The answer to my question “Will I Take Redundancy?” is yes! I accepted the offer and left the company, my last working day was Friday 29 August. It felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

My plan is to retire. I have 2 pensions I can start taking now and together with interest/dividends from my investments I should be able to get by. In fact I can pretty well maintain the same standard of income. I guess that makes me very fortunate. But really, it was not luck. I’ve been investing for the long term for many years. My previous sacrifices have left me in a good position. And I’m still young enough to enjoy it.

I’ve again got myself into a situation where I’m asset-rich but cash-poor and it is a little uncomfortable. Because of the house price boom in the UK of the past years, I have an asset worth much more (double at least) than I paid for it. Similarly I have stock market investments, mostly held in an ISA, that are probably of about the same value as my house.

But right now, I don’t have a lot of cash available. And I’m about to go on holiday, so I’m experiencing a cash squeeze.

I can’t easily make use of the value of the house, at least not without taking risks that are not worthwhile. And my ISA stocks are intended to provide an additional income for when I retire. That is too important for me to mess about with.

To get by in the short term, I’ve taken out a loan with my local Warrington credit union, NEWCU. Hopefully that, together with moving some money from my reserve bank account, will just about tide me over.

For the future, I’ve already taken steps to cut back significantly on my unnecessary monthly outgoings so hopefully, I’ll be able to rebuild my reserves.

I’m looking hard this morning at shares I’ve bought in a couple of companies in the past 8 months or so. For a few years now, I’ve bought followed an investment strategy which invests in two types of shares. The first is called a value share.

Here I invest in a large, well-established company whose share price has fallen, usually on some bad news, but the company is still paying a healthy dividend. In most cases, the market has overdone the reaction to the setback and the shares will at some point bounce back. In contrast to this is what is known as a growth stock.

This second type of share is in a company which has experienced above-average growth in earnings and share price over the past year. To qualify, these companies must also be above a minimum size and have a low  share price to sales ratio.

This investment strategy has served me pretty well over the time I’ve been using it it. Right now though I’m in a bit of a dilemma over two of the stocks I’ve bought. Normally I only review my holdings once a year, in November.

But this time I’m tempted to make an exception. A couple of shares in my holdings have fallen by over 20%, at a time when the market has risen. I think I’m going to act now to dispose of them, rather than wait until November.

One thing that is in my favour is that I don’t tend to look back. Once I’ve sold shares, I don’t follow them afterwards and agonise if they then rise strongly. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.