Howdy folks! Lots of new and exciting developments that happened during March 2021!
Remote Working the Future
We have now officially closed our office and all workers for the business are now working remotely. After paying for an office for 6 months + without stepping foot inside it has been quite the waste of money. Therefore we’ve given our notice in to stop it and instead go with one of these mail forwarding / book a meeting room ad-hoc type approach, which is one-tenth of the price we were paying for originally! All the staff have been given new machines for both personal and commercial use along with additional subsidized expenses such as energy costs which would naturally go up. We use Discord as our main platform to communicate work processes. We can live stream the webcams, jump into various voice channels and generally the functionality compared to Slack is far far superior in Discord’s court, even though Discord was originally intended for gaming. Our developers have built some pretty cool JS tools to connect with Discord and our own systems which is ace.
Garden is coming on lovely
I’ve managed to connect up the rainwater gutters to the water butts along with planting some additional seeds that are coming up. Here’s a variety of snaps. I’ve just got to work out how to get the electricity to the shed – so have been in contact with a few electricians. I’ve also built another raised bed for our patio area! Just now need to built the trellis work behind it and fill it with compost and ultimately some delicious climbing veg (not too sure yet – might try butternut squash).
Healthy Lifestyle & Diet
At the beginning of March I was fed up with feeling lethargic after eating. Something had to change as I was genuinely feeling tired most of the time and hungry all the time, two symptoms of raised blood sugar levels. After researching, researching and even more researching I put the nail in the coffin and my lifestyle had to change. I wasn’t eating particularly unhealthily, just the quantity and type of macro’s. I’ve now adopted the principle of the keto lifestyle with Mediterranean twist. I’ve been doing this for now just over a month (4 weeks in total) consuming less than 20 carbs a day and increasing healthy fats as my main source of macro-nutrient and moderate protein. Since then, I have lost 13kg in one month, mainly water weight but an incredible feat none the less. You only have to begin looking at some of the studies of just how damaging sugar is in our society and the real epidemic of metabolic syndrome that so many adults in western society don’t realise they have. I’m not going to turn into some preacher and convince my friends to adopt this lifestyle, but for me it’s set now and fortunately my amazing partner is fully onboard with it as well. Both of us have lost in combination almost 3 stone in less than a month. I was always quite big, broad shouldered mainly and always received the comment of being able to ‘hold weight well’, whatever that means. I didn’t really have a belly but was just big.
At the start of March we cleared out our entire kitchen of all highly processed carbohydrates, anything that contained added sugar (and the other 30+ names that the food industry manages to call it, yes there is actually that many). We donated it all to the local food bank – Pasta’s, tinned foods, beans, most dried goods like cous cous and a whole bunch of other stuff. Then we went full hog into this lifestyle, educating ourselves about healthy fats, clean Keto (there is a dirty version as well) omega-3 and 6’s and the important balance and dived straight in. Some things that I’ve specifically noticed my end has been that I can work longer without getting brain fog. I now get to the point where it’s 5pm but it’s feeling like it’s still midday. It’s really hard to explain what I’m feeling. The suppressed appetite because fat is so satiating is another reason which works well for me. Of course each to their own but if anyone was thinking of giving the keto lifestyle a go, then here’s a great video to introduce some of the basic principles.
March 2021 | Investment
Markets have been yet again been exploding! I really hope I don’t get used to this and sell when there is that inevitable big market decline. Even COVID-19 only saw a small dent in my diversified investments but I know some others have seen a substantial impact from it.
How are those figures looking?
Total Income: £11,368.00
Total Saved (?): £8,564.00
Total Expenses: £2,803.00
Savings (%): 75%
Really chuffed with keeping in the 70% savings rate bracket. Though this isn’t through being more frugal or cutting my expenses. I’m so grateful to be able to earn what I do earn, through nothing but hard work and grit over the years. With COVID-19 the business is just growing from strength to strength as more businesses look to adopt more of their marketing online to survive.
Anyway wishing you all the best for the future and continued high savings rates! Let’s hope that this is the last year that the UK is in lockdown and can manage to open up fully for the foreseeable.
