june expenses/income report – scorchio!
Well it’s certainly been hot hasn’t it?
The picture above could easily be somewhere in the Med but it’s actually Whitecliffe bay on the Isle of Wight, at the start of June no less!
I also had 2 weeks off towards the end of the month and enjoyed the weather, although am starting to feel bad about the amount of water I’m using to feed my growing tomatoes! Can’t actually believe there hasn’t been a hosepipe ban yet!?
Anyway, let’s see if the finances in June were as on FIRE as the sun was, shall we!?
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 £3679 (£3565 / £3205) – Running above again but again >£300 of this was for charity which it seems I didn’t account for very well (a good thing overall of course!)
- Mortgage £848 (£848 / £848)
- Household £749 (£643 / £602) – OK so as well as Charity we keep going over on Groceries (£452 – £393 / £325), which is not that surprising if you’ve read more than about 2 of these monthly reports. The weather is great and we keep doing crazy things like having BBQ’s and inviting people over, and drinking lot’s of nice cold alcohol which I guess isn’t helping. Still, fun though 🙂
- Holiday £192 (£490 / £333) – Was basically the tail end of our IOW trip, plus we booked a night away for our wedding anniversary in September. Thank you Wowcher (as usual) 🙂 for a great deal! Average slowly going down here after our expensive holiday at the start of the year.
- Going out £476 (£463 / £467) – Pretty much bang on target on all accounts here, although we have an expensive July “coming up”.
- Transport £186 (£165 / £192) – Spent a lot on Public Transport and Parking this month as Mrs T was getting to grips with where to park at her new job.
- Personal Care £103 (£103 / £92) – Nothing much to report here
- Home/Garden £313 (£146 / £100) – We bought a new dishwasher! This was believe it or not actually budgeted at the start of the year, as it is around 10 years old now so we knew we’d need one sooner rather than later. Also, it was extremely noisy and bits of it were falling apart. We managed to flog it via Facebook for a tenner though rather than pay Currys £20 to take it away. Small wins, people, small wins! The new one is very quiet so we can actually put it on and still have a conversation in the kitchen/diner, so we are very happy with how Dishwasher technology has come on in the 10 years since we bought the old one!
- Lifestyle £296 (£185 / £141) – Had £70 worth of cash withdrawals in here which didn’t get accounted for… annoying! I hate it when stuff gets untracked!
- Hobbies/Sport £94 (£78 / £149) – I’m really struggling to get out on the golf course this year, despite having time off and great weather, I just don’t seem to have the time to play more than about once per month! I’ve maybe lost the mojo a bit for it which is a shame but obviously keeping very busy with other things instead so it’s no major loss in my life right now. In addition, it helps the bottom line so all good!
- Admin £12 (£24 / £20)
- Financial £30 (£8 / £15) – A £25 charge for the Amex card we use but considering it gave us back £160 in cashback, seems like a good deal.
- Children £80 (£68 / £60) – Another solid month the little one! Continues to amuse us constantly. Great ROI on this investment 🙂
- Gifts/Charity £384 (£327 / £187) – Another solid month for charity, as I am giving away 10% of my betting/matched betting profits as per my post here. It’s bumping up our spending but as it’s all from profits, and it’s for charity, it can only be a good thing!
income
Figures in the same format as expenses…
- Total £5999 +£395 Pension (£5216 / £4422) – Another great month for income!
- TFS Income £2155 +£395 Pension (£2419 / £2500) – Work income. Boring!
- Mrs T Income £474 (£419 / £600) – Mrs T started her new job. Hooray!
- Ratesetter £66 (£25 / £5) – Ratesetter have bought their old, better offer back again! You now only have to invest £1000 for 1 year to receive a £100 bonus! But it runs out soon, so click this link here (<– obviously it’s a referral link! 1) to get started.
- Credit Card Cashback £66 (£28 / £10) – Yearly cashback from our Amex Platinum Cashback card! If you haven’t got one yet click here to sign up (<– referral link) and get an instant £25 cashback once you are accepted! Obviously what you do is put your spending on it and pay it off in full each month. Please do not sign up to this card if you cannot pay off your spending in full every month otherwise the cashback is clearly not worth it compared to the interest you would be paying! If you can pay off in full though, you get 1.25% on all of your purchases, which builds up nicely over the year, as evidenced by the amount above.
- Child benefit £82 (£82 / £82)
- Matched Betting / Gambling Hustles £3000 (£2121 / £750) – Another stellar month on the each way sniping! I can’t give you a full breakdown of where exactly the profit has come from this month because I didn’t do a full audit at the end of June, because I had a big chunk of money tied up in World Cup offers, yes people I actually did some proper matched betting for once!!! Can you believe it?! No me neither haha. But as usual I did keep a solid record of all of my each way snipes. Anyway, the no BS but genuinely quite unbelievable total for my each way sniping (plus a few world cup and golf bets) for June was…. £5393.27
However, as I didn’t do a full audit so have no idea what the exact total profit was including any matched betting (plus other potential losses of a few other random bets I no doubt forgot to track etc), I thought I would play it safe and record a £3000 profit this month and roll over any extra profits to July, and make sure I do my full accounts at the end of this month. As it turns out, I am very glad I did that because I am actually still in the red for July with the each way sniping… to the tune of about -£600 after 500+ bets!!! That is a lot of huffing and puffing to end up with a “small” loss (-2.2% ROI). So it just goes to show as I’ve said many times now, it’s NOT easy money, you can lose, especially over the short term, there are many ups and downs, and it’s not for the faint of heart. Having said that, if you wanted to know exactly what Each Way Sniping is and missed my guides I just wrote on the subject, check our part 1 here, and part 2 here.
Obviously if you want to make any money doing matched betting or each way sniping you should be using OddsMonkey… so here is my usual spiel about that:
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 and are currently bringing me in over £1000 per month betting on each way sniping! Now, back to the update!
savings rate, net worth and all of that horseplay
Despite an(other) relatively expensive month we came in yet again with a great savings rate of 42.17%. Average savings rate now for 2018 is 36% and July is going to be some sort of mega record income month, just as a spoiler, so we might even get over the 50% rate for this year. A boy can dream! 🙂
Net worth did this:
Excluding house equity: £171,271 / +£1,975 / +1.17%
Including house equity: £255,176 / +£2,327 / +0.92%
Liquid Freedom: £79,047 / +£1,394/ +1.80%
After last months “near record” increase, I have a confession to make. My figures were out by £1500!!! I’ve corrected them on my spreadsheet but if you are wondering why it is saying “Excluding house equity” went up by +£1,975 when the figure I reported last month was £170,796, this is why. Apologies again, obviously was not trying to mislead anyone there!
The Cryptos see-saw is all over the shop as usual. I think I might just stop mentioning it until it inevitably goes to the moon and I get my Lambo 🙂 . However the total has gone down by £1500, because that is where my accounting error was. I went in halves on a crypto with a mate and forgot to take his part of the investment off of my Net Worth (oops). So anyway, that’s all kosher at least now.
I have one other new investment which is in a first seed round of external funding for a company which I put £2500 into. The great thing about this is that it qualifies for SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme), which means I can instantly claim back half of that (when the paperwork comes through) so I’m only really risking £1250. There are other benefits as well but that’s probably for another post, which I should write up soon I think! In the meantime check out this SEIS website here if you want more info. So yea, basically giving index funds the middle finger yet again this month. Do as I say not as I do it seems around here 😀
other updates
Happy 5th Blogoversary – Not technically in June but seeing as we’re now way past it, it seems only fair to mention that the blog turned into an official greybeard in blog terms on the 3rd July! Here is the very first post if you missed my tweet on it. Good news is I haven’t changed that much in appearance since then, but I guess if you don’t have much hair to lose then you don’t end up losing much more haha. A lot has changed since I first started the blog so a proper 5 year update is most definitely needed, I will start working on it straight after this one goes out. Should be fun to do some macro comparisons on the finances and also what I’ve learnt over the 5 years, which can definitely be summed up as: a lot!
Holidays etc – In June we had the tail end up our IOW trip, and also a weekend away to Peppa Pig World. I am sure MMM would look down upon 2 such expense to a consumer tourist trap with disdain, but it was totally worth it and we all had a great time. In fact it was no where near as busy and hell hole like as I had imagined. Definitely recommend if you have little ones (that like Peppa Pig, which is pretty much all of them in my experience so far haha).
