July has been a busy month for us with lots going on. Pleased to report that the business side of things is moving from strength to strength, albeit a new employee who decided not to turn up to work for 2 weeks being only 3 weeks in to their employment… Unfortunately, discrediting millennials (which I don’t enjoy) but our experience so far of interviewing mid / early 20 year olds fresh / straight out of university has normally resulted in a bit of a disaster (this is now our 15th interview for graduates). The annoying thing is is that I’m actually in the millennial bracket and I don’t want to discredit all millennials because we do have some (late and early 20’s) who are fantastic at what they do. It’s just our experience of recent graduates of wanting to start a digital marketing role with no prior experience at salaries we could consider for someone with 2-3 years experience is unfortunately not viable for us, even though some of our senior developers are on well over ?60,000 p/a. I suspect, just like when I was at university 10 years ago, university provided me with that sense of ‘you graduate you’ll get straight into those managerial positions’ type mentality.
Anyway, I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of this type of debate as I’m sure there are some passionate people who want to share their thoughts on this! All I’m saying is that our experience of 15 millennials (of course, way too small to make sweeping generalisations) our experience has been pretty poor.
Value of Investments
Anyway, here’s the total value of investments to date across all accounts;
| Jul-19 | Jun-19 | May-19 | Apr-19 | Mar-19 | Feb-19 | Jan-19 |
| ?? 58,438.49 | ?? 48,743.43 | ?? 41,770.18 | ?? 37,687.25 | ?? 29,873.04 | ?? 24,666.31 | ?? 17,919.05 |
?20,000 now away from the target for 2019 of ?80,000 saved. A difference of almost ?10,000 from Jun-19 to Jul-19! One of the best performing months ever! ?9,361 to be exact.
You can see that the Index Funds (graph on the right) is moving up in the right direction. The actual return (?) is greater than the total invested. Compared to that of my active investments (graph on the left) which illustrates I’m down by around ?1,000. Fortunately this has shown bounce back as Imperial Brands I’m invested in has recently announced it’s moving part of it’s business strategy into medicinal cannabis and with growing pressures by peer groups to legalise cannabis, who knows what the future is to hold!
Here are some of the stats below regarding income and expenditure;
Total Income: ?11,750.00
Total Saved (?): ?7,122.00
Total Expenses: ?4,220.00
Savings (%):?61%?
I’m pretty pleased with the above. The credit card is really what’s ball busting me at the moment with seeing savings rate increase / climb to above 70% current. I have a holiday coming up which I’ve been slowly chipping away at, along with a new towbar fitted on the car (as some helpful bastard stole it) amongst a few irregular necessities and needs.
Expenses
Decided to document my expenses on the blog to provide a sense of the type of expenditure that I have each month;
- Mortgage: ?1,100
- Utilities: ?100
- Oil: ?60
- Water: ?10 (we aren’t on a meter, so flat rate throughout the entire year).
- Council Tax: ?250
The below are costs I actively try to reduce each month (as the costs above are pretty fixed really);
- Insurances: ?25
- Loan (Zopa – 1.4%): ?489
- Car Taxes: ?70
- Sundry (Essentially everything else): ?400
Sundry is one of those areas which I put everything into; Fuel, Car Servicing, Car MOT, Food Shopping, Dog Stuff, TV License, Milk Delivery, Caravan Storage etc etc.
In total, my regular expenses come to around ?2,500 p/m (without any large credit card bills / holidays to attend to).
Few Other Happenings
- The Football season is opening up again soon, so hoping to get back on the betting front on that side of things! Made some decent profit from ‘The Lord Tipster’ at the beginning of 2019. I’m wanting to document the progress on a separate page of the site called ‘side hustles’ – need to work it out though.
- The Cement Shop is continuing to chug away – I’ve now had 2 x ?50 Amazon Gift Cards out of it and total sales of just over ?1,100. Lots still to be done from an SEO & Web Marketing viewpoint, but getting there. (Do expect an update once I have the time / energy to do it).
That’s about it folks! Happy saving!
I remember I was a bit bigheaded after finishing my Batchelor degree. I took me a while until I understood that I was no better that others without a degree. I guess it?s a common feeling after all the effort we have put it.
Perhaps you could try to find someone who would appreciate the job but not necessarily hold a degree. That person would need to be intelligent and show a strong passion for the job. Now I?m assuming that this isn?t easy to find!
Good luck
Cheers Tony for stopping by!
Fortunately we’ve just employed a new person without any prior experience but with a willingness to learn! Here’s hoping!
That is some amazing progress with the cement shop. Very cool to see! Shame to read that you?ve been having staff problems though. You must have been unlucky; we millennials aren?t all bad!
Cheers Dr Fire! Yeah it’s not going too badly on the site – Ranking no.5 in the UK for the phrase ‘Cement Mixers’ – I do need to improve the style / design of the website, but of course time is the killer for me!
Great update. Have you considered hiring somebody who is older, possibly with a better work ethic? Perhaps someone who has partially retired etc? (No I’m not fishing for a job). Could be a solution.
Hey Grizgal – Thanks for stopping by!
Yeah we have in the past and do have a few 35+ at the company. We’ve just awarded a position to a pre-university student who seems to have a willingness to work hard / holds a good work ethic so will keep things posted!