may expenses/income report – honey, i bought a shed!
Greetings!
It’s nearly half way through the year already. Wowza!
And yep, we bought a shed 1. Exciting times at TFS Towers. In fact it was a pretty expensive month all round with that, a family wedding (along with stag do) and a weeks holiday to, yep you guessed it, the Isle of Wight again – we can’t get enough of that lovely Isle! 🙂
Let’s see how it all panned out.
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 £3724 (£3539 / £3205) – Yikes! Although the average has only gone up by around £50. Also, when you consider £400 of this was charity donations, it doesn’t seem quite so bad (see below).
- Mortgage £848 (£848 / £848)
- Household £716 (£622 / £602) – Went over on… you guessed it again, Groceries. But we did a huge MuscleFood 2 order so the freezer is locked and loaded for a hopefully much lower month next month.
- Holiday £154 (£549 / £333) – Comprises about three quarters of our holiday spending, some of which will roll over into June. Not bad for a week away!? And we were on the go every day. The IOW is a great place for a relatively cheap holiday with kids. One great feature is most of the places you can go back within 7 days for either free or for £1, how good is that?! One place we went to which offered this was Robin Hill – I couldn’t recommend this place enough if you have kids and especially if they’re around 5+ years old. Also it was half term week and still didn’t seem busy at all – although the weather wasn’t great, it was still fine to be outside etc. so can’t see it ever getting that busy barring maybe the main summer holidays.
- Going out £596 (£460 / £467) – The stag do and wedding bumped this up massively, cabs to Brighton and back ain’t cheap!
- Transport £85 (£160 / £192) – The TFS Mobile II passed it’s MOT with flying (well, driving) colours, rather surprisingly. One more year for the old beast at least then! (Then maybe… the Tesla Model 3…?) 🙂
- Personal Care £135 (£103 / £92) – ?
- Home/Garden £313 (£146 / £100) – As I mentioned we bought a shed. We got one with a little awning area and TFS Jr likes going under there which is cool. It looks ace as well! More pics on the “build” later on…
- Lifestyle £193 (£155 / £141) – Main chunk was clothes again.
- Hobbies/Sport £93 (£75 / £149) – Did play a bit of golf but keeping it cheap, definitely under budget on this one so far but have the whole summer ahead now to get on the course which I am keen to do so! 🙂
- Admin £0 (£27 / £20)
- Financial £5 (£4 / £15)
- Children £70 (£66 / £60) – Another solid month the little one!
- Gifts/Charity £516 (£316 / £187) – The majority of this was charity donations. I actually paid up our charity contributions up front this month as I knew roughly how the gambling/MB profits were going. I used an effective altruism site called EffectiveAltruism.org (hah!) where there is a widget listing some top rated charities, and you can pull the levers about until you are happy with your percentage donation to each, like this:
A really great way to save time but still donate to a few different causes in one hit! I am now ahead of the game this year on the Charity donations according to my 10% of profits pledge, but still owe about £75 from last year which I will pay this month along with this months contributions. It doesn’t have to be exact so going forward I will try to estimate gambling profits towards the end of the month and make a donation to keep things simpler, if possible!
income
Figures in the same format as expenses…
- Total £6194 +£395 Pension (£5059 / £4422) – I think the official term that would usually be used in situations like this is Boom shakalaka BOOOM! But I may be mistaken on that one. In a month where Mrs T had no income at all as we were still waiting for her start date to her new job, we smashed it out of the park nonetheless.
- TFS Income £2292 +£395 Pension (£2472 / £2500) – Average is tracking nicely here.
- Mrs T Income £0 (£408 / £600) – Average here looks like it’s going to fall short for the year but that is fine. Maybe I should re-estimate it? Not really sure. Good news is that she started her new job yesterday!
- Ratesetter £56 (£25 / £5) – Newsflash! Ratesetter have bought their old, better offer back again! You now only have to invest £1000 for 1 year to receive a £100 bonus! Just click this link here (<– obviously it’s a referral link! 3) to get started.
- The House Crowd £72 – This is interest paid on a crowd funded property loan. For more info see my series of posts on The House Crowd (other property crowd funding / P2P sites are available!)
