I’ve been a bit lazy and didn’t do an April review. With the markets as they were I just couldn’t be bothered. I did update my spreadsheets, but never quite found the motivation to put out a post. I’m just going to skip straight to May’s review and take it from there. The figures in brackets are from March.
As usual I’ve got last month’s figures in brackets for comparison. I’ve got my Defined Benefits Pension in there based on twenty years worth of money if I start drawing it at 60. I track how I’m doing with my mortgage balance compared to my AVC balance. The reason for this is that I made a decision to mostly stop overpaying my mortgage. Instead I use that extra money to put more into my AVC fund. So hopefully I’ll start to see my AVC fund increase in value and more slowly my mortgage balance come down until they meet at some point and I have enough in my AVC fund to clear my mortgage when I retire. That’s the plan anyway.
Debts
Mortgage £87,006.60 (£87,933.02)
Assets
Cash £24,780.48 (£27,468.16)
Defined Benefits £137,586 (£137,586)
AVC’s £19,912.26 (£19,416.17)
Shares £82,037.05 (£79,431.87)
House £278,089 (£278,089)
Total £542,404.79 (£541,991.20)
Net Worth including house equity
£542,404.79 – £87,006.60 = £455,398.19 (£454,058.18)
AVC Fund vs Mortgage Balance
£19,912.26 – £87,006.60 = -£67,094.34 (-£68,516.85)
It’s all a bit depressing really. I’m trying to tell myself the markets are just on sale, but I’m not sure I’m really managing to convince myself. My cash amount is down a bit as I got some dividends from my work shares. I took this as cash and added some money from my savings to put into my index trackers. I hit £50k in my Vanguard account at the end of May for the first time. Of course it’s since ducked under again, but it was still nice to hit that figure. Considering it doesn’t seem that long ago that I stuck £600 in of dividend money just to test the waters. My plan is still to get rid of more of my work shares, but I’ll do it gradually.
So my overall figures are up, but considering this covers a two month period and I’m putting in as much as I can it’s not the most heartening of reads. It’s not impacting my strategy though. And in fact I have just increased my AVC pension contributions again. I’ll keep plugging away and hope that by the time I come to retire I’ll have squirrelled enough away to have a fun retirement, and hopefully be able to go a bit earlier than I would have if I hadn’t discovered FIRE. I need to remember that I’m looking at a worse case scenario of retiring at 60 on more disposable income than I’m living on now. Before I’m not sure I could have ever really fully retired. So that has to be a win.
I’ve got my five year fixed rate mortgage up and running now. I was sad to say goodbye to my staff base rate tracker mortgage, but the time was right for some peace of mind with rates as they are at the moment. It was the right decision for me, no matter what happens to interest rates. You can’t put a price on a good night’s sleep.
I seem to have become a bit of a spendy pants recently. I seem to be saying yes to everything that’s suggested. I’ve barely got a weekend with nothing happening between now and the end of the summer. That’s unheard of for me, but I’m really enjoying making up for lost time. Saying that, I’m still trying to do things as cheaply as possible and I still haven’t ventured abroad. I’ve even slightly curtailed my parkrun tourism. It’s difficult to justify a 2 hour plus round trip for a 30 minute run when there’s one a mile from my house. I am however getting very good at combining trips to fit in multiple activities to make the most of the astronomical petrol costs.
It seems like a long time ago, but here are the goals I was working for in March.
- Finish Duolingo Unit 6 of the Spanish tree. PASS. Delighted to get this one done and I’m working my way through unit 7 now, which I should hopefully get done by the end of the year.
- Read the Spanish Intermediate short stories book that I’ve bought FAIL I’ve not even picked this up. I think it’s a bit too difficult for me which is putting me off. Must do better.
- Watch 16 episodes of Betty en NY PASS. I am about 75 episodes into this. It’s total trash, but it’s pretty much my go to if I have a spare 45 minutes and fancy watching a bit of telly.
- Reach 100 parkruns. PASS. I’m so happy about this one. I’m wearing my 100 tshirt with pride
- Book a trip to Alton Towers for the summer PASS. This is all booked and we’re off there next week.
I’ve managed to tick off a few things from my 60 for 60 list as well. (I did say I was saying yes to things!) I’ll do a post on that later in the summer as I’ve got a couple more things coming up soon that are on my list. The main one is the marathon I’ve just recently completed. I’m so chuffed with that, even though it was incredibly tough. And there’s not long till my ultra marathon, so I just need to get my legs sufficiently recovered to be able to manage those 34 miles.
As I have so much going on running wise just now I’m not going to set myself any goals for June. I need to get myself to the start line of the ultra fully recovered from the marathon, injury free and believing that I can complete the route. I know what I need to do, I just need to put my big girls pants on and get it done.
Sassenach Saving 