A bit of a social-spendy month, from a few outings with friends, including another enjoyable FIRE meet up in the pub.
Work has been really busy but I’m managing to not let myself get overwhelmed and am making sure I’m making it to the gym as usual and not having late nights.
However, thoughts of not having to do the stuff I don’t like doing when I retire seem to cross my mind a lot more often these days.
The company I’m working for wants to continue growing via acquisitions so I’ve been dragged into due diligence projects. I had thought last year’s acquisition would have satisfied the big dogs at the top for a while but evidently not.
There was a time in my career when I would have been the first to volunteer for such projects, just to do something different, to get some recognition perhaps; now, I just want to get on with my day to day job and I find these distractions annoying.
Anyway, how did my numbers look in April?
I saved 23% of my net salary. The above includes £23.44 from doing Prolific surveys, plus a rare payment of £67.67 from Google ads.
I got a small pay rise (the max available from the business) – I shall split the extra pay across my investments and my mortgage overpayments but this will be from June as I used some of the extra already to buy some new home office furniture to replace old.
Shares and Investment Trusts
No new investments, I just topped up existing ones.
I think I need to do an update on my investments at some point (this post in particular, as it’s been 4 years). There have been times when I’ve said ‘no new investments’ when at some point I have made changes but haven’t always remembered to mention them in the blog, as they would have started off as just small tweaks here and there (though quite a few in total).
Anyway, current share/IT portfolio can be found here.
(Entire portfolio here)
Future Fund
The markets continued their downward spiral but it wasn’t as bad as I thought and my FF ended up at £295,522.60 by the end of the month.
Dividends and Other Income
Seeing my dividends roll in regardless of what the markets are doing is the only thing that sparks any real joy (investment-wise) right now:
I received £529.21, of which £234.97 was from my ISAs, the rest from my SIPPs. All dividends were reinvested.
Here’s what my ISA dividend income graph looks like:
Goals Update
Here’s how it looks for month 4:
Just ticking along on the goals.
Not Great News
The little old lady who lives next door had a fall, resulting in a short hospital stay. She wasn’t badly hurt but injured her knee, so for a while, she was unable to walk.
She’s been looked after by her daughter who lives close by and it seems like she may stay there permanently now as she’s still a bit wobbly on her feet and increasingly forgetful 🙁
I popped round for a little chat and she’d forgotten that we’d spoken since the accident because when she saw me, started off with “You’ll never guess what? I fell down the stairs…”. Bless.
I wonder what will happen to her house.
Balls!
I don’t want to end this post on a downer so I want to say a big thanks to @TI from Monevator – not only does the website provide sound investing guidance but also gardening tips! 🙂
My houseplants have always had a problem with pesky fungus gnats and TI suggested LECA balls (balls of clay used in place of soil for houseplants).
This time of year, I’d normally be running around the house with the hand-held Dyson hoovering up clouds of the critters (the ones that haven’t taken a swim in my cup of tea) but having repotted all my plants (some full hydroponic, some balls topping the soil), there has only been the odd sighting of a stray bug or two flying around. I’ve also been encouraged to be more inventive with the plant pots:
A couple of my plants protested at the change to their environment but they seem to be doing ok, although I will continue to monitor.
The balls aren’t cheap (around £9 for a 2L bucket) but absolutely worth it for the stress-free and bug-free environment!
Unfortunately, I’m now thinking of buying more plants!
Anyway, hope you all had a great April!
10 thoughts on “April 2025 Savings, plus other updates”
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Hey Weenie,
Delighted the LECA worked out for you, thanks so much for coming back with an update!
Yes I’ve found most plants will transition to them. Weirdly I have problems with some succulents and there’s a few I haven’t tried yet (e.g. my ancient IKEA Ficus) but overall I’m a big fan.
Sorry to hear about your neighbour. However if I lived next door I could have given you some LECA as I accidentally bought a huge sack a few years ago (it wasn’t much more expensive than the small bags for some reason. Capitalism eh?)
I’ve been finding creative uses for it ever since. (E.g. I made a green roof for my shed that is about 50% LECA).
Fund is still going up and to the right, hang in there! 🙂
best
TI
Hi TI
I just bought another bucket of LECA as been adding more plants to my collection haha!
It would be great if you could share a photo of your green roof!
And yes, fund is going up and looking better this month!
