Another spendy month – think Spring/Summer is just spendy – which included social outings and a new pair of glasses (my prescription continues to change, for the better I might add).
I really enjoyed the bank holiday weekends, although the nice weather didn’t last, my garden (and water bill) were happy that the heavens opened. Unfortunately, there appears to be no sign of the rain stopping now!
So how did my numbers look in May?
I saved 23.8% of my net salary. The above includes £22.74 from doing Prolific surveys.
Shares and Investment Trusts
No new investments, I just topped up existing ones.
Still working on an update on my investments but getting distracted by ideas on other posts. I will get this done at some point.
Anyway, current share/IT portfolio can be found here.
(Entire portfolio here)
Future Fund
The rocket comes roaring back as things look to be back on track! Or are they? Who knows, when the markets wobble at the slightest sniff of uncertainty. Anyway, at the end of May, my FF ended up at £309,851.22.
Dividends and Other Income
A great month for dividends:
I received £807.71, of which £619.76 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 it looks for month 5:
Options Options
Time for my 6-month update and my options trading was not left unscathed by Trump’s tariffs and other announcements.
I made a couple of big losing trades – would have lost more had I panicked but I waited before selling, otherwise I could have lost 3 x more. I am still up overall; however my capital has no longer ‘doubled’ due to the losses I made:
My three big losing trades look really bad but this progress chart of my completed trades since I started in 2022 shows a more complete picture (and looks better, haha!):
Looks just like a normal investment graph! Anyway, I hope to recoup most if not all my losses in a few months’ time.
What a Pickle!
I learnt and did something new this month!
The local leisure centre has started taking bookings for pickleball and it’s a sport I’ve wanted to learn to play, ever since I heard about it.
Bought bats for me and sis and we’ve played a couple of times now, although it seems to be really popular with the community and hard to book available courts at the times we can play.
The sport is a little like a cross between badminton and table tennis and as we play both sports, we weren’t like complete beginners and managed to get some decent rallies and shots going! That ball needs some getting used to though! Also, I thought the sport is more forgiving on the joints than badminton is, or was, since it’s been a while since I last played.
Pickleball is not to be confused with Padel, which is different and played on courts enclosed in Perspex walls, a bit like tennis crossed with squash.
Well that’s it from me – hope you all had a great May!
