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:

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