Highlights this month:
- At last, I had a mini break away from home! As mentioned in my last update, I went to London – I had tickets to watch the NFL game, Miami Dolphins v Jacksonville Jaguars. It was a great weekend – an enjoyable match with a sellout crowd in Tottenham Hotspurs’ beautiful stadium. The following day, we spent some time wandering around Camden, sampling some expensive beer and food and then happened across probably one of the coolest and most fascinating shops I’ve visited in a long time – I didn’t buy anything, just enjoyed the sights and the music!
- I went to the cinema to watch the latest James Bond film, ‘No Time to Die’ – have always loved Daniel Craig as Bond.
- Enjoyed another great Manchester FIRE meetup in the pub – great to interact with faces old and new. There were around 20 of us who turned up. Anyone who’s interested in these meetups, sign up to Financial Independence FIRE – Manchester. Events are alternately online and face-to-face, so the next one will be online on Friday 26th Nov.
- And finally, I am sooooo relieved to say that I have finally exchanged contracts on my house, with completion due to happen early November! More details soon – so much (more) to do!
So, how did I get on with my savings in October?
I saved 14.4% of my net salary.
The above includes another £25 Premium Bond win, and £42.24 from doing Prolific surveys.
Shares and Investment Trusts
I started switching out some of my bond ETFs into a defensive investment trust, Ruffer Investment Co. Monevator recently did a two-parter on the 60/40 strategy but I was already getting a bit antsy about the portion of bonds I held in my portfolio and wondering what I could do. Despite not holding anywhere near 40%, I was feeling it was still on the high side.
I won’t ditch them completely but will likely switch some more into other defensive investment trusts.
Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.
(Entire portfolio here)
Future FundÂ
After removing the funds needed to buy my house, my Future Fund has dropped to £227,413. It’s not half as bad as I originally envisaged – as suggested by regular commenter Jane In London, I asked my Mum for the max amount she would loan me (that I could still cover with the eventual sale of my BTL) so this meant that I didn’t have to dip so far into my own funds.
I had to sell some equities (from my S&S ISAs) to release some cash and fortunately, I sold little bits of my portfolio over July and August when numbers were green.
I’ve been dreading doing this graph update.
Regular commenter Kid Cocoa suggested rebasing the graph, as if the house money was never part of my Future Fund, so that its removal didn’t cause me any distress. I did that and this is what it looks like:
[edit – original post had the wrong graph]
Looking good, with the markets bouncing back after the drop in September.
However, for consistency and because I feel like I need to see the consequences (and feel the pain) of my actions, this is what the graph actually looks like:
Oof! Looks almost like the crash back in March 2020, although there’s very little hope for another V-shaped recovery, haha!
My Future Fund’s value is now what it was in March 2021 so I’ve only really lost 7 months. My FIRE plan is still intact and unchanged – this is fine, I don’t feel so stressed about it any more.
Anyway, as horrid as the graph looks, I am already looking forward seeing it go back up again.
Dividends and Other Income
A more average month for dividends: