18 month financial update (!!!)
In the last monster update I promised to make any further updates if there were any pressing questions, and reader Jimbo asked for a numbers update. So, here it is!
I haven’t made any financial updates since January 2020, so this covers about 4 months of receiving a pay cheque still in 2020, and the rest is me being semi-FIRE’d.
I am going to try to keep this one brief! (You’re welcome!) 🙂
Also remember all numbers are for our combined household finances.
Headlines Figures
- Total Normal Investments – The value of all of our ISAs, SIPPs and Pensions combined.
- Other Investments – Things like Crowd funding, Angel investments, Crypto etc…
- Cash – Cash in bank, and bookmaker accounts
- House equity – Will be honest this is a ballpark guess based on what we’ve likely paid off the principal. I just don’t really care as we aren’t moving any time soon. In reality it’s probably bundles more as our house will have gone up at least £50K from when we bought it, judging from similar houses on market currently.
- Liquid Freedom – This is cash plus ISAs combined. Obviously I don’t want to liquidate any ISA holdings to live off just yet, but it’s nice to know what the total value of cash I could get hold off if I sold everything. I just realised I have included “Other investments” in this figure as well which I probably shouldn’t have. Crowd funded and Angel stuff is obviously far from liquid and no good if I wanted to sell tomorrow (you basically can’t). So I should probably redo this figure without it in future. I will leave this time as a comparison from the last update.
NW Commentary
Gotta be happy that this has gone up really considering I don’t have a job!
The increase in investments is about £20K of contributions and the rest was the market doing it’s bit. Although I made nearly £10K just from buying that £20K’s worth at almost the exact right moment in the covid dip. Shame I didn’t have any more capital to hand at that time!
It feels like we are not far off having a NW of half a million. This might be nothing to some people but this seems like an insane amount to me!
Taking out the house equity, even £330K sounds amazing. That gives us £13K/year using the 4% rule. Add that to 2 state pensions should easily cover our spending in proper retirement, in about 30 years time (haha).
In any case, my plan is to try to keep adding to the pot as and when we can, and to never take anything out till I’m at least 55 (only 15 years away, I’m sure that will go by far faster than you might think!). So all I need to do in the meantime is earn enough to cover our expenses, and a little bit more.
Although going forward it doesn’t matter if contributions slow up compared to the last few years, it did punch me in the gut a little that our NW grew by £115K in 2019, compared to the last 18 months “paltry” £41K. I guess this is something I just need to get used to. At least it isn’t deaccumulation just yet!
Other Investments Commentary
One of these went into administration, called The House Crowd. I’ve written about this company on the blog a few times in the past, so sincere apologies if anyone has invested in/via them because of anything they’ve read about on here. I’m not sure what the deal is with it yet but I’ve just wiped out that line on my spreadsheet and assuming I will get zero back until further notice.
That along with the fact that one other Angel investment actually did OK and exited and the value converted to cash, meant the total value went down.
Oh and I also revised my Crypto spreadsheet line to zero. I sold my Bitcoin and Ethereum far before the peak, but it was good to claw about £5K back from my last foray into it, in 2018.
All of my Crowd Cube investments are still trading which is pretty good going!
Two have been featured on Dragons Den, and one of them got offers (which they turned down, which I was very glad about as they always offer them shite offers!!!!)
NGX on Dragons Den – This reminded me of Huel which is obviously now massive, but with the USP of personalising it to your own DNA (you get a DNA test kit that you send off to them). How cool is that? If you are interested, you can find out more here 1 but I will be doing a review post of this soon when I get my first delivery of it (I sent my DNA test off the other day so hopefully be soon!)
Pedal Me on Dragons Den – Pedal Me are a cargo and passenger electric bike company in London. Clean passenger transport and last mile delivery, what’s not to like!
I won’t bore you with the rest as we’ll be here all day, but will try to update as/when anything exciting happens.
Spending
I’ve just pulled this straight from Money Dashboard and have not even remotely checked it, so it could be wildly inaccurate.
However, it does sound about right to me.
It also sounds pretty near my estimated spending I mentioned in my last budget post which quoted £61K if we bought a new car. Well we did buy a new car in the end, but the £51K figure above does not include that so, yea, sounds about right.
Going forward, I really hope we do not spend this much per year!!!!
I think I say that every single update. But we had a lot of work done on the house (and bought the car) so going forward I would at least hope any further big expenses are not quite so large and/or are a bit more spaced out time wise. We shall see!
Let me know what you think?
Have we done well over the last 18 months?
Am I living in a fantasy world and should get a job ASAP!?!?!?!?
Tell me dear reader!
Hasta luego 🙂
Notes:
- Affiliate Link ↩
You’re an inspiration TFS, defying the “you need 1 million pounds to retire” crowd. Ok, semi-retire, but still.
Btw I’m back in London let me know if you guys set up another beer mini-gathering 😉
PS I noticed your new twitter handle.. fancy!
