February 2024 update

It’s been such a while since I put together an update on my finances – there’s a lot that has happened in the past 18 months or so!!

My finances took a bit of a battering with legal fees having to be paid for a divorce, house sale, and house purchase. Plus I had to take a pretty big pay cut due to a round of redundancies at my company. But, I have my new home which I am over the moon about and a job so it’s not all bad!

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £0
Surveys/studies £0
Amazon FBA/eBay/FB Marketplace £0
Cashback £0

I’ve got several boxes of things to sell on FB Marketplace and ebay since moving house, I need to make the time to get started. I know from previous experience that once I start it’s not too bad, just that it is not an exciting prospect of going through boxes piled up in the garage 😀

Cashback services I use are TopCashBack and QuidCo, I tend to keep an eye out for any easy offers they have e.g. sign-up for a credit checkign service and earn £2.50. Usually I would just do a quick check before buying something to see who offers the highest cashback then go via that site/app.

How did I do in February?

I do realise that crypto is not investing, it’s speculating, which is why I only bought a small amount of BitCoin and Ethereum (now Ethereum 2) a long while back. I have several other currencies but they are only small amounts earned from completing tests etc.

Assets

Emergency Fund £7,840.00 (Jan £7815.00)
ISA, Freetrade £3,905.23 (Jan £3,713.96)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown (£3,435.97)
Pensions £150,311.52 (Jan £146,734.81)
Crypto £582.33 (Jan £399.49)
House £105,113.50 (Q2 £106,875.00) *Nationwide HPI 2023 Q4

Liabilities

Mortgage -£79,448.09 (Jan -£79,624.21)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£162,639.08 – £79,448.09 = £83,190.99 (Jan £82,475.02)

The comparison in monthly figures isn’t great this month, march should be more aligned though.

Still, I’m glad that I have no debt, other than mortgage, that I’m carrying. I have struggled with using credit cards in the past so after I moved house I made sure that I remvoed my Amex from Amazon, Apple Wallet etc. to avoid falling into the same trap.

The savings rate this month compared to January 2023 is interesting as the numbers are heavily affected from my cut in salary. I feel like I want to step up my investing contributions again but have been waiting for the bills to settle down since moving home.

Future Fund

My milestone of £15,000 for my Future Fund is small for most FIRE people but it feels like a way off just now 🙁

My Future Fund value is slowly creeping up and I now have a positive networth (excluding the house) in most part due to a much smaller mortgage.

Dividends

Last year, I received £163.34 and for 2024 I am currently at £52.28, averaging £26.14/month (2023 £13.61/month). Not enough to retire on but would cover some bills. All my dividends are being reinvested.

Goals

Read more – Last year I read 20 books, mostly fiction but a few personal finance and self-development books. This year, so far, I have managed to read six, again mostly fiction. I enjoying the fiction as it’s a nice change from my day job which is very technical.

Exercise more – This seems to be an every present goal!! I have assembled a fair home gym set up in my garage which consists of a power rack, pull down machine, a couple of punch bags, a turbo trainer and several bars and free weights.

The majority of my exercise though is walking Skyla which I’m looking forward to more now that Spring is here and we have more post-work day light 🙂

Learn more – I passed my Microsoft Azure Administrators exam a couple of months ago which has motivated me to push on with my work-related training. I am now studying toward a VMware exam which I hope to take either in April or May.

My Masters in Strategic IT Management resumes in April so I will have to be careful about balacning my time as that requires twenty hours ish of study time each weel 🙁

Earn more – This feels more important than ever at the moment having taken a pay cut and also being solely resposnible for the bills! I’ll be looking to resume paid surveys as I remember them not requiring a lot of time or effort. Undecided about Matched Betting, it’s been a long while since I did that so i think it will be like learning from scratch again.

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!

