Retire from 8 to 5 

After July’s tax payment and savings hit, it feels good to get back to a normal month and 47% stashed.

As we mentioned in the previous monthly update, K’s parents are visiting us this summer. And we wanted to show them around, so almost every weekend with a day trip to a local town – London (we didn’t go but made bookings for them), Cotswold, Shrewsbury, you get the general idea. This is one of the few times we genuinely dislike having a small car. Four adults and one toddler, in a large toddler seat, is a squeeze. But heck, we are too cheap to buy a big car so we’ll grumble a bit but its fine. So our expenses were a bit higher, resulting in <50% savings stashed.

We also took a mini break for a three days to Breacon Beacons National Park. It was our first visit and after many years, it felt good to be out hiking in the mountains. Hopefully, the first of many visits. After having visited so many national parks in USA, we were not expecting anything spectacular here. Could a tiny field compare with Grand Canyon’s glory or Yellowstone’s hot springs fury. Oh boy, were we wrong. The gentle slopes, rolling hills, dotted with sheep, unexpected tiny rivulets, meandering streams with tiny bridges across them, were a hikers paradise. We also hit jackpot weather for two of our three days. Junior walked a bit, would see a sheep ten feet away, which presumably appeared like a menacing tiger in his eyes, and would want to be carried. We were not prepared with a good hiking carrier backpack, and this will need to change before our next visit.

We also went to National Showcase for Caves. At first glance, we were super skeptical of £21 per adult and £16 per child entrance fee. £100 for an activity is a bit steep for us. But we bought tickets anyways, since we figured it would be a good rainy day activity, should we need the cover. But again, we were so wrong. We must be getting soft in our middle age or just viewing things from a different perspective because of our son, but this place was so much fun! With a toy train ride up a mini hill, beautiful huge caves, and fake life-size dinosaurs scattered throughout the hillside, it was a wonderful way to spend the day. Let’s not forget the huge farm, with Shetland ponies, all kinds of farm games (including an indoor go-cart track for kids!), mini golf and petting zoos. The highlight will be when junior, again on S’s back screaming “run a llama, run a llama”, and S kept ambling on assuming junior was pretend playing, only to see others quickly stepping aside as a llama escaped its farm pen and zoomed past her! Luckily nobody was injured but S definitely looked over her shoulder for the rest of the time in the farm.

All things considered, it tuned out to be a super fun August!