The Organised Redhead

My 2018 Goals

2018-06-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

This year I decided to simplify the goals I set for myself, in an attempt to focus more on the things that matter most to me. Here are the 4 goals I set:

1. Grow my new book publishing and digital marketing business to achieve £4,000 in profit this year

To be achieved through a combination of activitites such as publishing, blogging, podcasting or any other income generating activities which present themselves throughout the year

2. Focus on my well being to achieve optimal health this year

I will know I have achieved this goal when I am happy with the diet I am following and with my fitness and relaxation levels. I am eating an organic diet and taking quality supplements. I am regularly having treatments such as chiropractor, massage, acupuncture and reiki. I am using mediation and yoga to keep me relaxed and in touch with my spirituality

3. Continue my learning

I will know I have achieved this goal when I have read or listened to at least 6 further books
I will also have participated in any courses or events that offer learning opportunities, which present themselves throughout the year
I will have watched TED talks, educational films, youtube and podcasts to learn new things

4. Create a philanthropic strategy for this year and implement it

I will know I have achieved this goal when I have decided upon my charity giving strategy for 2018 and beyond. I will have a charitable target to save toward which could be something like funding a new school or providing sanitation/toilet blocks or helping a homeless person get off the streets

At nearly halfway through the year I've been making good progress. I've been reviewing my goals everyday so that I keep them clear in my mind.

Here's a quick run-down of how I've been doing:

1. Grow my new book publishing and digital marketing business to achieve £4,000 in profit this year

I'm behind on this target, with £839 profit made by the end of May 2018
Now that I am working full-time on my publishing business I hope to see profit increase

2. Focus on my well being to achieve optimal health this year

I've been doing great with this:

Chiropractor treatments x 3
Acupuncture treatments x 8
Reiki treatments x 2
Eating organic food and grass fed meat
Taking daily supplements
Meditating daily

3. Continue my learning

I'm happy with my progress on this one
I've read 3 books:

Headstrong (by Dave Asprey)
Unshakeable (by Tony Robbins)
Conversations With God Book 1 (by Neale Donald Walsh)

I've attended Tony Robbins' Unleash The Power Within event for a second time, but this time volunteering as a crew member
I'm booked to go to the rebooted Coventry TEDx event later this month which I'm really excited for

4. Create a philanthropic strategy for this year and implement it

I have not done well at this goal so far. I have started doing some research into what charitable goal I might like to work towards, but I have not yet picked my goal
For now my pre-existing monthly charity donations continue until I make a decision on my new goal

Did you set any goals for 2018? If yes I'd love to hear about them and how you're getting on with them. The end of June will be the halfway point through the year, so it's a good time to take stock on how you're getting on and make any revisions you think you need to...

It's Been A Year - Did You Miss Me?

2018-06-05T01:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I last posted. Nearly a year in fact. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm sorry for the long period of absence and that I'm doing fine - I'm still on my path to financial independence!

The truth is I realised some time ago that to hit my FIRE target of retiring by age 50, it was going to take some concerted effort - more than just saving as much as I could each month. I also got so fed up of working in an office that I couldn't bear the thought of having to continue doing that for the next 8 years or so.

So I started looking for ways to supplement my income. I think I previously mentioned that I'd been getting into online publishing - this is where the majority of my time is now spent. I'm focused on launching books so that I can build up an income stream which will ultimately cover my annual expenses - therefore allowing me to step away from my freelancing work.

Alongside this, I am continuing to save into my Freedom Kitty and into my Personal Pension, with the same targets as I previously discussed.

Here's the latest standings as of the start of June 2018:

Freedom Kitty

£58,691 of £190,000 saved (31%)

Personal Pension

£147,581 of £446,300 saved (33%)

I've been updating the progress bars in the sidebar from time to time even though I haven't been writing posts and I will continue to do so.

So for both savings pots I'm at the 30% point, or a third of my way to goal. I now have just over 7 years left to squirrel away the remaining 70% (although I will be helped by the effects of compounding). If I assume a 6% annual investment return, to hit my targets I need to be saving the following every month (until the month before my 50th birthday):

Freedom Kitty: £1,006 per month
Personal Pension: £650 per month

I would say that this is feeling do-able. The Freedom Kitty savings target is harder than the Personal Pension target.

I'm currently paying £1,000 per month into my Personal Pension so there's no problem there. I don't have regular payments set-up into my Freedom Kitty yet this financial year as I have not yet decided which stocks and shares ISA provider I will be using. However my intention is to max my ISA out this year which will be the equivalent of £1,666 per month which easily covers my goal amount.

The only risk to my plan is that I have just started a year's sabbatical from working in IT so that I can concentrate on building up my publishing business. This means that I am living off the savings I have accrued in my business account for the next year. If I don't manage to build my publishing business up to the point that it covers all my expenses (including Freedom Kitty and Personal Pension savings), I may need to reduce how much I'm paying in, or *gulp* head back for another IT contract.

I will be re-assessing where things stand in a year's time to see whether I need to return to IT, or if my publishing business has reached a point where it can sustain me. If I achieve my publishing income goal this will be a game changer because it will mean that I'll no longer feel the need to "retire" by age 50 as I will already be doing something that I enjoy with the freedom to choose when I work and where from.

If you have any questions or comments on the above do let me know. I'd also love to hear how you're getting on - do say hi in the comments...

My Marvellous Mid Year Update

2017-06-23T16:12:00.002-07:00

Ah June, such a wonderful month. It sees the transition from spring to summer, the longest day of the year on the summer solstice, the beginning of many fetes, garden parties and barbecues, and of course it's half-way through the year which means time for a progress update!

Despite my best intentions, I've struggled to find time to regularly update on how things are going with my quest for financial independence. It was so much easier to plan time for writing and perfecting my blog posts when I wasn't working (even though it's only a year since I finished my 4 months off it feels like much longer). Any spare time I have (after working full time, keeping house and of course socialising with family and friends) is taken up with my pursuits of side income from online publishing, researching other online money making possibilities and a little bit of matched betting. My first 6 months of 2017 have been action packed, lots of fun and very fulfilling, so here's a little about what I've been up to...

It was all about reviewing how I'd got on with my goals from 2016 and taking note of the lessons I'd learnt along the way. Then, with much enthusiasm and excitement, I set my goals for 2017. I was also working hard on preparing my second ebook ready for publishing: editing the manuscript, formatting it ready for kindle and paperback, and commissioning a book cover.

Near the end of 2016 I joined a Mastermind Group to keep me accountable for my goals and to share knowledge. Throughout January I participated in weekly calls which really helped me to keep focus, and ensured that I had progress to report back each week. If you haven't participated in such a group before I would highly recommend finding one to join.

On a social note, TheBF and I travelled to Wales for a weekend to visit friends and their baby twin girls who were about 8 months old, it was super to get to meet them for the first time. We were invited to a New Year's dinner party by friends, as well as 2 family games nights (such a fun way to spend winter nights), one of which we hosted.

TheBF and I also decided to take advantage of the January sales and invest in a new super king size bed! We opted for a Tempur Cloud mattress from Bensons for Beds, however we failed to research the reviews about Bensons before we placed our order. Big mistake. All I will say is that a saga of failed deliveries, lack of customer service and many trips back to the store ensued. So come the end of January, we had received a bed frame but no mattress, with no delivery date in sight!

Continuing the bed purchase story, after 3 failed attempts at delivering us our mattress and no commitment on a new delivery date, we decided to cut our losses and cancel the mattress order. We placed a new order with Dreams, who gave us a 2 week delivery slot, and delivered on time exactly when they said they would! I cannot recommend the Tempur mattresses enough, they are simply a delight to sleep on.

I am extremely proud to say that I published my second book on both Kindle and as a paperback near the end of February. As part of publishing it I ran various promotions to kick-start sales, so that took up a reasonable amount of my time. As well as that I hosted a Ladies film night, planned a holiday with family to France for later in the year, helped my parents with emptying a property they are selling, went for a delightful dinner to Nailcote Hall and enjoyed a romantic dinner staying in with TheBF.

The month began with a trip to Thurlstone in the Peak District for my second time attending a FIRE Escape meet-up. These are organised by Huw from Financially Free By Forty, where like minded individuals meet up to share ideas and generally geek out about all things to do with personal finance. It's a wonderful opportunity to meet lots of other people in the FIRE* community and I particularly enjoy the chance to put faces to some of the blogs that I read. I was very pleased to finally meet Weenie from Quietly Saving, whose blog I have really enjoyed following over the past year. Topics of conversation ranged from investing (including the more unusual investment options of whisky and trainers/sneakers!), online publishing, matched betting, eBay reselling, blogging, vlogging and personal development.

With my desire to pursue online publishing and to make a success of it, I was grateful for the opportunity to talk to other budding publishers, as well as Huw who is now so established at publishing he has been able to quit his regular job. I was very excited to come away from the weekend having agreed with one of the other attendees to start a weekly Kindle Mastermind call.

In terms of progress with my publishing side hustle, March was mostly about promoting both of my 2 books and tracking how successful those promotions were.

Socially there was plenty going on with a trip to see my niece's ballet show, a fun day out celebrating St. Patrick's Day, a trip to a gun range as part of a friend's birthday celebrations, helping on the telephones for Red Nose Day donations, enjoying a Sunday roast out with family for Mother's Day and holding a dinner party for a couple of friends in our newly fitted dining room.

* Financial Independence Retire Early

There were many exciting things happening in April for me, but the most outstanding of which was attending a Tony Robbins' event in London called Unleash The Power Within. I booked to attend when I saw tickets on offer during last year's black friday sales, not really knowing quite what to expect. This is truly a life changing experience. I simply cannot do justice in a few sentences to how great these 4 days are, or how much I have learnt, or even how many changes I have been able to apply to my life since attending. What I can say is that I am now determined to go to more Tony Robbins events, no matter where they are in the world, because it was totally worth every penny. I should also add that as part of Unleash The Fire Within I became a fire walker! Yes you read that right, I walked across a bed of hot coals, and I didn't burn my feet one little bit. It's all part of the process of showing you how to conquer your fears, and proving to yourself just how much you can do if you put your mind to it.

Hot coals at the firewalk event

Socially we enjoyed spending wonderful time with family over Easter as well as a fantastic trip to the Kenilworth Cocktail Lounge followed by dinner at The Almanac in Kenilworth, and we also spent a weekend visiting various friends in Southampton where I used to live.

Healthy eating and post-it notes would be the unusual tagline for May!

Fresh from the Tony Robbins event which was at the end of April, I was all fired up to do the 10 day challenge which is about changing your eating and lifestyle habits to really maximise your energy and create a body which is primed to go out and achieve all the goals which you have set for yourself. I jumped into the challenge full on, with fantastic weight loss as a side benefit to feeling really alert and alive. I'm happy to say that I have continued with the majority of the healthy changes ever since.

When you come away from something like Unleash The Power Within (UPW), there are so many ideas, thoughts and things to remember buzzing round your head, it can be a little challenging to know where to start at first. I decided to focus on re-reading my notes from the workbook from the event and writing up key points onto post-it notes which are now taking pride of place on our office wall! I also shared my experience with several people who were keen to hear of what it was like and all that I'd learnt. This was not only fun to do because it meant I could relive the event, it also helped seal many of the learnings in my mind.

One of the things I made a decision about while I was at the event was that the time had come to leave my freelance work so that I can start working on my sideline businesses full time. Ironically forcing my sideline businesses out of the "side" income genre and making them my main income streams. I have set myself a goal of quitting freelancing by the end of 2017, and I will do this no matter what. During May I started to take a look at what I'd been working on the past month or so, to assess where the money will come from, so that I can really focus on those money making ventures. My two weekly mastermind calls are still going strong, and these will help keep me accountable as I move toward my new giant goal.

There was plenty going on socially in May with some family dinners, a ladies film night to attend, hosting afternoon tea for some family friends and of course our traditional sweepstake evening watching the Eurovision Song Contest final.

Which brings us up to the present month. Business-wise, I've begun my transition from freelancer to online entrepreneur, by negotiating a new contract with my current client. I'm now working just 4 days a week as a freelance Scrum Master, and the fifth day each week I work from home on my own business ventures. I've now prioritised generating new books to publish as my first priority and this is what I'm spending my spare time working on.

