This month gave me a right kick in the teeth with a car bill that I mentioned was upcoming last month. I knew it would be a few hundred but can you imagine the look on my face when the quote came through at £675!
Around half of this was labour and tax but the other half was just for the coil springs, £175 each as they could only be supplied by Volvo. On previous cars, I could have bought an entire set of springs for that price!
Additional Income Streams
- Matched Betting £16 (Mar -£80)
- Surveys/studies £2.98 (Feb £8.79)
- Amazon FBA/eBay £0 (Feb £0)
- TopCashBack £0 (Mar £0)
Not much activity with the additional income this month, made a small profit with matched betting. I’ve got a few things listed on eBay which will sell at the start of next month so that will be something to look forward to.
I use a service called Odds Monkey to help with my matched betting, I’ve been using them for several months now and find the tools they provide to be essential in making a profit. If you are interested then drop me a message or you can sign-up via my affiliate link – OddsMonkey. The great thing is you can do as much or as little as you like and it fits around your life.
How did I do in April?
Assets
- Emergency Fund £2,150.68 (Mar £2,446.58)
- ISA, Freetrade £3,128.50 (Mar £3,009.24)
- ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £2,942.21 (Mar £2,913.33)
- Pensions £111,546.97 (Mar £107,559.23)
- SAYE £540.00 (Mar £510.00)
- House £375,000 (£360,099) *Nationwide HPI 2020 Q4
With the car bill, I had to dip into the emergency fund so I’ll be replenshing the cash levels over the next few months.
We had our house valued this month as we are looking into the prospect of moving. We were pleasantly surprised with what the estate agent told us after having a look around. There are a few jobs that need doing to get the house up to scratch but nothing we weren’t aware of. I am using the lower end of the range as I appreciate there is still work to do.
Liabilities
- Student Loan -£2,980.38 (Mar -£3,158.16)
- Mortgage -£189,389.70 (Mar -£190,069.79)
Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£120,308.36 – £192,370.08 = -£72,061.72 (Mar -£76,789.57 )
Last month I bought into Alibaba (the Chinese Amazon), this month I have added Baidu – the Chinese Google. Both are in my Freetrade General Investment Account so subject to any applicable taxes etc.
I have also increased my holding in Microsoft, I see them as a company that will continue growing for years to come. Not only are they in the consumer market with the Xbox etc. but also they are the second biggest provider of Cloud services behind Amazon. Interestingly, Alibaba are also a cloud provider so they tick several boxes for me.
Future Fund
The value of my Future Fund is up to £118,498.36 (£3,700 month-on-month), slowly edging to the £120k mark 🙂
Dividends
A whopping 45 pence this month for dividends, not quite at the stage where I can start thinking about retirement! 😀
Guest Post
If you are interested in writing a guest post for my blog, you can reach out to me via the contact page or by taking a look at the let’s work together page – it would be great to hear from you!
Vanity Metrics
These are metrics which serve me no purpose other than to see progress, or lack of, in the social media universe.
I have reappeared on Modest Money so I am able to compare stats again, hopefully on a consistant basis.
Alexa ranking: #6880720 (Mar #6,700,360)
Twitter followers: 507 (Mar 437)
Blog followers: 52 (Mar 48)