August 2021 update

Not happy with another car bill on the horizon, I decided the best thing for it was to sell the car. I did the usual of checking out the dealer buy-back price, We Buy Any Car, and the local garage but none of them could come close to motorway.co.uk

I took a load of photos of the car, chatted with them about the condition and they sent the details out to all their buyers. The next day I had a really good offer come in that was £2.5k higher than expected. So, the next week the Polestar was loaded onto a transporter and made its way up to Edinburgh.

Bit disappointed with the V60 Polestar in terms of reliability, my previous V60 I had for a couple of years longer and it just needed new tyres.

It was a beast of a car and so much fun to drive but by selling that I could buy a Toyota Auris hybrid which saved me £585 car tax each year, around £100/year insurance, and sooo much on petrol. Plus it left me with a fair-sized pot of money 🙂

With the extra cash sitting in the bank I decided to pay off my student loan so I called them up, got my redemption figure and paid straight away. Such a good feeling to know that another debt has been cleared. I know people have mixed feelings on paying off their student loan and some see it more as a “tax”.

Interesting thing is, after a few days the online balance for my loan showed the debt had been cleared and also that there was a small credit on the account – not sure how that would be given that we worked off a redemption figure. Oh well!

Of actually annoyance though was that my employer still took a student loan repayment from my pay this month and that hasn’t shown up on my loan account. I guess the notice from SLC & HMRC hadn’t been received in time. Not the end of the world as I expect to get that repaid some point in September.

Talking about repayments, I should be getting my car tax refund through next month too which should be around the £450 mark. I’m in two minds as to whether invest it or tuck it away in a new savings pot potentialy to pay for my Masters degree.

The frugle side of me takes over this time of year when both my car and home insurance come up for renewal. This kick-starts a flurry of comparision site searches for the best deal which I then check against TopCashBack for any further goodness.

This year I have saved £30 off my car insurance and got roadside recovery included plus £40 cashback from using the TopCashBack service.

At the time of writing I have still to finalise my home insurance but my renewal offer is the same as last year so at least I know I’ll not be paying more if I decide to stay with them.

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £29 (July £9.16)
Surveys/studies £0.93 (July £0)
Amazon FBA/eBay/FB Marketplace £50 (July £13.79)
TopCashBack £0.14 (July £2.37)

Continued to clear out items via eBay and Facebook Marketplace, mainly due to pressure from my wife! 😀

I know some of the items I’ve sold could have been priced higher but to be fair, I just wanted the items gone. At the end of the month, anything that was being advertised and hadn’t generated any interest was taken to the local Nansa charity shop.

The income from matched betting is starting to be a more consistent flow as I’m making more effort to take adavantage of bet clubs and offers around the football World Cup and a few other major sporting events. Still a long way off what I was making in my early matched betting days but something is better than nothing.

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 August?

Assets

Emergency Fund £3,192.51 (July £2,928.621)
ISA, Freetrade £4,240.64 (July £3,228.42)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £3,435.97 (July £3,249.52)
Pensions £120,869.69 (July £117,335.14)
SAYE £660.00 (July £630.00)
House £375,000 (£360,099) *Nationwide HPI 2020 Q4

Liabilities

Student Loan +£13 (July -£2,503.82)
Mortgage -£185641.19 (July -£187,074.21)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£132,398.81 – £185,628.19 = -£53,229.38 (July -£62,236.33)

Very satisfying to have that final payment listed in the spreadsheet this month. It will feel strange not reporting on any debts next month!

Slightly up on the EF payments – these are a combination of round-ups on certain transactions plus regular payments.

Future Fund

My next milestone is £150,000 for my Future Fund. It’s great to see this number increasing and my negative networth (excluding house) inching toward a positive figure.

Dividends

Just under £40 for this year and with four months to go, it’s looking good for my target. My average monthly dividends are £4.92 which is nearly enough to cover one of our mobile phone bills 😀

Goals

Read more – not so much reading this month, the same with audiobooks which I normally listen to when walking Skyla – I’ve just been enjoying the sounds of nature which I find very calming.