I have also started to turn my attention to opportunities for mentoring, training and coaching others. As an established Scrum Master I already have lots of experience at mentoring and training in Agile skills, so I am now starting to offer bespoke introductions to agile and scrum master training through the wonder of online video calls. I am also offering mentoring and accountability partnering in goal setting, life organisation skills and basic personal finance planning. I held my first Scrum Master mentoring sessions in June with great feedback. I have also been helping with CV reviews for aspiring project managers, to help give them the best chances of finding their first agile role.

My weight loss goal is progressing nicely, fuelled by the healthy lifestyle changes I've made following UPW. The current heatwave has somewhat hindered my exercise regime since we don't have air conditioning at home and I simply couldn't bring myself to do my usual morning run on my rebounder (mini trampoline). I'm hoping to restart this next week.

This month I've had the pleasure of helping out at my niece's 6th birthday party at the local bowling alley, a trip to see Shirley Valentine at The Belgrade Theatre with my Mum and Sister, a visit from a group of University friends where we all went to my niece's school fete, and a lovely barbecue in our garden for Father's Day. Coming up still in June, we have a trip to London to see Annie to look forward to, and spending time at my parents' as we celebrate my Mum's birthday.

So that's my half-year summary. Hopefully you're still with me! I should probably add that during the first half of the year I have continued to add to my Personal Pension and Freedom Kitty, remaining reasonably on target for the financial goals I set myself. So far I've added £6,000 to the Personal Pension and £6,000 to my Freedom Kitty bringing their current values to £130,266 and £37,747 respectively. I'm really pleased with how both of these are growing, and at the moment my intention is to continue to pay £1,000 per month into each of these for the rest of the year. Once I stop freelancing I will have to reconsider how much I continue to invest while I build up my new businesses to a suitable income level.

How is your year going? Are you on target for meeting your goals (if you set them)? Have you ever attended a Tony Robbins event, and if yes what did you think? As always I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, I read all of them and am always really grateful for your interaction.

Better Late Than Never - My 2017 Goals!

2017-04-13T14:18:00.001-07:00

So how did it get to be APRIL already?! I have had a reminder on my lengthy To Do list for months now to post about the goals I set for myself in 2017. Sorry it's taken me so long, but here we go...

At the start of January I carried out an exercise to review the success/failures of my 2016 goals, and then carried forward my learnings for setting my new goals for 2017. I decided to stick with the same goal tracking process as I'd implemented in 2016 because I felt it had been so successful at getting me to actually TAKE ACTION and get stuff done.

First of all I determined the 3 key areas I wanted to focus on for the year, and I loosely named these:
1. Personal Nurturing
Anything falls under here which I want to improve in terms of my health, fitness, relationships, wellbeing and personal development

2. Giving Back
This covers things such as donations and help for charities, fundraising efforts and any help or support I can offer to family, friends, acquaintances and people seeking my help

3. Achieving Freedom
This is all about my entrepreneurial and FIRE related endeavours - my ultimate goal is to achieve freedom from working for someone else - so whether I achieve that through early retirement, funding myself through my own money making endeavours, or a combination of these two it goes under this category!

Next I spent some quiet time listing out everything which I ideally wanted to achieve this year, and these evolved into 30 goals (yes you read that right...30!). I wrote these up in a spreadsheet and for each of them added a column in which I listed how I would know that I had achieved the goal - so that I would know when I could say it was "DONE"!

Since 30 is really too big a number to track and share, plus some of the goals are personal ones, I've opted to pick 10 good 'uns to share with you below. In each case I've listed underneath the goal how I know that I will have achieved it.

Personal Nurturing
Goal 1: I will easily have read 6 new books by the end of 2017
I will know I have achieved this goal when I can list the 6 new books which I have read

Goal 2: I will easily attend and eagerly learn from the Tony Robbins Unleash The Power Within event
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have attended the UPW event and have made a list of notes from it

Giving Back
Goal 3: I will easily maintain a monthly presence in the personal finance/FIRE online community
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have either posted a blog update, or commented on a personal finance/FIRE update from a member of the online community, at least 12 times

Goal 4: I will easily hold 3 free coaching sessions in personal development or personal finance to get experience at how to coach
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have provided 3 free coaching sessions

Goal 5: I will easily donate £400 to charitable causes this year
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have donated at least £400 to charity this year

Achieving Freedom
Goal 6: I will easily have 4 published and promoted books on Amazon by the end of the year
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have at least 4 books published in KDP and Createspace

Goal 7: I will easily attend and learn new tips from FinCon in Dallas
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have attended and made notes at Fincon 2017

Goal 8: I will easily attend and learn new tips from the UK Money Bloggers conference
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have attended the UK Money Bloggers conference (SHOMO awards 2017)

Goal 9: I will easily follow my 2017 Freedom Plan so that I achieve freedom from working the 9-5 by the end of 2017
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have finished my last freelance contract onsite

Goal 10: I will easily follow my FIRE by 50 plan so that I remain on target to retire by age 50
I will know I have achieved this goal when I have achieved the targets for 2017 on my revised FIRE by 50 plan

Once I determined my 2017 goals, I have since been breaking them down into quarterly and monthly action plans so that every month, and indeed every week, I am focussed on working toward achieving them.

My thinking is if I can do just one thing every day to get me a little bit closer to at least one of my goals, then over time I'm going to achieve them eventually.

So that's all for now folks. In a future post I'll do a run-down of how I'm progressing with achieving these, and whether I'm on target to tick them all off by the end of the year.

Did you set any goals this year? Now that we're over a quarter of the way through the year, how are you getting on with them? I'd love to hear your thoughts below...

One Year Of Organised Redhead

2017-02-13T06:41:00.001-08:00

Just a very quick post today to acknowledge the fact that Organised Redhead has turned 1 year old! It was a year ago yesterday when I published my first post, and what a journey it's been.

I had no idea when I started this adventure where it would lead me to. In the space of the year I have continued to grow my experience and confidence with blogging, as well as avidly following my fellow FIRE seekers' blogs and cheering them along the way.

The most exciting part of the journey has been my discovery of ways in which I can earn extra income through activities such as Kindle publishing, affiliate marketing and matched betting. It's been a year of discovery, and I look forward to many more to come.

For those of you who have joined me on my journey this far...

THANK YOU!

I really appreciate it, and hope to share many more tales with you along my continuing journey.

My Revised Roadmap To Freedom for 2017

2017-02-11T04:14:00.001-08:00

Last February I formulated my strategy for how to achieve retirement by the time I'm age 50. In my Roadmap to Freedom I set out the savings goals I would need to achieve on a monthly basis.

I think it's important to revisit this Roadmap frequently to make sure that I'm still on target with my savings each month. This post is the result of my 2017 review.

I have revisited all my calculations from last year, including:

My expense projections considering:

Ages 50-57 (the ages between which I'll be retired but won't yet be able to draw my Personal Pension)
Ages 50-62 (the ages between which I'll be retired and still have mortgage repayments to make)
Age 62+ (when I'll be mortgage free)

The current value of my Freedom Kitty and my Personal Pension

So without further ado, here is my revised Roadmap for 2017 onward...

FI Before 50 Roadmap

Freedom Kitty must reach £190,000 by Jun 2025 (age 49)

• To be achieved by saving on average £1,268 per month from February 2017 - May 2025 (assumes 4% interest)

Personal Pension must reach £446,300 by Jul 2032 (age 57)

• To be achieved by saving on average £1,090 per month from March 2017 - May 2025 (issues 5% interest)

This results in a total average monthly saving goal of £2,358

My FI Before 50 Roadmap suggests that I need to save a total of £2,358 each month until June 2025. This splits out across my Personal Pension as £1,090 and my Freedom Kitty as £1,268 per month. The amounts I actually want to set as my saving targets for 2017 have been slightly adjusted from those suggested in the Roadmap:

SAVINGS TARGET

Freedom Kitty - £1,666 per month

Personal Pension - £1,000 per month

Equals TOTAL Savings Target: £2,666 per month

(£308 more per month than the Roadmap states is needed, but split differently across the 2 savings pots)

Although my 2017 pension target is £90 per month lower than the Roadmap suggests, it is hoped that the fund will grow by at least 5% per year. Furthermore, savings into my Freedom Kitty are planned to be approx. £480 per month higher than the Roadmap requires, any excess in my Freedom Kitty can be used to supplement my Personal Pension if it has not met the required amount by age 57. The reason for paying more into the Freedom Kitty is to maximise the new £20,000 ISA allowance in 2017/2018.

I feel very confident in being able to achieve the Personal Pension target. The Freedom Kitty target will be more of a challenge, but I'm going to give it my absolute best shot.

Have you set any financial targets for 2017? I'd love to hear of them, let me know in the comments...

How did I get on with my 2016 goals?

2017-01-24T06:53:00.001-08:00

Looking back on 2016 and my aspirations to provide a monthly update on how I got on with my goals, things didn't quite go to plan! I knew it had been a while since I last posted but I didn't realise that my last goals update was for March. So here's an end of year review of how I got on with my goals for 2016.

1. Experience the joy, satisfaction and contentment of living with my partner (TheBF) for the first time

Accepting suitable offers for the sale of my house and TheBF's house, with both proceeding to sale completion

Finding a new house to buy with TheBF which meets all our purchase criteria

RESULT: DONE!

We successfully sold our houses and moved into our lovely home together in May 2016

2. Gain the freedom to choose what I use my time for, removing the necessity of doing work that does not inspire me simply because it pays the bills

Pursuing financial independence

Create a 2016 financial plan/budget [by February 29th 2016]
Create a "FI before 50 Roadmap" containing steps I need to take to become Financially Independent before the age of 50 [by March 31st 2016]
Follow the 2016 financial plan/budget

RESULT: DONE!

The plans were created in the first quarter of 2016, after which I followed and achieved the savings targets specified in the 2016 financial plan

Researching alternative options for spending my time which could eventually help to replace my current mode of work

Create and maintain a blog site to track my goals and interact with the online community

Research suitable blog site & how to use it, and set-up blog - DONE
Deliver at least 1 post per week on average

RESULT: FAILED

Sadly when I began a new full time work contract in June 2016 the regularity of my blog posts suffered. Most of my free time was spent pursuing side income generating activities such as book publishing

Research new alternative sources of repeat income

Generate at least £1 this year from a new source of regular income

RESULT: DONE!

I discovered Kindle publishing and successfully published my first ebook in July 2016. I generated considerably more than my £1 goal (which was set to effectively inspire me to research and find ways in which it might be possible to earn additional income). By the end of the year I'd made £162.35 profit from a combination of publishing and matched betting

3. Become a better person by the end of the year, than I was at the start of it.
Can be measured in terms of knowledge & skills gained, health & fitness improved, relationships circle expanded & strengthened, internal beliefs challenged & reviewed, positive habits created

Completing a personal development challenge with my sister (100 day challenge or something similar)

RESULT: DONE (We completed The Magic one month challenge)

Reading at least 6 new books

RESULT: NEAR MISS
In the end I didn't quite manage to read the 6 books I was hoping for - I completed 5.5*:

1. The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich

2. Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust

3. The Magic by Rhonda Byrne

4. The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy

5. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

6. The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results - only half complete

Given that in 2015 I didn't even read one book this was a good achievement for me nevertheless

Losing 10lbs in weight by the end of July and maintaining the weight loss through till the end of the year through good diet and exercise

RESULT: FAILED
I ended the year at about 1lb below my start weight for the year! This is one of the hardest goals for me to achieve. It feels like my whole life I've been struggling with trying to attain my ideal weight (which for me is just to be a healthy weight). Sometimes I lack willpower and I genuinely think that some people are more biased to be overweight than others. That's not intended to be an excuse, but being overweight is something which runs in my Mum's side of the family.

This is a goal which I fully intend to carry forward into 2017 to see if I can attack it once and for all. On the bright side, at least I can say that I didn't gain more weight in 2016.

Going on at least 12 planned "date nights" with TheBF in 2016

RESULT: DONE!

In fact we went on more than 12 dates, although not all of them were specifically arranged by me in the end, I think this still counts as a pass.

Going on a family holiday to France where I can spend quality time with TheBF, my parents, my sister, brother-in-law and niece

RESULT: DONE!

Researching and booking a mini-cruise with family

RESULT: PARKED

Due to all the time and effort required for selling and moving houses during the year, this goal did not feel attainable in the end. However I'm hoping to research a cruise holiday in 2017 with my parents and TheBF

Introducing a routine of regular meditation

By the end of the year, I will be meditating a minimum of 3 times per week

RESULT: I'm going to say DONE

This goal was a difficult one to assess the success of because some weeks I meditated every day, and other weeks I didn't manage 3 times. The main point however is that I did start meditating in 2016 and continue to do this consistently every week.

