November 2024 Update
Living Life
I did not take a lot of pictures this month but the one’s I did were boozy! XD That was because it was my birthday and I had friends visiting. I had a great time but I have to say I am glad I have cut back on my drinking because I felt terrible for a week after!
Our lodger is away back to India this month so we have been enjoying nights by the log burner on our own.
That said, he is back this week coming and we have some news for him (and all of you readers :D) - we are expecting a new member of our family next year! My wife is pregnant and we are so excited. We hope it does not impact our FIRE plans too greatly but undoubtedly it probably will - the good old “changing goal posts of life…” I am already thinking about how best to support the little one financially and will make sure I open a Junior ISA as soon as they are born. It really is exciting times!
P.S. Just in case you have missed it, I started an Instagram page where I am sharing all sorts of my travelling snaps in black and white - find it here.
Spending
We have done very well budget-wise again which is surprising as I have bought a few train tickets, gifts and plenty of alcohol…
This month we spent £2,679.89 which is 24% under our budget. Looks like the budget will be getting revised down next year (think again - the little one will have something to say about that!).
FI Fund
The markets have been flying this month! The S&P500 is up 5.96% and the FTSE 100 is up 2.18%. Bitcoin has been a big winner - rising 34.06%!
The FI fund includes our full net worth. This month the portfolio is sitting at £538,096.45 which is £30,774.68 (or 6.07%) higher than when compared to the last update.
I really cannot believe what I am reading - up £30k in a month! I would never have imagined this when I started investing.
The only tip I would have for anyone trying to do the same is just keeping saving / investing like a motherf*cker and keep doing that. You will see the results eventually. We still have a long way to go but I feel very fortunate.
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 8.1 months of financial independence each year.
