Category Archives: Savings

February 2021 Savings, plus other updates

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Monthly update time again – how time flies, even when you’re not really having fun.

No, I’m not sad, depressed or feeling fed up –  I think I’m just suffering from a bit of mental fatigue.

Long busy days at work have left me pretty brain-dead and brain-tired, I’ve gotten behind on my blog reading/commenting and for the first time in a long while, I didn’t get round to sorting out a post in between my monthly numbers updates.

I’m still exercising regularly, eating well, not drinking too much, getting enough sleep and avoiding too much social media or news.

The brighter days and better weather might help drag me out of this listless phase, back to my normal self.

Not many ‘highlights’ this month:

    • Attended (and also did a presentation in) the latest ‘Manchester’ FIRE meet up.  Always good to see familar faces, some new faces and to be able to chat about FIRE, pensions and such-like without people thinking you are a bore or a weirdo. Also attended a ‘Leeds’ Invest Meet up.
    • My nephew finally returned home from staying at his dad’s since before Christmas. Bless him, he’s grown an inch, his voice has changed but sadly, he’s picked up some very bad teenaged boy habits (less said about those, the better!).
    • Losing myself completely reading The Way of Kings, a 1000+ page fantasy tome recommended by SavingNinja. It’s been a while since I stayed up reading past 2am because I got caught up in the ‘just one more chapter’ cycle! Just started book 2, so I can lose myself again!

So, how did I get on money-wise in February?

I saved 47.7% of my net salary – continuing with my decent start to the year.

The above savings includes a top up of a £25 premium bond win, £27.96 from TopCashback* and £20 from Matched Betting profits (from last month).

Shares and Investment Trusts

No new investments, I just topped up existing holdings.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

Another wobble in the stock markets apparently, something to do with bond yields going up but whatever, I carried on investing.

At the end of the month, my Future Fund stood slightly up at £221,108, but the increase was from the addition of capital.

Steady and calm…

Dividends and Other Income

A bumper month of dividends:

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January 2021 Savings, plus other updates

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Was it just me or did anyone else find that this month passed by both slowly and quickly?

I daren’t think too much on why this was, as it hurts my brain!

Anyway, ‘highlights’ this month for me in the first lockdown month of the year included:

    • 4 hour+ Zoom chats with a couple of friends from uni, whom I hadn’t met up with for 6 and 12 years respectively – we had a lot to catch up on!
    • Attending two FIRE meet ups: the London one and the Manchester one. Of course, with the meet ups being on Zoom these days, you can be dialing in from anywhere and we even get some FIRE peeps from overseas joinng in. I know many people might be ‘zoomed out’, but unless you talk openly about FIRE with your colleagues or family and friends, I’m guessing these sessions will be different from your usual Zoom calls. Anyway, I’ve put in the links so people can join ‘Meet Up’ and see when the next events are on (the next Manchester one will have discussions about savings rates and the next London one will be talking about aiming for FIRE as a couple).
    • Downloading the Zombies, Run app – (thanks go to Faith of Much More With Less for the heads up on this fun app!). I’m not paying for subscription so have to wait for the new missions but that’s ok, I can be patient!
    • Buying some ‘working-from-home clothes’, in other words, a couple of pairs of leggings, £5 in the sales!
    • Rewatching ‘The Matrix’ for the gazillionth time – I liken Neo’s Red Pill moment to when I discovered FIRE and went down the proverbial rabbit hole myself…
    • Being riveted by the whole ‘meme stock‘, r/wallstreetbets vs hedge funds thing. I even had a few small ‘bets’ myself (using Freetrade*) on GameStop, AMC and Blackberry and came out eventually +12%, although the whole saga continues to unfold. Certainly the fallout from all this will be interesting. Silver, anyone?

    • Rotting my brain with guilty-pleasure TV shows like ‘Married At First Sight – Australia’ and ‘The Masked Singer’….don’t judge me 🙂
    • Spending a whole month with just my Sis in the house since nephew is still with his dad from before Christmas, as pointless him coming back yet with his school shut. It’s been surprisingly ok…
    • Not a highlight but making another trip to the dentist which had me going home minus £300 (2 missing fillings replaced – ouch!).  That went on my credit card and I may just plug this with some emergency cash.

Anyway, how did I get on money-wise in January?

I saved 46.6% of my net salary – not a bad start to the year.

The above savings includes a top up of £20 from Matched Betting profits (from last month).

Shares and Investment Trusts

No new investments apart from ones mentioned here, where I adjusted part of my investment strategy earlier this month.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

After the end of year rush upwards, the stock markets wobbled a little so I saw no real gains, despite new capital being added. Some ‘experts’ are saying there’s going to be another big crash at some point. Yeah, whatever.

At the end of the month, my Future Fund stood at £220,324.

Steady as she goes

Dividends and Other Income

Not a bad start to the year for dividends:

Continue reading →

2021 Goals

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A new year begins
A time for optimism
Look to the future

At some point in December, me and my siblings got so bored of quizzes that we started making up Haiku poems (something I last did when I was a schoolgirl) in our Whatsapp group just for something different to do, so I thought I’d start this post with one!


Anyway, it was back to work for me on 4th January and although my brain felt suitably rested, my ten-day break really didn’t seem long enough.

Right, onto the main topic…Goals!

I was scribbling some notes (yes, I still like to use pen and notepad to initially draft blog posts) when Boris announced the latest national lockdown measures.

I decided on one ‘lockdown goal’ (see below in non-financial goals) but apart from that one, I decided that I didn’t want to make a big deal of the situation.

As with previous years, I can focus better if I only set myself a few goals, with little room for distraction. This seems to work for me so I don’t see a point in changing this. Apologies if this doesn’t make very exciting reading but such is my life!

I managed to hit three of my six goals last year, so at least I know those goals were on the challenging side

So without further ado, here they are:

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December 2020 Savings, plus round up

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Happy New Year!

Ok, let’s just get the numbers out of the way first, eh?

I saved 47.3% of my net salary. Gift spending was balanced out slightly by a small but welcome bonus in our December pay. Another ‘bonus’ I received this month was a cheque for £84.94 which apparently was for a short-payment on an endowment plan I cashed in back in 2015.

The above savings also includes top ups from £20 Matched Betting profits (from last month), another £25 Premium Bond win, £55.34 affiliate income from OddsMonkey* (thank you to all who signed up via my link!), £60 from Adsense and £25.53 from TopCashBack*.

Shares and Investment Trusts

No new investments, I just topped up existing investments. This will however likely change, as I will be making some tweaks to my portfolio in the new year.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

This time last year, my Future Fund stood at £188,605. As at 31st December 2020, it was £219,553. Not even a pandemic could stop the Santa Claus Rally?!

No holidays, no commuting costs and no social life meant I was able to invest more this year.

The total capital I invested in 2020 was £17,935, (the most I’ve ever invested in a year, barring the time I invested my redundancy payout) so given what happened to the markets in March, I will happily and gratefully take an investment gain of £13,013 (YTD around +6%).

I remained fully invested throughout 2020, selling only some high-flying bond ETFs in March to rebalance into equities which were looking particularly dire.

So, a final month of dividends:

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