- Child benefit £82 (£82 / £82)
Matched Betting / Gambling Hustles £3673 (£1945 / £750) – Another stellar month on the each way sniping! The rough breakdown in profit was as follows:
- No Lay Accas: £0 – Pretty much lost interest in these now as the each way betting is going so well, and the footy season was all but over. I still may have another go when next season gets underway if time allows as I do find them fun to do.
- Each way snipes: £3465 – An exact figure this month as I took my profit snapshot right at the end of the month 🙂
- Gambling/Other Matched betting: £208 – honestly can’t remember what this was but glad it’s positive. Hah!
I won’t do a full breakdown on it this month but a couple of points worth mentioning:
- I got a couple of big doubles up which both returned high winnings (£700 and £1000) which obviously massively helped the profits. I still maintain that doing doubles and trebles is multiplying the value so if you keep stakes small this is a good strategy, as well as obviously keeping on with your singles!
- There are still massive day to day swings. I think my worst day I lost about £700 (ouch!) and in fact was on course to win around well over £4K on the month when the last 2 days of the month I bet on I ended up losing nearly a grand in 2 days. Obviously with smaller stakes these swings will be lower in absolute terms, but the same in percentage of your bank etc… So it must be stressed yet again if you can’t handle the pain of losing short term then this method of “matched” betting is definitely not for you. Obviously I wish I’d not bothered with those 2 final days, but you don’t know in advance when the good and bad days are going to come, so you may as well just play as much as you can, IMHO!
- I am now up to £20 each way (£40 total) stakes per bet so it will be interesting to see if I can keep flying under the radar. I’ve had a few gubbings from the crap bookies that you would expect, but none from my decent accounts (Ladbrokes, Hills, etc…) so it will be interesting to see how long those ones last with these slightly higher stakes.
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 monkey business
Despite an expensive month we came in with a great savings rate of 43.48%. Can’t really say much more about that than I’m very happy with it. Average savings rate now for 2018 is 35% and considering I still have my bonus and the shares pay out to come, it looks almost we’ll easily beat the target of 35% I set for the year. I may revise this target upwards once those two big windfalls have been received.
Net worth did this:
Excluding house equity: £170,796 / +£7,226 / +4.42%
Including house equity: £254,349 / +£7,578 / +3.07%
Liquid Freedom: £79,153 / +£4,091/ +5.45%
Another jump in the markets and great each way betting profits mean the second highest absolute increase in Net Worth since records began 4. I really need to actually put some money into index funds again but with market valuations at all time highs I am really finding it hard to pull the trigger! I need to go and read some more JL Collins methinks!?
Liquid Freedom is tantalisingly close to £80K now, hopefully we’ll smash through that barrier next month!
The Cryptos see-saw has gone down again but I am holding firm and will not update that row of the NW spreadsheet until I decide to liquidate any of my positions back into sterling.
other updates
Blogging – It’s been quiet around here again for a few weeks and that is again due to me having time off work. I just can’t seem to find the quiet time to sit down and write when I’m at home! I’m back in work now so will try to knock out a few more posts before I’m off again. All I can do is say… I’m sorry… I am thinking about you my dear blog but you are just not my no.1 priority 🙁
Holiday(s) – We had another cracking and pretty cheap week away on the IOW. Weather was a bit pants which is a shame as it had recently been mega hot, but we still made it to the beach 2 days so can’t really complain. We also went away at the start of the month for Mrs TFS’s birthday down to Eastbourne which was very pleasant.
Eastbourne Pier in all it’s sunny glory
Reading – One of my fave blogs, The Rational Pessimist has started blogging again! He has started a great series about EV’s 5, batteries, and the resources and production needed to convert our vehicle system to electrification by 2030, as predicted by a guy called Tony Seba. I am optimistic this can happen! After a furious posting session it’s gone a bit quiet but hopefully the RP will finish of the series soon enough. Definitely worth a read, part 1 is here.
Shed – Finally here are some more pics of the shed build, and I have a question to any keen gardeners out there so please read the comments underneath the pictures if you know your stuff?! Thanks!
