Financial Update 14# – April 2020 (House Improvements & Planting Veg)

Hey everyone! I’m taking a slightly different stance on this months financial update. With all the events / dread that is surrounding the world regarding Coronavirus, I thought it might be nice to not only blog about the financial side of things this end, but also things that have been happening in my life over the course of the month. I’ve been quite refreshing to share some of the things that I’ve been up to in the garden / house projects etc – Hopefully it is for you guys instead of the usual doom and gloom that the UK media seems in continuing to push forward.

April 2020 – Housey Bits

I’ve been quite busy over the last few weekends with on-going projects. I find April to be one of those months whereby if you’re into veg gardening, you’re sowing vegetable seeds left right and centre! Spring is generally my favorite month – everything is shooting up and things are coming back to life from Winter. Here’s a few snaps of the things that have been happening;

I’m super impressed with the greenhouse. It took me 3 weekends to erect and the finish of the product is great (Bought from Elite Greenhouses if anyone is interested). The instructions mind you caused me to spout a few explicit words given the language they use in it for the not-so-confident-DIYer wasn’t that helpful, but in general it wasn’t too bad.

I’m also pleased to see some of the other members of the FIRE Community in the UK also embracing planting of vegetables! I started with potatoes in basic Amazon grow bags. Super easy to do and well worth it with a delicious crop. Hopefully we could get a bit of a gardening group together to share some images around and tips?

April 2020 – Investment

Overall I’ve been quite happy with April’s financial performance given what we’re all going through.

Generally not too bad! We’ve had quite a nice rebound and essentially back to February 2020 levels minus the amount I’ve saved this month. Speaking of which, here’s the financials;

Total Income: £4,868.00
Total Saved (?): £3,100.00
Total Expenses: £1,768.00
Savings (%): 64%

It’s great to see my expenses fall so much! With mortgage / usual bills, my monthly expenses have been coming out from anywhere between £2,200 – £3,000 per month so to see them sub £2,000 is great! I do have a mortgage which is just over £1,000 meaning that I’ve only spent around £700 on the usual food bills / utilities etc. Absolutely dead chuffed with that! Of course though, this has been down to the coronavirus / lock down period side of things. But once the UK hopefully begins easing restrictions, we’ll try to maintain that sub £2,000 living expenses!

Whether or not I should factor in my mortgage (I currently do) I guess is a question most people on the journey question themselves with. I think come that period of time I’ll be at a turning point with the business. Do I sell or go to a part time type role? Who knows – it’ll be in 10 years time when I’ll most likely be coming to that avenue! What I’ve learnt recently though is that FIRE is not a race. It’s always very tempting to time markets, look at squeezing out every penny from expenses and look for new ways to make money in every nook and cranny – but in reality I just found that side of it was stressing me out. I’m on the ‘coasting’ journey – if I can save more and invest more, then great! But I’m not going to go to super extremes to achieve FIRE – got to enjoy life and live in the present right?!

Over the course of May I’m going to work on getting some new pages up on the blog and also sort out these graphs! Thanks for the feedback peeps on the graphs – I think some people couldn’t see them etc – so hopefully by scouting around I can get something a little better so everyone can see what’s happening on this end.

Thanks for taking the time to read my update – hope everyone is keeping safe and well.