March 2016 – Back on the road again

Our annual expedition to Scotland

2015 April Ben Vrackie (4) — The view from Ben Vrackie near Pitlochry

It is spring and Mr BOTRA and I find our thoughts turning to Scotland.

Most years since before many of you were born (1981 was our first joint trip) we have enjoyed a trip to Scotland at this time of year. On these numerous trips we have stayed in tents, in luxurious castles and occasionally in damp, cold and decidedly scruffy houses. Some years we have also visited Scotland in summer, autumn and / or winter but it is the spring holiday that has been consistent.

So for me Scotland is primarily a land of yellow gorse bushes, blossom on the trees, wood anemones flowering in birch woodland and patches of snow on the hills. On these springtime trips we are always sure we will get weather, it is just hard to predict exactly what and we tend to pack for every season. We have had days when we have worn shorts [although not too many of these] and days of heavy snowfall. We have chipped ice off the tent and watched the rain scurry across a bay, followed by a rainbow.

We now mix and match with a wonderful combination of the campervan and staying with friends in a large house. We get the perfect mixture of freedom to do our own thing and peace and quiet and time with old friends enjoying good food, excellent company and the chance to share a dram in a lovely Scottish country house.

Self-catering in a large house [there can be up to 17 of us] works out cheaper than self-catering as a couple and in Scotland no-cost camping in the ‘van is possible and this keeps the holiday within our annual holiday budget.

Planning to quit or stay through a reorganisation

20160317_135957 — Clock watching at work – is it worth it?

I had a plan; a fairly foolish idea when I work for a charity in a dynamic sector that is reliant on public sector funding in austerity Britain.

Nevertheless, I can’t help planning. My plan was to finish work from my three-day a week admin post in about eleven months time in 2017. In this plan I would get a card signed by my lovely co-workers all wishing me well and I would then retire in to the happy land of financial independence. This wasn’t a plan I had shared with my employer and now I hear that a company reorganisation is in the pipeline for the summer and I am feeling out of control.

This reorganisation means that I will be moved from my friendly and relaxed office that is just 10 minutes walk from home [the best commute ever] to a new [and windowless] office where I will be the ‘new girl’ who has had to cycle for 30 minutes through the chaos that is Greater Manchester traffic. In the new office everyone else is at the other end of the corporate spectrum to me; instead of turning up in my scruffy hiking gear, putting the radio on and just getting on with my job at my own pace, I will be expected to wear business clothes, get involved in office politics and become part of the corporate machine.

Some background. I gave up senior management roles some years ago when we took our 50-year-old gap year. I took on a role that I can easily achieve with my skills so that I don’t have the stress and responsibility that goes with a senior position; although this means we have less money, it also means I have head space for other projects and being so near to home I wasn’t wasting time commuting. Working three days a week also means that I have time to devote to my other work as a motorhome travel writer.

As far as financial independence goes, the money for our retirement in 2017 is in the bank [hurrah] and a little bit more besides. By next March the plan says we will have both enough saved and sufficient pensions to [hopefully] get us through whatever post-retirement throws at us.

I am lucky that our financial independence gives me is the freedom to walk earlier than I planned if I don’t like what I am offered by my company and Mr BOTRA supports me in this, although resigning will mean we eat in to our emergency savings that help him to feel secure. I am therefore trying to take back control and have a negotiating position and a fall back position. I am hoping I can get agreement to work from home [no nice colleagues to chat to but no pressure to corporately-conform either]. If this Plan B is allowed I can go back to Plan A and carry on working for a few more months. [Hope you are you following this?] If this negotiating position fails, I will offer to reduce my hours [thus saving the company money] so that the longer commute doesn’t eat in to my non-corporate working time … so I have a Plan B and a Plan C.

Britstops here we come

20160213_122904 — Mr BOTRA studying the new Brit Stops guide

Wherever we park our campervan is our home, it is self-contained and we carry everything we need to be comfortable. At present, with work restrictions, we generally spend about 70 nights a year in our motorhome. To do this while continuing to save for our retirement we are always looking at ways to save so when the new Brit Stops guide arrived recently we started planning free nights away in the ‘van.