Patio – I ended up helping a friend lay their patio in 30 degrees heat, which was kind of fun in a weird way. We managed to knock it out in about 1.5 days so was pretty good going! I guess this is one of the things I need to get used to, as you start to get a rep for being a DIY kinda guy, plus the fact that people know you have a bit of extra time off, you will end up getting roped into this stuff more often. Of course I was glad to help a friend out, but need to watch out I don’t just end up becoming a free* source of labour for the random acquaintances!
*Actually I was paid with some nice craft ales plus a meal out, so not quite free 🙂
Running – It’s been too hot to run! But have tried to get a few short runs in before work. I have a 10k booked in soon so that should be interesting… definitely no where near peak fitness right now!
That’s it!
Hope you are having a great July and I will endeavour to get the July update out in a more timely fashion… 🙂
Notes:
- I will get a £50 referral fee when you invest a £1000, if you do then many thanks! Thanks to whoever did that last month, you are the boss! ↩
- Just to confirm I totally agree with most of what is written in that post, and always try to avoid crowds where possible. But sometimes you just have to put up and shut up to end up doing something enjoyable. ↩
Discussion (28) ¬
Great work this month! I’ve started getting into running as well, which has been fine in the sun but will need to wait and see what winter holds!
Hah, I find I much prefer running in the winter, so I’m sure you’ll be fine Flint 🙂
I’m with you on the BBQs! We’re having at least one per week and even without the extra alcohol, all that meat is expensive! I still feel it’s worth it for making the most of this weather and it’s cheaper than going out to eat at a restaurant.
We have been blessed with amazing BBQ weather this year! Will definitely be doing a few more before the summer is out.
Also… don’t forget the ice creams! 🙂
Hell yeah – 5 years blogging is an awesome achievement – well done. And yet another solid financial month.
And yes that sun is getting really annoying – please bring back the rain. I cannot cope with it and I really struggle to run as well.
Thanks Ms ZiYou! Here’s to another 5 years for the both of us 🙂
Good job on 5 years blogging!
I’ve been reading your blog on and off for 2 years now and I’m always impressed with the effort you put in.
I like the way that you split out your costs and also that you don’t exist on pennies (like you, I’m not as ERE as some others).
Briefly on the topic of SEIS (and EIS), you can do well investing in these but be careful – they are potentially Weapons of Wealth Destruction!
(not as dangerous as crypto though…. I’ll get me coat…)
Hi GFF,
Thanks, glad you have enjoyed my efforts 🙂
Yea I really agree with the ERE stuff in my head, but somehow it just doesn’t seem to fit in with real life for us. But it’s all about adapting it to your own situation, that’s the whole point! I am sure we are spending a lot less now than we would have been if I never came across any of this, and maybe we’d still have no money saved up and I would still be working full time. So it really has changed our lives (for the better I would say as well).
Yep totally understand the SEIS type of investments can easily go down to 0. The deal you get seems very good to reduce the risk though! Hence only putting 2.5K in (which you’d get some (nearly half I believe?) back if it went bust as well). Cryptos… haha. I am kind of wishing I’d never got involved right now, but still have vague hopes my main investment will turn around as it has actually got a business model I believe in unlike most of the other coins I see out there (and no, I’m not saying what it is)
I think that the main thing about EIS/SEIS investing or crowdfunding is to really know what you are investing in, know the people, understand the financials and risk and don’t get caught up in the marketing/hype.
I don’t have the time to do that so I don’t invest but I know of one friend who invested money in something that went to zero – despite him telling me it was a sure thing.
Hi GFF,
The one and only investment I’ve made is a fledgling company in the same industry as I’ve worked in for the last 15 years. I’m not saying that makes it a bullet proof investment, far from it, but the product looks great, I can see their roadmap is good, and I can understand their business model at a very deep level. So I am quietly confident on this one (far more than Cryptos which was a totally uninformed punt… pretty rash/stupid really which I admitted at the time in all fairness…hah!)
Cheers
Too hot to run? How very dare you 😉
My Sunday morning run has evolved into a run plus swim in my local river though…
Well you are putting me to shame that is for sure Chris!
The swim does sound great, but no local rivers deep enough or that I would want to swim in 🙂
Hey mate,
You are very much an inspiration, well done on a good month and the 5 years of blogging.