As well as meditating, I have introduced several other short activities which I endeavour to complete daily:

Exercising (20 mins)

Yoga (about 15 mins)

Meditation (10 mins)

Gratitude (3 mins)

Affirmations (3 mins)

Visualisation (3 mins)

Reading (15 mins)

Goal Reviewing (3 mins)

Journalling (3 mins)

My goal for 2016 ended up turning into achieving 60% of this daily routine each week

* affiliate links, if you purchase through these links the cost to you will be the normal Amazon price but I will earn a small commission for directing you to the product

4: Use my unique personal skills and abilities to help others achieve happiness.

Offering tips, support and conversation online through my blog, social media accounts and getting involved in the FI and Personal Development communities

RESULT: DONE

This was another goal which was actually difficult to track whether it was achieved or not, because I hadn't really made it specific enough. Given that I started my blog, wrote about my FI plans, regularly read and commented on personal finance blogs throughout 2016 and I attended the March FIRE escape gathering, I feel that this was achieved.

Offering tips, support and help offline through any face-to-face opportunities should they arise, (meet-ups, coaching, training, speaking engagements)

RESULT: DONE

Again another goal which was difficult to say whether it was definitely achieved. As I did attend the FIRE escape gathering and also participated in Facebook Groups for UK finance bloggers and Fincon (which I also purchased a ticket to attend in 2017) I feel that I can mark this one as done

Supporting my chosen charities through a spread of donations totalling £350 this year

RESULT: DONE

This was a success for me, I donated to the charities who I have regular giving set up for, as well as sponsoring several of my friends in their charity endeavours.

So all in all I feel very happy with my progress in 2016. It's the first year in a long time that I have set a list of goals for myself, and it's definitely the first year ever where I have consistently tracked my progress toward achieving the goals. This for me is the biggest win of all. It has made such a big difference having goals to work toward (some of which felt unattainable when I set them) and being able to tick many off the list. I am looking forward now to 2017 and achieving my new list of goals. You can find out about my 2017 goals in my next post...coming soon!

How has 2016 for you? If you set yourself goals, did you achieve some or all of them? Have you set any goals for 2017?

Happy New Year

2017-01-10T06:28:00.001-08:00

2017 - A Year Of Great Things To Come

I'm conscious that it's been way too long since I last posted an update. I think part of the reason for this is that I'm too much of a perfectionist and I find that each time I write a post it takes me many hours of revisions and formatting to make sure that everything is just perfect.

So an experiment today! I'm sat in the break room at work taking my lunch hour and now that I've caught up on some reading (Financially Free By Forty's 2017 goals) I thought I'd open up Blogger and just see what I can achieve with a short post.

I do intend to continue writing and sharing my goals and progress in 2017, I also plan to share a quick review on how I got on with my 2016 goals.

I hope to chat with you more as our journeys to FIRE (financially independent/retire early) continue.

In the spirit of breaking my 2 month plus silence and "just doing it" I'm going to publish this post just as it's been written.

I'd love to hear about your plans for 2017, how you're getting on with your savings and goals, and just to say hi...so please do leave me a comment...

Life's Simple Pleasures: Halloween Pumpkin Carving

2016-10-29T17:20:00.002-07:00

It's been a while since I wrote about my simple pleasures, so a new post is long overdue. As I've said before, I'm a firm believer that happiness can be found in the little things in life. My personal view is that when we focus our attention on appreciating these small things, we can experience a more peaceful, contented and ultimately happy life.

Today I found myself with the biggest smile on my face as I experienced a rather creative, yet simple and fun pleasure...

Happy Halloween!

Yes it's that time of year when many people choose to have a bit of fun dressing up in ghoulish fancy dress, decking homes and streets with cobwebs, skeletons and all sorts of other spooky decorations, and getting into the spirit of all things halloween (pun intended!)

I've always enjoyed the theatrical nature of Halloween. I love finding new suitably frightening costumes to wear as well as experimenting with spooky make-up techniques. Then of course there's decorating the house with items from my "Halloween box of goodies" such as my flickering haunted house, bubbling cauldron, and spiders web candelabra. I always find it fun when the local kids stop by trick or treating, and this year we have made sure to have some sweeties ready - it's the least we can do when they've made so much effort with their costumes.

Sticking with the theme of Halloween, while I was out investigating our new local Aldi store today, I decided to purchase a couple of reasonably large pumpkins for the bargain price of 99p each, with a view to having some fun carving them.

I don't seem to find the time these days to allow my creativity to flourish, so this promised to be an opportunity not only to share some fun time with The BF, but also to let my artistic side have a bit of an outing.

There were a lot of seeds to remove and scraping out
to do before we started the carving!

Late this afternoon, we took some time to have a go at carving our masterpieces. TheBF had never carved a pumpkin before, and I had only carved about one or two basic attempts in years gone by.

First we began by cutting a large hole in the top of the pumpkin, then scraping out any seeds and pumpkin pulp.

There was lots to scrape out

Scraping complete!

Next we searched the internet for inspiration of what to carve. TheBF opted for a Pikachu style image, and I found a fairy image to carve. We printed out images to fit the size of our pumpkins and taped them onto the pumpkin so that we could use these as a guide.

Template applied and ready
to commence carving

I used a dressmakers pin to mark out the outline of the fairy (this took sometime and I now have sore fingers from putting the pin in and out so many times!) After this I was able to remove the paper image from the pumpkin and carefully use a knife to cut out the image of the fairy.

Pins for marking the outline

Something to keep me going...
well it was Saturday night!

After I'd fully cut-out the image of the fairy, next I wanted to create a "swoosh" of magical stardust trailing behind her. To do this I used a drill with different sizes of drill bits.

While I was doing this I switched the house lights out and popped a small torch inside the pumpkin to see how it was looking.

All in all, I think this mini project took me about 2-3 hours and I was thoroughly engrossed the whole time. In short I loved the process and better still I loved the end result.

A little bit of magical fairy dust

TheBF's pumpkin carving was fabulous too...

Pikachu!

So now we're all set for the next couple of evenings, these babies will be taking pride of place outside our front door, facing onto the square where we live.

A pumpkin welcome!

After the pumpkin carving was complete, it was time to decide what to do with all the contents which had been scraped from the insides! A quick internet search suggested that we could turn the many (many!) seeds into a tasty snack. So we decided to give it a go.

It was really easy to do, and I have to say the results are delicious. We put the pumpkin seeds in a colander and rinsed them, then placed them on a baking sheet where we drizzled them with Olive Oil and sprinkled with sea salt.

These went into the oven (at 180 degrees fan assisted) for 16 minutes (anywhere between 10-20 mins is good depending on your oven), after 10 minutes I checked them every 2 minutes to see whether they had browned.

Our roasted pumpkin seeds hot out of the oven

Once out of the oven, I put the seeds onto kitchen towel to pat off any excess oil, then popped them into a serving dish and they were ready to sample. They're a lovely savoury snack, reminding me of a type of bar snack one might be offered!

Removing the excess oil

Tasty pumpkin seed snack

So that's my simple pleasure for today - the enjoyment of taking some time to be creative both in carving, and in coming up with a new tasty snack for us to try.

Have you tried carving a pumpkin this year? How did it go? If you have any pictures, let me know using the comments or my contact form and if you're happy for me to do so, I'll be in touch to see if I can list them in a follow up post!

Now You Can Trade Gift Cards, With A Free £5 Credit For You To Try

2016-10-25T13:18:00.001-07:00

Have you ever found yourself after Christmas, a birthday or even a wedding, having received a generous gift card but unfortunately it's for a retailer who you have nothing particular you wish to buy from? Or perhaps you have won a gift card in a competition? Or been sent a gift card as a reward for being a loyal customer elsewhere and you'd rather have received the cash value instead?

It's possible to end up in a situation where you are scouring a retailer's online site or store simply to find a product to purchase so that you can make use of the gift. It's a lovely gesture, but sometimes it falls flat when you'd rather be able to spend the value at a retailer of your own choice. Well that's where handy site Zeek comes in, solving the problem by allowing you to sell your gift card (for a small fee) so that someone else can purchase it who actually wants to use the retailer in question.

Not only does Zeek allow you to sell unwanted gift cards, you can also find generous savings on a vast array of gift cards available for purchase.

Recently I was kindly offered a £50 credit to check out how Zeek works so that I could share the experience with all of my readers in an honest review. Unsurprisingly I couldn't wait to jump straight in and give it a go, particularly because I also have the opportunity to offer £5 free to all new members signing up using this link.

So, here's how I found the Zeek user experience...

First things first, with my frugal hat on I checked on Quidco and TopCashback to see if there were any cashback deals to be had for signing up with Zeek. Sure enough Quidco offered 4% and TopCashback offered 4.04% cash back for first purchases, nice! I found the sign-up process very quick and simple, opting to sign-up with my Facebook account (though there were also options to use your Twitter, Google or email accounts).

Since I didn't have a gift card to sell, my experience was instead from the perspective of a buyer. The great thing about Zeek is that you can pick up a bit of a deal, because you can buy gift cards for less than their face value, so I was excited to see what was on offer. I found the site easy to navigate with options for "Buy Gift Cards" and "Sell Gift Cards" always present on the top navigation.

Just some of the many gift cards available to purchase at a discount

Selecting the Buy Gift Cards option, I was presented with a vast array of well known brands including NEXT, Debenhams, iTunes, Argos, Tesco, Boots, Pizza Express, Prezzo, John Lewis, Toys R Us and many, many more. I had been a bit sceptical about how much choice there might realistically be, but I wasn't disappointed.

Under each brand a percentage was displayed to indicate the maximum discount available, though the exact amount of money-off depends on the individual gift card being purchased. Since the cards on sale at any given time depend entirely on what has been sold to the site by other Zeek users, the denominations of card available for each brand can be quite variable.

On selecting a retailer, it was then possible to see any gift cards currently on sale, with the purchase price for each clearly listed.

For each retailer there are a mix of card values to purchase with varying levels of discount

I opted to buy a £25 Debenhams card for online use, and a £30 physical card to use at Cafe Rouge, enjoying 8% and 7% discounts respectively (total cost £50.80).

For online cards, once purchased they're available immediately to spend, and can be accessed via a handy wallet option on the Zeek site. Physical cards are posted via recorded delivery to be received within 7 business days.

So my Debenhams gift card was available to use immediately from my Zeek wallet and I received my Cafe Rouge gift card in the post about 4 days after my order was placed. Unfortunately the Cafe Rouge card which I received was for £20 instead of the £30 I'd ordered. I immediately contacted Zeek to explain the problem and I have to say they responded very quickly and were keen to rectify the mistake. My personal view is that most companies will make a mistake at some point, but it's how their Customer Services handle the challenge of making things right that makes a good company really stand out.

Zeek, didn't disappoint, offering me two options to resolve the Cafe Rouge situation. I could either post the £20 gift card back, and once received, they would send me a £30 card (assuming they had one available for that value), or, they offered to credit my account with the £10 I was missing plus an additional £5 as an apology for the situation. I opted for the latter which meant I had another £15 to spend! This time I decided to opt for another online card, so I purchased a £20 Interflora card for £18 at a 10% discount.

In total I spent £58.80 for gift cards of value £65.00 which meant I'd saved £6.20 (nearly 10%).

Although I haven't tried selling an unwanted gift card to Zeek yet, the process sounds relatively simple. Gift Cards can be sold as long as their value is between £10-£500. The cost of sale is 7% of the card value (with a minimum fee of £3).

There are some things to consider when deciding to use Zeek for gift card trading:

For gift card sales, some of the face value is forfeited due to the sale fees (though this is nothing new - sale commissions are common practice across vendor sites on the internet)
You're not able to resell a gift card through Zeek if it was already purchased through their site
For purchasing, it would be nice if you could see the expiration dates of cards you are buying, as far as I could tell this wasn't an option to check before purchase (although for some of the retailers the duration is stated on the purchase page). Having said this, the 3 cards which I purchased all had long expiration dates on them (the earliest expiration being October 2017)
There's no easy way to search using the denomination you're interested in buying, instead you have to click into each gift card retailer to see what is on offer. A few times I clicked on a retailer to find that they only had £100 gift cards available, sadly outside of my budget
Turnover of gift card values available for sale can be fast, so you have to be quick if you see a card that you want
At the moment this service is only available in the UK. Although Zeek have advised that you can follow on Facebook, Twitter and their blog to find out when they're launching further countries

The things which I really liked and why I will continue to be a Zeek customer are:

The concept itself is a really good one - I love a bargain, so being able to essentially buy "money" for less is always a winner in my book. Plus it's nice to have an outlet for disposing of gift cards I simply wouldn't get around to using otherwise
The site is easy to use and the purchase process was quick and simple
The discounts I saw while looking through the different brands ranged all the way up to 25% off - certainly not to be sniffed at!
The handy Wallet feature allows you to easily see all cards purchased, and keep track of which ones have been used, as well as the all important expiration dates
I cannot fault the Customer Service, which was always super quick and very helpful
Zeek offer a referral program, which means that you can invite your friends to sign-up and they will receive a £5 free credit (as will you)

If you're interested in signing up to Zeek to make use of the promotional £5 credit, I would recommend following these steps:
1. If you already use a cashback website such as TopCashback or Quidco, navigate to Zeek via these to get your 4% cashback! (correct at time of publishing)
2. Sign-up for a Zeek account
3. Hover over your profile in the top right corner of the site and select the Promo Code option. Enter the promotional code: 23R7773N so that your free £5 will be applied to your account
4. Ensure that you spend your credit within 10 days of applying it to your account, because otherwise it will expire

Alternatively, if you don't use any cashback sites simply follow this link to sign-up and get your £5 credit (and importantly, remember to spend it within 10 days so that it doesn't expire).

PLEASE NOTE: In the interests of transparency if you decide to use the free £5 credit offer, I too will receive a £5 credit in my Zeek account. If you don't like the idea of this, please don't let this put you off giving Zeek a try, here is a non-referral link to Zeek from which I do not benefit whatsoever (though obviously you wouldn't benefit from the free £5 either should you use this). I also use other affiliate links in this article for the cashback sites I mention. Happy shopping!

If you give Zeek a try I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts and feedback, do drop me a line in the comments below...

Look out Dallas, FinCon2017 here I come!

2016-10-01T05:21:00.000-07:00

While I was reading my favourite blogs this week, I noticed in Mrs Frugalwood's latest post that she had not only attended FinCon16 but their website won the Best Frugality Blog of the Year Award in the 7th Annual Plutus Awards. Many congratulations on a well deserved win!

I've never attended any sort of conference before despite the fact that it's something I've always wanted to do. I guess I'd previously assumed that attending conferences was for employees of companies who decided to send "the chosen few" (of which I was never one). However, having entered into the blogging world earlier this year, and indeed venturing into Kindle Publishing as an income generating opportunity, I feel that attending a FinCon event could actually really help me get to a whole new level. Most importantly I suspect that I would enjoy it tremendously.

So this morning I bit the bullet and bought myself a ticket! I have to confess I am slightly daunted about going. For a start this means solo international travel to Dallas, a reasonable amount of expense after ticket, flights and accommodation are accounted for, and throwing myself into a situation where I'm likely to know no-one. Having said all that I'm also incredibly excited and will look forward to this immensely. Hopefully I'll get to meet fellow UK and non UK bloggers alike and maybe even make some new friends.

The early bird catches the worm
The real driver that nudged me into taking the plunge was the fact that there is currently a "List Sale" price for purchasing FinCon2017 tickets that's a significant reduction on the regular ticket cost. Until October 3rd 2016 the sale price is $189 per ticket compared to the normal $449 price. If anyone is interested in going here's where you can purchase your ticket. If you miss the October 3rd cut-off I'm not sure whether there will be any other form of "early bird sale" but it's always worth checking.

If you do decide to go (or indeed already have your ticket), or if you have attended FinCon before please let me know. We could share tips on getting there, what the best things to do are, best places to stay etc. Heck we could even arrange to meet up in person there!

No doubt I will do some sort of write-up on the event after attending (even though that simply feels too far into the future to even be thinking about just yet!)

It's all about the Side Hustles

2016-09-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm acutely aware that the regularity of my posts has been somewhat lacking of late, a long way from my aspirational 1 post per week! I have actually begun work on an update about how I've been getting on with my goals so far this year (given that the last update was for March), but it's going to take me a little while longer to get that post finished to a standard I'm happy with. So for the sake of letting people know that I'm very much still alive and kicking I thought I'd drop in this post about the side hustles I've been trying.

I think I've mentioned before, I'm currently putting in a full time work week freelancing in IT for a retail company. I love the flexibility that contracting brings me, where I can have several months off at a time in-between contracts. The trouble is while I'm on my breaks between contracts I enjoy my freedom so much that I never feel like starting a new contract again! Of course I always do start again, because I have financial obligations to meet.

In my ideal world I would be able to generate enough income from my side hustles to cover my expenses working from home. This is what I feel would allow me to truly be my own boss. Don't get me wrong, I feel very privileged and fortunate to be in a position where I can contract. In my opinion the freedom, variety and degree of autonomy freelancing provides, far outweighs the perceived benefits of having a permanent job. Nevertheless, while I'm working onsite as part of a contract, there's invariably a boss-man/boss-woman to be accountable to, whereas I'd rather be in a position to set my own deadlines and working hours.

So why am I telling you all this? Well it's because this year I've found myself on a bit of a journey. I finished my previous contract at the end of January and ended up taking 4 months off, mostly because I was preparing to move house. During that time off, I found myself drawn more and more to the blogs in the personal finance realm, because I was keen to find an escape route from the cycle of contract after contract. After initially being fascinated by the discussions around frugality, I quickly moved on to learning about investing as a means to becoming financially independent. This really struck a chord with me. Here was something I could work toward and action.

So I set up this blog, worked out what I'd need to achieve to be FI in 10 years and I set myself some goals for this year to help get me motivated and keep me on track.

As I read more blogs I started to discover that as well as saving I could potentially speed up my trek to financial independence by considering some income generating endeavours in addition to my freelancing. So I decided to take one or two of the ideas I've read about by other bloggers and have a go myself. Ironically it's because of the time I've been investing into these side ventures that my frequency of Organised Redhead posts has declined somewhat.

So what income generating activities have I tried so far?

Matched Betting

Back in May/June I had a go at a couple of matched bets. I love the idea of being able to make money (albeit in small increments) for relatively little effort and time. I used the two free beginner guided bets on Profit Accumulator and pocketed a profit of just under £40. However when it came time to sign-up for a paid account I paused because I had just moved house and did not feel I had enough time to dedicate to it. At some point I fully intend to get back into matched betting, but for now my focus is on my second side hustle attempt...

Kindle Publishing

I first heard about the potential of kindle publishing as a viable side hustle when I read about Huw's early experiments with it on his wonderful site Financially Free by Forty. It's not something which I would have considered previously because the thought of writing my own book was far too daunting a task. However, as I investigated my options online I realised that it was possible to get into Kindle publishing by commissioning someone else to write the book, once I had determined the topic, title and a loose outline of how I wanted the book to be laid out.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, which I think goes hand in hand with having an OCD streak, so putting a book together was not a quick, throw-it-together kind of affair for me. I opted to recruit a more experienced writer who commanded more money per words than other people on Upwork (the site I used to find my contributors), because I wanted a quality book. It also meant that I took a reasonable amount of time to consolidate the book after it had been written, spending hours choosing the right cover, title, keywords, and getting the editing just how I wanted it.

After several months of working on my first book, I finally managed to publish it on Kindle (under a pen name), and then on Createspace which allows me to sell my book as a paperback. My next goal is to get the book onto ACX which is the site which allows you to offer books as audiobooks.

I launched this first book for sale mid July, being utterly clueless on how to market it to best advantage. Needless to say the sales were disappointingly low. However, I have since sought guidance through kindle coaching and putting what I've learnt into practice I've seen a markable upturn in sales and consequently my profits.

My endeavours into kindle publishing have ignited my passion for pursuing this side hustle with a view to one day making this my main income source. I have a long way to go, but I feel that for the first time in my life, I have genuinely found something which excites me and inspires me. Could it be that I've finally stumbled across my true calling? It certainly feels like exciting times ahead for me.

Even if I don't achieve early financial independence (which I am still pursuing in earnest incidentally), if I could simply succeed in growing my kindle publishing business to the point where it covers my month to month expenses, I would be one extremely happy lady.

I'm interested to hear of anyone else who has got the bug for Kindle Publishing, or indeed Matched Betting, or any other side hustles which they're enjoying. Please do let me know in the comments.

If you would be interested in being among the first to hear about my upcoming book publications, with exclusive previews prior to publication drop me an email using my contact form, and I'll be sure to let you know when I have new books coming out.

A catch-up on how I invested my savings from March - August

2016-08-28T04:54:00.000-07:00

One of my key goals for 2016 is to set myself on a path toward achieving Financial Independence. As part of my roadmap I intend to save money each month into my Freedom Kitty which is currently made up of two ISA's (one from the 2015-16 tax year, and one for the 2016-2017 year), and also into my Personal Pension which I hold with St. James Place. This post covers my investing choices for March - August.

Freedom Kitty Investment - March to April 2016

In March I used a combination of savings from February & March as well as profit from my flat sale to max out my 2015-2016 ISA with St. James Place. This saw me transfer in £14,810.53, meaning that the total money paid toward the ISA in the tax year was £16,010.53 (the excess over the annual ISA allowance of £15,240 was for initial fees).

Prior to making this lump sum transfer I'd only been investing £150 per month into the ISA and for that reason I'd been recommended to direct my money into just one fund. My lump sum investment therefore also went into this one fund. So my 2015-2016 ISA is invested in the UK High Income UT - Acc fund, a link for the Financial Times fact sheet on this can be found here.

At some point I will discuss with my financial advisor diversifying my fund choice a bit for the ISA - probably later this year.

Freedom Kitty Investment - May to August 2016

Of the available money I'd put aside for investing into my Freedom Kitty in May - August, I actually invested £2,500 of it. I was particularly busy with our house move during May and June so it took me a while to find time to investigate and choose where to invest for the 2016-2017 tax year. Making use of the Monevator's superb resource page "Compare the UK's cheapest online brokers" (which has been updated in August 2016), I finally made a decision at the start of July and opted to open an ISA with Lloyds Bank Direct Investments Online.

I decided that I would like to set-up a regular investment plan rather than just making ad hoc transfers into the ISA (in reality I will probably end up doing a combination of both). So I have set-up a plan to invest £1,000 per month from July onward. In addition to this, I also transferred a one-off contribution of £500 into the ISA in July so that I could test out how the investing process worked (seeing as I was completely new to online investing).

I have opted to keep things really simple for now, so my investments were as follows:

£500 lump sum investment into Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% Equity Fund A Acc
£1,000 regular investments into Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity Fund A Acc

For now my ongoing regular investments are set-up to go into the Vanguard 60% LifeStrategy fund, but I may look to change this in future months.

Personal Pension Investment - March to August 2016

For the period March - August 2016 the following contributions from my Business Account were made into my Personal Pension:

March: £3,000
April: £3,000
May: £1,000
June: £ 350
July: £1,000
August: £1,000
TOTAL: £9,350

The amounts fluctuated because I was going through a period of not doing any work contracts (for 4 months), therefore without any income source I opted to reduce the contributions to my pension scheme slightly.

Since I have a financial advisor at St. James Place where my Personal Pension is held, they select the best investment options for me based on my propensity to accept risk. The approximate split for the current allocation of my investments is as follows (I've included links to the Financial Times fund factsheets):

SJP Global Equity - 14.5%
SJP Schroder Managed - 14.5%
SJP Strategic Managed - 14.5%
SJP AXA Framlington Managed Pension - 13.5%
SJP Global Managed - 13%
SJP Worldwide Managed - 13%
SJP International Equity - 9.5%
SJP Multi Asset - 5%
SJP Strategic Income - 2.5%

It's quite an interesting exercise for me to delve into the funds which are underlying my pension investments, because I have to confess that most of the time I'm largely unaware of where the money is invested having chosen to leave these choices in the hands of my financial advisor. I've received comments previously and have seen similar view points while reading other personal finance blogs, that the charges for my pension funds are considered high, particularly compared to what I would likely choose if I managed my pension investments myself. However, for now I'm happy with the status quo of where things are. Time is a very precious commodity for me, I have many projects I'm working on at any given time, so it's nice to be able to invest into my pension without having to worry about monitoring and selecting the investment choices. I'm having a dabble at my own investing in this year's ISA to see how that goes, maybe at some point in the future I'll reassess things, who knows!

The key thing for me right now is that I'm investing more money than I ever have before, and it's all moving me in the right direction to my goal of becoming financially independent by the time I'm 50.

If you have any thoughts on my investment choices, or anything else about this blog please do let me know in the comments below...

Income, Expenses and Savings catch-up for April - June 2016

2016-08-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

Following on from my last catch-up post which covered my Portfolio Value and Net Worth from April to June, it's time to give a run down on how I've been tracking for my Income, Expenses and Savings rate. I like to track these to keep me on target for achieving my second goal for 2016 which includes the pursuit of Financial Independence.

Income - Apr to Jun 2016

In May I closed my Santander 1|2|3 account and opened a First Direct current account. This means "bye bye" to interest and cashback on direct debits, but "hello" to a nice introductory bonus from First Direct for switching. Since we opened a joint account too we got an introductory bonus for that as well - happy days. The reason for switching was because we've taken out an offset mortgage with First Direct and I wanted to have the money in my current account offsetting the mortgage (TheBF has his current account offsetting against the mortgage in the same way).

I also received some income from the profits on the sale of my house in May, which has gone straight into my Savings Stash to help cover future expenses.

I had more business expenses refunded this month, for business insurance purchased (£327.95). I also transferred funds from Paypal into my current account during June for eBay sales which I made earlier in the year.

My monthly income target (as noted in my FIRE Targets for 2016) is set at £3,332 per month, so I've continued to achieve that through April, May and June. BIG TICK!

Expenses - Apr to Jun 2016

Apologies for the tiny font size in this insert, it's the largest I could make the text while still fitting the whole table in!

Key points of note:

Household expenses were dramatically less in June because we moved house at the end of May and so I had less utility bills for my old house, and not all bills had started for the new one. Things will start to get back to normal in July
My car insurance was due in April which came out of my Savings Stash, but due to the house move I then had to pay more when I changed my registered address. Strangely the insurance is more expensive at our new house than at my old house which was on a busy road near a roundabout
I had some rare spending on clothes in June because I started playing badminton again and realised that I needed new kit to wear (my old sports clothes were long gone)
In April I went to the hairdressers to get my hair coloured and re-styled. Since it's quite expensive at my current salon, I only go about 3 times a year and I save up for it in my Savings Stash. I may try to find a cheaper salon in the coming year
Now that we're in our new house we've had some office and bedroom furniture to purchase. TheBF works from home so it's important that we have an office that he can work from. I have a personal aspiration to start working from home permanently within the next couple of years so I wanted to make sure that I also had a nice desk to base myself at. I used my Savings Stash to cover my portion of this one-off expense, and we're both very happy with the end results
I've begun experimenting with income generating activities since my time off earlier this year. These have involved a certain amount of investment up-front to get me going. The two I've tried so far are Kindle publishing and Matched Betting

SAVINGS STASH VERSUS MONTHLY INCOME
Here's the split of how my expenses were covered from my Savings Stash (highlighted in yellow above) and from my monthly income:

Savings - Apr to Jun 2016
Subtracting my expenses (excluding expenses covered by the Savings Stash) from my income for each month I can see what I've got left to save into my Savings Stash and Freedom Kitty:

So my overall percentages of income saved each month are 48.73%, 64.22% and 77.39% respectively.

In terms of my savings rates into my Freedom Kitty (which will fund me in the 7 years between becoming financially independent at age 50 and being able to withdraw my personal pension at age 57), this is where I feel there is room for the most improvement. April and May were particularly low at 12.93% and 10.51% respectively, I think this is due in large part to going through the house move process where we spent more money on eating out for convenience, as well as various house related expenses.

My 2016 monthly target for savings into my Freedom Kitty is £1,000 per month. I'm pleased that I managed to exceed this target in June, but my monthly average to-date is £839.27 so I have some catching up to do if I'm to successfully meet this target for the year.

My Savings Stash usage looks like this for the 3 months:

So that's a pretty big catch-up, and I think this particular post has taken me the longest to write of all the posts I've done so far! I'm pleased to have done it though because I would like a history of my progress to look back on, as far as I'm concerned it's time well spent.

Do you track income, expenses and savings? If yes, how's it going for the year?

Portfolio Value and Net Worth catch-up - to June 2016

2016-07-25T15:34:00.002-07:00

It's been a while since I last posted one of my regular updates on how my goals or quest for Financial Independence is going. There are various reasons for the delay (yes I know excuses, excuses!):
- I was on a 4 month break from working a full-time contract when I started the blog, so had a lot more free-time available to write. Since the start of June I've been working a full week again
- I've been through the whole house sale and move process, which doesn't end on the day you pick-up the keys to your nice new house. We've been slowly working our way through a mountain of boxes trying to find places to best store everything
- I've been working on some income generating side hustles (kindle publishing and a little dabble with matched betting), which have been taking up a considerable amount of my free time because I'm new to them and learning as I go

All of the above have been impacting my precious free-time and thus the time available to write for this blog. I have missed posting about my progress I must confess, and I also feel guilty at times for letting my posting schedule slip. So I'm going to try to play catch-up on the posts about my finances and my goal progress...though it may be a somewhat slow process, please be patient!

So here's a catch-up post covering my progress toward achieving my second goal for 2016 which includes the pursuit of Financial Independence. This one is about my Portfolio Value and Net Worth for the months April to June 2016.

Portfolio Value - end Jun 2016

My portfolio includes the savings and investments in my Freedom Kitty as well as my Personal Pension, the combination of which make up my "FI Before 50 Roadmap".

FREEDOM KITTY
Here is the end of June value of my Freedom Kitty including the interim valuations for April & May:

After maxing out my contributions to the 2015-2016 ISA in March I could make no further contributions to it. I continued to put savings for my Freedom Kitty aside in my current account during April, May and June, but because I wanted to choose a new ISA provider for the next tax year I did not actually invest during those months (more to follow on this in July's update), so the savings have not been listed here.

As you can see, the end of June value of my ISA was £14,728, which is less than its value when I did my last post in March, and overall down by -£1,282.53 on my original investment. However the value had been much better in May, having increased by £421 on March, but then Brexit happened and everything went wobbly! I'm not too concerned because I can already see improvements during the month of July so things are getting back on track again.

Here's how the Freedom Kitty is tracking for the year - I've set myself a target of £23,000 for this calendar year (Jan-Dec 2016):

At 64.03% I've actually gone backward on the progress I'd made in March (which was at 66.54%), but I have half the year to go and I'm still over 50% of the way toward my Freedom Kitty goal for 2016. With my additional savings to be added in the latter half of the year, and hopefully a bit of a rally for my investments I am optimistic that I will still make my target.

Here's how the Freedom Kitty is tracking against the overall target of £209,590:

A slight drop from 7.3% to 7.03% since March, but I think I should still be able to achieve 10% by the end of the year with a little bit of luck.

PERSONAL PENSION
It's been an interesting few months for my Personal Pension. I decided to instruct my pension provider to cut the employer contributions being made by my Limited Company because of the period of time I was not working (4 months) and therefore not billing for any sales into the business account. Until this point the contributions had been set at £3,000 per month which is a lot to eat away from the company's cashflow, when said cashflow is not being replenished. I asked to drop the amount to £1,000 per month. Unfortunately, despite being advised that it's easy to change the regular contribution amounts when I first began the pension, there have been a few hiccups at the pension provider in making the change so my figures will reflect the sporadic nature of what has ensued! I've been promised that things are now sorted and should be consistent moving forward (not to mention apologised to with flowers and wine!)

So here is the end of June value of my Personal Pension:

Even though my pension contributions have effectively been reduced to £1,000 per month from May, at the moment I am still on target to hit my overall £2,000 per month goal. This is because I have contributed an excess £3,000 across the months of February, March and April. I will need to see how things go later in the year to decide whether I'm brave enough to attempt to change my regular contribution amounts back up to £2,000 (I need a few months of consistent withdrawals by my pension provider for my confidence to be restored!)

Here's how the Personal Pension is tracking for the year - I've set myself a target of £110,000 for this year:

Great progress here since March, I've now got just under 47% of the way to go to hit my pension target for this year.

Here's how the Personal Pension is tracking against the overall target of £364,965:

I've achieved 26.15% of my overall target for my Personal Pension goal, which means I'm now over a quarter of the way there, a really nice milestone for me...happy days!

Net Worth - end Jun 2016

I don't include assets such as car, valuables or house sundries in this calculation - it's really only the big or purely savings items I choose to include. The credit card debt listed is my monthly spend which I always pay off in full each month by direct debit. Following the house sale and purchase we've just been through, my net worth has seen a little dip because I used some of the equity from my house sale to fund my share of the stamp duty for our house purchase. Since March my net worth is down by £5,492.05, but I'm sure it will be on the up again soon as I continue to invest and of course over time we'll be paying our mortgage off which will help.

So at the half-way point through the year, I'm very happy with where my FIRE funds are at. Given that I didn't even have a plan for FIRE at the start of the year I'm really pleased with my progress. I'm looking forward to a strong second half of the year now that the big expense of the house move is complete and I am back in a paying freelance contract - not to mention the income generating side hustles which I've started.

So, I'm interested to hear how you're getting on now that we're over half-way through 2016. Have you seen much impact in your investments as a result of Brexit? Have you been enjoying the unusually hot British weather?! As always I'd love to hear from you and appreciate your comments...

Yes I'm back!

2016-06-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last posted, but fear not I haven't abandoned my blog - I've simply been moving house and have had no broadband until yesterday. I think it will take me a while to get back on track with my posts and I may have to do a consolidated catch-up post to get up-to-date with my finances, but the main thing is I'm back!

A historical day
This morning I set my alarm to get up at 5am to catch the last of the EU referendum results for whether Britain would vote to remain or leave. I have to confess I wasn't expecting the result as it's turned out, we will evidently be leaving the EU. A couple of things have struck me as the last results have come in...

We're now entering a period of very uncertain financial times - the truth is no-one really knows what will happen next and this is reflected in the immediate turmoil in the world markets - notably with the GB pound down 10% at the last reckoning. It will be interesting over the coming hours, days and weeks to see whether this is a temporary wobble due to the immediate shock of the result, or if this is a sign of things to come for the UK.

The other thing that I find deeply saddening is that this historical decision looks like it could end the UK union as we know it, with both Scotland and Northern Ireland calling for referendums to leave the UK and stay in the EU. It looks like the Great Britain I have grown up in could be about to change forever.

I also feel sorry for any of those from the EU currently in the UK who must now be feeling pretty unwelcome and worried for their future - particularly those who have been here many years and are an integral part of our communities. For my part I would just like to say that as far as I am concerned you are still very much welcome and I hope that anyone here in this country will be permitted to stay.

As the weeks ahead unfold who knows what else will happen - perhaps this will signal the end of David Cameron's reign, perhaps other countries in the EU will call for their own referendums, perhaps the UK will enter a recession, perhaps my savings and investments will bottom out for a while, perhaps interest rates will rise (glad we just locked in our mortgage rates for a while!), perhaps there'll be a run on the banks or we'll see some large financial institutions collapsing - financial armageddon?!, or perhaps things will stabilise much quicker than anticipated and things will trundle along much as they ever have...

I certainly will be following with great interest the developments that this historical decision has caused, and I hope that things are not going to be as bad as some have predicted, but instead as good as the Leave campaign have predicted...

More news
Following on from my previous post where I updated that we had exchanged contracts on the purchase of our new home, I can now proudly declare that we have moved in to our beautiful new home! The big move date was on 26th May and I have to say the move itself went very smoothly, much to the credit of family and friends who so kindly helped with our move.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, we have been without broadband since that date because the landline had been stopped by the previous owners and it takes about 4 weeks to get the landline reinstated in a new name so that a broadband provider can then be selected. We have both dearly missed our sturdy internet access! We did have limited internet capabilities through our mobile phone data packages, but it's certainly made me realise how many things we have that require wifi to operate, and how much data we actually use month to month. TheBF works from home so having a stable and robust internet connection is key for us.

