June 2019 Savings + other updates

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Just back from my hols, so here’s my belated update for June.

This month saw numerous social outings with friends, interspersed with meeting new people at my second investors’ meet up in Manchester (similar to the first one, except in the evening) and attending my first crowdfunding event.

Reaching my milestone age and attending these events nudged me to reconsider the allocations in my portfolio. After revisiting some old Monevator posts, including one on age and portfolios, I’ll be starting to implement some small initial changes – I’ll sort out a post on that soon.

So, how did I get on in June?

I saved 50% of my net salary! I should have/could have saved more as I received the second part of my small annual bonus this month. However, I’ve put some funds aside to cover for some holiday spends, some of which may carry over into July. Perhaps a missed opportunity to really bump up my savings rate but it’s been an expensive month!

The above savings includes top ups of £33.68 from TopCashback*, £60 matched betting profit (from last month), £50 from another premium bond win and £74.67 affiliate income from OddsMonkey (thank you to all who signed up via my links!).

Shares and Investment Trusts

I opened a small new investment in The Renewables Infrastructure Grp Ltd (TRIG) but mostly added to existing investments. I also made a small crowdfunding top up to my Freetrade investment.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

The markets have been pretty buoyant lately as my Future Fund has risen to £169,631.

Dividends and Other Income

A decent month for dividends:

I received income of £282.51, which has all been reinvested. A little behind on my goal at the halfway stage but should be a bumper month in July to get me on track.

Here’s the main dividend income graph:

Matched Betting (MB)

With all the social activities going on and the short month due to my holiday, I didn’t have as much time to do MB. That said, I still did better than last month, with total profits for the month coming in at £200. Not great but it all adds up.

As mentioned before, the MB guide I subscribe to is OddsMonkey*, which is great for beginners and experienced matched bettors alike with quality tools to help you make profit. There are step by step guides and also a friendly forum for you to ask questions and get assistance on any of the offers.

Matched Betting isn’t for everyone, but you won’t know until you try it and for me, it’s the ideal ‘side hustle’/hobby to do in my spare time. Anyway, check out the free trial* (with no obligations).

Goals Update

Here’s how I’m doing versus my goals:

Passive income (dividends) beats active income (MB) again, which is great. Lagging by quite a bit on my MB goal so hoping the latter part of the year will reap some more profits.

A Bit on my Holiday

The first few days of my annual trip to Hong Kong were very relaxing – various members of the family were still at work and my nieces and nephews still at school, so I had a lot of time to myself.

As there’s no need for me to do the touristy thing, I spent those days getting rid of my jet lag, a bit of shopping,  walking a little (a very little as it was too hot and humid), reading, eating and funnily enough, taking the time to finally draft some blog ideas/posts (in an old school notebook) which have been swirling around my head for a while!

I then went on my ‘holiday within a holiday’, which was a long weekend to Singapore (just over 3 hours away) with the whole family – it was my first visit to the country. For some reason, I thought it was going to be like HK but I saw some big differences – the pace of life was a lot slower, far fewer people, a lot more open spaces and greenery, less traffic (and so, less traffic pollution). It was really hot (33 degrees) though somewhat less humid.

During the trip, we visited Sentosa Island and had some goes on the Skyline Luge. It got rather competitive but was a lot of fun.

Sentosa Island

We also went on a Night Safari, which was pretty amazing, and the following day, I did a spot of indoor climbing – considering it’s been over 10 years since I last climbed, I surprised myself by being not too bad at this.

However, I rediscovered the fact that I’m really not great with heights so couldn’t look down and found it easier going up, but not down! 16 metres felt like it was really high up, so it was very much mind over matter! Plus I wanted to show my niece and nephew that their aunt could keep up with them!

It was then back to Hong Kong, where there were lots of lunches and dinners with family and a trip to the cinema (‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’). According to my Fitbit, I did over 10k steps most days, but my waistline is telling me that I need to get back to the gym pretty sharpish!

Local cows just chilling in the village.

So, feeling suitably refreshed, it’s back to work and back to reality on Monday.

Sounds like I missed a bit of a heatwave while I was away but it’s no fun going into work in heat and sunshine!

Anyway, at some point, I’ll catch up on my blog reading and commenting.

Hope you all had a great June.

[*referral/affiliate link]

14 thoughts on “June 2019 Savings + other updates”

  1. Hi Weenie – sounds like you had a fun break visiting the family. And a holiday within a holiday is such a good idea. Singapore does sound like a really interesting place to visit – yet the temperatures you quote scare me!

    • Hey Ms ZiYou
      It was very hot but you do acclimatise quite quickly – apparently Singapore is hot all year round, being so close to the equator. I do like hot weather but if I lived there, I’d probably want to go on holiday to somewhere a bit cooler!

  2. I love Singapore! Can’t say I’m a fan of Sentosa, but I love all the gardens, parks, and nature walks across the island. Plus all the delicious food… 🙂

    • Hi Mindy
      We only did Sentosa because we had tweens in tow. It meant that I missed out on the Botanical Gardens but that will be for my next trip! Yep, loved the food! 🙂

  3. Pingback: The Full English – Sparking joy – The FIRE Shrink

  4. Good to see your monthly dividends keep improving compared to previous years, you are doing great. Next month should be your monthly dividend record, right?

    Looking forward to reading this future post explaining changes on your portfolio.

    Loved the , a reflection of my ideal life after haha

    • *sorry there are some emojis missing on this:

      Loved the cows, they are a reflection of my ideal life after FIRE (it’s a joke but not so joke hehe)

      • Hi Tony

        Hah, I think I get what you’re saying about the cows and your ideal life after FIRE, ie just chilling in the village! 🙂

        Yes, July should be a record month – I’ve been totting the values up and it’s looking good so far!

  5. That sky luge looks so much fun!
    A great post FI business idea to open one over here perhaps? 🙂

    I started climbing, well indoor bouldering, a few months ago and am really enjoying it but like you am not a big fan of heights, not sure I’d handle 16m! Will have to work up to that one.

    I love how you put links into all the places you’ve been so we can go and investigate further if we want to, I will have to remember to do that on my next update.

    • Hey TFS
      I’m surprised there aren’t more sky luges around the world though imagine that a huge space and land is required to build it, which could be the make blocker.

      Glad you enjoyed the links – I was trying to do a half-arsed effort of describing the places I’d visited, then realised I may as well just stick them as links for people to check out if interested!

  6. Weenie, good to hear you had a nice holiday, and thankfully sounds as though the protests didn’t impact you at all.
    I’m currently starting to focus my attention a little more towards ‘age and portfolio’, so look forward to your thoughts on the subject in due course. The old ‘100 minus your age’ has been my very rough equity holding ratio guide for a few years now, but i feel that there needs to be some additional factors added into the equation – age of retirement and, the prevailing withdrawal rate, being two such considerations. A 50 year old FIRE’ing on an optimistic 4% withdrawal rate must surely have to remain more heavily invested than the same 50 year old on a withdrawal rate of say just 1%.

    I’m sure a clever actuary out there has written a detailed paper on the subject, and i will stumble across it in due course. Hopefully before the crash!

    • Thanks KC.

      Yes, it’s the balance of remaining invested, while providing some protection.

      I think it will just boil down to how confident/optimistic I’m feeling about the stock market in general and how comfortable I feel about staying invested.

      I just don’t want to get to the stage where I have sleepless nights stressing about my investments!

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