The Brit Stops scheme is a simple system [always the best ones]. Farm shops, pubs and food producers agree to host one or more motorhomes to park at their venue for a night for no charge. For the cost of £30 for the guide, a motorhomer has a list of 640 places where they can park up for free. This is modelled on the French Passion scheme that is popular across France.

Using Brit Stops we get to stay in some beautiful places and sometimes discover a new local food or drink. We might stay at a farm shops and buy some cheese, or a café and relax over their breakfast the next morning or we might enjoy a pint of local beer in a country pub. Brit Stops also allow us to be spontaneous as we don’t have to book a pitch many months before. No sooner have we spotted a forecast for a spell of fine weather for the weekend and we can be on our way (although some Brit Stops do like motorhomers to ring ahead).

The beauty of Brit Stops for us is that we get the opportunity to buy good quality local food created with care by a small business which beats the mass-produced offerings in the supermarket any day. Camp sites can be quite expensive in the UK and the Brit Stop guide can help us save money on our holidays (meaning we can take more]. In any year, once we have stayed two nights on a Brit Stops the guide has paid for itself, so we feel good, and we can support local businesses with some of the money we have saved, so we feel even better.

The number of places to stay has grown dramatically since Brit Stop started in 2011. It took us a few years [and the ownership of a slightly bigger van] until we got the Brit Stop bug in 2015. This happened when we were staying on a Caravan Club Certified Location that charged £15 for just a hook up on an uneven field where they hadn’t even bothered to cut the grass. Down the road was a Brit Stop where ‘vans could park for free with views overlooking the canal; no competition, as they say.

Emotions vs economics

P1080525 — Our beautiful insulated cafetiere and milk pan make great coffee and so make me happy

According to the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) in the UK we have spent £6.2billion in the last five years on stuff we don’t need and rarely use. If you thought that each of these impulse purchases added another day or two to your working life would you still buy that exercise machine, that electronic soup maker or that juicer that languishes at the back of a cupboard? For me, having a goal to retire early helps to put a brake on the impulse to buy. But everyone has to work it out for themselves and there are some interesting purchases listed here that are regretted and are now languishing in someone’s attic.

Of course, if you use your juicer every day, after exercising in your spare room and filling your soup maker then these products weren’t a wasted impulse buy for you … but we all have at least one guilty secret don’t we? Even Mr BOTRA and I bought a rowing machine some years ago that was soon listed on Ebay. Our insulated cafetiere and lovely milk pan [pictured above] by contrast was a well thought out purchase [for us] as it means that we can make good coffee in our ‘van that hasn’t become tepid before it is ready to drink [thus saving money in cafes].

Psychology Today considers there are reasons why we impulse buy; it might be that we love shopping or we don’t want to miss a bargain; because we are offered three for two or we have delusions that this new thingamajig will save us time or money or make us a better person. What it comes down to is that humans often make an emotional decision about an economic activity. Psychology Today also offers techniques for avoiding impulse buying. The NEST article ends optimistically, suggesting that individuals learn from their impulse buying mistakes and all those regretted purchases are certainly the backbone of Ebay.

Mr BOTRA and I have had an expensive month [even though February is so short] and I am certainly not going to lecture anyone on their own purchasing choices. But our shopping wasn’t done impulsively. I follow a simple process to avoid wasting money; I write down what I think I want to buy [I don’t do this for groceries you understand], consider it for at least four weeks and finally decide if it is something we still need rather than want. For us, walking boots and warm winter coats have all worn out recently and we opted to buy quality replacements that make a bigger hole in the budget but will [hopefully] last longer. We have also made two recent purchases that will result in long-term savings. The first is thermal vests; as I get older I become more of a wimp that craves the sunshine and warmth of summer; comfy and cosy thermals should keep the chills at bay and the heating bills down. Secondly, after many months of deliberation, we have bought hair clippers that will save money on hair cutting and soon pay for themselves.