Right, let's get serious

OK, the wedding went without a hitch (check out the blog link to the right) and Christmas went well. Now it is time to get serious about achieving the dream........

When could we move?

Tomorrow would be nice..............but let's stay real.

Besides which, our main priority for the remainder of this year is the wedding of our youngest daughter, Tanya.

Tanya & Chris.....Soon to be Mr & Mrs Stott

Tanya and Chris will be married on 02 December at Powick Church. We have plenty to arrange and organise for this, so our thinking is that we will put Beacon Croft on the market in January 2007. We are hoping that we can have completed a sale by April 2007, after which we will go into rented accommodation local to Malvern (More about this in a later post).

We'll plan on a six month rental contract, which will take us up to early October. We are planning on finding, buying and moving into a property in Skye by late August, with the extra two months of rental giving us scope for 'drift' on the timescale.

Linda and I will continue to work until the last minute in order to maximise how much goes into the retirement pot (or the miller fund as I like to call it !).

Between January and April / May we plan to visit Skye / Kyle of Lochalsh to do some decent recce work. After April we will begin to look for properties in earnest.

What will we get for our money?

From what we can see, you get a lot more for your money in Skye (and most of the north west coast of Scotland for that matter). Importantly for me is that most of the properties come with land, or very generous sized gardens. Personally I'd like 0.5 - 1.0 acre of land as we've never had much more than 100ft of garden before now.

We've found a good range of internet based estate agents so that we can start the process of seeing what prices properties are going for. Some of the houses look fantastic and we could get carried away and want to rush the process, but we want to plan this carefully and visit the area a few times to get a good feel of the differant locations. (I know the area relatively well, but Linda doesn't).

Here are some of the agents we have found :

http://www.skye-property-centre.co.uk/
http://www.iosea.co.uk/
http://www.skye-properties.co.uk/
http://www.hspc.co.uk/
http://www.primelocation.com/uk-property-for-sale/browse/all/uk/scotland/
http://www.remax-skye.co.uk/
http://www.lochalsh.com/mhproperty/property.html

and here is a useful summary of the buying process in Scotland, which differs somewhat from England:

http://freespace.virgin.net/nicola.taylor/property.htm

We'll be looking for a 3+ bedroom property in order to host lots of visitors.

Linda would prefer to put Beacon Croft on the removals van and take it up with us, but that's only because we bought new kitchen curtains in January !

Can we afford it?

I suppose everything else hinges on this question.

Linda and I are both 47 and we now work for the same company in Malvern, Worcs. The Company still (but for how much longer I wonder?) operates a final salary pension scheme, with an option to take early retirement at 50. So we have set ourselves the goal of taking advantage of the early retiirement option before it disappears forever.

Add to this my Army pension ( I served 22 years ) and it is starting to look do-able.

But we have to go up there mortgage free, which is where Beacon Croft comes into the equation.
Beacon Croft is the house we own in the Worcestershire Village of Powick, England. We have lived here since Apr 2001 and have been improving it ever since. Selling Beacon Croft will provide the cash for buying a house outright on Skye and provide some savings for those unforseen expenses.

We have added up all essential expenses we currently have to meet and added a generous safety margin. We have crunched these numbers several times and we are confident we can do this move and not have to work once we are in Skye, although, for peace of mind I will be checking out the part time employment prospects.

The crucial element of our financial planning is....how kind will Beacon Croft be to us in what she will achieve on the market? In the 5 1/2 years we have lived here we have done lots of work on her, let's hope she will repay the TLC we have spent on her.....

Beacon Croft - Anyone want to buy her?

I woke up one day......

and decided it was time to escape the stress and strain of working to fund a mortgage. Linda (the lovely linda) agreed with me. We have decided to sell up and move to Isle of Skye / Kyle of Lochalsh.

This blog will record our efforts to turn our dream into reality and retire to Skye before we are both 50. Please look in on us and see how we get on......

Dave & Linda