Life Update
Howdy folks!
I’m back from holiday now and back to the usual work slog / grind. I went on a 2 week cruise down to the South of Spain visiting the likes of Malaga (absolutely loved it there), Gibraltar, Vigo, Lisbon (Portugal – one of my favorites) and a few other places on a cruise.
Going away on holiday always puts it into perspective whether or not tucking away all of this money is the right thing to do. To even have that chance, or opportunity to be able to pack up work or at-least be given the choice to is enough to continue in spurring me on, especially in times of economic downturn that we’re seeing at the moment.
Continued Life Updates
April sure did zoom on by in a flash, an instant as I’m ever finding myself now. Life, is just generally busy – I’m finding myself now even trying to save time by doing more online grocery ordering than that of having to go to the shops.
We’re continuing to press on with the various garden works and bits and pieces going on throughout the house. I’ve got a few pennies saved up as we’re having part of our garden levelled out and a new office base installed over the next coming weeks.
Economic Recession / Woes etc
Inflation, cost of living crisis – I hear snippets of it throughout various discussions with colleagues and clients. A looming recession, a market downturn – the media are biting onto it hard and won’t let it go until they’ve caused mass hysteria (this is just my belief!).
I’m just going to keep calm and carry on. I do browse Reddit every now and then and there was a bit of an ‘old timer’ on there, supposedly in their 80’s who gave a great overview to their investments (mixture of bonds and shares) since the 1950’s, of which they lived through the times of 25%+ inflation during the 70’s and 80’s. Essentially, this long post (I wish I could re-find the link again for it) boiled down to essentially, just keep calm, look for the long-term and everything else will fall in place – and it did (for them at least!). The screenshots / graphs of every single recession between the 1950’s and today on this Reddit post looked like complete fart in the ocean in comparison to the upwards trend his graph showed – a barely noticeable downturn at all.
Keeping calm and continuing on is certainly what I’m going to be doing over the course of my investments. In-fact, keeping calm and carrying on is probably so boring to read that it’s probably why very few in the ‘media sphere’ recommend it – always continuing to push crypto, timed based arguments forward.
Garden Snaps
April is one of those times where as a vegetable gardener you can really start to see things take off a little. It’s a pretty busy month gardening wise, especially planting out seeds, trying to work out timings in the beds and ultimately what I always struggle with, is keeping some of the more delicate plants at this still ‘pretty cold’ time of the year, alive!
I’ve installed a new ‘Strawberry’ planter type wall thingy – They’re called ‘Plantboxes’ and essentially they hold water in them for about 5-7 days (reducing the need to continuously have to water plants every day. They’re absolutely fabulous, love them to bits and clearly, so do the strawberries! Of which, I’ve never been able to grown in the past.
Financial Update | April 2022
So how have those financials been looking for the month?
Income | £13,576
Income has gone up this month, mainly due to the end of the financial year and with the various dividend type payments that have gone out as well.
Expenses | £3,281
Still a little higher than what I’m used to, but this is now including a few additional costs that we’ve seen price rises in. I’m really wanting to keep this towards the ‘£2,500’ per month mark ideally, but considering this does include my mortgage which is around £1,200 p/m, I don’t believe I’m doing too bad at the moment.
Savings | £8,775
Equaling a savings rate of 65% not too shabby! Similar to most of the months I’ve achieved this year and glad and very grateful to be able to tuck away such a large proportion of my salary.
Investment Growth | -£11,072
Ooof – imagine saving £8,775 for then you to ‘lose’ an additional -£2,297 ontop of that? The markets certainly are going down down and down. Strangely, I don’t have a huge ‘attachment’ or ’emotional’ need to sell. Perhaps I’m a little too comfortable with the Global All Cap fund and just need to revisit my thought process with investments? Whatever the case, a lot of blogs and posts I’ve read I can see everyone else is also in the same boat. At-least this money wasn’t in Crypto, of which some coins saw a 90% drop in a day! (Christ almighty, that would certainly frighten me!)
Investment Graph
Ending
It’s a case of continuing on as we are this end and working through the huge heaps of work and busyiness in the office. We’re still going through the process of selling, taking much longer than I had anticipated, but perhaps I was a little wet behind the ears to think it would be wrapped up in 6-8 months.
We are super excited though as we have just signed up a new client who sells ‘SWEETS’! Normally, we are involved in quite tedious industries such as ‘Sensors’ or ‘Artificial Grass’ – you know, those subjects that really want to make you get out of bed each morning with a spring in your step (not). So signing up an online sweet shop and us of course, making sure the product is 100% we had to order some to try out, we’ll be starting the project in June and look forward in seeing what may bring this client online!
Thank you folks – take care.
