Being back at work and with it not being as quiet as I had hoped, I found it hard to face my laptop outside of work hours, so apologies for the lateness of this post.
I was actually in the gym on New Year’s Eve and out litter-picking on New Year’s Day morning – starting as I mean to go on!
I saved 21.5% of my net salary – more than I expected, which I’m surprised at.
The above includes £43.26 from doing Prolific surveys.
Shares and Investment Trusts
No new investments, I just topped up existing ones.
Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.
(Entire portfolio here)
Future Fund
Santa didn’t show up for his rally but wasn’t so mean in the end. As at 31st December 2024, my Future Fund stood at £293,212.02. That’s a 17% increase from this time last year (that’s 17% including money I’ve added as well as investment gains).
Here’s how it all looks at the end of another year:
Was tempted to have the submarine make an appearance but it’s not that bad!
This year will see me breaching the £300k milestone soon!
Using unitization, I’m up just 10.3% this year across my entire portfolio – that’s investments, cash/premium bonds, everything. This figure includes my dividend income portfolio, where many of the UK stock prices continue to remain fairly depressed rubbish.
This is nothing spectacular investment-wise, I’m sure other investors can brag about much bigger gains and I’m happy for them, but happier for me that I’ve got these gains. Go me!
Am I hopeful for 2025? I’m always hopeful but somehow, I don’t think this year will be quite as good as the last one – just have a feeling that there’s some other global event or disaster just round the corner which will disrupt markets again.
Dividends and Other Income
A great final month for dividends:
I received £726.18, of which £224.75 was from my ISAs, the rest from my SIPPs.
Here’s what the ISA dividend graph looks like now:
Total income received in my ISA was £4,329.02 so yay, I reached my target!
Goals Update
And here’s how it all ended:
Failing the Emergency Funds one again didn’t surprise me – I was always going to struggle with this one, trying to balance saving/investing, coping with increased costs etc. I do need to keep at it though.
The charity donations one seemed too easy – there were probably a few small donations I forgot to add but I got there even without including them.
I read a total of 17 books (my Goodreads goal) this year – am very happy I bagged the non-fiction/classic goal but disappointed I didn’t get the chance to clear more books off my bookshelves.
The last non-fiction book I read? ‘I Will Teach You to be Rich‘ by Ramit Sethi. Although this book would have been far more useful to me had I come across it in my 20s, I still learned something new (and something about myself too).
Already mentioned my ISA dividend income – this is now edging very close to my (current) goal of average £400 per month in income from my ISA investments to cover most of my basic household expenses. (£400 will more or less cover my council tax, broadband, gas and electricity and my monthly grocery food bill!).
What’s another Year?
2024 wasn’t a bad year. Aside from my surgery last January, my sprained wrist, and feeling a bit frazzled before my annual leave, I’ve been mostly healthy in mind and body.
I am still going through the motions of the peri-menopause; I’d say my symptoms are on the mild side (my life is largely unaffected), although this past month, I’ve suddenly been getting hot flashes, ie night sweats without the sweating! Getting too hot was starting to disrupt my sleep but I’m now back to wearing what I would normally wear in the summer to bed and it seems to have done the trick. Bye bye, cosy winter PJs!
Year three in my house and some plants I bought when I moved in are still alive! My sister got me a bonsai tree for Christmas; I have never been able to keep one of these alive for more than a few months, so this will be a real challenge!
Another year at work – same old grind, the occasional different flavours. Have gotten to know my boss more this year and I like her and like working with her. Probably more of the same this year but I must remind myself to put my health first and start recognising the signs of mental fatigue earlier on.
Interest rates dropped, including my mortgage rate and in fact, I received another letter about another drop. My interest rate will now be 4.8%, down from the 5.3% I signed up to when I first took out the mortgage.
Another year of making my own kefir – those grains I bought are still going strong! Oh, and I made a small return to homebrewing beer too, which wasn’t planned but which was fun to do again.
I wouldn’t say my social life was exceptionally busy this year but I enjoyed outings with friends, attended most of the Manchester FIRE meet ups, attended WI meetings (and a couple of WI events), watched the darts live, had a trip to London to see the NFL American football, and enjoyed a lovely trip to Hong Kong to see my family, plus a cheeky jaunt into China!
Speaking of darts, one of my friends got me a darts board for Christmas. I have no idea where to hang it (it’s really heavy), so it’s currently propped up in my living room where I throw a few darts at it as I walk past. Will need to move it before my sis comes round or she will report to my Mum and that will be another thing for her to disapprove of…! 😀
New Year, New Challenges?
New year, same old me.
I was thinking about goals and couldn’t really think of anything which I should be doing or doing more of, which could be set as a goal or NY resolution. Well, nothing that won’t disrupt things, as I’m quite happy with things ticking along at what appears to be an orderly pace.
Despite all the doom and gloom in the news, here and abroad, I’m still able to be a mostly optimistic person – it’s either that or be a miserable old sod, which I’m sure I will be in time, but I don’t need to rush it along, haha!
I will just try to continue to ignore what I can’t control and keep on keeping on, carry on saving and investing where I can and enjoy my life however I can.
I already know my goals will likely end up being similar to (or the same as) previous ones (so sorry to be boring!) but they keep me focused and they’re ones I can keep at.
Anyway, here’s to a happy, healthy and hopefully wealthy 2025 to all of us!
