Frosty mornings and a dose of CoVid, December update (Financial Independence +36 months)

This month’s house sit turned out to be slightly unusual, in that one of the homeowners was there for half the time. We had signed up to look after 3 dogs, some chickens and some sheep for nearly 3 weeks while the owners were in Australia. About a week before we were due to arrive, we received a message telling us that the husband’s 101 year old mother had been taken ill in Ireland. He had decided not to travel, but she would head off on her own, as she has a sister who lives in Melbourne; would we be willing to come as planned to help him with the animals and allow him to jump on a plane at a moment’s notice if required? We were promised our own sitting room and entrance(!), which started to give us a clue about the scale of the place.

We decided we didn’t have much to lose, and agreed. We arrived on 4th Dec to find a very large house tucked away down a drive which must have been at least 1/3 mile long (great for privacy, not so great when you have to put the bins out for collection). The sign at the end of the drive declared we were indeed in the right place at <insert name of village> Hall. There was no bell or knocker on the front door, and we eventually found the homeowner round the back by the stables. A plummier English accent it would be hard to find (he genuinely said ‘yah’ instead of yes), but he was very friendly and welcoming.

The house was beautiful, but largely single glazed with numerous ill-fitting external glazed doors and the owners were very reluctant to use the heating. In fact the upstairs heating is never turned on, and we managed to time our stay just in time for a week of sub-zero temperatures. It was so cold in our bedroom, that I decided to get the fridge thermometer out of the van to see just what the temperature was in there.

I have never liked a bedroom to be too warm, but for the duration of our stay it ranged between 6.4 and a balmy 9.2 deg C, which is cold even in my book. Thankfully, the duvet was warm and we had plenty of blankets and socks. I actually slept remarkably soundly, so maybe we are missing a trick with our comfortably centrally-heated modern sleeping chambers?

The small sitting room we had use of had a woodburner and was next to the kitchen with it’s oil-fired Aga, so it was the warmest room in the house with the fire lit. Once the homeowner got to know us a little, we were largely left to our own devices. We were a good excuse to accept every invitation he received to go shooting, fishing and golfing with friends and was often out for supper. Coupled with trips into London, we didn’t see too much of him. When he was home, he liked taking the dogs out for a walk, so we were encouraged to get out and explore the area, so it worked well and enabled us to actually visit Sutton Hoo, which had been on our list for years.

The dogs had a routine of a long early morning walk before breakfast, and we saw some beautiful sunrises and glistening frosty mornings along the footpaths by the river, which could be reached through the gardens behind the house. It was an effort getting out of a nice warm bed in the dark, but so worth it. When it’s 7 degrees in your bedroom, it’s amazing how quickly you can be ready!

Just over a week after we arrived, the homeowner flew to Ireland, not really sure when he would be back. It turned out, he would not return before we left, as his mother died a few days later. We never really felt alone in the house though, due to the constant stream of people…..cleaners, a gardener, an engineer to fix a problem with the landline, a decorator, airbnb guests in a converted outbuilding…. the list seemed endless. Having grown up in a draughty old barn conversion, I have never aspired to owning a grand period home. If confirmation were needed, this housesit definitely demonstrated the responsibility this kind of building brings. The decorator is apparently booked for 2 weeks each year in advance. “They never know exactly what will need doing, but they know there will be plenty for me to do”.

One of the most interesting parts of house sitting is getting a glimpse into how other people live. We always try to be flexible to keep the routine as constant as possible for the animals, which means we end up living the homeowners lives for a while to some extent. There is always something new to learn (how to make toast on an Aga, how to light a fire with a strong backdraft down a chimney, how to defrost a chicken water feeder…)

While he was away, I did have a quick google to see if I could find out what our host did for a living. It wasn’t hard to find a profile page on a website with a photo. His expertise was described as ‘Asset management, 3rd party private equity and hedge fund distribution’. When we recounted this to a friend, the immediate response was “Ah – a leech”. I suspect there is some family money in the mix too, as there is a photo of the family pile in Ireland on the wall in the downstairs loo, together with a chart tracing lineage from Edward II down to 1865. I assume there must be some family connection, even though the family name did not actually appear on the chart. Speaking of the downstairs loo, I had to include a photo of it (see photos at the end of the post). Although the plumbing was modern, the structure definitely was not. It was however very practical for the climate!

