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.

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.

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.

September 2020 update

It was a tough month at work, sometimes despite having loads to do I can find it hard to keep going. The work is typically varied and normally it keeps me interested but perhaps it was the change in weather or completing a challenging task that left me feeling a bit down, I’m not sure. This then rolled into me developing a sore throat and then a list of other symptoms which scarily sounded a lot like COVID-19.

I decided to take sick leave and self-isolate but as things didn’t improve I booked myself a test, I make it sound easier than it actually was – it turned out to be pretty hard to book any kind of test! Despite having a drive-in testing centre about a mile from my house I had to wait three days before I was finally lucky enough to get offered a home testing kit.

After getting the test kit ordered, the rest of the process was pretty decent. The kit arrived the next day, I then got it returned the same afternoon and within two days I got the result back which was thankfully negative. The odd thing though with the fam self-isolating is that my daughter was actually put out about having to stay off school! 😀

One downside to being ill was that it interrupted my gym routine and I don’t mean that in a vain way, it is one of a few things that keeps me well balanced and in a reasonable state of wellbeing. Thankfully after a week and a bit off while the symptoms cleared, I was able to go back and restart the classes.

I managed to spend a fair bit of time this month reading and listening to audiobooks, not all personal finance-related, I enjoyed listening to The Amityville Horror although I had to replay a lot as I kept dozing off during it! It’s a good book though and I’d recommend borrowing a copy from the library.

Also, I took some produce from the garden…

Not a huge amount, the potato plants are still growing as are the pears so will provide more in the months to come. The pears are actually pretty large, the photo doesn’t really do them justice, in fact they are large enough that they have caused the tree to lean over so I should really start picking some more!

At the same time as the potatoes, I also planted some onions but they grow much slower so won’t really be ready until maybe Decemeber. I have taken a couple up though and used the to add to a salad as I planted a mixture of red and white. The carrots didn’t survive due to Skyla digging them up before they could get established.

The apple tree was reasonably fruitfull this year and have contributed to a good few apple crumbles. We also have a dwarf pear tree in the front garden which typically is pretty decent but nothing this year.

All good stuff though, food on the table and some fresh air & fun prepping, planting and picking 🙂

Additional Income Streams

Matched Betting £158 profit (Aug £168)
Surveys/studies £17.99 (Aug £19.27)

I didn’t take out any profit from my matched betting but the survey profit I used to reduce my credit card balance.

While off ill, I was looking at ways to bring in extra income and I came across JustPark. This company (I’m sure there are others too) allow you to rent out any car parking space (or garage) that you don’t need and also help you find parking if you are visiting somewhere. If you sign-up via my referral link* and rent out your space then we both get £10 to spend on parking, or a £10 Amazon card.

No takers yet but it is not surprising with the lockdowns and large numbers of people working from home. In the future I may get a bit of business if the larger Aviva offices reopen and people start coming back but we’ll see, I’m not losing anything by making it available.

Matched Betting

Completed all the easy new account offers via Odds Monkey so I’m now starting with the average difficulty ones. The fact that all the easy ones are done has had an effect on my monthly profit, that and making a few mistakes. I’m still learning so I expect to mess a few bets up so I’m not too cut up about that.

I’ve been chatting with Weenie about accumulators so that is something I’ll be trying out in October, not sure what the results will look like but hopefully gain more profit than I lose.

Also opted to switch to annual renewal for my OddsMonkey membership, this was a pretty decent result as 12 months was being offered at £140 (£10 saving) compared to £15/month.

How did I do in September?

Spending was down significantly compared to last month as there were no large expenses to sort out.

I didn’t add any further contributions to my Emergency Fund as I put that, together with savings from spending, and paid down a decent wedge on my credit card balance.

It’s such a good feeling seeing the credit card balance edging nearer to zero. Once I’ve got this paid off I’ll have to decide whether to start paying off my student loan or the smallest part of my mortgage (it’s made of up four parts; two at a lowish rate and two at a higher rate).

