2025 Goals

Posted on 14th January 2025 by weenie

I’ve ended up dragging my feet on my goals as we’re two weeks into 2025 already!

A normally quiet January at work hasn’t turned out that way so I was brain dead by the weekend, with brain cells active enough only to allow me to veg out on the sofa in front of the tv!

Anyway, here are with my Goals!

*Spoiler Alert* – there’s nothing radical or wildly different here. In fact, they’re pretty much the same as last year.

They’re just simple annual goals, ones which have some meaning to me, even if they might not make sense to others. Still, they provide me with some focus while I get on with the humdrum day-to-day stuff.

Continue reading →

December 2024 Savings, plus round up

Posted on 7th January 2025 by weenie

I’d say ‘Happy New Year’ but we’re past that now, aren’t we? 🙂

Being back at work and with it not being as quiet as I had hoped, I found it hard to face my laptop outside of work hours, so apologies for the lateness of this post.

I was actually in the gym on New Year’s Eve and out litter-picking on New Year’s Day morning – starting as I mean to go on!

Anyway, let’s just get the numbers out of the way for 2024!

I saved 21.5% of my net salary – more than I expected, which I’m surprised at.

The above includes £43.26 from doing Prolific surveys.

Shares and Investment Trusts

No new investments, I just topped up existing ones.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund

Santa didn’t show up for his rally but wasn’t so mean in the end. As at 31st December 2024, my Future Fund stood at £293,212.02. That’s a 17% increase from this time last year (that’s 17% including money I’ve added as well as investment gains).

Here’s how it all looks at the end of another year:

Was tempted to have the submarine make an appearance but it’s not that bad!

This year will see me breaching the £300k milestone soon!

Using unitization, I’m up just 10.3% this year across my entire portfolio – that’s investments, cash/premium bonds, everything. This figure includes my dividend income portfolio, where many of the UK stock prices continue to remain fairly ~~depressed~~ rubbish.

This is nothing spectacular investment-wise, I’m sure other investors can brag about much bigger gains and I’m happy for them, but happier for me that I’ve got these gains. Go me!

Am I hopeful for 2025? I’m always hopeful but somehow, I don’t think this year will be quite as good as the last one – just have a feeling that there’s some other global event or disaster just round the corner which will disrupt markets again.

Dividends and Other Income

A great final month for dividends:

Continue reading →

November 2024 Savings, plus other updates

Posted on 3rd December 2024 by weenie

Apologies, this post might end up dragging on a bit.

I had a great holiday (more on this later), though not entirely relaxing in parts, but enough that my batteries have been mostly recharged and I feel more in control of things.

So with one more month to go, how did my numbers look?

I saved 21.5% of my net salary. The above includes £12.23 from doing Prolific survey and a £10 charity lotto win.

Shares and Investment Trusts

No change here.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund

Trump’s re-election boosted my FF upwards to £296,316.79. I never dreamt that my FF would get close to another milestone this year – might a Santa Rally push it that far? Whether it does or not, I’m very happy with this progress, especially as I’ve got a big wedge still in UK equities which are not achieving the big numbers their US counterparts are doing.

Dividends and Other Income

A good month for dividend income: Continue reading →

October 2024 Savings, plus other updates

Posted on 4th November 2024 by weenie

Just the numbers really as I’m flat out at work and at home.

Plus I’m exhausted.

But holiday soon though, hence the ‘busyness’.

And my wrist is better, though not 100%.

Anyway, here goes for October!

I saved 22% of my net salary. The above includes £86.94 from doing Prolific surveys and £60.03 from Google Adsense.

Shares and Investment Trusts

No change here.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund

My Future Fund continues its upward trajectory, flying in the face of doom and gloom, the government’s new budget barely caused a ripple. At the end of the month, my FF stood at £287,102.05.