Unpacked boxes waiting to be disposed

It's often said that moving house is one of the most stressful things a person will do in their life. So despite going through 2 house sales and a house purchase and move, I decided that this wasn't enough for me and that it was time to rejoin working life! Just one week after our move I started a new contract working on a project in an IT department for a company involved in Retail. It's a position which effectively requires a full-time week of hours so my free time is significantly impacted. This poses challenges on several levels, I will need to be very good at managing how I split my time across unpacking boxes, setting up home, writing this blog, working on income generating side hustles, catching up on reading all the blog posts I've missed, and of course leaving some time for sport and hobbies.

Getting back to normality
So now it's time to settle in and get into some sort of routine where I can hopefully fit in everything that I would like to do. One of our first challenges is putting all the furniture that's still displaced around the new house into the rooms where it will eventually reside, and of course unpack and dispose of the many, many boxes still waiting to be unpacked in pretty much every room of the house! Please be patient with me while I endeavour to return to normal, my posts may be a bit sporadic for a while but I am trying!

More boxes - waiting to be unpacked!

In the meantime, do tell me what's been going on with you?
I'm also interested to hear your thoughts on the EU referendum result - the UK was clearly split on the vote, obviously slightly in favour of "leave" - it's really interesting to hear thoughts from the different perspectives, I'd like to try to keep an open mind on these things...

Busy times

2016-05-13T15:18:00.000-07:00

Time for a quick update post to let everyone know that I am still alive and very much here! I'm sorry for the slow-down in posts over the last week or two, but there is good reason with some breaking news...

TheBF and I have finally exchanged contracts TODAY on our new house!

That's a giant step toward achieving my number 1 goal for the year! We are both incredibly happy, particularly because the journey to this point has been fraught with problems and stresses. There were several times over the last few weeks when we thought that the chain we were in would collapse and our dream home would disappear from our grasp. Luckily, the stars appeared to align today (despite it being Friday 13th!) and the contracts were finally exchanged.

In the UK, the key part of the house sale/purchase process is the exchange of contracts, with the completion date following either on the same day or within the days/weeks thereafter. In our case, we now have a completion date just under 2 weeks from our exchange date (near the end of May), so now we're going to be very busy packing, boxing everything up and moving our things into storage ahead of the big move day.

As well as doing a lot of chasing with Solicitors and Estate Agents and packing over the past days and weeks, I've also been working on a side hustle which is new to me - I'm having a go at Kindle publishing and this has also been taking a lot of my time. Hopefully I'll be getting my first books published soon and will see whether my hard work has paid off in getting some returns on my investment. I will keep you all posted!

As soon as I am able I will be back to "usual business" with my blog posts, I have 1 update post for March still to post (about how I invested my money in March) as well as all of my posts for the month of April. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am still here and will be raring to go again once the house move is complete.

Income, Expenses and Savings for March

2016-04-26T15:43:00.001-07:00

Each month I publish the following regular progress updates toward achieving my second goal for 2016 which includes the pursuit of Financial Independence:
1. Portfolio Value and Net Worth as it stood at the end of the previous month
2. Income, Expenses and Savings achieved for the previous month
3. My Investing Choice for the previous month's savings

This post covers point 2 above: Income, Expenses and Savings achieved.

Income - Mar 2016

This is likely to be the last month I'll benefit from cashback for my direct debits from the Santander 1|2|3 account* (£12.10), because I'm changing banks in order that money in my current account can be offset against our new mortgage as we move house.

It's another nice month for interest at £37.53 which is due to the fact that I had the profit from my flat sale sat in my account until it was transferred to my ISA.

Income was further supplemented by an expense that I'd previously forgotten to withdraw from my Company account to cover costs associated with office working from home (£208). I also sold my fitbit on Ebay in February and withdrew the money from my Paypal account in March.

My monthly income target (as noted in my FIRE Targets for 2016) is set at £3,332 per month, which I've easily managed to achieve with £256.30 to spare - mostly thanks to the business expense repayment.

* The Santander 1|2|3 account offers 3% AER (variable) interest when the balance on the account is above £3,000 (on balances up to £20,000) as well as cash back for selected monthly direct debits (1% for water, council tax and Santander mortgage; 2% for gas & electricity; 3% for mobile, phone, tv & broadband). More details and the terms and conditions about the product are available on the Santander website. This is not a referral or affiliate link, this is provided purely for information purposes only.

Expenses - Mar 2016

Points of note this month:

No council tax again because it's paid over 10 months rather than 12 by direct debit (not sure why, Councils seem to work it out this way for some reason)
I needed to pay the garage to fix and replace some of the wheel bolts on my car this month - I discovered they'd gone bad when I took my car to have the tyre replaced due to a flat a couple of months ago, this is exactly the sort of thing my Savings Stash is for (phew!)
My grocery bill was about £100 more in March than I spent in February, I need to keep an eye on this moving forward - it would be nice to try to keep this cost down a bit if I can. Part of the reason for the extra cost was because I hosted a Ladies Dinner and Film evening at mine, this is a monthly thing I do with 4 of my family/friends, so every 5-6 months it's my turn to host
March was a busier month for me entertainment wise, we took Mum out for a nice Mother's Day lunch, I had a trip to Cardiff visiting a friend and I went out for St. Patrick's Day with friends
My Savings Stash covers birthday and Easter expenses. I also used it to get a certificate for my gas appliances which I needed for my house sale
My cash spend was the same as last month at £40

SAVINGS STASH VERSUS MONTHLY INCOME
Here's the split of how my expenses were covered from my Savings Stash (highlighted in yellow above) and from my monthly income:

Savings - Mar 2016
Subtracting my March expenses (excluding expenses covered by the Savings Stash) from my income for the month I can see what I've got left to save into my Savings Stash and Freedom Kitty:

The overall percentage of my income I've been able to save is 50.01%, that feels like a pretty solid savings rate again this month.

As I mentioned last month, the savings rate I'm really interested in is the amount going into the Freedom Kitty which is what will fund me in the 7 years between becoming financially independent at age 50 and being able to withdraw my personal pension at age 57. At 26.47% the Freedom Kitty rate is lower than I achieved last month (31.46%), but I'm not going to worry about it too much because I was only £50 short of my £1,000 monthly target for savings into my Freedom Kitty.

My Savings Stash usage looks like this for the month:

As well as the usual money in and out, I decided to shift some of my emergency funds from the Savings Stash to my Freedom Kitty so that I could take full advantage of my ISA allowance for the 2015/2016 tax year, you can see this reflected in the table as the £1,123 out.

Well, after my second month of tracking my income, expenses and savings rate I'm feeling pretty pleased with how things are going. On the whole I think I've managed to keep my expenses reasonably low (low for my normal spend rate anyway) and now that I have made a plan for how to get to FI it's really nice to document how I'm getting on with achieving it on this blog.

Did you have any last minute dashes to shift money around for the tax year end? Did you fill your ISA allowance? This is the very first year I've ever filled my ISA allowance and I have to say, it feels good!

Portfolio Value and Net Worth - March 2016

2016-04-19T05:30:00.000-07:00

Each month I publish the following regular progress updates toward achieving my second goal for 2016 which includes the pursuit of Financial Independence:
1. Portfolio Value and Net Worth as it stood at the end of the previous month
2. Income, Expenses and Savings achieved for the previous month
3. My Investing Choice for the previous month's savings

This post covers point 1 above: Portfolio Value and Net Worth at the end of March 2016.

Portfolio Value - end Mar 2016

My portfolio includes the savings and investments in my Freedom Kitty as well as my Personal Pension, the combination of which make up my "FI Before 50 Roadmap".

FREEDOM KITTY
Here is the end of month value of my Freedom Kitty:

As you can see the total amount I'd invested into my Freedom Kitty by the end of Feb was £1,200. In March with the ISA year end looming I managed to contribute a whopping £14,810.53 in order to max out my ISA allowance for the year.

The reason I was able to do this was because I sold my flat (which I had owned since 1999) earlier this year and I made some profit (after putting aside money to cover what I anticipate will be the capital gains tax liability). I have had the money from the flat sale sat in my current account while I decided whether I would likely need it for my upcoming house purchase with TheBF. As we progressed through March it became evident to me that I should be able to use some of the money to pump into my ISA without causing us any problems with the house purchase (mostly because we're using our mortgage to cover up-front costs).

I'd also not yet invested the money I'd saved for the Freedom Kitty in January and February so these contributed to the figure. So the money I was able to put into my ISA in March broke down as follows:

Flat sale profit - £12,135.00
Savings from January - £678.78
Savings from February - £1,048.22
Savings from March - £948.53
TOTAL - £14,810.53

Within the 2015/2016 tax year I have paid a total of £16,010.53 into my St. James Place ISA. The ISA allowance for the year is £15,240, which means that the up-front fees for my ISA came to £770.53, which looks to be an initial fee of 5%. I don't yet have a benchmark to compare this up-front fee against, but I will certainly be paying a lot more attention to both up-front fees and ongoing fund fees from now on.

Due to the up-front fee, the current value of my ISA is less than the total amount I have invested by -£706.53, I'm hoping to see this deficit disappear over the course of the coming year, but who knows what may happen!

I have decided to consider an alternative ISA provider for the 2016/2017 tax year, so I've got some research to do in order to pick a good one!

Here's how the Freedom Kitty is tracking for the year - I've set myself a target of £23,000 for this calendar year (Jan-Dec 2016):

At 66.54%, I'm now about two thirds of the way to achieving my Freedom Kitty goal for 2016 with 9 months still to go. Though of course I have been helped along the way to this target by the money from my flat sale.

Here's how the Freedom Kitty is tracking against the overall target of £209,590:

It's particularly satisfying to see the percentage for my overall Freedom Kitty target shoot up from 0.54% to 7.3%. With 9 years 3 months to go until my desired FIRE date, I think this is a healthy percentage to be at. If I can manage 10% of the way to the £209,590 target by the end of the year I'll be very happy.

PERSONAL PENSION
Here is the end of month value of my Personal Pension:

In March the monthly pension contribution from my business account was £3,000 again. This is great because my monthly target is £2,000. As I mentioned last month, I'm not currently working on a contract so there's no income into my business account due in March. I've decided to postpone starting a new contract until after we've moved house, which means it's likely that my business account will not have any sales income until August. For this reason I have asked my financial advisor to reduce my company's pension contributions to £1,000 per month with this change taking effect in May. However, for now at least, I'm ahead of schedule for achieving my pension contributions target this year.

Here's how the Personal Pension is tracking for the year - I've set myself a target of £110,000 for this year:

I've got about 65% of the way still to go to hit my pension target for this year. My ability to achieve this target looks like it will really hinge on how soon I secure a work contract after our house move.

Here's how the Personal Pension is tracking against the overall target of £364,965:

I've achieved 24.59% of my overall target for my Personal Pension goal, next month I should hit a nice milestone of 25%, and that will feel good!

Net Worth - end Mar 2016

Goals progress update for March

2016-04-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

Here is my monthly progress update where I provide a review on how I'm getting on with my goals for 2016. This post is reporting on my progress as things stood at the end of March this year.

1. Experience the joy, satisfaction and contentment of living with my partner (TheBF) for the first time

Accepting suitable offers for the sale of my house and TheBF's house, with both proceeding to sale completion - Following on from the disappointment of losing the buyer for my house in February, I quickly got it back on the market. It's quite hard work having people coming round to view the house as I always feel I need to run round beforehand tidying and cleaning! Within a few days of my house being back up for sale I had 3 appointments to view booked in, and in just over a week of relisting the house I'd accepted a new offer. Things have moved swiftly since then, the survey has already been carried out by my buyer's mortgage company and the sale is now progressing nicely. TheBF's sale is also proceeding to plan, the mortgage has been approved for his buyers and the survey is booked to take place in April

Finding a new house to buy with TheBF which meets all our purchase criteria
- In early March we were house hunting in earnest. Initially we focussed our efforts on viewings in a neighbouring town about a 40 minute drive from where I currently live. As we reached the point where we were ready to put an offer on a house, I realised that my heart was really yearning to stay in my hometown and I had a bit of a "wobble" moment. It seemed no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get excited about moving somewhere that far away (even though I know for many people this is not far at all), and there were a few teary moments (on my part!) as TheBF and I had a heart-to-heart. Luckily for me I have the best boyfriend ever, I am so thankful to have such an understanding and caring partner, and we swiftly refocussed our efforts closer to home.

