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!

Get started!

I have been telling myself this for ages – Just. Get. Started!

So I decided to sign up and start a blog to document my thoughts and my journey through frugality to become financially independent (FI). It is also about me being accountable, and hopefully hearing from others who are on this road – that is why I have decided to share this rather than keeping it all squirrelled away privately somewhere.

Often the speed at which I feel I am moving!

Today, I am not super-concerned with making this first post a thing of beauty but it’s the lever to get the ball rolling.

I have been reading and listening to several books on Kindle and Audible and saving money, investing, retiring early, and becoming FI and most of the time the basis for it all is “look after your money”.

This makes sense to me as to how can one become FI if they are spending all they earn, or worse, spending more than they earn.

To take the first steps to a better, happier life it seems key that I have an understanding of what money is coming in and where it is going. To this end, I think the first thing to do is to start tracking the expenses.

The good thing is that I have been recording my expenses, as best I could given that I’ve got a family who doesn’t necessarily share the same view as me, for about three years. This process has improved over time and I have recently added a few more categories to help identify more preciously what has been spent.

I’ll share the concept later on and when I’ve carried out a bit of analysis on the data, I’ll also share the results so you’ll be able to get a feel for what I’m doing.

It would be great if you could share in the comments below how you track your expenses!

I will add more as I can about my circumstances, both financial and personal, and there may also be other topics that creep into this blog such as my efforts to learn a foreign language or my fitness life.

The last thing I want to say right now is thanks for stopping by and reading this. Please do take a moment to comment below, it would be great to hear from like-minded people! 🙂