October 2023 Savings, plus other updates

Posted on 7th November 2023 by weenie

A blur of a month.

Work continues to be really busy. I’ve now met my new boss and getting used to working with her. I have a load of holidays to use up before the end of the year and sorely in need of a break (late nights starting to take a toll), but need to balance hitting deadlines with resting my brain. A few long weekends should hopefully help.

My niece and nephew were up for half-term, stayed mostly with my sis but I had them for a weekend. I did take a day off work to take them to Arcade Club , four floors of arcade machines and games consoles. We were there for nearly 4 hours so it was well worth the money, and yes, I really enjoyed myself too, reliving my misspent youth!

My teenaged self’s idea of heaven!

Anyway, how did I get on this month?

I saved 14.1% of my net salary. The above includes £62.35 from doing Prolific surveys.

Shares and Investment Trusts

I just topped up existing investments.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund

OOF! The biggest drop of the year for me – I’d been oblivious to ‘market noise’ as been too busy to check my accounts, so was a little shocked to see this when I ran the numbers. Still, it’s already started to pick up in November but as at the end of October, my Future Fund ended the month plummeting 4% down to £224,414.

Just have to keep calm and carry on investing.

Dividends and Other Income

A fairly average month for dividends.

Continue reading →

2023 Goals

Posted on 9th January 2023 by weenie

I think most will agree that 2022 was not a particularly great year.

Who knows what 2023 will bring? The optimist in me hopes that it will be better but the realist in me reckons it will be much of the same, just a slightly different flavour.

Regardless, I’ll just roll with life and its challenges and will try to make the most of what is thrown at me.

So here goes with my Goals!

Please contain your excitement, as there’s a fair bit of of copying and pasting here!

I still prefer to keep to simple annual goals, ones which have some meaning to me, even if they might be meaningless to others. They provide me with some focus while I get on with the humdrum day-to-day stuff.

Continue reading →

Dogs of the FTSE + Random Shares (final update)

Posted on 22nd February 2022 by weenie

My final (probably) Dogs of the FTSE experimental portfolio was set up in June 2021.

I haven’t been paying attention to this so it’s high time for an update.

As usual, I always seem do these updates when the markets are incredibly rubbish, so I couldn’t have chosen a better time!

Here’s a reminder of the Dogs of the FTSE strategy (which is based on the US Dogs of the Dow strategy):

Choose the ten FTSE 100 shares with the highest yield (subject to my criteria*)
Invest equal amounts in all ten shares
Hold for a year (give or take a week)
At the end of the year, sell the ones no longer in the top ten, replace with new shares with highest yield
Repeat from step 3

[*criteria being that shares already in my portfolio are not included, nor any where a dividend cut has been announced]

Note that this is part of my ‘fun’ portfolio (although it’s been no fun at all lately!) and represents less than 1.5% of my Future Fund – it is not what I do as a main investing strategy. All dividends received are reinvested.

Dogs of Doom

The mutts are again drowning in a sea of red numbers, although unbelievably, the portfolio is actually doing slightly better than it was in my last update!

A few (BHP, British American Tobacco and National Grid) seem to be strong in the face of adversity but the others are not looking so clever (notably Polymetal International, Persimmon and M&G).

Over the same period, the FTSE 100 Total Return was a lofty 8.42% so the Dogs have been a complete disaster at -2.35%.

Even with dividends received included, it’s only a gain of 2.38%, so a really poor show for this strategy.

I guess I might drum up the motivation to do another update in a couple of months’ time, to see if there is any change, for better or worse!

Random Shares

My Random Share Portfolio is made up of free shares awarded to me whenever someone signs up to the Freetrade app via my affiliate link, bagging us both a random free share (worth between £3 and £200) in the process.

Freetrade has been ordered by the FCA to get rid of all paid-for social media influencer posts.

Apparently, some TikTok influencer alluded in a video that using Freetrade contributed towards them reducing their personal debt. Not very responsible, but who gets financial advice from TikTok influencers? Too many, it appears.

I personally don’t class my blog as social media and I don’t categorise myself as an influencer but I don’t want to fall foul over anything so this will be my last Random Shares portfolio update. I will likely sell off all the shares in this portfolio (once they’re in the green). One less thing to keep tabs on.

My referral link still works for free shares, I just won’t brandish it about in any posts, unless people ask me via email/DM and of course, their capital is at risk if they choose to use the app.

Can I just say now that I’m not in any way saying that you will reach FIRE if you download the Freetrade app, although fee-free transactions might help you along the way!

Here’s the full portfolio before it’s all sold off.

Anyway, a big thanks to all who signed up via my link in the past – hope you all got a decent free share and perhaps continue to get some use out of managing your portfolio with the app.

Invest in this Fund!

Posted on 29th September 2020 by weenie

The pandemic and resulting lockdown, combined with falling or non-existent savings interest rates has turned thousands of people into armchair investors, dipping their toes into the stock markets for the first time and potentially risking their money due to their lack of experience and knowledge.

With Winter Rock Associates, you will benefit from years of expertise, knowledge and time spent by the fund manager, researching and picking the best opportunities to produce the best performance for your money (capital at risk etc).

Investing in our fund means your money is spread across multiple assets. As some investments will perform better and some worse over time, diversifying will, fingers crossed, help spread the risk and smooth returns over time.

Our management fees are very competitive, which you will find in the small print hidden in our website but you will be benefitting from significant returns on your investment so it will be money well spent in the long term.

Investments

Here are some of the assets the Winter Rock Associates Fund has invested in:

The fund is showing an overall return of 10.9% (since March 2020) so would be a great addition to those saving for the future.

Note that the fund is only open exclusively to new investors for a short period of time so don’t delay – contact me now for more details! Don’t miss out on profits!

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I’m joking of course, so please don’t contact me! 🙂

It seems anyone can create a fund these days – thanks to Average Money Man for pointing me to Hedge Fund Name Generator and I had some fun designing the logo at Free Logo Design.

What is real, however, are the assets/companies I mention above – I do have these actual investments in a portfolio.

I didn’t use any expertise, knowledge or time to select those companies I’m invested in – my criteria was that they were a well known brand/I’d heard of them before or I used their products/services.

Using Freetrade*, I bought £10 fractional shares in each of those companies (plus others) and when they make a decent profit (eg 50%+), I sell.

Of course, I don’t recommend this ‘strategy’ to anyone – I’m just saying this is the strategy I’ve followed and I’ve had a bit of success recently (with a large dose of luck!).

This is my ‘fun portfolio‘, which allows me to do daft things like pretend I’m a hotshot trader, buying and selling with impunity, and giving in to FOMO! I even follow some ‘experts’ on YouTube for latest buys and sells!

The main thing is that I leave my core investments (my ETFs and investment trusts) ticking along (untampered with) in a sensible but boring way, as long term investments should.

Yes, it was very exciting last month when I sold my £10 piece in Tesla for £20! But that’s as much excitement or risk I would like or need investment-wise.

Anyway, if anyone fancies getting us both a free share worth up to £200, sign up via my link – good luck and perhaps you too can enjoy creating your own Winter Rock Associates Fund! 😉

[*referral link]