Exercise more – August was a real struggle for exercising as I’d managed to get golfers elbow, also known as tendinitis, from weight lifting. This really set me back mentally and as a result, I didn’t attend many classes at all. I did finish the month strongly though with a Body Attack class and two treadmill sessions in the final weekend. This got me just enough MEPs to meet the minimum monthly target.

Learn more – I spent quite a bit of time working through an ethical hacking course which I found really interesting, so far I have been able to use a Kali Linux VM, USB wireless adapter, and a few packages to run deauth attacks. I’ve only done this on my wireless network for obvious reasons (I don’t want to end up in jail!) but it was cool to be able to prevent one of my Echo Dots from connecting to the Internet 🙂

I have also been spending some time looking into a framework called Flutter, which is used to develop good looking, cross-platform mobile apps.

Earn more – Effectively by paying off my student loan I will be bringing home a bit more money each month which could count as extra earnings – a pound saved is a pound earned, right? 🙂

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!

July 2021 update

There’s been an ongoing theme with my recent posts…

Car bills!

This month I noticed a ticking/clicking sound when getting toward full lock in either direction. The car had a similar fault a while ago which Volvo sorted under warranty, typically this instance occurred after the warranty just expired.

A trip to my local independent garage put me on course for an approximately £1700 bill to replace the CV joints/driveshafts. To be fair, the mechanic said the car will be fine to drive for a good while and that if it were his car, he’d leave it as-is.

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £9.16 (June £25)
Surveys/studies £0 (June £1.42)
Amazon FBA/eBay/FB Marketplace £13.79 (June £22.44)
TopCashBack £2.37 (June £7.08)

My sales of unwanted items have been spread across eBay and Facebook Marketplace this month, I’m finding Marketplace both good and bad. Good in that there are usually quite a few people interested in what I’m selling but also bad in that you get let down by a lot of people not turning up when they arrange to.

How did I do in July?

Assets

Emergency Fund £2,928.62 (June £2,680.41)
ISA, Freetrade £3,228.42 (June £3260.25)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £3,249.52 (June £3207.80)
Pensions £117,335.14 (June £116,113.19)
SAYE £630.00 (June £600.00)
House £375,000 (£360,099) *Nationwide HPI 2020 Q4

Liabilities

Student Loan -£2,503.82 (June -£2,613.17)
Mortgage -£187,074.21 (June -£188,013.56)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£127,341.70 – £189,578.03 = -£62,236.33 (June -£64765.61 )

Month-on-month figures are consistent with last month.

I can’t recall how long my SAYE scheme is running for, might have to look into that and see when I can take up the share purchase, or withdraw the money – whichever works out best.

Future Fund

Small increase this month but still moving in the right direction.

Dividends

Smaller income this month but still a marked improvement compared to this time last year: £2.66 (2021) vs £0.07 (2020).

Goals

I can’t remember having shared my goals for this year before but I’ll mention a few of them here:

Read more – continuing to read “How Google Works” as well as listen to “Leadership Strategy and Tactics” by Jocko Willink.

Exercise more – I use a MyZone belt to track my effort when exercising, it measures the effort in MEPs (MyZone Effort Points). Each month to keep my progress level, I need to attain a minimum of 1300 MEPs, represented by the red line. The green line represents my target of 2000 MEPs which is a bit harder to hit consistently.

Learn more – I’ve spent more time on PluralSight this month, watching an updated video about Kanban (work planning and organistation) as well as “Developing a Google SRE Culture“.

Earn more – My dividend earnings so far this year are £36.98, my target £50 so I think there’s a fair chance I will make that.

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!

June 2021 update

Another month, another car bill 🙁

This month it was a replacement tyre as the front nearside wall got sliced on something as I was on my way to pick up my daughter from a nearby village. Fortunately I wasn’t going fast when it happened but I knew straight away it wasn’t good.

