Retire from 8 to 5 

Months like this one, with just are our normal expenses, make our bank balance happy. It leads to a fairly uneventful month report because we did nothing, except our usual jobs, and went nowhere, except to the usual child-related weekend stuff.

A couple of comments on expenses –

• Savings pot is back at our desired range of 35-45% (i.e., one person’s full paycheck). This will add up at the end of the year and allow us to make our annual overpayment on our mortgage.
• Transport at 5% is our advance purchase train tickets for May Bank Holiday weekend to visit Edinburgh. S’s sister lives here and we try to see each other atleast a few times a year. It was the whole point of choosing UK, as explained in this blog post.
• Home improvement 7.6% – This was a long-time coming. Our current mattress is over 12 years old, and is finally not as “memory foamy” as it used to be. Many many years ago, in November 2011, S fell while running down a hill and it resulted in a pretty bad multiple disc herniation. She recalls returning home and sleeping, aka passing out, on the couch in pain and being unable to remember much for a few hours. However, in the immediate aftermath, she was unable to sleep on a lumpy sleeping bag on the floor (since she literally was not able to bend down and get up) and graduated to the only in-stock mattress at the local mattress shop. The mattress came with a free-frame and finally S was able to sleep again after weeks of agony. This in-stock mattress happened to be a $1200 Serta mattress. Little did S know that she had purchased probably the single best mattress in the market at that point! It was love at first nap. Any ache any pain, this mattress was the cure! And over the years, it has moved 5 houses with us until it finally gave up a few weeks ago! This mattress has been more expensive than our TV or our one iPad! We always wondered if it would occur to any house thief to steal the mattress and not our TV! And it is with a very heavy heart that we are replacing this mattress with an Emma mattress. We have just received it and yet to open the box. S is very much hoping to fall in love with this mattress the same as the Serta one. Time will tell if the Emma mattress holds up to its hype.