Living with Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation

Today's an anniversary of sorts.

In April 2013 I woke up in the early hours of a Saturday morning with my heart beating wildly and very fast, thumping hard in my chest and clearly out of rhythm.  Given the history of heart disease in the family, I thought my time was up ...

I called the ambulance service on 999 but they weren't as concerned as I was (!) when I said I had no chest pain, and they told me to make my own way to the nearest hospital with an A&E department.

Once there, I was seen quite quickly, given aspirin & beta-blockers, lain on a bed and hooked up to an ECG machine.  Soon afterwards, the symptoms subsided somewhat and I left the hospital late on the same morning with some further medication and an appointment at the hospital's regular Chest Pain Clinic on the next Monday, although I hadn't actually experienced any pain at all.

Another ECG at this next appointment, and then booked in for an ultrasound scan of my heart, the results of which were that my heart seemed structurally sound but I had suffered an attack of atrial fibrillation (AF or A-Fib in the medical jargon), where the chambers of the heart beat out of synch with each other.  They said it could either be the start of a longer-term problem or it might never happen again.

Cost of Car Ownership over 9 years ...

We've just replaced our 15-year old car, which we've owned for the last 9 years.   It was just about on its last legs, was going to cost a fortune to keep on the road for another year, and it effectively had zero residual value when we got rid of it.  

Still, it's been a good workhorse for us, had carried tonnes of stuff and taken us many times on very long journeys both in the UK and across mainland Europe.

Anyway, I thought I'd take a look at what this car had actually cost us during the time we owned it, and so here's the summary spreadsheet (click on it for a larger image) :-

A personal Rate of Inflation ...

I mentioned this subject in a post a few years back, but inspired (!) by the recent decision by NS&I to tie future index-linked certificate renewal returns to CPI instead of RPI, CPI being typically around 1% lower than RPI, I decided to have a go at calculating a personal inflation rate to see how it compares with the UK government's own 'official' figures.  

At the time of writing, CPI is running at 2.4% per annum and RPI at 3.3%.

My results are tabulated below with a few following notes on the methodology and values used etc.  I've hidden the columns with the actual sums spent, and am just displaying the percentage changes from 2017 to 2018.

including holidays & travel

a) our long winter break was used as a proxy for all the 'Holidays & Travel' category, and its costs were multiplied by 2 to represent the other holidays we also take throughout the year.   Because our 2018 early break was actually paid for in late 2017, I calculated the costs which would be incurred today of taking an identical trip in early 2019, using exactly the same flights, accommodation & duration etc.

2016 Goals - Remember, trying is the first step towards failure...

With an acknowledgement to Homer Simpson, for the excellent piece of lifestyle advice in the title.

It's the time of year when many bloggers are writing detailed reviews about their last year's personal and lifestyle goals, and either congratulating themselves or indulging in self-flagellation depending on their degree of success.  

And then setting out even more ambitious plans for the year ahead.   Some I've read mention up to 25 goals for the year - that averages out at two per month.  

Cut yourself some slack, FFS !  

Is this how Financial Independence arrives - not with a bang but a whimper ?

My recent post about the company's finances made me think very seriously about the state of our personal finances, and what may be possible in '...retirement...' or at least for long periods without a regular earned income.

Using some of the 'float' we've established in the company, in the last few days I've set up a large monthly contribution from the company into my personal SIPP.   Making contributions to an employee's pension plan is also an allowable expense against corporation tax, so it's a tax-efficient way to withdraw money from the company.

Assuming the unlikely prospect of doing no further work at all in the period, these contributions would reduce the three years future 'earnings' we've banked to around two-and-a-half before the company runs out of reserves.  

Anyway, I've been beavering away at various spreadsheets for the last couple of days.  

Our Previous House is Sold !

Yesterday we finally exchanged contracts on the sale of our previous home, after it being on-and-off the market for the last three years, so I suppose some sort of celebration is in order - or is it ?

The buyers first viewed the property on 22 February, so it will have been a fourteen-week long process from start to finish, i.e. at completion next Friday....

Even though the market has supposedly been rising recently, we eventually agreed to sell it for only 81% of what we paid at the top of the market in the summer of 2006 (you'll already have guessed that this house isn't in London if we're selling for a much lower price than eight years ago !).    We'd had previous offers, but they were generally very speculative and derisory and we weren't distressed sellers, we always had a positive equity-to-loan value even at the depths of the fall, and so were prepared to hold out until we could get what we thought was a reasonable price.

In-sourcing as a way of life...

In my formative years, firstly as an apprentice and then a junior engineer in a large engineering company in the late 1970s and early 80s, I did the usual things like regularly drinking to excess and wasting money on useless expensive toys, but in those days I wasn't earning too much and so looking back I can see my wages were heavily supplemented simply by doing things myself.

