Compared to last month’s ‘activity-filled’ calendar, September was on the quiet side.
The only things of any note were:
- My nephew went back to school and all was well until during the second week when he came home with the lurgy and we had to self-isolate. Fortunately, he was able to get tested within a day and his results (negative) 48 hours later so there was little disruption to the household.
- I had a little homegrown ‘harvest’:
- I finally found some time to update my blogroll and have added a few new FIRE blogs to my list, notably South Wales FI , Sassenach Saving and The Frugalist.
- And did I mention that I managed to hit a little milestone this month? More on that later…
Work had my brain fried most evenings so all I’ve felt like doing after logging off was slumping on the sofa watching ‘comfort’ TV – I rewatched/binged all 4 seasons of ‘Heroes‘ (“Save the cheerleader, save the world!“) and have just started to rewatch ‘Battlestar Galactica‘ (the remake, not the original camp 70s show).
I did however keep up my gym sessions so haven’t been entirely unhealthy!
Me and Sis have slowly started to add more to our shopping – an extra packet here, a couple more tins there – in anticipation of a second lockdown and in case people start going mad again stockpiling like they did in March and April (which seems a lifetime ago).
Restrictions haven’t eased off in Greater Manchester, with cases continuing to rise. Life (as we know it now) will just go on.
So, how did I get on with my savings in September?
I saved 56% of my net salary – very good, but considering it was a month of doing pretty much nothing, I was surprised I didn’t save more.
The above savings includes top ups from £60 Matched Betting profits (from last month) and £72.72 from affiliate income from OddsMonkey* (thank you to all who signed up via my links!).
Shares and Investment Trusts
I sold my holding in Murray International Investment Trust (MYI) for a small profit (reason being that MYI hasn’t done so well compared to other global ITs and while the yield of >5% is tempting, I’m not sure it will be maintained). I swapped it for SPDR S&P Global Dividend Aristocrats ETF (GBDV). I topped up other existing investments.
Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.
(Entire portfolio here)
Future Fund
After reaching my £200k milestone, the stock markets went all jittery and did their best to spoil my little celebration.
By the end of the month, my Future Fund had dropped to £199,167 – it could have been worse so I’m ok with that, although it seems I wasn’t the only one who ‘flirted’ with £200k, only for it to skip out of reach again!
Dividends and Other Income
An average month for dividends: