february income/expenses update – feelin’ hot hot hot!
As you can see from the above pic, we spent some of February basking on a lovely beach in Antigua! Actually a more accurate description was frantically chasing TFS Jr around, which let’s face it, was far more fun than just cooking ourselves slowly in the Caribbean sun anyway. But how did all of this extravagance hit our bottom line?! Find out below…
expenses
As usual you can check out my Awesome FI Tracking Spreadsheet for a full breakdown of Income/Expense tracking and Net Worth tracking, as well as updated some of the summary sheets as well. Remember you can copy this to use/update as you please using Google Sheets “File -> Make a copy” menu command!
The figures below as usual represent: £Current Month (£2018 Monthly Average / £Monthly Average Target)
- Total £2487 (£3780 / £3205) – Wow, a very nice surprise. February is the shortest month which definitely helped, and we did pay for most of the holiday stuff last month, but nonetheless it’s very nice to see such a frugal month which included a bit of holiday spending! The monthly average has jumped back down so one more frugal month like this should see us back at that average target
- Mortgage £848 (£848 / £848)
- Household £452 (£594 / £602) – Wow. This is lower than any of our months from 2017. Groceries clocked in at £326 which is the same. I’m not celebrating too much yet because February is the shortest month of the year and we were on holiday for a week of it, but still, going in the right direction. Let’s keep this momentum for March!
- Holiday £448 (£1233 / £333) – Although we were all inclusive, we hired a car out for two days and had a bit of spending money for our holiday, hence this spend.
- Going out £297 (£300 / £467) – Not much going on this month, just a few meals out etc…
- Transport £46 (£257 / £192) – Not much driving happened this month, obvs!
- Personal Care £130 (£109 / £92) – Mrs T had a haircut and bought some stuff that make her look even more beautiful than she already is 1
- Home/Garden £0 (£24 / £100) – ZERO SPEND ALERT! ZERO SPEND ALERT!
- Lifestyle £62 (£138 / £141) – I genuinely couldn’t believe my eyes on this one. Clothes spend was an all time low (probably) of just £34. Well done to the trouble ‘n’ strife!
- Gifts/Charity £103 (£100 / £187) – It was TFS Jr’s 2nd birthday!!! Can you believe it? We certainly found it surprising. She was spoilt rotten but still the total spend wasn’t exactly humongous showing you don’t need to drop a bomb to make your kids happy. And let’s face it spoilt and happy are two totally different things anyway! Anyway, we need to start donating some money to charity as per here otherwise we’re going to have a hefty “bill” soon, so I’ll look at that this month.
- Hobbies/Sport £55 (£57 / £149) – A bit of squash and I did the Tunbridge Wells half marathon. Funny story… I turned up thinking I was all paid up and they had no record of my entry. I checked my Gmail, thinking I had an argument on my hands to prove that I’d entered, only to find out that I totally hadn’t entered! Luckily I could enter on the day and it was only a few more pounds than the normal entry price. I had a really strong memory of the confirmation email coming through… weird! Has anyone else ever had that before (getting old I guess?!) 🙂
- Admin £4 (£65 / £20) – Nowt to report.
- Financial £0 (£3 / £15) – Not really sure how but it seems Santander didn’t charge us the usual £5 for their 123 account. Maybe they’ve stopped this charge and I missed the memo?
- Children £42 (£62 / £60) – Not much to report here.
income
Figures in the same format as expenses…
- Total £3744 +£395 Pension (£3930 / £4422) – Not bad!
- TFS Income £2543 +£395 Pension (£2579 / £2500) – Not entirely sure why but I got paid more than normal this month. Need to check into this! (Maybe it was the holiday sell split over two months or a further tax rebate due to signing up the marriage allowance thing I mentioned last month… not sure!?)
- Mrs T Income £590 (£590 / £600)
- Ratesetter £2 (£6 / £5) – Slightly lower than usual because I took last months figures half way through the month. They are still running a decent signup offer, the terms are now you get a free £100 if you invest £5000 for a year. It’s a lot to stick in for a whole year but still pretty good for the free money, so if you’d like to avail of this offer then click on this link here (<– obviously it’s a referral link!).
- Child benefit £82 (£82 / £82) – The gift that keeps on giving
Matched Betting / Gambling Hustles £511 (£515 / £750) – Another solid month for the matched betting. According to the tracking software on OddsMonkey I actually made £715 from no lay accas during February! Below is a nice updated graph of my overall no lay acca progress/profit:
The big dip during January is in part bad results and in part straying away from good strategies. I am definitely going to write up a guide of good vs bad strategies very soon. 2
Anyway, the astute in the room will realise that £715 acca profit and only £515 total profit betrays the fact that I lost a bit of money doing other bets or non-risk free offers. This is true, however, I also have “invested” some of the profits into future bets, quite a few on Cheltenham for example, but this money is obviously written off as lost until all of those amazing bets inevitably win (hey… a boy can dream, right?)
If anyone is interested I have been using Odds Monkey matched betting software (<–affiliate link) for this, which having tried a few different ones out there, I found to be a far superior product in pretty much every way to everything else I tried. Check it out if you are new to matched betting, there are loads of great tutorials to get you going and you can try it for free. One of the best things about it is the Forum/Community aspect as you can learn loads of new and interesting ways to profit from gambling that aren’t just your standard “Do offer, lay off, get free bet, lay off, win £3.50” type of, let’s face, quite boring, time consuming and laborious matched betting methods. Some of these methods are what helped me to have a bumper Cheltenham 2017! Now, back to the update!
savings rate, net worth and all of that jabberwocky
The low spend and solid income all adds up to a very lovely savings rate of 39.92%, bringing us back into the positive for the year at 12.6%, what a relief! Hopefully we can smash it again in March to get that average up higher. I still haven’t done my goals review/setting post, which will be the next post up, so you will have to wait to hear what I’m going to set as the savings rate goal (the suspense!)
Net worth did this:
Excluding house equity: £155,994 / £3,594 / 2.36%
Including house equity: £238,491 / £3,594 / 1.53%
Liquid Freedom: £69,903 / £1,636/ 2.40%
The stock market seem to have recovered slightly, and our Liquid freedom pot is now tantalisingly close to breaking back through the £70K mark, which is first did back last September before we went on a spending spree 🙂
Brief note: House equity remained static this month as we got a mortgage statement at the end of the year and my figures were off slightly, so I’m stalling that until they fall back in line (The actual equity would likely be a lot more anyway due to house price rises, but seeing as we’re not selling any time soon it doesn’t really matter, I’m more interested in how much we’ve got left on the mortgage)
Crypto update – This part of the portfolio now stands at £10,727 and just to clarify this is the money I’ve put into it. Some may think this is too much but it represents only around 7% of our total investments and 15% of our liquid assets. I am fairly comfortable with still calling that fun money but it’s certainly on the limit and I won’t be looking to put much more in at all. As usual I’ll promise you an update in a future post of what I’m holding (and what I bought/sold along the way!) and what my strategy has evolved into rather quickly with all of this. Still to actually update what it’s all worth now but that is on the to do list (like everything else, after Cheltenham!) so I should be able to give you a an update either in the March summary or I’ll do a special cryptos update post all of it’s own.
Other updates – Running, Reading, Relaxing
Running – I did the yearly tradition of running the Tunbridge wells half marathon which I completed in 1:32:33. Was very happy with this considering I hadn’t done much training and went on an all inclusive holiday the week before (and no I was not doing a alcohol free month like TEA has been doing while he’s been on holiday)!
Not sure if they renamed this garage just for the race but it made me chuckle
Reading
Here are some links to things I’ve found interesting this month:
- How to give up work for good – For those that missed it, the TFS blogs first ever mention in the mainstream press! I have to take issue with them saying that I am planning to retire by 40 (I don’t think I’ve ever said that on the blog or to anyone else… a totally made up “fact”) but it’s cool that the concept of FIRE is getting more exposure to a mainstream audience. For people that are reading this because of that article… welcome!!! Please give me a shout in the comments below to let me know what you think of the blog/that article/FIRE in general so far…?
- An interesting article on a German town who took back control of their energy system. This is my favourite quote in the article:
A profit every year, which has not only paid off the bank loans but funds the town’s kindergartens. Generally cheaper electricity than most competitors, including E.ON.
- Here is a podcast on the same subject as above, for those who prefer the audio format.
- A big shout out to the FIREHub which is a great resource for finding new FIRE based blogs from Europe.
- A couple of new(ish) UK FIRE blogs on the block which I’m not sure whether I’ve mentioned yet: I Retired Young and Deliberate Living UK from long time commenter Wephway.
- Foxy Monkey blog has had some cracking content on it recently. I have enjoyed reading this interview with a full time matched bettor – very illuminating! And he also came up with a guide on how to buy Bitcoin/Ethereum/Cryptos for free, wish I’d read this before paying a sh!t tonne of money in coinbase fees! In fact, I found the strategy on a Reddit thread and was going to write up a post myself, but Michael has already done such a bang up job, I can just post his link for you all instead.
