Jul ’18 Performance

I can’t believe I am almost at the end of August and I have only now got around to getting this posted – I must do better! On the flip side of all of that, I really didn’t keep much attention to what was going on once again. Everything is on autopilot – my actively managed ISA is just building up cash so really there isn’t much to do. Life can be good!

As I covered in my “How I measure performance” – basically I take the value of the portfolio at the end of last month, add on any contributions for the month, and that was my starting value. End value is the value at the end of the reporting period. Simples 🙂

‘folio	Perf.	Notes
Company Pension	2.64%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
Personal Pension	2.60%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
ISA 1	1.30%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
ISA 2	0.80%	The performance does not include the income that was paid out into my account
ISA 3	1.39%	Although dividends are paid out, they remain in the ISA wrapper, and will get reinvested for growth. The performance figure includes both the Capital growth, and also income received which will get reinvested.
ISA 4	2.86%	Go T’ Pub ISA
FTSE-100	1.46%	This excludes any dividends
FTSE-250	0.23%	This excludes any dividends
FTSE-All	1.22%	This excludes any dividends
S&P500	3.65%	This excludes any dividends
Dow Jones	4.75%	This excludes any dividends
VWRL	3.28%
VHYL	-2.73%
GBP/USD	-0.63%	This was taken on the spot rate on the close of the last day of the month. Going forwards I will pick up the exchange rate from www.xe.comfor consistency and real life 🙂

So, the US continues its upwards path, the pound slipped a little, and all my various portfolios went up a bit in value. Nice.

So my IFA beat me this month, but then he is more heavily US based (with the exception of GTP).

Really a very boring month. Money goes in. Money buys stuff. Money produces more money. Pot goes up. No magic (sadly), no 100 baggers making me an overnight millionaire (sadly, again), but the slow and steady inevitable climb towards retirement continues. Bring it on!

Cheers

Note: For those of you in either the FI London or FI UK Facebook groups, and for those note, there is another FI Meet up planned on the 19th October in central London. Estimates at the last meet up was that around 100 people turned up (of which I only got to chat to a very small fraction) – please do come along, bring a friend as well if you so want!

Advertisement

Jul ’18 Income and Expenses

Time continues to fly by and it seems I am late again on these, but never mind – here they are now, better late than never!

I have to be honest, I think I missed some expenses this month, but so be it – given I tend to err on the side of caution anyway (for example all fuel costs I count, although I can claim some back for work travel), so I am not too worried on that.

Income

At last. A normal, full pay cheque hit the bank account. That was such a relief – although still not as high as I would ideally like, it is at least back to closer to normal (think a near 10% post tax rise!)

My “standard” cash reserves are completely depleted which does leave me worried, but this was the month to see those fortunes change and start filling up the reserves again.

Well, that was the plan wasn’t it…..?

Expenses

Item	Notes	Amount
Things I choose not to avoid*	Mortgage, Insurance, shared bills etc. – yes, we could move somewhere cheaper, not have insurance, reduce our bills a bit and so on, but we are where we are.	33%
Groceries	All the food and other stuff needed for home	3%
Alcohol for home	Home alcohol consumption only	5%
Bicycles / Car related	Any costs related to either the bikes or the car	1%
Alcohol Out	Generally, its the pub….	4%
Eating Out	I include purchased lunches in this as well as meals out etc.	4%
Other	My catch all for anything I may have missed….	5%
Holidays	Any spending related to holidays, flights etc.	1%
Savings	Anything left over! This includes money into ISAs, mortgage payments and non relief pension contributions. My company pension comes out before it hits my bank account so isn’t included, nor do I include the “top up” of money when my money goes into my personal pension (i.e. I put in £100, I register it as £100, not the £125 that gets credited in my pension)	44%

* This covers a number of things that I would class as essential for me. Yes, I could move to somewhere cheaper to reduce the mortgage (which in turn would reduce the insurance I have to pay), yes I could reduce my bills by switching energy supplier etc. but it comes down to what I am happy with. There are a few other things in there that are classified as essential that others may object, and so I have just lumped it into there.

So what to make of it all? The day to day stuff has come down nicely – a reflection of getting my normal salary back – so nice to have a little flexibility in the budget.

The downside, the increase in alcohol and food both at home and out went up. There were a lot of factors, going out with friends I hadn’t seen in ages, a couple of work events that I can’t claim for, some clothes, some stuff for home and so forth. It all adds up over time sadly, but hopefully that will have got it out of my system!

The savings rate going back up to 44% is a major plus – and I am hoping to get back above 50% now that I am on a more normal income, but let’s see!

Jun ’18 Go T’ Pub ISA Performance

So this is not a great sign that it is the middle of August nearly and I am only just writing up June, still at least I shouldn’t be short of posts for the next couple of weeks!

For the full details over all of the portfolios as a summary please refer to the full month end report – this is specifically looking at what has happened on the Go T’ Pub portfolio only.

I know they are changing the charging mechanism for Selftrade and I had it in my diary this Monday to look at but time flew by once again and I have done nothing about it. I recall doing  a quick scan and thinking I was too lazy to make it worthwhile to move, but I will need to do proper research on that. Oh well.

So, what activity did we have this month?

• New Funds added. As always, the regular contribution of £1,100 has gone in
• No dividends were paid. Maybe I should find some other ETFs to buy that pay out in different months just to give me a little excitement
• No withdrawal was made
• Left over cash from the previous purchases was left in

Overall performance: The starting value was £20,634.47 with £1,100 in new funds added, and £0 withdrawals, meaning total starting value was £21,734.47. We finished the month on £21,665.77 so the total performance across the whole portfolio was -0.32%.

Not ideal but the fact that the portfolio isn’t racing up means I can keep buying more units I guess….

So, lets get into the detail…..

VWRL ETF

So the standard units were purchased – however with the high price means I could only afford to buy a further 17 units at £63.62 per unit (a slight dip on the previous month), making the average cost per unit of £61.78. So it just keeps ticking along and increasing the number of units which all helps!

Given how busy June was it means I didn’t look the minute the shares were purchased, and so I just had to look at the end of the month!

So – how does this now look as the graph data slowly builds up?

The clear air gap continues! At some point I expect there to be a fall, when who knows. The same old automatic, proven, method is ticking along thank you very much!

Cash vs. Investment Trust

So now for the fun, and highly not recommended, part. The money from my Cash ISA that was part of my emergency fund that I invested in the market to see what would happen over time.

So, how is it looking?

Cash	Now stands at £5,130.23
S&S ISA IT	Now stands at £5,395.68*

*Disclaimer – I may have misrecorded this but have no idea…

So still quite a way ahead, with another 12 shares bought through dividend reinvestment – making 46 extra shares from dividends already – that’s compounding for you!

How does the rollercoaster look now?

So, still looking not at all bad all told. Again this is my emergency fund so I would HAVE to sell if I needed the cash regardless of what the price was – not a situation you want to find yourself in if you can help it!

Conclusion

I continue to shout about how wonderful this fire and forget is. If you don’t have some weird spreadsheet fetish and just want to get on with your life rather than worry about this – crank up the investment to the max and forget about it – bliss!