I was wondering how much of your attitude to spending/expenses is dictated to by your gambling ‘income’? Do you give it much thought during the month or when you are smashing Wowcher?
Just curious..
Hi Tombo,
Aww shucks… thanks for the kind words!
You know what, that is a great question and something that keeps cropping up in my mind. We are finding it really hard to justify not upgrading some of our old stuff with this new found “easy” income, and I fear it does make the wallet zips just a little looser in general as well.
As mentioned in the above post we bought a new dishwasher (planned purchase from the start of the year) but in July we also upgraded our hoover (also 10+ years old TBF) to a brand new spanking Dyson.
The Wowcher thing would have happened regardless, I think £100 once a year for the wedding anniversary is more than fair, it’s all the other things we end up signing up to throughout the year that end up blowing our budget! 🙂
So the short answer I think though is… yes, yes it does 🙂
Cheers
5 years blogging is a really super effort. I’ve been reading for about 3 of them I reckon, and I remember the UK FI blogosphere was a bit of a wasteland back then. I reckon you’ve inspired a whole wave of UK bloggers (myself included, though I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I can keep it up for 5 years!).
Also, holy guacamole on the matched betting income. My money’s on that getting you to the lambo before crypto does.
Cheers Captain!
Would be great to see you and many others reach the 5 year milestone. 5 is like a dinosaur in blog years isn’t it haha? Not sure about inspired but there are plenty more about nowadays for whatever reason, but it’s nice to know I’ve played at least some part in the “movement” on some level, which surely can’t be denied.
You know what… I am with you on that one! Hah!
Cheers!
Look at that betting income! At least someone other than FIFA was making money off that World Cup, right?
Cheers to a great income month, mate.
Haha Cheers DbF. Hope you enjoyed the “soccer” as much as we did in the end over here.
I’ve found that you can make a lot of money in matched betting – but it is not very exciting and tends to be a bit monotonous.
You end up just with digits on a screen.
I don’t have the time to do it anymore but I’m a bit jealous of what you’ve managed to do here!
Hi GFF,
That is pretty much why I have totally abandoned what you’d called normal matched betting and am just doing the value betting/arbing whatever you want to call it on horse racing. It is far more fun, I actually enjoy the ups and downs rather than scraping out £20 profit every day from 5 different reloads.
But yea… it still takes time, no denying that, and that could well be better spent with the family and so on! At the moment I feel I’m balancing it well, so working well on that front for me as well.
Cheers
Congrats on 5 years blogging. I’ve only been reading your blog for the last few months but it’s been really inspirational.
I stumbled across the concept of FI via getting into minimalism and it’s been a revelation in terms of how my wife and I think about money.
Your blogs are refreshingly honest and funny. It’s been really interesting seeing how your plans have changed over time and I’m looking forward to reading more. Thanks again.
Matt
Thanks again for this
Hi Matt,
Wow that’s great to hear that! Welcome! And I hope you stick around to see how everything pans out (sounds like you will do)
Thanks back to you for reading, I know people say they blog for themselves and that is partially true, but it is a great feeling when people say they like what you’ve written, definitely makes the (sometimes) hard work (often it is fun tbf!) of blogging worthwhile.
Cheers again!
Yes, congrats on the 5 years and still going strong! When I first came across your blog some 4 years ago, I went back to some of your older posts and did see that very first one! It was enough to persuade me to start my own blog so you must have done something right! 🙂 A great savings rate and it’s brill that you could be on track to breaching that 50% mark by the end of the year! Wish I could say the same for my own numbers but I’ll keep plugging away!
Hi weenie,
Thanks for the comment as always and glad I inspired a few people with those early posts. I guess they had that “new blogger” optimism at the very least which I think is probably more inspiring than being 100% spot on with actual facts… haha 🙂
You have consistently outperformed me on savings rates over the years (and you calculate yours differently/more harsh than I do anyway) so I wouldn’t get too down on yourself about that one 🙂
Your 5 years will come around very quickly now won’t it?
All the best
Congratulations on your 5 year blogversary TFS! A great achievement. I’ve been following along for about 2.5 years, it’s fascinating seeing how your strategy to reach FI has been changing. Here’s to the next 5 years!
Thank you for the kind comments Corinna and for following along 🙂