2018 review plus 2019 goals: the year of keeping calm and carrying on

Jan23
by TFS on January 23, 2019 at 8:40 am
Posted In: Aspirations, TFS Updates

 

Woah! Another year has flown by – I hope you all had a great 2018!

It’s a perfect time to reflect on what has gone on in the previous twelve months and attempt to chisel out some plans for the next dozen, so like all good PF bloggers I will enthusiastically[/sarcarsm] join in 🙂

gooaaaaaaaaaaaaal…..

For the first time in a good few years we actually hit our savings rate goal which was:

  • 35% if share scheme pays out

The shares paid out and we hit 43% savings rate so that was comprehensively dispatched with!

If anyone wanted to refresh their minds with the full “goals” post from last year by the way, here is the link to it.

 

oh… and there’s another one!

I also set myself a side goal of…

£750/month matched betting as well

I made £2,520/month in the end so yea kinda smashed that one out of the park. I did have one incredibly lucky win in August but even taking that out I still would have over doubled the target.

 

he must have a foot like a traction engine*!

I also wrote about “going deep” in 2018 i.e. concentrating on fewer things but trying to do them well. And you could argue that I have done exactly that in a few areas.

  • I kinda gave up on golf – in all honesty I do want to try to get out more this year agin, but it’s just very time consuming
  • I continued running and nearly got a PB in October at the Reigate half. Running is just easier for me to squeeze into my normal schedule (e.g. lunch time runs at work) I will try to continue to step up slightly again this year although can’t see me getting any huge gains in performance, but if I can continue to badger my half PB time I will be very happy!
  • Matched betting / Each way sniping – I really concentrated on this as a money making side hustle and it paid off big time.
  • Reading – I definitely read more books in 2018 than the previous year! Still a paltry amount compared to most (maybe 6-7) but pretty good for me.

 

There will be a few more home renovations to do this year so it may be hard to concentrate on the more fun stuff like the above, but I’ll do my best to use the “gong deep” philosophy again this year as I think it’s a good one.

*If anyone is getting these heading references… you are instantly one of my BFFs

 

get on with the damn 2019 goals man!

I’ll keep this post short and sweet and post up my 2019 goals, which are few in number yet again but actually one extra interesting one compared to the previous year.

  1. Savings rate of 45% – This is massively dependant on goal number 2 to be honest but I am just going to assume I will hit both goals 🙂 . It will also hopefully help us focus on still *trying* to be frugal-ish as best we can. I figure if our income is around 80K and we spend 44K, that is bang on 45% which seems pretty doable to me, and even if goal #2 doesn’t quite come in it still gives us a shot at hitting 45% if other factors go in our favour.
  2. Matched Betting / Each way sniping: £40,000 (!!!!) –  Yea you read that right! I am going all guns blazing this year! This equates to £3,333.33 per month which I think is definitely doable with my larger stakes now on the each way betting stuff. But it will take hard work, discipline, and definitely a bit of luck going my way! I am also going to concentrate again on some traditional matched betting e.g. opening account offers (there are still tonnes out there I haven’t even done yet!) and things like no lay acca’s which are still good money makers from what I can see.
  3. Robin hood rides again – I am going to keep my donations pledge with regards to matched betting profits but I am going to modify it slightly as doing 10% of earnings this year kinda blew up our budget a little bit! So I am going to say this, I will donate between 5-10% of the profits but with a maximum of £2000 donated at the 10% rate. This way I know roughly up front the maximum amount we will give, and will pretty much assume I am going to hit that limit, but if profits fall way shorter than expected for any reason, we will still give 10%. A few example scenarios would be: A) £30,000 profits, give £2000. B) £20,000 profits, give £2000, £15,000 profits, give £1500. D) £50,000 profit, give £2,500 (i.e. 5% of £50,000). Hope that makes sense!? As you can see it will pretty much mean we end up donating £2000, unless I have an outlier year at either end of the profits scale.
  4. Amazon Merch (T-shirts) – Have 100 designs uploaded with at least 1 sale by the end of the year – I am very keen to not give a specific earnings amount for this as I haven’t even uploaded one design yet, so have no idea whether my designs will attract sales or how much commission I would make even if they do. But The Saving Ninja tells me if you upload a design and it doesn’t sell at least 1 unit within 30 days they take it down! So to get 100 designs up there that haven’t been taken down within a month seems like quite a tough target for a complete newbie, it’s something tangible, and doesn’t rely on the luck of getting some designs that really take off and become popular. Hopefully if I get 100 or more designs up I will be earning a decent amount per month (I dunno… say £100/month?) but as I say I have no idea what sort of returns to expect on this so I’m not going to focus on the actual income while I’m getting to grips with it.

 

As you can see though, as the title alludes to, it is pretty much just more of the same again this year … with a lot of fun chucked in on the side as usual 🙂

 

budget schmudget

I’m not even going to bother with a detailed budget analysis for 2019, we never seem to hit it anyway and it’s always horrendously inaccurate on both the income and expenses side so I just really cannot be bothered with the agro this year! I think I’ll just stick with roughly the same figures as last year for the target and hope for the best… haha.

Here are some of the headline figures from 2018 though:

Income

Monthly average: Budgeted for £4,422 / Actual figure £7,644 / Difference +£3,222

Yearly: Budgeted for £53,064 / Actual figure £91,728 / Difference +£38,664

Expenses

Monthly average: Budgeted for £3,205 / Actual figure £3,753 / Difference +£548

Yearly: Budgeted for £38,458 / Actual figure £54,089 / Difference +£15,631

 

So what went right (income) and what went wrong (expenses)? 🙂

Income – My share scheme paid out which was a fair bit higher than I expected, plus betting side hustle income was much (much!) higher than expected, where I had budgeted £9,000 and ended up with £30,240!

Expenses – Strap yourselves in.. We bought a new car which blew our transport budget by £3,906. We bought new windows (£4500) and 2 new sofas (£900), a garden shed (£260), a new mattress (£500) amongst other things(!!) which blew our home and garden budget by £6,468. We “blew” our charity budget by £2,390 due to the higher than expected gambling hustle returns… All of that adds up to £12,764 and so accounts for the large bulk of the budget being blown

 

I think it’s fair to say going forward that our base spending will be what we spent this year minus all of that extra crap, but including the £2K from the charity as mentioned in goal #3 from above. So that roughly comes out as £42500. That neatly ties up with what I said above about a 45% savings ratio, assuming income of £80K and expenses of around £44K. Obviously there will be some extra stuff that needs doing to the house or some other random expenses that crop up. I know how this game works now! But hopefully that will still stay under the £44K mark. And if not then our savings rate will be even better, if we make that income!

 

fin

That’s it! I am now ready to go out and rip 2019 a new one!

Hope you all have a great year 🙂

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