April was an absolute rollercoaster; financially speaking, emotionally speaking, and at some times literally speaking!
Easter holiday in The Netherlands: Efterling, tandems and nature reserves
I mentioned on my last update that we headed off to The Netherlands during the first week of the kids Easter holidays. We drove across to Hull and got the ferry overnight to Rotterdam.
First up, we headed north to Zandvoort staying in an apartment. The owner of the apartments showed us around, including getting to hold the 1-day old guinea pigs! The next day we picked up a couple of tandem bikes and set off on a 30km route across the tulip fields at Keukenhof and on to the beach and sand dunes, very cool! Had some amazing fish at a place called Hoogies.
The morning after we popped in at the Formula 1 track at Zandvoort, free entry and literally no one about, apart from half a dozen people out on the track in their own cars, very fun to watch! We then headed south to Gouda, did a Sirupwaffle factor tour (like a Stroopwaffle but butter not margarine), as well as a Gouda museum tour. After that we headed south to the Biesbosch area.
After that we did the short drive to Efterling. We had 3 days on the park and 2 nights at the hotel. We all really really rated Efterling and both kids said that they would much rather go back there than Disneyland Paris in the future, and I would definitely agree.
The effort and detail that had been put into the park was phenomenal, you could spend a couple of hours walking around the fairytale forest alone! The rides were also very decent, and more importantly the queue times were extremely reasonable, we didn't have to queue for longer than about 20 mins max.
Also, it worked out a hell of a lot cheaper than Disneyland, £700 for a 2 night stay (in an upgraded room), with 3 days on the park. You can park 2 mins away from the hotel and the walk to the park is 5-10 mins. There was also a fantastic pool at the hotel. I'm aiming to do a full write-up of the theme park sometime (much like my Disneyland one here). We'll definitely be back again before the kids are too old.
- Edinburgh and Seahouses - we drove up to Edinburgh for a friend of mine's 40th birthday celebrations. My Whitbread shareholder card got it's first use at the Premier Inn. Seahouses was great on the way back, we had fish&chips and ice cream as well as spending a lot of time with the eider ducks on the beach.
- Sad news - shortly after the trip to Edinburgh we had to put our cat down. She was a rescue cat and we had had her for 12 years. The kids had grown up with her. She was behaving oddly for a day or two, and seemed to be in pain standing up. We took her to the vets, got all the (very expensive) scans done and found that she had multiple tumours. Apparently cats are very good at hiding illness, so I'm just hoping that she wasn't in too much pain for too long. She was the perfect cat, answered to her name, very gently around the kids, and loved nothing more than snuggling up on me in bed. We will miss her dearly. On top of that news I found out a few days later that my Uncle had passed away after a short battle with cancer. I've got the funeral next week. April started out fantastic, but ended up with a brutal couple of weeks.
- I mentioned previously that work is slightly precarius at the moment. Well, I actually got paid a week late in April, with the email notification coming out on the morning of payday, April 1st, that payment would be delayed (bad timing considering April fool's day!!).
- Since then it appears to have settled down a bit, and I got paid on time at the start of May.
- I'm busy with an ISO audit for the next few weeks but am still wary of the long term stability of my role and the wider company.
Breakdown for December:
- ISA up £17k
- Pension up £22k
- GIA/easy access savings up £12k
- Crypto up £11k
- House price up £1k
- Total: up £70k!!
After the record dip last month (-£44k), I experienced the biggest increase during April, up £70k! And at the point of writing this 2 weeks into May that has continued on to +£100k since the start of the tax year! This brings my total net worth value to £1.4m and the compounding machine is really kicking up a gear now!
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