With my previous Volvo, I had a puncture which I could seal using the provided temporary repair kit but this time round there was no chance of it working. I was able to phone my dad who drove out to pick up my daughter and her friends while I waited with the car.

The emergency call out and new budget tyre came to £200 which was a nasty unplanned expense but it was manageable. Fingers crossed for an incident-free July!

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £25 (May £28)
Surveys/studies £1.42 (May £0.24)
Amazon FBA/eBay £22.44 (May £487)
TopCashBack £7.08 (May £30.96)

Bit quieter this month across the income streams; just clearing out a few more items on eBay – I had a few buyers from overseas who pulled out as they hadn’t checked the amount of import tax they would have to pay. Not very helpful as it loses me time in running the auction for another week plus potential buyers who may have found an alternative in the mean time.

How did I do in June?

Assets

Emergency Fund £2,680.41 (May £2,441.91)
ISA, Freetrade £3260.25 (May £3,155.58)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £3207.80 (May £2,985.23)
Pensions £116,113.19 (May £112,741.54)
SAYE £600.00 (May £570.00)
House £375,000 (£360,099) *Nationwide HPI 2020 Q4

Liabilities

Student Loan -£2,613.17 (May -£2,803.43)
Mortgage -£188,013.56 (May -£188,430.57)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£125861.65 – £190627.26 = -£64765.61 (May -£69,339.74)

Mostly the same as May, just a touch down on the payments to the Emergency Fund.

Not much too say on the month-on-month figures. Guess that is kind of good as it indicates stability and consistency?

Future Fund

Woohoo! Blew past the £120k mark this month with a total of £123,711.65 – happy days! 🙂

Dividends

Best month yet in terms of dividends, this month’s £15.87 has dwarfed the amount (£0.95) from this time last year. It’s so nice to see improvements in the dividend payments, hopefully I’ll be able to reach the goal of £50 this year.

Goals

I can’t remember having shared my goals for this year before but I’ll mention a few of them here:

Read more – hardly a SMART goal but I do want to spend more time reading and less time on Netflix. So far it isn’t going too badly, I am currently reading “How Goolge Works” as well as listening to “Work Rules” which is another book about how Google works. Bit of a trend there eh?

In earlier months I have relistened (for the third time) to “Your Money or Your Life” by Vicki Robin, I like this book a lot and have gleaned useful pointers from it each time. “Unshakeable” by Tony Robbins which is on my list to go over again.

I also listened to “The Automatic Millionaire” which, contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t rate all that highly.

Exercise more – I set a base line of three times a week for this. I’m hitting the target most weeks, only when I’m not feeling well do I miss my sessions. My typical week would look like:

Monday – RPM 45 minutes
Tuesday – Arms session
Wednesday – BodyCombat 60 minutes
Thursday – Back & shoulders
Saturday – BodyAttack 45 minutes
Sunday – Legs

I do sometimes give the weights a miss, or do a weights & cardio session in the same day, really depends on how I feel. Comabt & Attack give me between a 900 and 1200 calorie burn, the weights sessions are lower but still a good workout. With that in mind, you’d think my weight would be going down but no, it has other ideas and has been on an upward trajectory 🙁

Learn more – Over the past few months I have really picked up the pace on PluralSight (online training) and I’ve been looking at Google SRE (Site Reliability Engineering), C#, and management videos. With all of those I find it easy enough to dip in to the course for anywhere from 30 minutes upward each day as they are usually pretty easy to leave & pick-up.

Earn more – My target for passive income from dividends is £50 this year, not a big number at all but it is in keeping with the size of portfolio I have right now. I have received a pay rise earlier in the year which was great and it staves off the desrire to look elsewhere for a better paid job which I am more than happy about.

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!

May 2021 update

May was a mixed bag of ups and downs for me…

I started the month with a reoccurrence of depression which overlapped the May Day weekend and resulted in a week off work. This was followed by some positivity when I moved my tech blog, Knight Talks Tech, from Hostgator to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

After seeing a note about using GCP from Saving Ninja in a Slack channel I’m part of I thought it was well worth a look. Ninja had said how he had set up WordPress in GCP having followed a video by a guy on YouTube, I watched the video and completed some of the steps. Things got in the way and I became distracted from completing the work.

