Apologies for the lateness of this update, just not been able to get round to it.
July was a blur, where I continued to enjoy a great summer of sport, pottering around my garden when I could, watched the epic ‘The Odyssey’ in the cinema and had a couple of social outings with work.
This month was also sad as my uncle passed away and I met up with cousins who I hadn’t seen since we were teenagers. Kind of sad that it takes a funeral to bring the family together in this way.
Anyway, how did I get on in July?
I saved 33.8% of my net salary. The above includes a £200 charity lotto win and £10.57 from Prolific surveys.
Shares and Investment Trusts
No changes made to this portfolio after last month’s AI-led rejig – all dividend income was reinvested.
Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.
(Entire portfolio here)
Future Fund
At the end of July, my FF was at £410,208.97, so the rocket continues onwards and upwards. Happy but anxious still…
Dividends and Other Income
An average month for dividends:
I received £683.02, of which £284.34 was from my ISAs, the rest from my SIPPs. All dividends were reinvested.
Am slightly behind target at this point but am not really concerned.
Goals Update
I read my first non-fiction book this year! What was it?
An attendee at one of the Manchester FIRE meetups lent me this book, ‘Quit‘ by Annie Duke. The book was a fairly easy read and was full of great stories and interesting anecdotes. It had me thinking of times in the past when I should have probably quit (whether that was a job or relationship or some other endeavour). I hope to remember key points when I come to quit my job next year…
Other stuff
Work has been pretty relentless and my brain is really tired and in need of a break. My boss is on annual leave but I do have a week booked off at the end of August. I can’t wait. I have a couple of things planned but mostly, it will be blissful nothing.
One good thing that has been introduced by work is Craft Club night. A room is booked out for people to spend a few hours doing whatever ‘crafting’ they want. Snacks and soft drinks are provided.
It’s surprisingly popular and as you can imagine, it’s mostly women attending, mostly young in their mid-20s. People are doing various hobby-type activities including colouring, painting, bead art, crocheting, cross-stitching. Me, I’m doing a complicated paint by numbers and I may share the finished piece if it looks ok (at the moment, it doesn’t haha!)
When I go to the office, things are so busy with me juggling with the volume of the work and trying to be sociable. The quiet time in the craft club room has been great to rest my brain and also to get the chance to get to know people I don’t normally interact with.
Anyway, best get this posted – hope you all had a great July!
Looks like you’re up £80k in the last 12 months. The growth in your investments is now exceeding your contributions. You are starting to reap the rewards of the seeds that you planted 10+ years ago. It’s a serious achievement, you should be proud.
Have you given any thoughts to de-risking the portfolio as you get closer to your target? As I am only a few short years away from pulling the trigger myself, I have been drip feeding new contributions into bond ETF’s and money market funds. I would like to have two years of this type of fund that could is low-risk and can be easily liquidated as a buffer in case of a market crash.
Today I realised that I’d been thinking about volatility wrong for my entire investing life. I used to think of de-risking as something that you only really needed to do later on in your journey, and that higher volatility just meant higher average returns, assuming you didn’t need the money. But someone today introduced me to “volatility drag”. This is the page they sent me which explains it quite intuitively if, like me, your conceptual maths isn’t great: https://themoneycalculator.co.uk/volatility-drag-calculator.
I’m quite far away from retirement still but I’m going to have a serious look at reducing volatility of my portfolio this weekend. Like you I’m thinking a mix of bonds (corporate and gilt) and maybe just a decent money market fund. The question is if I can stand the FOMO if the market rips.
Hi Alan
I think since I’ve been investing, I’ve always been ‘aware’ of volatility so I always underestimated my returns when trying to predict/plan for the future. I’ve always held some bond ETFs but nothing really significant in value. It is only in the past year that I’ve started to think about and actually go ahead with derisking my portfolio but considering I’m less than 1.5 years away from my planned retirement, I’m probably still heavy on equities and I’m still fine with that. Perhaps I am suffering a bit from FOMO…
Hi QuietlyWatching
Love the name 😀
This past year, I have been doing some de-risking but I am still heavily in the market.
