Ahhhh, another one of those bloggers looking back at the past year. Well, it’s not just for my readers, but also for myself to see what went well, and what didn;t. Let’s start with a graph:
If you don’t already, I highly recommend taking monthly snapshots of your accounts/investments so you can produce graphs such as the above. You can see the dip of covid in March 2020- but ever since that its been growing ever since.
Spending
Was down. A lot. Mostly because even with many of the Covid restrictions removed for much of the year, we still didn’t book a holiday nor do a lot of the normal spending that we would have otherwise done. Both a lack of time/effort on our part + the worry of having to cancel stuff just meant we didn’t manage a holiday. Nor did we meet up with friends that we would normally do, or even just treat ourselves to meals out or any other entrainment etc.
We did buy a new(er) car- Electric in fact. Although I have put this as an asset in my spreadsheet (deprecating of course), so it hasn’t really affected our net worth as such. It’s been quite nice to avoid petrol prices- which seem to be going up every time I drive past (and avoided the silly fuel rush too). I also sold my motorbike and put that into an index fund as well, so I guess that’s good as well.
We do have plans for a new patio next year as well as (hopefully) a holiday too, so I can see spending next year being rather higher.
Investing
Unsure I even need to include this- everybody knows the stock market has been utterly insane (in a good way) this year. Every month I think we can’t hit a new high, off it goes and sets a new all time high. I think it just shows that you really can’t predict the market, and it’s much less stressful to just buy the index and just wait.
I sold some AJBell shares I got as part of their IPO back in December 2018. So, held for just under 3 years, and originally bought for 160p, with some 13.45p of dividends since then too. Sold at just over 400p, so double my return.
I haven’t really bought much of anything but indexes this year to be honest- with the rather crazy stock market, I know that individual stock picking has its place, but not really in my portfolio. One stock I am still holding is IMPAX ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETS PLC (IEM) which has had a pretty amazing 5 years:
So I think I’ll keep holding that for a while longer- even though the ongoing charge is much higher than most of my portfolio (0.95%). I do like having more of a “greener” portfolio wherever possible. I’m hoping that as this becomes more and more popular that it brings fees/costs down for everybody.
2022
I mean nobody knows what 2022 is going to bring- more Covid? Another variant? Or maybe it will just peter out and we will go back to normal- I certainly hope so. I can’t see me being able to use my ISA allowance this (current) tax year, which is frustrating, but there isn’t much I can do about that. Over the past 2 years consolidating accounts where I can means that its a much simpler process each month to do the spreadsheet updates. I can also see how this will work into FIRE after my FIRE date as well- it’s much easier to sell some of a globally traded index fund over some p2p balance etc. Still seem to be on track for a 2030 retirement, but lots of other personal changes coming in 2022 as well, that could potentially delay this- let alone the stock market that could do anything in 2022-2030 as well.
As ever, these are only my views and nothing of this is advice or suggestion of what you should do.