I’d second doing an update on your investments. I’ve noticed changes to your investments (difficult to track because looking back at older monthly updates, it only shows the current state of your portfolio not as it was at the time) but no idea what your thinking is now and how you are changing. For example, I spotted that you had bought IUKD at some earlier point, then a few months later you ditched it to buy something else.
Hi Curlew
I’ve never been that meticulous tracking my investments but my selling and buying does kind of follow a strategy, which I will elaborate on in my updated post.
Yes, I did have IUKD as part of my ETF portfolio – when the property allocation of the portfolio got too high, I sold it all but kept IWDP which I also held. I’ll try to add some more detail to the update as well as some of my thinking/decisions.
Thanks for the response, Weenie.
Not sure I follow your logic about disposing of IUKD…the property allocation of that ETF is only 6.5% (I had a quick look at the iShares site) and IUKD itself was a very small holding of yours. Can’t see how it would have made any real difference in rebalancing. Anyhow, I await your update with interest.
Hmm, I’m probably not even talking about the same ETF in that case. I’ll provide more clarity (and accuracy!) in the update!
Hi Weenie,
I’ll focus on your “little old lady who lives next door” situation, combined with some gardening tips (not wishing to tread on anyone else’s toes of course) for this one.
When I bought my house 4 years ago, I scanned the adjoining gardens for trampolines (no apologies, at this stage of the game I want peace and quiet if I can get it). Garden privacy was really important. All the houses and gardens around mine were “little old lady types” and I had a lot of privacy, particularly from some stunning staghorn trees at the end of my garden, the majority of which were in the neighbours garden but a few of the trees were in mine. The old ladies house with the garden backing onto mine was sold, new neighbours moved in, with 3 kids under 5, the trampoline went up and they cut down all the privacy trees for reasons I will never understand. Perhaps they like our windows looking into each others gardens? ARGGH. The point I’m making is, if you do not have sufficient privacy cover, assume the worst and start planting in advance. I recommend something fast growing and ever green, like a row of Pyracantha’s. Fabulous blossoms in the spring for the pollinators, colourful berries in the autumn/winter for the birds. Prickly thorns, good for security too. Hawthorns are great too, but deciduous. My privacy cover is starting to take effect, but I wish I’d planned for this when I moved in! You may of course be less bothered than me about these things…
Good luck and I hope your dear neighbour is ok!
Hey Starla
My fence panels can only provide so much privacy and not from anyone’s upstairs windows. I do have a greengage tree that is taller than the fence now and that is spreading to provide some privacy.
One neighbour has a huge magnolia tree so that provides some cover but that’s it really. That said, I don’t think I’m so bothered as you are, like I’m not bothered about people seeing me pottering around my garden (or when I’m sunbathing).
One garden away from me, a family has recently moved in (it’s a rental) and they have two little girls aged around 5 and 7. At first, their shrieking and laughing was really noisy but I’m fine with it now. Kinda tune it out like I do with dogs barking – if you let these noises get to you, it can be really annoying. However, if the kids were living right next door to me though hmmm, I’m not sure about that, that might need some getting used to.
Same neighbourly situation, Weenie. We were talking to the old lady over the back and her family at Easter; I drove past the other day and saw a For Sale sign on her house, and realised then that she’s already moved out . We are like Starla in that we enjoy peace and quiet, so any neighbourhood changes come with a bit of “fingers crossed”. Having said that, we’ve been super lucky with the rental next door changing families 5 times in 6 years, and everyone has always been lovely so there’s no reason for us to expect anything different this time. It doesn’t even have to be families moving in – the neighbours on the other side had a baby a couple of years ago, and that’s been a joy and a laugh watching/hearing her grow up and playing in the back yard.
Thanks for the tip on the clay balls, I’m going to try them as well. My current method of dealing with fungus gnats is to retire the indoor plants to the outdoors and start again!
Hey Mrs ETT
Good to hear you’ve enjoyed peace and quiet in your neighbourhood and long may that continue.
My neighbourhood is on the quiet side so I would hope that will continue too, whatever happens to my neighbour’s house.
Good luck with the clay balls – my sister has just switched and she wonders why she didn’t do it sooner!
I too have retired (and lost) many a plant outdoors due to gnat infestation – lost some really nice plants in the past but I didn’t know what to do then!