June 2024 Update
Hi everyone! This month has been great for us - hope you enjoy the update.
Living Life
This month I finished off my break and started my new job. In the run up to started I had been anxious with all of the expectations but now 3weeks in I am feeling a lot more comfortable. What I have found is that although the people are different, they are very much in the same mindset as those I worked with previously. I have found it really easy to fit in and hit the ground running. It helps that I really get on with my boss - we are on the same wavelength.
The big disappointment this month for me has been the extremely poor performance by Scotland in the euros. It had to be written in the stars that Scotland would go out like they did. Why are we such glorious losers?! At least it seemed like all the other fans enjoyed having the Scottish fans there!
Otherwise, the Mrs and I have tried to enjoy the sunshine as much as possible. Seeing family and friends and going on coastal walks. I have really enjoyed it.
Spending
This month although I had felt we spent quite a bit (a few gifts to buy and I bought tickets to the Anthony Joshua fight) we are under budget again. Then again, my streak of significantly reducing my alcohol intake is probably helping the budget a lot!
This month we spent £3,087.56 which is 12% under our budget.
FI Fund
The markets are up again a little this month and our portfolio continues to rise too. That said, it does feel like there are more cracks starting to show with both the Bank of Canada and European Central Bank cutting interest rates for the first time. You would expect that we may see the US and UK do similar soon.
The FI fund includes our full net worth. This month the portfolio is sitting at £474,854.33 which is £11,712.21 (or 2.53%) higher than when compared to the last update.
Inspired by the Mad Fientist, we track our net worth slightly differently. This helps us visualise the trajectory towards FIRE based on current monthly spending and investing habits.
The graph has the following assumptions:
Income from investments (post-FIRE) = 4%
Monthly savings / investments = £3,000 per month
Return on investments (pre-FIRE) = 7%
Also, as another way of looking at it, we break our FI milestone (an arbitrary £800,000) into 12 equal bars to track our progress against that. Each bar indicatively represents achieving financial freedom for each representative month of the year. Therefore, we are currently sitting at 7.12 months of financial independence each year.