Foxy recently posted…Podcast interview with Andy from Maven Money
Hi Foxy!
Haha, always tried to walk a different path, even to those already walking a different path. (Jokes, there are obviously many people doing something similar to myself).
Beer sounds great, Saving Ninja is unfortunately in Sweden so doubt he’ll be attending but sure we can get a few of now things are opening back up again.
I’m confused about the Twitter comment, I haven’t changed anything in years… please do tell me?! 😮
Gutted 🙁 Come to Sweden for an expensive £10 beer! 😀
Hi TFS
Numbers look great considering you don’t officially have a job! 😉
Someone who didn’t know what you were up to would wonder about all that cash you are holding but it’s technically your ‘working capital’, since you can’t gamble without cash!
Nice timing on buying during the COVID dip – I think we all wish in hindsight that we had more to put in but at the time, there was so much doom and gloom that I think if I did have a pot of cash back then, I would have been quite cautious and not gone all in!
Anyway, I think you should continue living the semi-FIRE life – it’s obviously working for you in all ways.
weenie recently posted…“Freedom” Dogs of the FTSE 2021/22
Hi Weenie,
Honestly I was gutted at the time I only had 20K easily to hand, it felt like the first obvious buying opportunity I’ve had since investing. On the other hand, who sits on tonnes of cash that isn’t otherwise being used? Not many. Then the only other option is buying on margin/leverage which I think is a step too far for me, and if you start thinking I should have bought stocks on margin you are definitely pulling the old hindsight trick on yourself.
Thanks for the encouragement as always 🙂
Walking a different path and staying ahead of the game is a necessary trait of the advantage gambler 😀
Re Twitter, I saw the “@TFSRetireEarly” and thought it used to be “@TheFirestarter”. Never mind.
Alright, beer let’s do this! How about next Thu? Feel free to suggest a pub near you with outside space? You’re also south as far as I remember, I’m in SE. We can email the specifics unless TFS readers want to join too 🙂
Ah haha. No it’s always been that, I would have nabbed @theFirestarter if it was available but alas it was long gone by the time I got round to this blog!
Sorry that’s a bit short notice for me! I will email you! 🙂
Yeah those numbers are very impressive. I am especially in awe because of the amount of money you are spending on living life so to speak. I think it’s great that you can work for yourself as a professional gambler pretty much, spend money on loving life and still increase your portfolio. Long May it continue buddy, pleased for you. Find it amusing how we both thought we could live off such smaller amounts all those years ago 😁.
TFJ
TFJ
TheFIJourney recently posted…Summer 2021 Update – Freedom & Self Isolation, Crypto Punt & More
Haha yes how things change ay.
I guess the lesson there is a plan should always be subject to change, and many times over. Personally seems quite obvious surely for most people, but maybe a small minority get blindsided by that one?
All the best mate!
Nice one TFS, thanks for the update on your journey.
There are some nice numbers in there and with your projects, lots of family time, “plenty” of income coming in from professional gambling(…?) it sounds like you’re nailing life!
Hope you can keep up the updates for the next 15 years to see what doing fun stuff that makes some money, loving life and investing the difference looks like in semi-fire.
Well done on the COVID dip timing. Monevator helped me out there and I managed to turbo charge my savings. It did include a significant portion of squeaky bum higher risk active shenanigans between early March and late April using 0% leverage and kids cash savings.
All’s well and in hindsight it looks great overall but it made for an “interesting and educational” ride at the time which isn’t quite over yet.
Thanks SLG.
It is very weird as we’ve sort of been in our little bubble due to covid, I keep forgetting how good things are until I meet up with friends who are still working. Then I’m about to say “what the f**k why are you still doing that shit!?!” before remembering that is normal and I am the weird one 😀
Wow 15 years, that would be something even if it is just an update every 6 months. Will the internet be anything like it is by then?!!??! Probably not.
Sounds like you went in hard at the right time and have been handsomely rewarded, I already had far too much risk on my plate at the time with no job so could not have realistically done anything similar without causing myself a heart attack I don’t think 😀
Good luck to you though and thanks for all the nice comments over the years.
You’re doing amazing TFS! That yearly spend would need a salary of around £71k as a sole earner, and you saved over £20k, that’s mental! I still can’t fathom how you spend that much more than we did in the UK, I forgot, did you do a breakdown of your spending’s blog post?
Keep on living the dream dude, I’m sure if the money started drying up you’d have a million other ideas to try, and the time to do it!
Jimbo here, thanks for doing this post, your % increase and even your annual spend are so similar to mine. On my personal FI journey am early 40s and just exceeded the halfway mark to my goal but not yet brave enough to reduce my hours. Think I am 7 years from goal but a few years from Coast FI still (it varies by calculator).
Keep up the good work.
I am SE London based and would be up for a beer at the next meet.
We are due an update Mr TFS
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Almost 2 years have flown by. How is life?