Category Archives: Savings

September 2018 Savings, plus other updates

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Moel Eilio in Snowdonia. Yes, it looks creepy…

For someone who’s never really counted ‘walking’ as a favourite past-time, I did quite a lot of it this month.

Spent a couple of weekends doing ‘practice’ walks in the Peak District and the West Pennines, which I found surprisingly quite pleasant – not strolls but not too strenuous either.

The practice walks were to prepare me for a charity walk in Snowdonia, organised by work. We managed to choose a day which was in between two days with yellow weather warnings and ended up doing the walk in extreme weather conditions and quite poor visibility.

With lashing rain which stung the face and winds still buoyed by recent storms in the country which blew us all over the place, I found out that my waterproof jacket was not waterproof and neither were my walking shoes!

But I’m glad I attempted and completed the 9-mile walk, it was a good test of character! Plus I might even go on more walks in future (weather permitting), as may have discovered a new hobby of sorts!

Anyway, onto the nitty gritty, how did I get on with my savings?

I saved 43.5%, which sees my average savings rate going down a little to 44.8%.  Considering this month was quiet on the social outing front, I’m a little disappointed if I’m honest as I thought I would be closer to 50%.  No realistic chance of achieving my goal now with the final (more expensive) stretch of the year coming up but I’ll keep at it.

The above savings includes top ups from £447 matched betting profits (from last month), £16.15 from TopCashback*, £60.53 from Google Adsense and £123.33 affiliate income from OddsMonkey (thank you to all who signed up via my links!).

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 

Again, I didn’t really notice what the markets were doing – all I can say is that with extra capital and reinvested dividends, my Future Fund now stands at £150,051, so I’m halfway towards my next big milestone! Woohoo!

I seem to have streaked well ahead of John K (whose portfolio is currently showing as £103,427) but I did mention that I had the massive advantage of chucking in a large chunk of my redundancy money last year. The next £50k will take much longer to accumulate as no large amounts of capital to throw in, so plenty of opportunity for John to catch up using his strategy.

Dividends and Other Income

Dividends received this month: Continue reading →

August 2018 Savings, plus other updates

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Well, it looked like summer was well and truly over up here and it was time to dig out the warmer clothes already, but then it turned all sunny again! I don’t know what to wear any more!

Life is more or less back to normal – the family have all gone home so the house is all quiet again.

Work has been busy, despite many people being off for the summer holidays – one week, I’m one of the employees of the month (yay!), the next, they’re asking me to work on the bank holiday (I’ll get the day back in lieu).

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence…?

Anyway, I had several social outings this month so how did that affect my savings in August?

I saved 35.8%, which sees my average savings rate going down to 44.9%.  Still a decent savings rate in the scheme of things but not great for the target I’ve set myself!

The above savings includes top ups from £148 matched betting profits (from last month), £18.06 from TopCashback* and £137.42 affiliate income from OddsMonkey (thank you to all who signed up via my links!).

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 

I didn’t really notice what the markets were doing so all I can say is that with extra capital and reinvested dividends, my Future Fund now stands at £149,204.30, still steadily making progress towards my next big milestone.

Dividends and Other Income

Dividends received this month: Continue reading →

July 2018 Savings, plus other updates

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So it was back down to earth again this month – back to work, back to a mix of sunshine and rain – a great British summer!

I’ve had my sister and nephew staying with me, spent a nice weekend with them, so while they’re visiting friends, I’ve been able to update the blog, do my numbers and also catch up on a bit of blog reading.

My fridge freezer finally arrived and so my kitchen is complete at last! However, I keep inadvertently going back to the old fridge which is now empty – I guess it will have to revert back to being my ‘beer fridge’!

Anyway, how did I do with my savings in July?

I saved 40.3%, which sees my average savings rate going down to 46.2%.  A little higher than expected but some costs are on my credit card which won’t be settled til next month.

The above savings was topped up with £64 matched betting profits (from last month), £50 premium bond win – woo hoo! 🙂 and £63.98 affiliate income from OddsMonkey (thanks to all who signed up via my links!).

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 markets mostly went up for me this month and with the extra capital, my Future Fund now stands at £147,993, still steadily making progress towards my next big milestone.

Dividends and Other Income

Dividends received this month: Continue reading →

Holiday and more Toilet Rolls

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I had a great holiday – enjoyed catching up with all the family, but as always, it was over far too quickly.

 

Not quite as action-packed as my last holiday but I still managed to squeeze quite a bit in:

  • A day out at the trampoline park with my niece and nephew – I did realise that I shouldn’t really be flinging myself around on American Ninja-style apparatus at my age but I couldn’t help it!
  • A karaoke session with the siblings – we sang all our 80s and 90s favourites!
  • Five days in Koh Samui, Thailand where I snorkelled, kayaked, ate a lot of yummy food and stayed up til 3.30am watching England in a nail-biting penalty shootout!
  • A foot massage evening with the siblings
  • An outing to celebrate my sister’s birthday
  • Ten pin bowling session, scoring 73 in the first game and 150 in the second – clearly the first game was just a warm up, haha!
  • A game of badminton
  • Lots of dim sum and sushi!

I didn’t know that planes with open propellers were still used commercially!

Budget Blown

As with previous holidays, I hardly bought anything for myself (just snacks and green tea teabags!) but I spent a lot on eating and drinking out and of course, I had to treat the kids and ended up spending a lot more than planned.

So much so that I had to borrow from my sis so she will be wanting to collect on her debt either later this month but maybe I can stall her until next month…

Some people buy souvenirs on holiday….I buy toilet rolls!

As always, I leave home with a heavy suitcase (full of stuff for the family) and end up with a light/empty one and as with my last trip, I stocked up on toilet rolls for my return trip home.

Toilet Rolls

Why toilet rolls? Because they’re something I will use, I can store them away and I needed to fill up my empty suitcase!

I usually buy Tesco brand, £3.35 for 9 rolls, 2-ply, average 220 sheets per roll.

The HK ones I buy cost £2.88 for 10 rolls, 3-ply, average 340 sheets per roll.

And that’s with a crappy Sterling exchange rate. There will, however, be no need for me to buy any more on my next trip – the stash I have will last a long time!

On the subject of spending, I successfully used my Starling card in both Dubai (airport) and Thailand – am very happy with the app so no doubt, I’ll be using it again on my travels.

Thoughts and Ideas

As mentioned previously, I didn’t do any blogging while I was away but while I was lounging by the pool in Thailand, I jotted down a few ideas and thoughts about my investments.

I’ve now got more of an idea of how I will use my SIPPs and ISA for income when I pull the plug on full-time work. It’s still only a loose idea and I’ll see how things look at the end of year as I’m overdue an update on my investments plan.

I’ve realised that I’ve been coasting along when I could probably make a lot more effort with my expenses and my savings. I guess a bit more focus won’t do any harm and might be enough to make a difference. I have family staying with me later this month so perhaps the focus will have to come after they leave!

Some clowns, plus a couple of guys wearing white make-up…

A shame that ‘football didn’t come home’ in the end as this trip was very much entwined with the World Cup, with various plans being made around catching the timezone friendly (and some unfriendly) matches.

I almost miss the ‘Three Lions’ song which has been played endlessly everywhere!

I shall still enjoy watching the final as a neutral and also look forward to catching the Wimbledon finals – tennis has been forgotten with all the football excitement!

Have a great weekend all!