We left what was a very memorable sit and headed to my in-laws for Christmas in Hertfordshire, via some friends for a couple of nights. Unfortunately, the morning after we arrived at my in-laws, Mr Wombat woke up with a nasty cold. As we had tests in the van, he used one to discover that CoVid had hitched a lift with us somewhere along the line. Despite doing our best to quarantine him in the spare room, both his parents came down with it 5 days later – on Christmas morning 😦

As we were supposed to be having Christmas dinner with my brother in law and his family 10 miles down the road, this prompted a hurried exchange of ingredients on the doorstep, as we had half the meal and they the other half. I was left to rustle up a full Christmas dinner at 5 mins notice in a strange kitchen. The sprouts were a bit overdone, but on the whole it went pretty well considering. Luckily they had bought a turkey joint rather than a whole bird which would have been very hard to divvy up.

Just as I was daring to believe I was the annoying person who is immune, I got symptoms 2 days later. We were supposed to be heading to my parents for New Year, but that has had to be put on hold.

All in all quite an eventful month, with very little thought being given the to freedom fund beyond the nice dividend notifications that started popping up steadily in the last few days. I wasn’t sure what I should have been expecting when I sat down to update our tracker spreadsheet. It turns out the year went out with more of a phut than a bang:

• Freedom Fund Value: £1,172,588 (down £19k on last month)
• Monthly expenses: £2,155* or a withdrawal rate of 2.2% if we were to maintain this rate of spending
• Earned Income: £0
• Miles walked to end December: 1769 vs. a target of 1748**

The freedom fund saw most of the rebound of November drain away again, finishing £19k down on this time last month. As we have 3 years of normal spending in cash, without considering any earnings we may collect along the way, the volatility of our investments is not causing us any concern yet.

Our monthly expenses were back to what has become ‘normal’ for our current lifestyle. We started the month with an above average frequency of cafe and lunch stops in Suffolk, but illness does wonders for your bank balance, and spending was cut right back for the second half of the month, despite the road tax on the van coming up for renewal (£290).

I have again showed £0 earned income even though I have continued to provide a few hours of remote mentoring for my previous employer. I am hoping I might see the first payment for that in January. It certainly will not be enough to cover our monthly expenses, but it is something I find rewarding and it more than covers our monthly grocery bill in exchange for an hour a week of my time.

This month also saw me complete my walking challenge. In 2022, I have walked the equivalent of Lands End to John O’Groats and back, or in fact a little further (21 miles further). I will need to think up a target for January to reinforce the habit into the New Year.

I am still crunching the numbers on the whole of 2022 and how it compares with previous years, so a review-of-the-year type post will follow.

Even though we didn’t really do anything for the last 2 weeks of the month, I still found it hard to select which photos to include in this post, as the sub-zero winter wonderland that was the UK at the beginning of December was so photogenic (and our canine charges were quite cute too).

Random thought for the month, conceived sitting in a cafe in Aldeburgh (a well to do seaside town in Suffolk): Why do some dog owners pay to have their dog professionally clipped in the middle of winter, only to have to buy a jumper (or designer tweed coat) to keep it warm……….?

*Includes £500 per month personal allowances (£250 each), which may not be spent in the month, but which is not tracked. Some of it may show up in the freedom fund in the future, if savings build up and are invested.

** I challenged myself to walk the equivalent of Lands End to John O’Groats and back in 2022. This is the longest overland distance between 2 points on the UK mainland or 1748 miles.