February wasn’t such a great month:
1 – I caught the lurgy that’s been going around. It dragged on for over 2 weeks, not quite bad enough for me to be bed-ridden or take time off work but bad enough that I didn’t feel like leaving the house at all as the cold weather just made me feel worse.
2 – My fridge-freezer broke down. Fortunately it was when I was feeling better so I was able to drop food off at my sister’s and had a big enough appetite to eat a lot of food! The cold weather came in handy as milk etc was fine in my shed but I was sad to have to throw some food away.
Still, it wasn’t all bad:
1 – my new fridge freezer arrived quickly and is a lot quieter than the old one (I hadn’t noticed before). It’s still half empty however, I’ve not gotten around to refilling it so need to get going with my batched cooking again! Rather than dip into my emergency fund for this purchase, I’ve gone for 3 affordable interest free payments with Klarna.
2 – I received one of the employee of the month awards so got £50 Amazon vouchers – yay! Sadly, I was not one of the lucky hard-working ones who won a trip to Vegas! Maybe next year!
3 – attended another enjoyable FIRE pub meet. It’s always good catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.
Anyway, how did my numbers look for Feb?
I saved 24.6% of my net salary. The above includes £48.44 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
The beginnings of a wobble didn’t do too much to my portfolio and my FF remained pretty much flat as a result, at £304,331.51 by the end of the month. March is looking decidedly shaky however, so let’s see how that pans out over the next few weeks.
Dividends and Other Income
A decent month for dividends:
I received £423.12, of which £277.43 was from my ISAs, the rest from my SIPPs. All dividends were reinvested.
Here’s what my ISA dividend income graph looks like:
Here’s how I did in month 2:
I’m particularly impressed (myself) at my emergency top ups although part of me does think I should be investing that money but topping up is long overdue!
The classic book I read? ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Brontë. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it and how easy it was to read!
Options Options
This month, I finally achieved my options trading goal of doubling my money. It’s taken me just over 2 years.
I opened my live account with £1k capital and today, my IG balance stands at £2,015. Go me!
What now? I will continue with my strategy but will start making withdrawals of any profit I make (probably to put in my ISA). At some point, I hope to have withdrawn all my initial capital so I will be playing with pure profit.
The gains aren’t ground breaking, I’m making on average £30 a month from trading, but could I scale this up to make some meaningful (and realistic) income, like say £100 a month?
I would need a much bigger pot to play with, place a lot more trades and also need to be ‘on it’ with trade notifications and what’s happening with the market.
Note, I am so nowhere there yet! I will check my app when I get a notification and I might close a trade if I get the chance to. However, I don’t like opening trades on my phone so am slow to take advantage of market volatility.
Anyway, I’m happy just to make this a fun thing to do, although current wobbly markets aren’t looking great for my March trades!
What Else?
I have a draft ‘fun’ post in the making – hopefully will get round to posting that over the next week or so.
Anyway, hope you’ve all enjoyed a nice sunny weekend and hope your February was a good one!