Digging out the base. I didn’t take a picture of the final concrete layer unfortunately but to be honest it wasn’t much to write home about… Just a quick slap dash job! 🙂
OK so here’s my question. Anyone know what the hell this horrible plant/tree is!?!?! It has massive roots that were going all underneath my garden and everywhere it can shoots are growing out of the roots. Destroyed as much as I could but I’m worried it will keep growing underneath my shed and then grow up again through the concrete (hopefully quite unlikely) and ruin my new shed 🙁 . Thanks if anyone can let me know!
Close up shot of pretty big root with shoots growing out of it
Shed starting to take shape here. See (near enough) the final article at the top of the post if you’ve forgotten what it looked like.
Notes:
- It does have a felt roof in case you were wondering, I just took that pic before I put it on. ↩
- Referral link – If you sign up and order through it you will get some extra free meat with your first order and I will get £5 off of my next order. Thanks if you do! ↩
- I will get a £50 referral fee when you invest the £1000 for a whole year, if you do then many thanks! ↩
- What I mean by that of course is since I started keeping track of my own records. I just wanted to use that phrase because it sounded cool 🙂 ↩
- Electric Vehicles ↩
Discussion (25) ¬
Cool shed, I love the porch on it.
And I assume you’ve read the book on effective giving that says de-worming is the best – yet very unsexy way to donate?
Thanks!
Haven’t read that book no, so thanks for the info! (I think I may have just read that factoid elsewhere though). I’ll bump up my worming percentage next time I make a donation… thanks!
Hard to tell what the plant is, but based on the size of the root it looks to have been a much larger tree that was cut down. Without rotavating the garden to grind the stumps, you may need to slowly chip away at the life in the roots until they eventually die and start to rot away (since the tree can’t feed without shoots/leaves, it’ll eventually run out of resources and die).
As it’s a tree (vs an ivy or other aerial-root climber), I highly doubt it would grow through concrete or any hard surface. Tree roots don’t tend to be as penetrative as fast-growing plants.
Hope that helps!
Hi JC,
Thanks for replying to my question about the plant! I should have said, I am pretty sure it’s a tree that is coming under the fence from next door. I didn’t know that trees could grow new shoots up from their roots!?!?! Weird!
I basically chopped as much of the root off as I could and drilled holes in it to try to kill that particular root off. And then concreted over that part of the fence as well, so I am hoping I’ve done enough to stop the roots/shoots coming back.
That’s good to hear about the penetration etc… thanks! 🙂
Wow, massive congrats on that awesome MB income! I don’t currently have the stomach to handle the pain of big variances – struggling even with my £2.50EW bets and the week where I upped it to £3EW was a dreadful one and I had to meekly drop back to my comfort zone, haha! I still haven’t gotten round to trying doubles yet, so will give that a go next month, or maybe I’ll see how I get on this weekend.
Great savings rate and yes, I’d suggest getting some of that cash into index funds asap. Pound cost averaging/drip feeding is the way to go – if you think it’s high now, it’ll be higher next time you think about investing! Time in the market, not timing the market, remember!
That shed looks fab, but wouldn’t last one winter up here before being that overlap got blown to smithereens!
Cheers weenie.
Ah that’s annoying, it always seems to happen that when you up stakes you will inevitably go on a losing run, but you just need to stick with it and trust the maths! But can understand why you would want to drop back down. End of the day if you are not comfortable betting any particular amount, drop the stakes. Not worth the stress otherwise! Honestly losing 500+ in a day didn’t bother me at all as I knew overall I am like 5K+ in the green since starting the experiment with Each way, so I just think of the bigger picture and forget about the short term swings (obviously it’s nice to celebrate the wins still).
“Time in the market, not timing the market, remember!” – I know this is common wisdom but I can’t help thinking more along the lines of my good friend FI Fighter who looks for more eccentric investments that are possibly undervalued. Having said that, it would be stupid to not put at least some of this money into “safe” index funds, especially seeing as I haven’t done so for quite a while now.
Haha, I don’t remember seeing a “northern proof” sticker on it… no 🙂
Every bloke needs a shed (I have two – and a garage). Even the missus has a she shed.
I thought you had just made that up but on googling shed paint ideas earlier I see that it is actually a real thing haha.
Surely it should just be a She-d though?
Awesome profit from the MB. I think I will do a post one day on why I personally stopped MB’ing but that’s more from a ‘chasing losses could destroy me’ perspective hehe. Quality shed…
Chris
Hi Chris,
Thanks! I just hope it continues, if so then we’ll be smashing all of our savings goals this year!