- FI BLOGGER IN CONTROVERSY SHOCK! – I’m a bit late to the party on this one but in case you haven’t already seen it, it seems TheEscapeArtist has been stirring the pot with some “controversial” posts about women and men. Here is the first one entitled Don’t be a good guy, be a nice guy. A few readers took issue with this and I initially didn’t understand why as I thought most of what he’d written seemed reasonable enough, but later learned from the main objector, MissSaraBee who wrote her own blog post in reply, that the post had been edited and her subsequent replies blocked. I’d urge you to read both posts to get a full picture of what happened here but as I never saw the original article it’s hard to comment, but I found it all rather fascinating nonetheless. An argument on the internet is always great fun to witness, in a weird way 3. Anyway, my stance is that MissSaraBee probably missed the point of the original post even if it did contain a few sentences that were objectionable, but also that TEA has been a bit naughty in editing the post and not marking it as such. By doing this, it looks like her comment was a massive over-reaction when it might have not been to the original content. My personal stance is that if I edit a post due to an error or comment pointed out by a reader, I will mark it up in the comments and/or directly in the post so readers can follow exactly what has happened there, and I will pretty much never delete a genuine comment 4. Also allowing her original comment to stand but blocking any further replies also seemed a bit harsh. TEA has followed up with another post called Don’t be a nice girl, be a confident woman which I think solidifies the original point he was trying to make and that it wasn’t anything about being sexist, and I hope that has satisfied any of the original objectors at least somewhat. Anyway… did you catch any of this drama?! What did you think of it all?
- Slightly related to the above, I will be seeing TEA next Thursday at the FI London meetup so I hope my viewpoints there don’t cause any awkward silences between us 🙂 . If you are coming along let me know!? Here is a tweet from Foxy Monkey with the details.
Relaxing
As mentioned did a bit of relaxing in Antigua. Below are a few snaps to sign off with. How was your Feb? Good I hope!
Oh and Good Luck to all the Matched Bettors during Cheltenham next week!
Some fish (maybe Barracuda?!) by Jolly Harbour
Chilling on our own private beach. A joke of course, we just drove by and stopped off. There are 365 beaches in Antigua, one for every day of the year!
Friendly roadside donkeys
The Devils Bridge with some rather dashing and crashing waves
Any need to make a phone call?!
I ran up this hill to attempt to burn off some of the food and booze. Great views from the top!
An abandoned boat on the beach complete with random graffiti
Notes:
- I will definitely be telling her to read this post, sure to get some brownie points. Oh sh!t that’s blown it! ↩
- If I don’t get it out by the weekend it may be delayed till after Cheltenham which is next week and I feel totally unprepared for, haha. ↩
- Schadenfreude, me?! Never! ↩
- Although critical/trolly comments do seem to be almost non-existent around here anyway, which is thanks to an awesome readership base and/or not as much mainstream exposure as TEA gets! ↩
Congratulations on your mention in the metro!
Thank you QT 🙂
H TFS, excellent update, honest as ever and Antigua looks rather nice. I had a look at the TEA versus MissSaraBee debate which had passed me by…what surprised me most was the amount of editing and censoring of Comments that TEA seems to be doing. Like you, on my blog, most comments I receive are not critical or abusive, and I’m still at the stage that I’m pleased to receive any! I like to think that I write posts for myself, first and foremost, and I’m not trying to gain an audience or cultivate a style. But I do recognise that if I’m putting it out there, then people taking time to comment on the content should be allowed to post their feedback. That’s why its a blog, after all, and not a diary.
Hi Jim,
I guess once a blog becomes a certain size blocking comments or people in general will inevitably become necessary so I wouldn’t blame TEA for doing that. But needs to be done in a way so comment conversations can be followed properly that’s all (i.e. either delete a whole comment thread or let all stand, unless one is just plain abusive etc).
Cheers!
Hi TFS,
Thanks for the shout out about FIREhub. And congratulations on such a frugal February!
No worries Mrs W. Keep up the good work over there 🙂
Very smart move getting in the nice holidays before you get bogged down with schools. I very much regret not utilising that 4 year window of opportunity in a similar fashion. Antigua looks amazing..
Yea that was pretty much the thinking behind it Rhino.