How to balance missing out on big market gains with putting more into safer bonds/money market funds?
I think new investments this year will just go in the latter and I also need to build up cash, just in case something bad happens and I need to not touch my investments. 2 years’ of cash/MM funds would be nice, I’m not there yet, closer to 1.5 years so need to continue to build. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
I hear you, Weenie! I swear, by Wednesday each week my brain is completely fried. Glad you’ve planned your break to be an actual break for downtime.
Craft club sounds fun, and it’s given me an idea. Just last week our work introduced “Wellbeing Wednesdays” where (in theory) we can have an hour to devote to wellbeing activities. As we are remote and dispersed and overworked/under-resourced, I don’t think many people (including me) took advantage of it. However, I could take this idea and suggest a virtual craft club in that time. We could either sit on Teams and chat and craft, or at least post what we’ve been doing. Would love to see your finished piece no matter what it looks like!
Hi Mrs ETT
Best of luck with getting the craft club included in your Wellbeing Wednesdays!
During lockdown, we had ‘virtual cafes’, just an hour to chat about non-work related stuff and it was there that I kindled the gardening bug as there was a colleague talking about things he had grown in his garden, veggies and flowers. I was glad I made the effort to attend those sessions for some connection (and sanity!).
Haha, I’ll see for myself what my finished product looks like and may consider sharing! 🙂
Certainly making progress! Well done
I’m in a similar position and hope to pull the plug in 2027 too. I do hope you continue your blog into the drawn down phase as this is where I am starting to get nervous…..
Hi Apollo71
All the best with your plan for next year and yes, I do intend to continue with the blog – just hoping I don’t need to do a post which starts with ‘Oh no, I got it all wrong…’ Haha!
Hey Weenie,
A tardy reply here too. Firstly, I’m sorry to hear about your Uncle and I hear you on the full family get togethers being reserved for passings or weddings. I also went to see The Odessy (with the girls), I like an epic with some monsters having been brought up on a 70s diet of Jason on the Argonaut’s and those Ray Harryhausen animated creatures.
Your FF is tearing away, you’re way ahead of me (although I’m going to give my self a bit of slack having to pay off the cost of a house in Surrey). Regardless I’m envious of your exit next year (please keep blogging, don’t leave me ha!). Realistically, to give me the retirement I want that isn’t too “tight” I’m looking at 2.5 – 3 years tops. Although we’re making redundancies again, and I could put my hand up and see if they’d consider me, but the payout just doesn’t make it worth it vs my earning power over the last few years. Annoying as it’s so close to the numbers working. I don’t know about you, but once I pull the trigger on corporate work, I don’t want to have to do another job, only if I choose to, which are very different things.
Good stuff with the Craft Club, it’s a time to be thinking about “what next”, new social circles and pursuits. Exciting to be laying the ground for your next chapter!
Hey Starla
Thank you for the kind words.
Yes, I too was a huge fan of Jason and the Argonauts and other Ray Harryhausen films. Before the days of streaming, DVDs and videos, you were probably like me when I was a kid, waiting to see if those films were being shown during the Christmas scheduling, so each time of watching was really exciting!
Indeed, the FF is tearing away but I’m still a little anxious that it is doing that! And yes, your financial situation down south is rather different from mine up north! I took a bit of profit the other day, selling some world ETF for money market funds.
100% with you – when I pull the plug on corporate work, unless something has gone horrifically wrong with my FIRE calculations, I don’t want to do another paid job. I don’t know how involved with volunteering I will get but it will be something different from my career job in any case and something I will choose to do (and if not suitable, I can just walk away from).
For my next chapter, I’ve already been looking at how much I need to put aside to get a good laptop and I have a boxful of craft things already! I’m sure I will be kept busy!