You do have to have a pretty regimented outlook if you are doing the each way betting as you are in effect gambling. Definitely don’t want to be chasing losses, just keep to your level stakes and a level head.
Could you not just do “normal” matched betting where profit is guaranteed so that chasing losses is not an issue though?
Obvs there are other reasons why it’s not for everyone. It’s certainly not the holy grail of side hustles, although it pretty much is for my personality type and current situation.
Thanks!
hey FS. I’ve just completed the base for a new shed (backbreaking! had to lug in about 500kgs of aggregate by hand). Where did you get yours from? I’m after a 7×5..
Ouch! I feel your pain having done a similar amount when I did the patio last year. Great exercise though I guess(!?). Luckily I got away with just chucking some wet concrete mix onto already existing slabs this time, bit of a hacky job really but I am hoping it will be “good enough” for a good number of years.
We got it from Buy Sheds Direct (you can top Cashback it as well, think it was decent maybe around 10%): https://www.buyshedsdirect.co.uk/sheds/7×5
Some of the pieces were a little out on dimensions so had to saw them off to fit (either that or I was doing it wrong… haha!) but overall it seems like a well made shed.
Cheers
I find your posts really interesting TFS, as your approach is so different to mine. I don’t gamble, mainly because I don’t feel I have the time to pay it the attention it needs, and I’d never heard of TheHouseCrowd (though I’ve read about Ratesetter). Will definitely be doing some research into their potential!
FireShrink
Gambling needs time, patience and a lot of practice to get right (Been doing it for nearly 20 years now). I don’t recommend anyone get into it really but if you do then the each way matcher is pretty much the best way to make money I’ve ever found, full stop. So if I would recommend anything it would be that. If you haven’t got time then ain’t worth it of course!
There are a few other house crowd posts on this blog so just do a quick search. They’ve been going years and are pretty kosher from my experiences with them. There are other Property crowd funding/P2P sites out there of course so have a look around before making any final decisions (let me know if you find any decent ones!)
Cheers!
Amazing result from the EWS. Are you still using the same parameters for selecting horses and then just placing them as un-layed doubles?
Hi Guy,
As I’m approaching the 10K in profits just from EW’ing… I’ll do a proper write up on strategies. It’s nothing ground breaking, just like my Acca strats, but probably worth writing up in case people have questions on it going forward I have something to forward them too. So watch out for that either the end of this week or if not early next.
Cheers!
Nice read, I’m new here but seems like you had a killer month for earnings! Also I like your shed…
Hi Flint,
Welcome! Hope you like what you read so far?
It was a really good month mainly due to the matched betting/gambling (do not try this at home… hah!)
Cheers!
I am indeed! Looking forward to more posts 🙂 yeah won’t dive in unsupervised! Seems way to intense for me, can’t handle the swings up and down, tried day trading the frse100 with a practice account for a while, was way to emotionally invested and couldn’t handle the Rollercoaster!
Christ on a bike… I wouldn’t even attempt day trading!
Only go into something knowing you’ve got an edge.
You can quantify your edge with bets quite easily once you know how (keep eye out for my next post which will detail exactly how/why this works) but, no offence, I don’t see how you could have any edge on a whole worlds worth of trading knowledge on the FTSE 100…(?!)
Cheers 🙂
No offense taken you are absolutely correct, zero edge and zero chance, but I tried! And didn’t lose any money so alls well. Looking forward to that next post! 🙂
Haha of course you did it the right way. I’d have just dived straight in knowing me and lost a load!
The shed looks sharp! And if extra money can’t go to things like stag events, then what’s even the point of all this hustle, right?
Looks like you’re doing awesome with the betting, too. I may have to look into that now that the US is becoming a bit less puritanical on betting. 🙂
Thanks DB40!
True enough, but I would have gone on it whatever I’d made on the hustling this month anyway… haha. But it does worry me that making such “easy money” on the side hustle might make us less frugal than otherwise. So far I think we’re doing alright on that front but it is in the back of my mind.
Hehe, I know you like a punt, so the gambling changes over there are no doubt good news for you (or maybe not! hah!)
Cheers!