Category Archives: Savings

July 2026 Savings, plus other updates

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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: Continue reading →

June 2026 Savings, plus other updates

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This month will just be remembered for the heatwaves and football.

The scheduling of the World Cup matches haven’t been great – I love the World Cup (but hate the corrupted FIFA) and have watched pretty all matches bar the ones in the wee early hours. For that late England match against Mexico, yes, I took a day off work to recover!

Tonight is the crunch match between England and Argentina so let’s hope the lads do us proud!

Anyway, how did I get on in June?

I saved 25% of my net salary.  The above includes £11.71 from Prolific surveys and £100 from Nationwide, its ‘Fairer Share’ to all members.

Shares and Investment Trusts – Computer says ‘No!’

For quite a while, I have needed to do a full analysis of my income portfolio but I’ve not had time to go through it all.

So I asked AI (Microsoft Copilot) to analyse for me and it did so in seconds what would have taken me hours…

To cut a long story short, after a few prompts, it ‘recommended’ that I sell or trim 10 holdings as my portfolio was “heavily skewed towards REITS, infrastructure and specialist income trusts and underweight in core dividend equities“.

This got narrowed down to 5 offenders and after some research and consideration, I sold according to its recommendations and added some new investments (Edinburgh Investment trust, which was on my watch list; Rio Tinto and iShares UK Dividend ETF, both which I have held in the past).

I prompted AI to compare the before and after portfolios and its reply was:

“This is a meaningfully improved portfolio vs your previous version — you’ve reduced some clutter and strengthened the backbone.

There are still too many alternatives and “yield vehicles”, with some overlap and redundancy present.”

Yeah well, I am happy with that, glad that it’s an improvement.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

At the end of June, my FF was at £403,521.69, so the rocket is still flying high, though starting to level out a bit? Still feel a tad anxious that something is about to burst…

Dividends and Other Income

Another great month for dividends: Continue reading →

A Dirty Dozen

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I have been so busy just going about my everyday business, that not only did I forget my blog anniversary earlier this year but I completely skipped last year’s anniversary! Must have been menopausal brain fog! Oh well!

Happy  belated 12th birthday to Quietly Saving! 🙂

Anyway, wow, long time or what!

My blog is ancient! Old school and retro? I’m fine with that!  It  works for me – so many (far glossier and modern) FIRE blogs have fallen by the wayside over the years, disappearing into the internet abyss. Sadly, I’ve not had the time (yet) to seek out new ones to add to my redundant blog list. Think the young people aiming for FIRE prefer vlogs.

Last Woman Standing

Do I still enjoy writing this blog? Yes, I still find it freeing to be able to write like this. The blog helps me focus, documents my journey, helps motivate me, it’s a place to empty some of the thoughts rattling around my head or to articulate ideas. It also keeps me accountable.

Some might describe my progress over the years as ‘plodding’ but the truth is, I’ve just gone as fast I’ve wanted to; I was never in a rush to FIRE and I’ve not suffered from FIRE burnout, have just steadily and purposefully moved forwards at my own comfortable pace, step by step. It’s my race, not anyone else’s.

And now here I am, on the final leg of my journey, having set a FIRE date of 2027!  I will do an update post on that as it’s been 10 months (already!) since I made that announcement.

My mindset about FIRE has shifted because it finally really isn’t that long now, yet I have to admit that my mind is still resisting a little about making that next mental step, which is diving into the detailed particulars of decumulation…

Don’t worry, I will get my head round this, I do have a plan of sorts.

Humdrum

Gosh, so all this time, I’ve been posting my rather unexciting numbers monthly (with some glimpses of my life) for 12 years! 

There’s nothing extravagant about my relatively ‘ordinary’ life; it’s one which is filled with a lot of mundane, routine, same-old-same-old stuff, with good things far outweighing the bad. I’m an optimist so that’s how I see it.

What have I been doing these past 12 years?

May 2026 Savings, plus other updates

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A complete blur of a month.

Work has been so busy (more on work later…) and we enjoyed some days reaching heatwave temperatures, brilliantly coinciding with the bank holiday, so I was outside much of the time.  I had family visiting too so had a lovely time catching up.

Anyway, how did I get on in May?

I saved 30.2% of my net salary.  The above includes £5 lotto win.

Shares and Investment Trusts

As well as topping up existing holdings, I used some cash sitting in my ISAs to open positions in Mony Group plc (MONY) and Foresight Group Holdings Ltd (FSG) – mentally, that’s it now, no more new positions for my dividend income portfolio. I might do a one out, one in…

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

I haven’t been looking at my portfolio, other than to make note of dividends coming in so it was a nice surprise to see that I had reached another milestone, breaking through the £400k barrier!

At the end of May, my FF was at £401,488.02! At the beginning of this year, there was no way I expecting to hit the milestone so quickly! However, forgive me if I don’t feel incredibly joyful about this, just a tad anxious still that something is about to burst…

Dividends and Other Income

An decent month for dividends: Continue reading →