Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Retirement

April 2024 Savings, plus other updates

Update is later than usual and I blame the sunny evenings and weekends, which had me spending more time outside, less indoors on my laptop (wi-fi isn’t great in the garden!).

April started off well with an evening out at the darts to witness teenage sensation, Luke Littler trounce seasoned pros – so cool and calm for such a young lad! This was my first time watching darts live – we knew what to expect, it was rowdy, noisy (a lot of singing which we took part in), the beer was expensive and the testosterone in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife, but it was a fun evening!

Packed on a school night

However, the month didn’t end so great as I had various major repair works done on my car, which came to a total cost of £1,718.93.

Ouch! I was expecting a bill of at least £1k and my heart sank when they gave me the full quote but hurrah, my emergency funds came to the rescue! I need to focus more on topping it up to replace that big chunk removed.

Anyway, how did my numbers look for April?

I saved 15.8% of my net salary. The above includes £46.52 from doing Prolific surveys and £12 Grand National bet winnings.

Shares and Investment Trusts

No new investments, I just topped up existing ones.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

No rocket in April as the markets appeared to stabilise. My Future Fund remained flat at £262,558.40 at the end of the month.

Dividends and Other Income

An average month for dividend income:

I received £489.78, of which £281.35 was from my ISAs, the rest from my SIPPs. All dividends were reinvested.

Here’s what my ISA dividend income graph looks like:

Goals Update

How go the goals?

The emergency funds goal is pretty much impossible now but I will keep at it.

Not doing great on the reading front; I have been reading but the book I’m currently on is over 1k pages and I’m just slogging my way through it, albeit in an enjoyable fashion!

Options, Options

[Firstly, this is not any sort of recommendation or suggestion for anyone to try – DYOR!]

I’m now 6 months into Year 2 of my Options trading, so time for a little update.

My options trading platform (IG) clearly warns that 68% of their retail investor accounts lose money trading on their platform, although the general consensus is that it’s closer to 95% of all options traders who lose all their money.  So, am I just a member of that homogenous losing flock?

My stats since November 2022

Nope, I’m still winning! 🙂 Since the beginning of November, I’m up 12.6%.

It’s been a bit of a grind to make any profits, but I’ve been patient. I think I’ve mentioned that there’s nothing exciting about the trading I am doing!

This could almost be a graph for passive investing!

While there’s potential for this to scale up to make meaningful profits, it’s not something I’m considering just yet – I still see trading options as a social hobby (combined with the online Beginners Options meetings I attend monthly) and I’m very much still a beginner. It would be great to make more profit but more profit = more capital = more risk.

I am however continuing to make steps towards my options trading goal, which is to double my money – I started with £1,000, topped up an extra £150 (as I feared a margin call) and my balance is showing at £1,883. I expect to have hit my goal by my next update in 6 months’ time, but we shall see!

And that’s all for now – May’s update will come round very soon and I will try to not be too late with it!

Hope you all had a great April!

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