Future Fund

Contributions to my Future Fund via Pension, EF, and ISA didn’t change much with the exception of the EF payment as mentioned previously.

The sharp rise during September is down to the inclusion of an ISA and also an uplift of just over £2700 in my pension.

It will be cool to pass the £100k mark although that could take a little while yet but seeing this graph and my decreasing debts are giving me a ton of motivation to keep pushing ahead.

* This is an affiliate/sign-up link, please see my Affiliate Disclaimer.

June 2020 update

This article contains affiliate/sign-up links.

Some good news on the work front this month, my team were told we would be returning to 100% hours from July – yay!

The entire workforce was put onto 80% time/salary at the start of May as a precautionary step to protect the financial wellbeing of the company. I was initially worried about the financial impact this reduction in hours would bring but we have coped fine thankfully, my wife picked up extra shifts so it lessened the blow a bit.

How did I perform financially? I’ve put together a few figures to try and establish some benchmarks for future months, there may be a bit more detail for some areas than others at the moment but I’m working on that.

Spending

This covers our expenses such as groceries, travel costs, pets, and any other discretionary spending for the month. Not sure how this would compare to other families of four but it is the lowest for amoutn spent in a month this year – not sure if that’s because we have been doing less or if I’ve messed up the tracking somewhere!

Travel costs are really low at the moment as my wife is cycling to work, I’m still working from home, and we have declared our car off road with the DVLA.

I anticipate a much improved accuracy for spending in July as I have taken up the use of an app called “Emma” which utilises the open banking here in the UK to amalgamate transactions and balances across mutliple accounts. More on this app in another post, but it you’d like to take a look and sign-up in the mean time, please use my link* as I earn in-app points 🙂

Credit Card

I was a little hesitant in adding this category as I feel a degree of shame about getting into credit card debt. In fact, I have carried around this type of debt since my twenties, occasionally paying off the balance in full only to build it back up again. But, as Vicki Robin says, “No shame, no blame”!

Decided to use some extra money we had to pay down the debt a bit more aggressively this month than we usually would. Feels good to see that number come down and also get the balance below 25% of my credit limit.

Having been listening to the ChooseFI podcast for a little while now, the idea of using travel reward credit cards has grown on me but I still harbour a “fear” of the cards and the trouble they can cause without sufficient will power.

Company Pension

I use salary sacrifice to make the most of my income, this reduces the amount of income tax I have to pay as my salary is effectively reduced. My company offer a 3% contribution match which I take advantage of plus I add a decent percentage on top of that.

The scheme is run by Scottish Widows and typically does okay but the 2019/2020 year ended in a negative performance percentage. This resulted in my pension pot losing a few hundred pounds despite the contributions.

Emergency Fund

Contributions to my EF were low this month, mainly because I forgot to add the money 🙁

Note to self: automate this to avoid the same happening again!

Pretty much all the podcasts and books talk about setting up an EF to cover three to six months of expenses, this feels pretty daunting when starting out. My first target is to cover one month’s worth, then I’ll aim for two months. I feel much more inclined to keep going when the goals are achievable, they don’t have to be easier but achievable none the less.

ISA, Freetrade

I opened my Freetrade ISA in May and added a further £310 to it during June. The cash balance was invested in funds according to my portfolio strategy which I’ll talk about in another post. I don’t have a magic link for Freetrade but if you are interested in opening an account (in the UK) then message me and I’ll send one through, we’ll both then earn a free share worth between £3 and £200 – nice!

That pretty much rounds out my thoughts on my June finances, a bit late in getting these written down and published but heh-ho 😀 Next month, I intend to get round to this a bit earlier and making small incrementally improvements to my systems should enable this.

Quick question for you, do you use reward credit cards? If so, what have they enabled you to do, what places have you visited courtesy of using these cards rather than using a debit card?

Thanks for making it this far! Let me know what your thoughts are on financial updates and the kinds of things you measure.

Have a great week 🙂

* affilitate or sign-up link