I came back to this though having received an email from HostGator saying that my renewal was coming up and asking for a load of money from me. I wasn’t prepared to pay a couple of hundred pounds so that was incentive enough for me.

There were a few moments when I needed to do some supplementary Googling as things have moved on since the video had been created, but other than that, it all went well. In fact, having got to the end of the video, links for a revised instructional were then being promoted! 😀

Bit of a frugal move as it costs me £10/year for the .com domain and around 90 pence/month for hosting, definitely better than around £200 from HostGator.

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £28 (Apr £16)
Surveys/studies £0.24 (Apr £2.98)
Amazon FBA/eBay £487 (Apr £0)
TopCashBack £30.96 (Apr £0)

I made a fair bit via eBay this month selling off a few unwanted things like my son’s old moped (£349) and a couple of MyZone fitness belts (£100) which I no longer needed as I have the latest version. Selling the moped made a big difference financially as well as mentally, having it gone feels like a weight has been lifted.

The money from the moped went toward fitting a new carpet up the stairs and on the landing. The other eBay proceeds, TopCashBack money and vouchers I get for being part of a COVID-19 survey I used toward a 2020 iPad Air from John Lewis.

My profits remain on the low side for matched betting although I am hoping that will pick up next month when the Euros come round.

How did I do in May?

Assets

Emergency Fund £2,441.91 (Apr £2,150.68)
ISA, Freetrade £3,155.58 (Apr £3,128.50)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £2,985.23 (Apr £2,942.21)
Pensions £112,741.54 (Apr £111,546.97)
SAYE £570.00 (Apr £540.00)
House £375,000 (£360,099) *Nationwide HPI 2020 Q4

The emergency fund has recovered a bit this month, just glad we have that in place and that it is available for us to use.

Liabilities

Student Loan -£2,803.43 (Apr -£2,980.30)
Mortgage -£188,430.57 (Apr -£189,389.70)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£121,894.26 – £191,234 = -£69,339.74 (Apr -£72,061.72)

The month-on-month figures look better compared to April with increases and decreases in the right places.

My Student Loan repayment is up by £5/month and my company pension contribution up by £11.33/month due to a pay rise effect from May.

Big turn around on the EF which is nice 🙂

Future Fund

Just a shade under the £120k mark now.

Dividends

£2.78 for May, I’m looking forward to seeing how June compares year-on-year

Here’s a little look at the composition of my lazy portfolio…

I’ve got a bit of cash sitting in the ISA waiting for me to invest, things have been so busy at home I’ve not got round to it yet.

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.

Alexa ranking: #6880720 (Apr #6880720 )
Twitter followers: 524 (Apr 507)
Blog followers: 57 (Apr 52)

April 2021 update

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.

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)

February 2021 update

I’m super-late publishing my February update and as a consequence, I can’t remember much to talk about for the month so I’ll crack straight on with things…

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £232 (Feb £30)
Surveys/studies £0 (Feb £5.82)
Amazon FBA £30 (Feb £37)
TopCashBack £0 (Feb £8.81)

The matched betting profit was exceptional compared to recent months, I made more bets and also took advantage of bet clubs and other offers. I think over the winter months I didn’t feel much like spending time in the evenings looking at bets and opted more for Netflix.

FBA profits for February were made from the final sales of the items I sent in January. There was more competition in February which meant I needed to drop the sale price to shift my items, despite this I still was able to make a reasonable profit.

How did I do in Febraury?