Will be bargain basement holidays all the way in a few years time no doubt 🙂
hi TFS, haven’t read the “nice guys” blog post but will say I gave up reading TEA a while ago because some of his remarks about women were setting off alarm bells. I did read Sara Bee’s blog post about it and suspect she did the classic thing of going off on a rant while she was still angry, always a bad idea because your point tends to be lost if you do that. Not sure TEA has done himself any favours by suggesting in response that she probably has psychological problems though! Bit of a messy brawl all round, on a touchy subject. PS Antigua looks very nice.
Yep – I had to drop him from Feedly due to the aggregation of marginal annoyances. I would concur that there’s something not quite right with the way he relates to women. He is unique amongst FI blogs in his hypersensitivity to criticism. It does have the consequence of making his comments section quite a sterile promontory. He’d do well to toughen up (cupcake)?
Good to hear others thoughts on the matter 🙂
Thanks for chipping in.
Antigua was lovely yea, I would definitely go back if we get another chance in the future and the price is right.
How long was your holiday? I suspect thats wgy your grocery spend was down this month! I always find household spend falls when we are away – we haven’t spent less, of course, but its hidden under the holiday spend!
I did consider that as well and it definitely played a part, but it was only a week.
Also, we hosted two parties for TFS Jr’s birthday (one family, one friends) – neither were massive but definitely added a fair bit to the food bill, so I’m still happy that it was (relatively) quite low this month.
Thank you for providing your input on the “FI Blogger in Controversy” situation.
Yes, you are correct that my comment on TEA’s blog seems overly harsh compared to the current content on his post. No one has access to the original TEA post, but my original comment was a reaction to his equally harsh original/first draft content. He has since edited the article multiple times to make it an academic review on a pop psychology book with an uplifting, inclusive call to action at the end.
More important in this whole ordeal, which you brought up in your post, is the amount of censorship TEA has used.
The intent of my original comment was to inform a well-known author that his original content was misguided, and could influence a large audience towards unproductive gender games.
I was happy to compliment TEA when he edited his work per audience input, and answer any questions other readers posed in his comments section. I was even prepared to delete the post on my blog in response to his edits.
But he blocked all my comments, removed me from his subscribers list, and blocked the comments of others who wanted to contribute to the discussions on his page.
TEA’s reaction to the situation has been, to put it simply, disappointing.
My post has unintentionally become a platform to discuss censorship, and how censorship affects discussions on controversial issues. Which is why I have elected to keep it up.
I applaud TEA for his feminist post, as you link in your review. That post is the caliber of work I expect from a well-respected voice in FIRE.
However, one post does not excuse his behavior toward his audience thus far. There is a difference between what you write and how you act. And his behavior towards multiple members of his audience thus far has been quite characteristic. I continue to hope he produces more inclusive content, and changes his censorship policies in light of this conversation. I am highly biased, considering my role in this controversy, but I am still unconvinced.
Again, thank you for directing people to both sides of the story. I enjoyed your monthly update. Great job with your earnings, and I loved the pictures at the end. I look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Hi MissSaraBee,
Thanks for giving some more of your point of view on here. Appreciate it!
Yea I think the least you can do if you’ve edited a post significantly which came directly due to comments on it, is to notify future readers. I don’t think this is losing face in anyway and people wouldn’t judge you for it, just admit you made a mistake. Writing and getting points across is sometimes hard, most of us bloggers aren’t/haven’t been professional writers so I think it is OK for us to make mistakes as long as we ‘fess up when that happens. We’re running silly little internet sites not dictating an eastern bloc country for goodness sake 🙂
Anyway, cheers again and glad you liked the pics!
Worth bearing in mind that his follow up post was just a section cut and pasted from someone else’s book.
Roy-Chubby Brown could cut and paste a chapter from the Female Eunuch but it wouldn’t necessarily convince me he was a feminist?
I assume TEA hasn’t got Arianna Huffington on speed-dial so unlikely he asked permission to reproduce her work from a copyright perspective?
On a similar note I sometimes wonder if TEA ever ran it past MMM as to whether he could reproduce his entire blog?
Very true Rhino. I was trying to be nice and give TEA some kudos for trying. But yes, thus why I say I’m still unconvinced.
Like a couple of the commenters above, the TEA debate entirely passed me by. His site, his rules ultimately, but there’s something particularly disappointing – not to mention borderline hypocritical – about censorship on a blog about any kind of freedom.
Anyway, cracking holiday photos. Glad you enjoyed yourselves!
Cheers FS, was a fun week in the sun for sure. Hope all is well with you!
Fabulous photos, TFS – Antigua looks lovely, like my kind of holiday!
Amazing work (and luck!) on the no-lay accas – my confidence has been a bit shot on these so I’ve not been doing as many and generally only placing mostly £5 bets, which, if they win, don’t make a big hit on the profits. I know I should trust the EV but perhaps I need a decent month just to get me going again. I’ll keep chugging along on these though, plus those EW bets I mentioned on my blog.
The ‘TEA controversy’ – I read the original unedited post and also saw MissSaraBee’s comment. Perhaps she did go off on a little rant but I felt that the original post was written in a way to provoke (whether intentional or not), which is precisely why I didn’t post a comment myself!
It was sad to read that he’s been deleting comments and amending his posts (even amending his own comments). Can you believe that one of the comments deleted was from The Accumulator of Monevator fame!?
Anyway, for the other side of the story, check out MissSaraBee’s blog on the whole shebang here: https://www.blondebumblebee.com/phenomenon-nice-guy/ – including some of the comments deleted by TEA, kindly resurrected by @TheRhino.
Hope you enjoy the London meet up!
Hey Weenie. TA has left a comment now over at Sara bees site which I think pretty much sums the whole thing up..
Cheers – I’ll check it out now!
Its a bit of a shame that out of all the FI blogs out there, the only slightly dubious one bubbles to the top and becomes a defacto spokesperson for the cause. Thats life I guess?
Oops, missed your link to her blog above!
Hi weenie,
March so far has been a bit the other way with the acca’s. It seems to be one good month followed by one bad so far. Either way the graph is going up on average and that’s all that matters.
Yes I did read MisSaraBee’s post as you noticed after your initial comment.
Now… I could edit your first comment and delete that second one to make you look less, erm…. unobservant, but I think I’ll let them both stand 😉
Yes, my comment should be left as I was unobservant and didn’t read your post properly! I’ll blame reading on the small screen of my phone!
Hi TFS, your blog is the 1st I came across after watching the terrible FIRE programme in TV few months ago. I read all the posts here, and followed with MMM, and many more, like LivingAFI (my favourite, because it resonates with my career path!). Good to see lots of people with the same views as me on money and early retirement, although my website is not about this.
I am now about to retire. Although, as a hyper active, I may get find retirement very boring. This would be my main concern, as well as loss of sense of identity. This is not often discussed. As a middle aged woman, I fear fading into the background. For now, being a quite successful contractor in my chosen industry is a big part of my identity. Women after a certain age are often dismissed as “old dear”.
In any case I have made the decision to quit my current career path for ever at the end of this month. I will go travelling and figure out if I want to work and what to do next.
Hi Maria,
That’s brilliant to hear that at least one person watched that awful TV show yet still was curious enough to search out for the blogs that are now underpinning the FIRE movement out there 🙂
Just had a brief spin around your website/blog, looks awesome! We were in South America in late 2008, I wonder how close we came to crossing each other’s paths? Haha.
Good luck with the whole quitting/working out what you want to do process. I agree that is probably the least discussed area of this whole thing – and unfortunately I am in no position to comment being quite a few years from FIRE myself – and agreed that LivingAFI is good in this area as they go quite deep on subjects such as this one.
All the best 🙂
@maria, greetings from a fellow middle aged woman! I agree with you that the issues of work and identity can be very different for women and men. For myself, I am old enough to have be aware just how recently women were forced out of the workplace as a general rule on marriage (this was my mother’s experience), and even now, it can be hard to keep work going to a level commensurate with your abilities if you have children. I worked hard to achieve a well paid professional career, and to keep that going alongside caring for children, and part of me is very reluctant to give up that identity. I don’t want people assuming I’m ‘just’ a housewife who is financially dependent on their husband (that is not to disrespect those who make that choice, just that it’s not something I aspire to). I suppose though at the end of the day one should not base choices on fear of other people’s judgements.
I’m currently half in and half out of the workplace, I don’t have much difficulty finding things to do, although it is quite hard to identify activities that provide the same sort of challenge and sense of collective endeavour you can get from good, fulfilling work.
Red Kite you are spot on. finding something challenging to keep the brain engaged is the most difficult part. I lived in Brazil for 15 months with my husband, few years ago. I could not work as I did not have a work permit. Let’s just say I am really not cut to be an expat housewife! That stint at not working was not successful. And I felt very lonely as my husband was working all hours of day and night and weekends!
Most people who achieve FIRE are hard working, very focused, goal orientated people. FIRE can be quite a shock to the system, if approached without a plan. I am now working on my plan 🙂