So I'm delighted to share the news that we have now found our dream home in my hometown! We entered negotiations with the vendor and agreed a purchase price, so all that is left now is for the purchase process to go ahead alongside the sale of our 2 houses. I think it will probably be a couple of months before we actually complete and make the move - but this goal is WELL on the way for 2016 and I couldn't be happier

2. Gain the freedom to choose what I use my time for, removing the necessity of doing work that does not inspire me simply because it pays the bills

Pursuing financial independence - On target...

~~Create a 2016 financial plan/budget [by February 29th 2016]~~ {PREVIOUSLY DONE}
~~Create a "FI before 50 Roadmap" containing steps I need to take to become Financially Independent before the age of 50 [by March 31st 2016]~~ {PREVIOUSLY DONE}
- Both of the above plans can be found here
Follow the 2016 financial plan/budget - Mostly achieved for March. Detailed Income, Expenses & Savings breakdowns will follow in upcoming posts - only the headline figures are noted here.

Income wise, it was a really strong month, helped by the welcome news from my accountants that I had not yet claimed back my expenses for home-based office work, I was really pleased about that. My target monthly income is £3,332 which I achieved and actually managed a little bit extra (£256.30 more than target).

My overall target for monthly savings is £3,000, breaking down into targets of £1,000 for the Freedom Kitty (I achieved £949.69) and £2,000 for the Personal Pension (I achieved £3,000). This means I've exceeded my overall savings target by £949.69, but the split of how I achieved this was slightly unbalanced compared to my plans. It's important for me to save into my Freedom Kitty because this is what's going to enable me to stop working earlier than my pension retirement age of 57 - it needs to be big enough to support me for 7 years

Researching alternative options for spending my time which could eventually help to replace my current mode of work

Create and maintain a blog site to track my goals and interact with the online community

~~Research suitable blog site & how to use it, and set-up blog~~ {PREVIOUSLY DONE}
Deliver at least 1 post per week on average - Achieved for March! I published 5 posts which means I'm still on target for achieving an average of 1 per week since I started the blog

Research new alternative sources of repeat income

Generate at least £1 this year from a new source of regular income - I didn't receive any new income in March. I did however spend time investigating how kindle publishing works as well as reading about matched betting on Richard's blog (Live Happy Save More).

3. Become a better person by the end of the year, than I was at the start of it.
Can be measured in terms of knowledge & skills gained, health & fitness improved, relationships circle expanded & strengthened, internal beliefs challenged & reviewed, positive habits created

Completing a personal development challenge with my sister (100 day challenge or something similar) - Following on from last month's update, my sister and I have now set a date to work together through the daily practices in The Magic* by Rhonda Byrne. We start on April 1st and will finish on April 28th. During March we set-up a board using Trello ready for us to track our daily progress and share thoughts. Trello is a great tool to easily do this and best of all it's free!

Reading at least 6 new books - With a little bit of extra reading time required on the last day of March I managed to finish my first new book of the year The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich* by Timothy Ferriss. I really enjoyed this book and it was a real eye-opener for me - it is possible to break away from a 9-5 office job and earn a good income with less time and effort required. I can see though that to achieve this I need to put in effort up-front to get set-up with a product and business process that will allow me to earn from it with very little effort on my part. I'm hoping to be able to put some, if not all of my learnings from this book into practice. I'll assess my effectiveness in doing this, based on whether I'm writing my blog from a beach in the Caribbean or from my office at home this time next year ha ha!

In terms of my reading goal for the year, I'm a little behind where I need to be, but I know with the Magic Challenge that I'll be finishing my second book in April so I should be back on track by then.

Losing 10lbs in weight by the end of July and maintaining the weight loss through till the end of the year through good diet and exercise

Unfortunately I made no progress with my weight loss in March - not helped by the fact that the Easter Bunny brought a fair bit of chocolate! I review my goals every day and the fact that I've not found motivation to get going with this goal has been bothering me a lot. So I spent some time in March investigating options which might help me such as Weight Watchers (which I've used successfully before), Slimming World and calorie counting style diets. I've pretty much concluded that a menu plan of my own choosing will be the best option for me, because I can make it flexible, plus I really don't want to have to spend money on a diet group. So I'm working on a personalised plan to get me going and I've also started indoor running for 20 minutes on most weekdays. Let's see if I have more to report in April!

Going on at least 12 planned "date nights" with TheBF in 2016 - we've been pretty busy this past month with the house sale and purchase process, so it's not really been the right time to plan any big dates. However, we have done two very fun date nights which practically organised themselves.

We went to watch Speedway Racing thanks to receiving complimentary tickets (TheBF belongs to a biker group where the tickets were offered in the forum). INTERESTING FACT: Speedway bikes have no brakes and 500cc engines which can accelerate faster than a Formula 1 car to 60 mph! It was a really good night, particularly when we were given the opportunity to go and watch two of the races from the centre of the track.

Our second date night was at Festival Hall in London where we saw one of our favourite comedians Dave Gorman. We watch his show on the TV channel "Dave" called Modern Life is Goodish, it's definitely my kind of humour, particularly with his powerpoint slides!

So I think I'm going to consider these 2 dates as progress toward this goal (even though I didn't specifically arrange them) since they were so good, and at the end of the day, the reason I set this goal was because I thought it would be fun for us to do some new things we hadn't done before - and these were definitely new!
{DONE AT END OF MARCH: 5 dates}

Going on a family holiday to France where I can spend quality time with TheBF, my parents, my sister, brother-in-law and niece - we'll be doing this in August

Researching and booking a mini-cruise with family - I've put my research into mini-cruise options on hold while TheBF and I are focussing on our house move. It doesn't feel like the right time to be arranging or booking any trips. I should be able to get back to this later in the year

Introducing a routine of regular meditation

By the end of the year, I will be meditating a minimum of 3 times per week
- In March I started to introduce doing a morning routine every week-day. There's various things I do as part of the routine, one of which is at least 10 minutes of meditation. I have been experimenting with different guided meditations on YouTube, here are a couple of my favourites:

Meditation For Beginners - Learn To Meditate

Positive Thinking Meditation: Endorphin Meditation with Positive Affirmations

This goal is definitely on target, in fact I exceeded the "3 times per week" target in March

Offering tips, support and conversation online through my blog, social media accounts and getting involved in the FI and Personal Development communities - I've signed up to the emails or feeds of the FIRE blogs I've found so far that I like to read. I try to get some reading in every day and I enjoy participating in the conversations in the comments if I find I have something to say

Offering tips, support and help offline through any face-to-face opportunities should they arise, (meet-ups, coaching, training, speaking engagements) - In March I attended my first FIRE Escape meet, arranged by Huw at Financially Free by Forty. For anyone who hasn't been to one of these yet, if you're in any way interested in Financial Independence, Retiring Early or just talking about money, ways to increase income and save I would highly recommend it. Everyone was very welcoming and friendly, and it gave me an opportunity to find out how other people approach the same goal as me, we were able to share tips and experiences. There should be two further FIRE Escape weekends later this year and I'm hoping that they'll be on weekends that I'm free as I definitely plan to go along again

Supporting my chosen charities through a spread of donations totalling £350 this year - as at the end of March I've donated £95.52 to my chosen charities. I need to be saving £87.50 per quarter to achieve this goal, so I'm ahead of where I need to be, I think I'll easily end up donating more than £350 this year

So it's the end of quarter 1 already, 2016 seems to be flying by. I'm very happy with my goals progress to-date. I think my biggest achievement so far this year has actually been taking the plunge and setting this blog up! I'm looking forward to tracking and achieving more of my goals in the rest of the year and sharing my progress with you.

How has the first quarter of 2016 gone for you? Is it just me, or do you think that this year has gone really quickly so far? I wish you well in your endeavours for the rest of the year, and would love to hear from you if you feel like leaving a comment...

How I invested my savings from February

2016-04-02T11:16:00.001-07:00

Each month I will be publishing the following regular progress updates toward achieving my second goal for 2016 which includes the pursuit of Financial Independence:
1. Portfolio Value and Net Worth as it stood at the end of the previous month
2. Income, Expenses and Savings achieved for the previous month
3. My Investing Choice for the previous month's savings

This post covers point 3 above: My investing choice.

Freedom Kitty Investment - Feb 2016

As I discussed in my Income, Expenses and Savings update I was able to save £1,048.22 toward my Freedom Kitty for February 2016.

Last year I decided that I wanted to have a stocks and shares ISA even if I was only able to invest a small amount into it, so since July 2015 I've been saving £150 per month into an ISA with St. James Place. With the tax year end fast approaching I decided that the best place to put my hard earned savings from February would be into this ISA - anything I can do to max out the ISA for the 2015-2016 tax year would be a good idea.

However, while I took time to decide where to put the money, as well as deciding what to do with some profit I made on the recent sale of my flat (which completed in January) I didn't get chance to invest the money during February. Therefore you will see when I publish my investing post for March how much I finally managed to transfer into my ISA before tax year end (essentially the sum of my savings from February, March and the profit from my flat) as well as the fund choice.

Sorry it's not much of an update about my investing for February, but since I have committed to providing 3 regular progress updates per month on my financial independence goal I felt it was important to be consistent and publish the 3rd post for February anyway (even though the detail will really be coming in March).

Personal Pension Investment - Feb 2016

In February my Personal Pension received a regular contribution from my Business Account of £3,000. My Personal Pension is held with St. James Place. Previously I'd had 3 different pension accounts which I'd accumulated from working at different places where a workplace pension was provided, so I chose St. James Place to consolidate these (a process I began back in February 2015).

One of the reasons I chose St. James Place (SJP) is because I don't know a thing about investing (or at least I didn't at the time of my decision!) and so I was looking for somewhere with a Financial Advisor I felt I could trust. Since my parents had held their pensions with SJP and were very happy with how their affairs had been handled it seemed a sensible decision to follow suit. I had previously sat in on some of their meetings with their financial advisor to make sure I was happy that everything was being done as I felt it should be (although I'm no expert, I have worked at a Pensions company in my past, and I felt I knew a bit more than my parents so could let them know if I felt anything didn't feel right!) I like that you get assigned a financial advisor who will always be your contact, and they will come out to see you at a place and time that's convenient for you several times a year (on an as-needed basis). So far I have been very happy with the SJP product and service, though it's a bit early to tell how well the investment will do.

Since I have a financial advisor at SJP he ascertains my propensity to accept risk, and selects the best investment options on that basis. The approximate split for the current allocation of my contributions is as follows (I've included links to the fund factsheets on Trustnet):

SJP Global Equity - 15%
SJP Schroder Managed - 15%
SJP Strategic Income - 15%
SJP Strategic Managed - 15%
SJP AXA Framlington Managed Pension - 15%
SJP Multi Asset - 15%
SJP Global Managed - 10%

Do you use a Financial Advisor or Company to invest with or do you undertake your own investing? If you self-invest, I'm interested to know how you first learned the basics of how to do it, and how you found the process of investing in the early days.
Do let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts...

How I got on with my goals in February

2016-03-24T13:16:00.001-07:00

Here is the first of my monthly updates where I provide a review on how I'm getting on with my goals for 2016. This post is reporting on my progress as things stood at the end of February this year.

1. Experience the joy, satisfaction and contentment of living with my partner (TheBF) for the first time

Accepting suitable offers for the sale of my house and TheBF's house, with both proceeding to sale completion - We received an offer for the asking price on TheBF's house so that's fantastic. I accepted an offer on my house, only to find out a week later that my buyer's house sale (without which they could not proceed to purchase mine) had fallen through. So 1 out of 2 properties on the way to being sold by the end of Feb. It's progress but with 1 step forward 2 back it seems!

Finding a new house to buy with TheBF which meets all our purchase criteria
- We have not found a house to buy yet, but by the end of February we were hunting in earnest and had several viewings lined up

2. Gain the freedom to choose what I use my time for, removing the necessity of doing work that does not inspire me simply because it pays the bills

Pursuing financial independence - Good progress on this one...

~~Create a 2016 financial plan/budget [by February 29th 2016]~~ {DONE}
~~Create a "FI before 50 Roadmap" containing steps I need to take to become Financially Independent before the age of 50 [by March 31st 2016]~~ {DONE} - both of these plans can be found here
Follow the 2016 financial plan/budget - Achieved for February! My target income per month is £3,332 and somehow I managed to hit this with 8p to spare (£3332.08). Target savings were £1,000 into the Freedom Kitty (I achieved £1,048.22) and £2,000 into the Personal Pension (I achieved a whopping £3,000). So I over-achieved on both of these!

