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Welcome to theFIREstarter! If you are interested in themes such as Financial Independence, Retiring Early, Downshifting, or simply just working less and living more then please stick around, I think we’ll get on just fine 🙂
If all of that sounds right up your alley then you can follow along by:
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If you want to get the full story you can start from the very first post here or for a more casual read, just see what catches your eye on the list of all posts page.
My thoughts and plans have slightly changed in the few years since I set up the blog, you can learn a little bit more about me and the main points on what those plans were and how they've changed here, here, here, here and finally here.
If you'd like to keep a track of new developments, money saving tips, money making tips, my adventures in attempting self sufficiency and simple living, free financial hacks and spreadsheets, and my general musings on Financial Independence, Personal Finance, investing, and the occasional humorous rant, then please consider following along. Those links again:
They say a picture paints a thousand words and I think that round yellow face pretty much sums it up for me. Post over I guess!
Haha, as if I’d let you off that easily… prepare for a 2000+ word slog on the epic 5 year journey of yours truly!
As a bit of a TL;DR – I am quite surprised reading back over some of my old posts that the main aim and underlying plan has actually been pretty consistent since day one, and I have largely achieved that initial goal. This is despite my personal circumstances changing massively and our expenses in all likelihood going up in that time.
The big storyline for me is about the development of side hustles, which although were part of the initial plan, have turned out in ways that even I could never have predicted when I started down this ol’ yellow brick road to FI.
In fact as is sometimes the case with my yearly updates, I think I’ll split this out over a couple of posts so it doesn’t get too long. In the next instalment, I’ll highlight some of the posts which provide an insight into how my thinking has changed along that way or have been important updates in general, as well as just some of my favourite posts in general that could be unrelated to much else, as well as some general rambling on 5 years of blogging and the FI life in general.
But first… it would be incredibly negligent of me not to go through some of the top line financial figures from the 5 years I’ve been in this game.
We’ve been thinking about getting a new car recently and upgrading from our creaky old ~£1000 beater of a Peugeot 307, and as we are getting a bit bored of owning said make and model, we decided to cast the net a bit wider to see what was about.
As well as this, I decided to knock up a spreadsheet to estimate TCO, or Total Cost of Ownership per year, to see how various different options would actually impact our bottom line, as opposed to just focusing on the sticker cost of the vehicle purchase. As I am interested in Electric Vehicles (EVs), and even though the cost of the vehicle purchase is much larger than any Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) powered car we are likely to consider, I thought I may as well stick that into the spreadsheet just to compare… The results have been… interesting 🙂
Hi! The sun is still shining, and after a brief bit of rain our tomatoes have finally decided to go slightly red, which was nice of them. Yes, they are finally bearing some fruit, and the finances have been following suit! 🙂
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)
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!?
Welcome to part 2 of my guide to Each way sniping.
It does seem I picked a bad time to start wanging on about this each way betting stuff, as I’m having terrible luck so far in July*! However, that is not to say you are as well, because it depends on what bookmakers you are using and what times you are checking the Oddsmonkey Each Way Matcher tool. No two each way bettors is ever going to have exactly the same outcome, which is worth bearing in mind. So hopefully YMIV 1.
*Since I started writing this intro though I have hit a really big day (Thursday 12th) – my best ever so far in fact – which has put me well ahead, so hopefully anyone else who has started up recently managed to keep going until Thursday and has hit some good winners as well!
Having been through the theory of Each Way Arbing / Sniping and some basics of how to actually go about it, using the Oddsmonkey (<– Affiliate Link) Each Way Matcher tool (<– non affiliate link) in part 1, I’ll now just throw out some more detailed thoughts and strategies of how to maximise profits, gubbings, specific bookies, and so on. If you missed part 1 click here to have a read!
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Disclaimer
I am not a professional anything, and you should treat all the words you read on this site as ones that exist for your infotainment only. Even the ones in this disclaimer. I will not be held responsible for any kind of outcome from you following the advice or hint of a suggestion made on this blog, and will not be liable for any emotional damage inflicted by the stinkingly bad puns contained within. Read at your own risk. Some of the links on this website may be affiliate links, if you support me via these links I will be forever in your debt, not in any monetary sense of course. Like I'd actually put that in the disclaimer! Hah!
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