Welcome to Home in the Green! Thanks for visiting.
This tranquil, rarely-visited outpost of the internet is where I share what I am doing and learning as my family and I move towards financial independence.
I live with my partner and two children in Edinburgh in Scotland. We are at the early stages of our financial independence journey. For us, that means we are focussing on how to optimise our time and our money, with the hope that we will be financially independent before traditional retirement age, hopefully in our mid-50s.
Our strategy to build wealth is through investments and rental property income. At the moment we have high childcare costs, so maxing out one of our Stocks and Shares ISAs each year, even with one rental property income, is a stretch goal for us.
We are also overpaying the mortgage on our residential property to get down to a 60% loan-to-value ratio when we next remortgage.
Reducing our environmental impact is important to us. So, while we find many ways to both save money and live more sustainably, we are also happy to spend in line with our values and pay more for a more eco-friendly option.
Food is a passion for us – so while we look for ways to cut food costs and reduce waste, we don’t sacrifice quality or taste. Instead, we choose not to take many (any) overseas holidays and buy a lot second hand.
As our children are so young, we also don’t want to be so focussed on saving or making money that we miss some of the best years of our lives.
Please stick around if you are taking a similar path. I’d love to hear your stories – what’s working well for you and what your challenges are.