Assets

Emergency Fund £2,226.39 (Jan £1750.00)
ISA, Freetrade £2,924.52 (Jan £2899.28)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £2,783.11 (Jan £2,849.54)
Pensions £103,498.91 (Jan £100,040.25)
SAYE £480.00 (Jan £420.00)
House £360,099 (£350,883) *Nationwide HPI 2020 Q4

Liabilities

Student Loan -£3,376.77 (Jan -£3,516.77)
Mortgage -£190,464.67 (Jan -£190,422.22)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£111,912.93 – £193,841.44 = -£81,928.51 (Jan-£ 85,979.92)

I reached a milestone this month, my Emergency Fund passed the £2,000 mark, next up is to achieve enough money to cover one month of expenses.

The Emergency Fund is now made of NS&I Premium Bonds, fund investment and cash.

There is a fair bit of discussion around what one should do with their EF cash. For me, the main attributes of my EF are that the money needs to be accessible within a few working days and that it needs to be set to work. The fund part of my EF is the “riskiest” but I am comfortable having it there earning dividends and potentially growing in value too.

This month’s pension figure includes Mrs Frugalist’s Nest pension for the first month which makes the pension gain look a bit nicer 😉

Future Fund

The main increaset this month is from the introduction of the Nest pension rather than any decent growth in the main pension.

Dividends

Above average dividends for this month, I’ll need to revisit the investment details so I can forecast when to expect further payments.

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: #6,700,360 (Jan # 4,267,238 )
Twitter followers: 437 (Jan 382)
Blog followers: 46 (Jan 44)

January 2021 update

January was a really quiet month in most aspects of my life. It started off with the back-to-work blues, then my wife caught COVID-19 from work and a week later I caught it too. The worst part of it for me was the tiredness which lasted two to three weeks. During that time I didn’t really feel like doing much so things like matched betting took a backseat (which you’ll see further down the post).

What could have been a large outgoing this month turned out to be not so bad. My car was due it’s annual service and MOT at the end of January but instead of paying the £450 for the service by Volvo, I used Spencers, an independent garage in a nearby village, and paid just £145 for both the service and MOT.

One of the good things about becoming more financially aware is that I budget each month for expenditure such as the above so there wasn’t a moment of panic or a compulsion to reach for the credit card!

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £30 (Dec £51)
Surveys/studies £5.82 (Dec £5.72)
Amazon FBA £37
TopCashBack £8.81 (Dec £13.06)

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 things is you can do as much or as little as you like and it fits around your life.

My FBA profits came from two different items that I sent in having purchased them before Christmas. There were multiple units of each item, one of which has now sold out and the other is close to selling out too. I’m not going to disclose what the items are as they seem to be good sellers and I’m on the look on for further deals on them.

One item provided me with a 39% profit on a sales value of £16.96, and the other gave me 47% on £6.65. That’s not bad after the UPS fee and the FBA fees have been paid.

How did I do in January?

Assets

Emergency Fund £1,750 (Dec £1,500.00)
ISA, Freetrade £2,899.28 (Dec £3,611.82)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £2,849.54 (Dec £2,713.38)
Pensions £100,040.25 (Dec £98,995.33)
SAYE £420.00 (Dec £420.00)
House £360,099 (£350,883) *Nationwide HPI 2020 Q4

Liabilities

Credit Card £0 (Dec -£950.99)
Student Loan -£3,516.77 (Dec -£3,656.77)
Mortgage -£190,422.22 (Dec -£190,092.68)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£107,959.07 – £193,938.99 = -£85,979.92 (Dec -£87,459.9)

There was an adjustment to the value of my Freetrade ISA as I reallocated some funds.

I added £200 of NS&I premium bonds to my Emergency Fund this month, the rest of the month’s contributions remains in cash.

The good news is that I managed to clear the balance on my final credit card this month which frees me up to pay extra into my EF or pay down my student loan. It’s a great feeling to know I no longer have any debts owed to credit card companies 🙂

Almost forget to include Mrs Frugalist’s SIPP in the calculations as this is the first-month showing payment. I’ll have to look into her Nest pension organised by her company and get that added in next month.

