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 →

Interim December 2024 update

Posted on 23rd December 2024 by weenie

Thought I’d get this interim post off before the festive shenanigans are in full swing and I don’t find the time to post.

The full December update will include my progress over 2024, how I did versus my goals and if Santa continues to be mean and not generously turn up for a rally before the end of the year! I’ll then be setting some new goals for 2025.

So in brief:

Work Stuff

The work’s Christmas party was a good one and a big one – lots of people from our various offices around Europe attended.

Spent some quality time getting to know my boss (only the 3rd time we’ve in person) so that was nice. She thought I was only a few years older than her (she’s 39) so she’s my favourite boss already, haha!

I had planned to have my dancing shoes on that night, but in the end, was barely on the dancefloor as spent the evening just chatting to different people! Actually not chatting, but shouting as the music was so loud!

I had to be physically in the office the following day as boss wanted face to face catch up on work – somehow I managed to drag myself in and was minus my voice! Took the rest of the weekend to recover from those efforts, haha!

Mortgage

Received another letter from my lender advising that my mortgage interest rate will be dropping in the new year, down to 4.8%.

I’ll stick the extra in my overpayments for now.

Mortgage interest rates are never going to be as low as they were a few years ago so am happy for any small reduction I can get.

It will be interesting to see what rates will be at in a year’s time, when my current deal runs out.

Other Stuff

It’s the 23rd as I write this and I’ve already had four ‘Christmas’ lunches – I’ve tried to vary the meat so it’s not turkey every time (not my favourite meat).

Planning a gym session tonight and then back on it again at the weekend after the two big days of eating and drinking.

My wrist is pretty much healed up after the sprain, although having to still use a wrist support for certain weight training exercises; I do plan to wean myself off that though as don’t want to be reliant on the support.

However, I now don’t know if the aches I occasionally feel are from the injury, or if they’ve always been there (old age…) and I’ve just not really noticed before?

I don’t want to rush back to my old weights for fear of injury, but feel like it will be a slog getting back to where I was before. That’s if I can go back to those weights, I feel like part of my weight loss may have been due to muscle loss. Looking at my diet these past couple of weeks, I’m mostly vegetarian during the week, so I probably need to up my protein to build/ preserve muscle mass. I will make my kefir smoothies more protein-packed.

Outdoors stuff

I’ve barely ventured out into my garden since my return from my hols so am looking forward to doing a bit of winter gardening, pruning, tidying up etc. Everything just looks really sad right now.

This will get me out of the house, otherwise I will just vegetate on the sofa watching tv!

Also need to resume my local litter picking – not been able to do that in a while, as the rubbish bag would have been too heavy for my recovering wrist to handle.

Young Uns

I was round at my sister’s a few weeks ago and after our evening meal, talk turned to retirement.

Did I mention that my sister is on countdown to early retirement? Just 6-7 more months of working and she’s already told work – I’m not jealous….much!

Anyway, Sis mentioned that by the time my nephew came to retire, the state pension age would probably be at least 75 and I laughed and said he’d probably do really well for himself and retire early.

“What, you mean FIRE?” he piped up. “Financial Independence…”

“…Retire Early,” I finished for him, trying to hide a wide range of emotions from my face.

I asked him how he had heard of it and what he thought of it. He said he’d come across it while he was looking into investing (he’s 17) and that he thought it was good idea.

He’s already read ‘The Millionaire Next Door’ (picked it off my shelf when he and Sis were living with me).

I don’t think there’s any need to worry about the personal financial future of the lad, he appears to have his head screwed on right!

And on that note…

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year – eat, drink and be merry!

Ten is the Magic Number

Posted on 28th April 2024 by weenie

Well, the wheel of time grinds onwards and last month, my blog turned an epic TEN YEARS OLD!

Happy 10th birthday to Quietly Saving! 🙂

Long time or what! Except it hasn’t really felt that way.

My blog is positively ancient compared to some other FIRE blogs (not that there are that many these days), considering how many have fallen by the wayside and dropped into the abyss of the blog graveyard over the years. In the words of good old Elton, “I’m still standing!” 🙂

Last Woman Standing

Even after 10 years, I still enjoy writing (most of the time) – the blog is a means to help me focus, to document my journey, to help motivate me, a place to empty some of the thoughts rattling around my head or to articulate ideas. The blog was never about making me money, else I would have given up after year 1!

Some might describe my progress over the years as ‘plodding’ but the truth is, I’ve gone as fast I’ve wanted to; I see it as steadily and purposefully moving forwards, step by step.

The last couple of years did feel like a bit of a slog – there was barely any progress with my Future Fund due the stock markets creeping along sideways, it was all quite disheartening and demotivating but I doggedly kept at it.

At no point in the last ten years have I ever thought about quitting my goal and I don’t feel burned out from my FIRE journey, probably as I’ve just gone along at a pace I’ve been comfortable with.

That said, neither am I all bright-eyed and excited as I was at the beginning of my journey – what has crept in recently is a little trepidation as I am now on the last leg of my journey. I feel that a slight mindset change is required but I’m not quite there yet – my mind seems to be a little hesitant about taking that next step.

I need to start thinking seriously of ‘what happens next’, look into more detail on how I am going to fund my life post work, look into what my life will look like. The word ‘decumulation’ keeps popping up at the back of my mind and I’m currently just batting it away, like an annoying fly. Don’t worry, I will get my head round this.

Humdrum

Gosh, so I’ve been posting my numbers monthly (with some glimpses of my life) for a whole decade!

It’s all been pretty mundane stuff – I reckon I live a relatively ‘ordinary’ life, one which is filled with a lot of routine, same-old-same-old stuff, with good things far outweighing the bad. My life is not action-packed, there’s very little drama and no cliff-hangers!

I am mostly an optimistic person, this governs how I live my life and also I think how I invest (whether that’s good or bad, haha!).

I think I’ve gotten the right balance with my life vs aiming for FIRE because as far as my nearest and dearest are concerned, I’m just living a normal/mundane/modest/boring (delete as applicable) life on a middle income, except that I have a fanciful idea of retiring early.

What have I been doing these past 10 years?

Continue reading →

March 2024 Savings, plus other updates

Posted on 7th April 2024 by weenie

The days have brightened up and a bit of winter sun has been great for my spirit and soul!

I had a few extra days off as well as the Easter days. Over the bank holiday, I did the usual thing of going to B&Q and came away with a couple of plants and paint for the garden fences (front fence now done).

Have enjoyed some nice relaxing days, pottering around the house and garden, planting some things so will see if those are successful.

Anyway, another month, another NI reduction, resulting in some extra pay in my wage packet. As with the last reduction, I will use this extra to overpay my mortgage.

Also, another month, another work bonus! This time, the annual discretionary bonus I get if the company hits its profit/growth targets and partly linked to my own performance.

I’m sure there was a time when I would have gotten hugely excited about getting a bonus, probably because it would have been already spent on ‘stuff’ (and then some) in my head! When I saw it in my wage slip, I just thought, oh that’s nice and mentally divvied up how it would be invested etc. As with the last bonus, I split it across my ISA, SIPP, emergency funds and mortgage overpayment.

And on that positive note, how did my numbers look for March?

I saved 50.3% of my net salary. Normal savings rate shall resume next month! The above includes £87.44 from doing Prolific surveys and £50 football predictions winnings.

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

The rocket continues onwards and upwards, my Future Fund hitting £262,470.89 at the end of the month. Looks great but I can’t bring myself to get too excited about it (much!).