Aug ’18 Income and Expenses

So once again things are flying by and I find myself a month behind already – I put it down to a holiday, providing holiday cover and work being very busy indeed.

I am definitely not complaining but time is really pelting on, which makes me glad for the GTP ISA – I don’t need to do anything!

Anyway, onto the more interesting (hopefully!) side of things…

Income

So the usual salary has gone in and a little extra from my other half’s ISA dropped in which continues to build and help. All in, nothing exciting and life continues to move on. And naturally, of course, dreaming of having that stream of cash coming in without having to work!

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.	31%
Groceries	All the food and other stuff needed for home	3%
Alcohol for home	Home alcohol consumption only	4%
Bicycles / Car related	Any costs related to either the bikes or the car	1%
Alcohol Out	Generally, its the pub….	6%
Eating Out	I include purchased lunches in this as well as meals out etc.	6%
Other	My catch all for anything I may have missed….	3%
Holidays	Any spending related to holidays, flights etc.	8%
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)	38%

* 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 a friends wedding and stag do hit the holiday numbers and alcohol and food out – it doesn’t happen often so I made the most of it! Unfortunately, although the savings rate still looks good, the only way I could keep my GTP ISA going was by eating further into my cash reserves. This will soon have to stop of course.

Other than that things just keep ticking along, no great surprises and mostly keeping a lid on the spending. The holiday and stag do did put a big dent into the costs, however if I can reduce those going forward I will be in a much stronger position.

 

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Jul ’18 Go T’ Pub ISA Performance

So as I desperately try and catch up on publishing my numbers, I realise I ought to be publishing the numbers for August, not July, but never mind, that will come in time!

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.

Once again I have still not got around to looking at changing the provider for this ISA in light of the recent changes to the charging mechanisms for them, however I did look back at my post trying to find the GTP ISA provider, and it was either Selftrade or II. As II are already providing one of my other ISAs it looks like I won’t get around to changing – very bad on my part.

So, what activity did we have this month?

• New Funds added. As always, the regular contribution of £1,100 has gone in
• VWRL paid out a dividend again. £107.09. Compared to this time last year when it was only £7 that is a heck of a jump!
• No withdrawal was made
• Left over cash from the previous purchases was left in

Overall performance: The starting value was £21,665.77 with £1,100 in new funds added, and £0 withdrawals, meaning total starting value was £22,765.77. We finished the month on £23,416.27 so the total performance across the whole portfolio was 2.86%. Not at all bad!

VWRL ETF

So the standard units were purchased – with the whopping dividend also reinvested (it paid to buy me an additional unit – compounding in action baby!!). I bought a further 19 units at £64.96 per unit, making the average cost per unit of £62.01. So not only a great big dividend this month, but enough to buy another unit – for free!

I really am very very pleased with the way this is going!

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

Look at that gap! That’s what that free VWRL unit did for me 🙂 I know this does sound really quite sad but that is truly a great moment for this ISA. I could have used £35 a MONTH for going to the pub (a bottle of wine, a burger and a few pints or a pint and about 25 packs of pork scratchings – probably a little too many even for me).

There will be a drop at some point I am sure but for now I will just continue to enjoy watching that gap grow!

In terms of dividends to date:

• Jul ’17 – 18 shares @ 42.3p dividend per share – £7.61
• Oct ’17 – 73 shares @ 26.8p dividend per share – £19.60
• Jan ’18 – 127 shares @ 22.4p dividend per share – £28.51
• Apr ’18 – 182 shares @ 23.5p dividend per share – £42.79
• Jul ’18 – 238 shares @ 45p dividend per share – £107.09

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 £5,130.67
S&S ISA IT	Now stands at £5,395.68*

*Disclaimer – yes this is the same as the previous, I think I typed in the wrong box but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter!

So still quite a way ahead for now, not at all bad!

Conclusion

For an easy life, you really can’t go wrong with this approach for automated investing. I don’t need to read any company reports, I don’t need to worry about politics or economic collapse anywhere. Just buy and forget. Bliss!