Happy New Year!
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed the celebrations last night to see in the new year.
It’s 3.30pm as I type this and I’ve only just gotten out of my pjs so it was a late one for me! 🙂
Anyway, I had a great Christmas – no travels abroad this time but there was a 400-mile round trip over the festive period – some good times eating too much but surprisingly drinking little (apart from last night!)
So, how did I do in the last month of the year and against the targets I set?
Not flying abroad for Christmas this year meant that I more or less maintained my savings rate, ending up at 41.7%.
My average for the year stands at 46.3%. Although I didn’t achieve my goal (again) to hit that elusive 50%, I’m more than happy with this average, which is my highest to date. It’s a personal best! 🙂
The above savings include top ups from £120 matched betting profits (from last month), another £25 premium bond win and £70.67 affiliate income from OddsMonkey (thank you to all those who joined via my link – much appreciated!).
Shares and Investment Trusts
I continued to top up existing investments.
Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.
(Entire portfolio here)
Future Fund
This time last year, my Future Fund stood at £142,831. As at 31st December, it stood at £188,605.
The total capital I invested in 2019 was £15,838 yet there’s been an extra increase in my portfolio of £29,935 over the year! Wow – I’m astounded!
I didn’t do anything special to achieve this – all I did was ignore the noise about political uncertainty and continue to top up/buy and hold my investments, reinvesting all dividends received. I also received a good dose of LUCK with the buoyant markets. Although I did switch some of my equity ETFs into bond ETFs (for a bit more balance and stability), this seems to have affected income rather than growth.
My investments effectively made a loss last year, so realistically, this could well happen again in 2020. I can’t expect it to be this good every year!
Dividends and Other Income
Dividends received this month: Continue reading