Future Fund

Still moving in the right direction but gains on the smaller side this month.

Dividends

A lack of dividends paid this month looks naff but a payment for February sneaked its way into the screenshot!

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 can’t compare January to December using Modest Money as my blog appears to not be listed but these stats come from Alexa, Twitter and WordPress instead.

Alexa ranking: #4,267,238 (Dec #1,298,570)
Twitter followers: 382 (Dec 295)
Blog followers: 44 (Dec 29

December 2020 update

Just a few things of interest this month that impact my finances and work, and decent form by Norwich City at the top of the Championship, make it a month that I am reasonably happy with.

As all my money has a purpose each month, I utilised my Emergency Fund (EF) to cover the cost of two new tyres for my car. The reason for using the EF is that I keep next to no money in my current account, pretty much just what I need for groceries and petrol.

The company I bought the tyres from are based in Andorra so to protect myself I paid for them using a credit card and then immediately paid the balance off with the EF money. There were some indifferent reviews on the web but I have no complaints at all, the order process went fine and the tyres arrived three days later.

With work, I received my variation of contract making me a permanent home worker. Some of my office-based colleagues may say about costs increasing by WFH but the heating is still going to be on at the same times as my kids and wife are home at different points during the day. Electricity will increase slightly and the broadband bill will remain the same.

My company will be paying me £26 expenses per month directly to help offset WFH expenses, this is pretty handy as it means I will not have to make a claim to the Inland Revenue myself.

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £51 (Nov £137)
Surveys/studies £5.72 (Nov £10.21)
eBay £37
TopCashBack £13.06

The eBay income came from the sale of our old TV which had a broken screen (teenager + game console!). The guy who bought the TV wanted it to repair his broken unit so I felt happy with this sale as it helped prevent two TVs going to landfill. The proceeds went to help pay down my credit card bill 🙂

How did I do in December?

Assets

Emergency Fund £1,500 (£1,150.80)
ISA, Freetrade £3,611.82 (£3,546.79)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £2,713.38 (£2,682.73)
Pensions £98,995.33 (£97,194.47)
SAYE £420.00 (£390.00)
House £350,883 (£350,883) *HPI current valuation

Liabilities

Credit Card -£950.99 (-£1,728.26)
Student Loan -£3,656.77 (-£3,806.77)
Mortgage -£190,092.68 (-£189,487.04)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£107,240.53 – £194,700.44 = -£87,459.91 (-£90,057.28)

Not so much added to my FreeTrade ISA this month as I bulked up my emergency fund and paid a bit more than usual off my credit card.

My plan to clear the credit card debt in January might be pushed back to February now although it depends on additional repayments I can sneak in next month.

The pension contribution reflects an additional one per cent, that coupled with a new Vanguard SIPP I opened for Mrs Frugalist means that we are now putting 15% of our household income into pensions. That’s another personal milestone met 🙂

Future Fund

It’s nice to see the graph continuing to move up & right, this month’s gain puts me quite near the £110,000 mark and is a good way to end the year. Just over half of the gain is from the inclusion of my Hargreaves Lansdown ISA which was missing from last month’s FF.

Dividends

A late flurry of dividends this month gave me a nice fuzzy feeling as payments crept past the £8 mark for the month.

It’s nice to look ahead to the prospect of seeing how 2021 payments compare to 2020. Who knows what they will look like as amongst many things the economy will continue to be influenced by COVID-19 and also the departure from the EU.

Looking ahead to 2021

I’ll share my review of 2020 shortly and also my plans for 2021. I’m going to try and concentrate on the processes required to meet my goals rather than just the goals themselves, I think this level of planning will help with my motivation.

Guest Post

This month I had the opportunity to share a post from Martin at Studenomics, he shares his thoughts on what to look for in your first side hustle – things to watch out for and how to choose the right one.

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.

