Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Retirement

September 2024 Savings, plus other updates

I’ve sprained my wrist badly and have been in pain this past week or so. I’m not having to take painkillers daily any more so it must be getting better, but it’s still quite sore at times.  I am slowly getting some movement back but really need to rest my hand.

Typing one-handed has not been easy and I’ve not been able to face using my laptop outside of work hours, so apologies for the update delay.  Can’t even contemplate how I would have coped if I had a manual rather than a desk job.

How did I do it? I hurt it at the gym, as I was returning equipment… Didn’t think/know I had injured myself and carried on regardless, which was a big mistake. I forget I am not so young and invincible!

Not being able to drive had me wondering if I could survive without my weekly grocery shop and just live off what’s in my fridge, freezer and cupboards – of course, why not turn my injury into a FIRE frugality experiment, haha? 🙂

The answer was ‘yes’ – apart from a couple of jars which I couldn’t open (or didn’t want to risk getting the contents all over me), I have been fine and have had fairly decent and healthy meals. The only things I found I was low on was fresh fruit and eggs.

Perhaps I should consider periodically doing a no-shop week, just to use up what I have already.

Other things which happened this month (apart from the wrist injury):

  • I had family visiting at the beginning of the month so it was nice having them stay a while and for them to check out my pad for the first time.
  • My homebrew is still brewing, so will leave for another few weeks. I don’t drink so much these days so am glad I didn’t make a big batch!
  • Wept (with joy/emotion) when I heard Linkin Park’s first new single in 7 years.
  • Lost a friend – by ‘lost’, I don’t mean as a result of death, but as in they have decided to take their friendship elsewhere. Ghosted on WhatsApp, but not just me, all the other friends in our group too, so for whatever reason, she fell out with all of us/didn’t want to be friends with us any more after nearly 12 years of friendship. Very odd, except that this has coincided with her moving house to a quite well-to-do location in the countryside. We can only guess. We were all worried about her until we saw on FB that she had ‘new’ friends. Well, good luck to her – perhaps she needed a fresh start.
  • Won a Fitbit and £200 Amazon vouchers in work’s charity raffle – not bad for £40’s worth of tickets bought! Am well happy with that, although would have loved to have won the top prize, which was a week’s stay in the CEO’s villa in Portugal!

Anyway, how did my numbers look for September?

I saved 18.6% of my net salary. The above includes £46.14 from doing Prolific surveys and £10 bet winnings.

Shares and Investment Trusts

I sold my holding in Balanced Commercial Property Trust as the board of BCPT recommended to sell the company to a private investment company, so I decided it was time to exit after holding for many years. Funds from the sale have been split between existing holdings and new purchases in Twentyfour Select Monthly Income Fund and Global X ETFs Nasdaq 100 Covered Call ETF – will see how these two get on…the latter is a bit spicy!

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

Against the doom and gloom in the national and global press, the rocket is back! By the end of the month, my FF was up to £282,740.69.

Dividends and Other Income

A good month for dividend income:

I received £745.40, of which £453.58 was from my ISAs, the rest from my SIPPs. All dividends were reinvested.

Here’s the progress on my ISA dividend income:

Goals Update

How go the goals?

Just 3 months of the year left and the chances of me achieving them all is remote but I will keep at it!

And that’s it for September.

Who’s got their heating on already? Not me! 🙂

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