Many's the hour I would spend under the car bonnet (that is, the 'hood' to those across the pond), or stripping motorbike engines or doing DIY improvements to the first house I bought.   Also, Saturday mornings spent in the local scrapyard climbing on piles of old cars stacked four high, with tools between my teeth and also hanging out of every available pocket, just to get at that elusive water pump or starter motor I needed.  Funny how the models I was after always seemed to be at the top of the pile, but that's life... 

For younger readers, this is how second-hand car parts were to be had in the good old days, long before the breakers started stripping parts themselves and offering them off-the-shelf, at hugely inflated prices of course because they now have to factor in their own labour costs.

I think the now all-pervasive 'Health & Safety' culture must share some of the blame, although it's also fair to say that these old scrapyards were potentially dangerous places to be if you didn't have your wits about you. 

How places can define people....

I hadn't previously realised how much the place in which you live can so significantly alter your habits and redefine your lifestyle.

Perhaps the stronger connection with our home is partly due to the time we spent gutting and refurbishing it before we moved in, and also the recent major project to develop the extended gardens, and so we feel that we know the building and gardens intimately....

And although I've always had an interest in making, mending, recycling and growing etc, it wasn't until we moved to our current home that such opportunities actually became possible on a scale which can impact on our way of life.  I use the word 'recycling' here in a broader engineering sense, i.e. the re-use of old materials and items that are unwanted or are no longer serviceable for their original function, but which can be modified to serve a different requirement.

As I've said before, we now live in a semi-rural location on the edge of farmland, with only a few near neighbours.  It's generally remote and quiet, and we can basically do whatever we want without fear of disturbing anyone else, hence the experiments with wind turbines, solar panels and perhaps a future combined heat & power (CHP) plant.  And now we have our additional garden land, we've extra space to indulge further such fancies.

Demand for the paid consultancy services I provide has been slightly reduced over the last couple of years due to severely depressed conditions in one particular industry sector in which I have expertise - this had provided a good proportion of my income for the last ten years or so.  It might take quite some time for this sector to recover, and for major spending to resume on capital investment projects, and so now seems an ideal time to get into the workshop and gardens. 

At our previous house within a typical residential street in a mid-sized market town, I would have been itching to find 40-odd hours or so of paid work each week to keep me occupied, otherwise it would have seemed that time was simply wasting away.

However, here in our current place, I could almost find enough things to do around the house and gardens to keep me busy full-time, and so an average of 20 hours of paid consultancy work per week was the reduced target for this year.  

This is an average figure though, and I always take on any work opportunities that are on offer - for the last couple of months, I've actually been working well over sixty hours per week, but at this time of year I don't mind at all, especially when these particular current projects are so interesting and intellectually challenging.

For the rest of the time when things are slack on the work front, there are things in the house and garden to build, repair, prepare, plant and tend etc, and even when it's too cold, wet or dark outside then there's many of my projects that can be continued within the comfort of the house or workshop.   Not only some of the physical construction activities, but also doing the initial basic designs, drawings and calculations can leave you wondering where the time has gone....

I'm also trying to set aside the last Wednesday or Thursday of each month for a regular and more detailed review of our pension and ISA investments, and for research into future opportunities....

Land acquired.....

It's been quite a while since I last posted, what with work commitments and Christmas etc, but some sort of celebrations are in order !   

Our purchase of additional land adjacent to our house went through in November of last year.  It's a strip of 5 metres width and around 35 metres in length.   We had first expressed an interest in buying this land back in February 2011, and so the whole process took around 20 months to complete....

We won't frighten you with the costs, but adding legal, survey and planning fees it came to an awful lot of money for a simple extension to the gardens.

Anyway, we've now got the land and are very pleased with it.  The neighbouring farmers also bought the remainder of the available land for sale, as additional grazing for their livestock.

So we've already taken down the existing fences and hedges, and hired a mini-digger and operator for a day to clear out one particular area which must have been used as a dumping ground for hedge and grass trimmings for the last forty years or so.

the northern end, before clearance.....

and after....

Some of our old hedge trunks were very substantial and so we've added to our stockpile of logs for the fire.   They need to season for about a year first though, to dry them out properly, so they'll be good for next winter.  The rest of the tree and hedge cuttings went on several bonfires.

Going off-grid... Part 1 ... Musings on the possibilities....

Firstly, my apologies for what is quite a long post without any pictures to break up the text....one of the advantages of writing this blog is that, for potential major projects like this one, it focuses my ideas and also forms a written Design Basis & Facilities Description for me to refer to in the future, and is a basis for comparison after completion....

I think it would be very good for the soul if we could be totally independent of our electricity supplier and run the entire house off-grid.

How can this be achieved ?  Let's look at the possibilities....