Alexa ranking: #1,298,570
Twitter followers: 295
Blog followers: 29

November 2020 update

Quiet month for me in general so I’ll crack on with things…

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £137 (Oct £275)
Surveys/studies £10.21 (Oct £16.56)

Things were a bit slower this month with my matched betting although I still made a >£100 profit which I’m fine with. I wasn’t feeling it for a good while so just dipped in and out as I fancied it.

How did I do in November?

Assets

Emergency Fund £1,150.80 (£1,107.69)
ISA, Freetrade £3,546.79 (£2,187.76)
ISA, Hargreaves Lansdown £2,682.73 (not recorded)
Pensions £97,194.47 (£94,943.49)
SAYE £390.00 (£360.00)
House £350,883 (not recorded) *HPI current valuation

Liabilities

Credit Card -£1,728.26 (-£2,299.60)
Student Loan -£3,806.77 (-£3,960.77)
Mortgage -£189,487.04 (-£190,668.62)

Total Assets (excluding house) – Total Liabilities = Net Worth
£104,964.79 – £195,022.07 = -£90,057.28

Yes, I have a big mortgage and the repayments are pretty hefty but the decisions around that were made pre-FIRE journey.

We could downsize as we have a spare bedroom and an office/5th bedroom but when we looked into this a few years ago there just wasn’t much to gain if we want to stay in the current area. We’re not looking to relocate just yet as my daughter is in her final year at high school and then hopefully starting college. Renting out the spare room could be an option we considering though…

It’s not something I’d rule out in the future as I like the idea of geo-arbitrage although that comes with other considerations such as having the best dog in the world that we would have to take with us as I’d not even think about giving her up.

As you can see, although my spending and credit card payments are down this month, my savings rates are down too. Part of the reason for this is a bit of lethargy, I just struggled with motivation to bring in extra money which would have been used to reduce debt and increase savings.

Thankfully, my credit card payments should be done with ahead of schedule – it’s now looking like the bulk of the balance should be cleared in December and then January will mop up the remaining balance.

Whether then to start on paying down my Student Loan or to add to my Emergency Fund is the question. My Student Loan is under £4,000 and attracts a rate of interest of 2.6%.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on this – would you clear the loan and be rid of all debt (except mortgage) or build your EF a bit more?

Future Fund

Continued good performance from my Scottish Widows pension scheme and a boost to the Freetrade ISA saw me edge past the £100,000 milestone.

So happy about this as it is the first big milestone that I have hit on my way to FIRE 🙂

Also, just while compiling my list of assets and liabilities/debts (above), I realised that I have not included my HL ISA in my Future Fund so that’ll be added from December onward.

I have set the next milestone at £150k which I plan to make in the next couple of years. Increased pension contributions, both from higher saving rate & higher salary, plus side hustles and general market performance although the latter cannot be relied upon.

Started recording my dividend payments in my Freetrade ISA (lazy portfolio) which can be seen in the graph below. I’ll provide a breakdown of my lazy portfolio in the future showing what funds I have.

Not likely to be retiring any time soon on the above level of payments but I expect these numbers to grow nicely over time. I’ve set an informal target of the monthly dividends being enough to cover my mobile phone payment which is not much, like £5, so should hopefully be achievable in the next 12 months. I’ll then add the next notional target – over time the goal is to have the dividends covering a significant proportion of my regular expenses.

Credits

I have taken inspiration and assistance from a couple of other FIRE bloggers in the creation of my monthly updates so I’d like to take the opportunity now to say thank you.

Weenie over at QuietlySaving – thanks for providing quality posts, yours was the first FIRE blog I started reading and it was from your updates that I “borrowed” the Future Fund concept. Also a big thank you for your help with my dividend graphing (see above) – I was banging my head against the wall with Apple Numbers trying to get it right, I then went from Excel (thanks!) to Google Sheets and I’m pretty happy with the result.

You can read what Weenie’s November looked like here.

Sassenach Saving‘s monthly updates provided me with the thought of breaking down my assets and debts for a month-on-month comparison. Check out their November update here.