Life Update
Well there’s definitely some / feeling like it’s brewing on the horizon. The news, the general doom and gloom, it all feels like it’s a little too much pressure at the moment.
On the business side of things we’re still doing ‘OK’ – lost a few clients due to them tightening up the marketing budget and have gained a few here and there, but operating slightly lower than we had anticipated.
The garden office is progressing really well and can’t ultimately wait to get into it!
SEO / Google continues to do it’s usual business and causing me massive aggravation and headaches. Have you noticed search turn into this ‘drivel’ type content of ‘Top 10 Best’ ‘blog’ posts now when searching for something? Well, welcome to the ‘Google Helpful Content Update’ – the algorithm update that massively rewards comparison sites for their drivel content and mashup of nonsense (sorry, I’m ranting).
I start this blog post off with hopefully a bit of light entertainment… We need a bit of cheer and joy in our lives, especially with all the crappy news and garbage TV is on now-a-days. So here’s something we can ALL relate to on our way to FIRE;
Garden Office – It’s getting there…
The garden office has been coming along in bits and bobs. It’s somehow now merged into this ‘mega’ garden project and it’s quite literally turning my bank account into a bit of a sieve! I’m kind of kicking myself that I didn’t hold off on the garden works until next year just to help balance out the finances a little, but ultimately this has seen costs up to around £30,000 now! Certainly not cheap, but worth it.
It’s going to allow me to separate work from the house which is an important work ‘identity’ thing I’m looking for. Being a remote only worker, working from the spare bedroom (which we’ve decorated as the office) has ultimately meant that my house, that room, that gaming PC that I need to boot up more, shares the same thought process, the same feeling of being the ‘work area’, and I ultimately want to stop that. Hence why we went ahead with this garden office.
We’re also looking to start a family next year and having that ‘get away’ place to focus on work / the business will be important to me and when needing to attend to family duties, I can leave work in that ‘garden office’ behind (if that makes sense).
The Garden – Producing enough to start a farm…
The garden has given us ALOT of vegetables this year. Especially tomatoes, I have so many god damn tomatoes. Tomato soup for quite literally days. I think the 12 plants was way overkill for us 2 😀 – Especially given that most of them are now in the freeze after being cooked / chopped up and turned into some sort of sauce. I still quite literally have HUNDREDS of the buggers!
So I decided to do something a little more ‘extra’ with the left over vegetables and in true FIRE fashion, I bought a book from local garden centre about fermentation…! Phwoar! My first batch were quite literally dreadful, I put essentially way too much garlic on and created a perfume that would probably kill. But the second attempt, reducing the garlic has now lead me to some rather tasty pickles!
Financial Update | September 2022
So how have those financials been looking for the month?
Income | £7,576
Expenses | £3,281
My expenses have been relatively stable for the time being because the majority of my ‘costs’ so to speak and related to a one off cost (being the garden office) and thus I’m removing this from my financial tracking.
Savings | £3,775
Representing a 50% savings rate which I’m still pretty chuffed with to be fair. I’ve made a promise to myself that I will continue to invest around £4,000 per month regardless of costs and reduce any unnecessary expenditure that comes along the way until the garden office is completed. Though it is ultimately really starting to weigh down at the moment and hoping can get it cleared off and done and dusted very soon.
Investment Growth | -£11,289
Oooof big yikes. This was followed by a -£2,605 drop in August as well. Hoping for a rebound! But just going to do what many other savvy ones are doing. Just keep buying, buying and keep on going with it.
