It's a no-brainer

Our mortgage was fixed for 2 years. Unfortunately, the agreement expires at the end of November this year. In the midst of the strongest inflation in decades. Therefore, we have negotiated with the bank where the mortgage is today. With this bank, we have a shareholding with the same value as the mortgage.

The negotiations literally start with the bank clerk asking us what we think it's worth and what we think about the future. The whole procedure felt frivolous and dishonorable. Kind of like walking into a store and asking the price of a shirt and getting the answer: "What do you think it's worth?

My irritation caused me to fill in a notification of interest with a competing bank. We received an offer that is 3 points lower than the current bank's offer, without us having any savings or investments at all there. Felt like a non-issue to switch banks...

If you dance with the devil, you have to pay the piper

When we thought we were beginning to understand the extent of the Covid-19, the world's most perfect husband and I made an active decision not to leave the market. Mainly depending on whether we would not be able to reinvest in a number of holdings due to regulations between America and Europe.

By the time we understood the extent of the pandemic and its consequences, it was already too late. It was mentally stressful to see one's holdings go down by more than 60%. We are still following our plan and continuing to buy dividend stocks. However, we have reduced risk-taking, somewhat.

Today, we are back to the same numbers we had before pandemic broke out.

I am married to an old man

This summer, mr Dewlar received his first pension payment. Although he is not an old-age pensioner, it was one of his private pension insurances that started to pay out. It felt strange when the first payout came. 

I thought something was wrong, we are not that old. We have a teenage son who just turned 15. Even mr Dewlar thought it was a strange feeling. Another insurance was actually going to start being paid out, but he moved the date forward.

We started our pension insurances when we were in our twenties. Then it felt like it was light years away before they would start bearing fruit. Obviously I must have blinked because here we are now…

Thank God there are two more years left until my first insurance is paid out.

The lesson that was intended for the offspring became mine instead

Whenever the world's most perfect child receives money as a gift, whether it's a birthday present, Christmas gift or summer vacation money, we've forced him to save 50% of the money since mid 2018.

The main reason for this is to make it natural for him to save money. I was also hoping that he would become aware of how much money he was spending on toys that would just sit there. In those four years, the amount has risen to more than $1,370. This made me go into his room and look around. All I could see was "junk" while all I could think was "this could have been 1 OXLC, this could have been 1 PFLT" and so on.

Thank God for the world's most perfect husband! He reminded me of all the fun YMD had the hours he actually played with the toys. One must remember how to enjoy life as well.

Out on the other side to...

After struggling with all the Covid-19 regulations for 2 years, being forced to close one of our stores, finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel, inflation is hitting. And, it hits hard. Food prices are going through the roof, energy prices are at levels never seen before and to ice the cake, Riksbanken, Sweden's equivalent to the Fed, raises the interest rate by 1%.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand that they raised the policy rate but it should have happened a long time ago. We have a head of National bank who reacts to the market instead of acting. For example, we had negative policy for a very long time when it was not needed. If he had acted on the market and raised the policy rate in time, a few tenths of a percent would have been enough instead. This could have moderated inflation.

I also believe that this inflation is largely created by all the politicians who dismantled fully functioning clean and predictable energy production. Everyone could see that this would lead to increased prices for just about everything.