Oct ’18 Performance

So October came and went – but did the portfolio? I have to admit I did check it a few times with all the moving around that was going on – but I had to laugh at all the hype in the press about the “crash” and “billions wiped off” etc. etc.

Seriously? It’s only wiped off if you have to sell – and what about the profits people made before this? Anyway…

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 🙂

	Perf.	Notes
Company Pension	-5.10%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
Personal Pension	-5.97%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
ISA 1	-4.03%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
ISA 2	-5.13%	The performance does not include the income that was paid out into my account
ISA 3	-5.60%	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	-4.99%	Go T’ Pub ISA
FTSE-100	-5.09%	This excludes any dividends
FTSE-250	-6.84%	This excludes any dividends
FTSE-All	-5.42%	This excludes any dividends
S&P500	-6.23%	This excludes any dividends
Dow Jones	-4.44%	This excludes any dividends
VWRL	-5.54%
VHYL	-3.86%
GBP/USD	-1.96%	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.com for consistency and real life 🙂

So what to make of it all? Surprisingly everything came down pretty evenly – the surprise being the VHYL didn’t drop as much as others.

Am I worried? Nope – the dividends still paid out, I still bought more units and I still think markets are high. Am I going to change anything? Nope.

Did it hurt to see the amount of actual £’s disappear off my networth? Yes… but again it simply means that anything I do buy I buy more of so as I am still growing my networth, now is not the time to worry.

Onwards and upwards – or in this case at least, onwards!

Sep ’18 Performance

So September flew by with a holiday meaning I hardly checked my portfolio all month and, you may not believe this, but it made absolutely no difference!

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 🙂

	Perf.	Notes
Company Pension	-0.86%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
Personal Pension	-2.12%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
ISA 1	-0.38%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
ISA 2	-1.00%	The performance does not include the income that was paid out into my account
ISA 3	1.69%	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	0.02%	Go T’ Pub ISA
FTSE-100	1.05%	This excludes any dividends
FTSE-250	-1.85%	This excludes any dividends
FTSE-All	0.53%	This excludes any dividends
S&P500	0.41%	This excludes any dividends
Dow Jones	1.90%	This excludes any dividends
VWRL	-0.17%
VHYL	-0.06%
GBP/USD	0.58%	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.com for consistency and real life 🙂

So what to make of it all? Pretty much nothing to see as things just plod along apart from my IFA managed pension, which plummeted (not a surprise given the markets and where this is invested), and my ISA seems to do ok.

Things just tick along, money goes in, dividends pay out, and the slow progress just keeps going on. I still have a long way to go to make the FI point, but it keeps going.

How was your September?

Aug ’18 Performance

So I am still playing catch up and giving August’s performance when I should be giving September but please do forgive me..I need to hurry things along!

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	0.97%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
Personal Pension	-0.09%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
ISA 1	-0.57%	No income generated as all funds are in growth or reinvested
ISA 2	-0.32%	The performance does not include the income that was paid out into my account
ISA 3	-0.72%	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	0.62%	Go T’ Pub ISA
FTSE-100	-4.08%	This excludes any dividends
FTSE-250	-0.90%	This excludes any dividends
FTSE-All	-3.46%	This excludes any dividends
S&P500	2.98%	This excludes any dividends
Dow Jones	2.12%	This excludes any dividends
VWRL	1.35%
VHYL	6.08%
GBP/USD	-1.29%	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.com for consistency and real life 🙂

So what to make of it all? Drops across the board outside of the US. Not great, but means I get to buy a little more for all my direct debits (in theory!).

Whilst I never like to see my investments not performing, I really am not worried at present, the more and more I can buy the better.

To be honest, not a lot to see – keep throwing money in, and wait for time to do its magic!

 

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!

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!