Researching alternative options for spending my time which could eventually help to replace my current mode of work

Create and maintain a blog site to track my goals and interact with the online community

~~Research suitable blog site & how to use it, and set-up blog~~ {PREVIOUSLY DONE}
Deliver at least 1 post per week on average - Achieved for February! Even though I started the blog on 12th February I managed to publish 4 posts, so ahead of the game ever so slightly on this one

Research new alternative sources of repeat income

Generate at least £1 this year from a new source of regular income - I've not managed to get any new forms of income yet, though I have been doing some research into possible income sources

3. Become a better person by the end of the year, than I was at the start of it. Can be measured in terms of knowledge & skills gained, health & fitness improved, relationships circle expanded & strengthened, internal beliefs challenged & reviewed, positive habits created

Completing a personal development challenge with my sister (100 day challenge or something similar) - My sister bought a book for me called The Magic* by Rhonda Byrne this month. I've previously read her book and watched the DVD of The Secret* which I found fascinating, it really changed my outlook on life, particularly with the insights into the power of positive thinking. My sister tells me that The Magic includes a 28 day programme to follow so this is likely to be our challenge for this year - still to be decided!

Reading at least 6 new books - Until this year I've been really lapse at reading books. This year I'm trying to read a minimum of 15 minutes per day. My first book for the year is The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich* by Timothy Ferriss. I'm about half way through it at the end of February, so a little behind target but hopefully I can catch up over the coming months

Losing 10lbs in weight by the end of July and maintaining the weight loss through till the end of the year through good diet and exercise - I'm afraid I've failed fairly spectacularly at this goal so far, I've just not been giving the pursuit of weight loss my due attention. This needs to change! I'm hoping to pull some motivation out of the bag for March

Going on at least 12 planned "date nights" with TheBF in 2016 - so far this year (by the end of Feb) I've arranged 2 date nights. The first was a trip to the cinema to see the latest Star Wars film followed by a cheeky dinner at Nandos, the second was to the Tamworth Snowdome where we had dinner and then went tobogganing - so much fun! We've also done a third date night which TheBF arranged where we went for cocktails at the casino then to the cinema to see Deadpool (which I'd highly recommend if you haven't seen it already)

Going on a family holiday to France where I can spend quality time with TheBF, my parents, my sister, brother-in-law and niece - this is now booked for the summer, looking forward to it already!

Researching and booking a mini-cruise with family - I made a start researching mini-cruise options, and started a spreadsheet to keep a "possible" list. However I've not completed this and still need to discuss with family whether they even want to go on one!

Introducing a routine of regular meditation

By the end of the year, I will be meditating a minimum of 3 times per week - Since I've not been in a contract during February I've had more time on my hands, so I've made a start with meditating but it's not up to 3 times a week yet. I've been using guided meditations on spotify and youtube as I find this works best for me

Offering tips, support and conversation online through my blog, social media accounts and getting involved in the FI and Personal Development communities - I've set-up a twitter account for Organised Redhead (@OrganisedRed) to allow me to follow the stories of others, I'm also building up a reading list of FIRE blogs I like to visit where I will be endeavouring to be an active participant in the conversations that take place in the comments sections

Offering tips, support and help offline through any face-to-face opportunities should they arise, (meet-ups, coaching, training, speaking engagements) - I didn't have any particular opportunities to help anyone "offline" in February - though in January before I finished my last contract I did help coach a couple of fellow colleagues with their respective plans for buying a first home and getting out of debt

Supporting my chosen charities through a spread of donations totalling £350 this year - I'm on target to achieve this goal, I've donated £63.68 by the close of February. Most of my donations are automated so this goal should almost complete itself by the end of the year

And that's it for my February update! Overall I feel good about the progress I'm making. Since moving home this year is such a big endeavour, my primary focus will be spent on achieving that. Hopefully later in the year I'll have more time to focus on the other goals to try to get as many DONE as I can.

Did you make goals for 2016? If yes, how are doing with them? There'll be another goals update soon for how I got on in March [*spoiler* there's some news to report on the house move front!]

Featuring on Canadian Budget Binder

2016-03-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

Today The Organised Redhead is appearing in the Making a Difference (MAD) feature on Canadian Budget Binder. Every Saturday Making a Difference showcases a personal finance blogger, this could be from anywhere around the world.

If you have a personal finance blog and would like to be featured you can contact Mr. CBB and he will explain the process to you.

Please do check out my "MAD" feature HERE (it's just over half way down the page) and indeed the rest of Mr. CBB's great site.

Introducing my new feature: Life's Simple Pleasures

2016-03-17T04:47:00.000-07:00

I'm a firm believer that happiness can be found in the little things in life. From time to time I'm going to be featuring reflections on life's simple pleasures as part of my blog. My personal view is that when we focus our attention on appreciating these small things, we can experience a more peaceful, contented and ultimately happy life.

I do hope that you agree and perhaps can find happiness or inspiration from the little things I showcase here.

Oh and I'd absolutely love to include your simple pleasures as part of this feature! Please let me know if you have an idea that I can share and I will happily include your guest post, or even write about your idea if you'd prefer not to do a post yourself.

The key here is that no thing is too small! Anything goes!

So without further ado, here is my simple pleasure I'm delighted to share with you today...

Have you ever pondered the great delight that a hot drink can bestow?

Call me British, but for me my simplest and happiest of pleasures is in drinking a wonderful cup of tea. The most uplifting hot drink of the day for me is that very first cup of tea in the morning. I pop the kettle on, make my brew, feel the steam rising onto my face, and take my first, long sip - it's almost impossible for me to do this without saying "aaaahhhhhh" afterward, and I always experience a feeling of utter bliss as I relish that moment of complete contentment.

For some, the drink may be a steaming hot coffee, be it latte, cappuccino, flat white, or espresso to name a few. For others still, a hot water adorned with lemon, lime or orange. Then of course there's the delights of hot chocolate or malted drinks such as Horlicks and Ovaltine (other brands are available!). Seasonal drinks such as mulled wine, mulled cider or gluvine are yet more examples of the wonders of heated beverages which can light up (and heat up) our lives.

If you think about it, hot drinks are there for us through the many ups and downs in our lives. During the darkest and saddest of times, when people come together to support each other, one of the common denominators that people can bond over is the desire to pop the kettle on and share thoughts over a cup of tea or mug of coffee. A good strong coffee has brought many a student through a late night vigil endeavouring to meet an assignment deadline. A very British "High Tea" has become a social phenomenon that people use to celebrate any number of special events - I've attended these for baby showers, hen do's and indeed my very own 40th birthday celebration last year. Then of course there's the after dinner coffee, a perfect close to many a social occasion such as weddings, anniversaries or just dinner out of an evening.

A few years back (2011 to be precise) I watched a highly entertaining television series: "The drink that speaks for modern Britain". I loved watching as James May and Ozzie Clarke travelled all over the British Isles visiting vineyards, distilleries and breweries sampling the drinks on offer with lots of laughs along the way. As their adventure drew to a close they sat outside their caravan discussing all the drinks they'd sampled, trying to decide what the winner should be. It feels quite apt to finish this article using the words of James May as the program drew to a close...

James May:
“Do you know what I think? I think there is one drink that genuinely invigorates this nation. It allows no hindrance to its enjoyment on the basis of class, or race, or education, or income, or geographical location. It gets things done, it’s something that unites the people of this nation, and it’s something that other nations in the world simply don’t get. There is one drink. Do you know what it is?

Oz Clarke:
“Tea”

James May:
“It’s a cup of tea isn’t it? A cup of tea is the drink that speaks for modern Britain."

Can a mug of hot coffee, or a nice cup of tea bring you the same pleasure as it does me? Do you have a simple pleasure you'd like to be featured? Please let me know in the comments or using the Contact form in the right hand sidebar...

Income, Expenses and Savings for February

2016-03-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

Income - Feb 2016

I work as a freelancer (in project management within the I.T. industry). This involves carrying out contracts for my customers which tend on average to range from 3 to 12 months in duration. I operate through a Limited Company and invoice my clients on a monthly basis, who then send payment to the Limited Company's business bank account usually 1 month after being invoiced. I then receive a monthly salary from the business account, supplemented by dividends based on current profits.

At present the only other regular income streams I have are interest on my current account (the Santander 1|2|3 Account) and cash back for certain* direct debit payments made from that account. I'm particularly keen to find and experiment with new sources of income this year, so hopefully I'll have more to report on this in the coming months.

In January I sold my flat which had been vacant for some time and I'd been paying all the utility bills. The power company sent me a refund in February for the amount I'd overpaid by at the point of the account closure, so I've classed this as income.

Looking at my FIRE Targets for 2016, I'd specified a personal income target of £3,332 per month. I'm not kidding! I can't quite believe it, but I've pretty much hit that target on the nose for this month and I have to say I'm delighted with that.

* The Santander 1|2|3 account offers 3% AER (variable) interest when the balance on the account is above £3,000 (on balances up to £20,000) as well as cash back for selected monthly direct debits (1% for water, council tax and Santander mortgage; 2% for gas & electricity; 3% for mobile, phone, tv & broadband). More details and the terms and conditions about the product are available on the Santander website. This is not a referral or affiliate link, this is provided purely for information purposes only.

Expenses - Feb 2016

Just taking a look at the list a few thoughts spring to mind:

No council tax this month. This is because the direct debit scheme calculates over 10 months not 12, with no payments in February and March
One of my two cats was ill requiring 3 trips to the vets resulting in a spend of £202.42 ouch! Luckily I have a Savings Stash which paid for this (see below) and he's now fully recovered, poor thing
Holidays & Trips - I really enjoy reading the Financially Free By 40 site. Huw who writes the blog arranges 3 weekend meet-ups a year for like minded UK individuals and calls these "FIRE Escapes". I decided to go along to the next one for 1 night hence the £32. I've also got a friend's 30th weekend coming up in April which needed to be paid for this month. I've helped arrange some of the transport for this and one of the ladies is paying me her train cost in March (£27.10) so I'll see this returned as income next month!
It's really important to me to send birthday & anniversary cards/gifts. It's something that I've always done and am hoping I'll be able to continue doing while still being able to achieve my desired savings rate. This year I decided to get REALLY organised and make a list of all the cards I need for the rest of the year and buy them all in one go to take advantage of multi-buy savings. I spent £53.38 on this which felt like a lot of money for cards, but this would have cost a lot more if I bought cards on an ad hoc basis throughout the year
I've enlisted a conveyancer for my house sale (which unfortunately is stalled at present, more on that in an upcoming post), and this required a £50 payment for initial costs
The majority of my spending is paid using my cash-back credit cards, hence it's really easy for me to work out my expenses at the end of each month. However I do still like to make sure I always have a small amount of cash in my purse (normally £10 or less) and I don't always remember to note down what this gets spent on. I will try to be better at this in future months, but £40 doesn't feel too bad - I suspect I probably bought dinner one night with some of it!

SAVINGS STASH
For many years I've had a system where I put aside an amount of money each month to cover future bills and expenses (to help prevent nasty surprises further down the line which could risk putting me in debt). The expenses highlighted in yellow fall under the categories covered by my "Savings Stash", whereas the rest of the expenses are simply covered by my monthly income. The totals for this break-down as follows:

Savings - Feb 2016
If I take the expenses paid for by my monthly income and subtract these from my income for the month I can see what I've got left to move into my Savings Stash and Freedom Kitty:

As you can see the overall percentage of my income I've been able to save this month is 49.24%. However, the percentage I've been able to save into my Freedom Kitty is sitting at 31.46%. It's really the Freedom Kitty percentage which is the important one, because money in the Savings Stash is just to cover expenses spread throughout this year rather than for future use.

My 2016 FIRE Target was to achieve a monthly average of £1,000 into my Freedom Kitty, so I've had a good month toward this with £1048.22 allocated.

Since I've mentioned my Savings Stash, I thought it may be of interest to include details of this each month:

This may seem like quite a large pot of emergency reserves to be holding, however as a Company Director I have to complete a Self Assessment tax return each year and I'm holding the money I anticipate I'll need for paying my taxes in my Savings Stash. The Savings Stash also covers expenditures such as large car expenses, vet bills, Christmas, Birthdays, insurance as well as some savings for holidays and a new car.

So that's about it for my first month of sharing income, expenses and savings achieved. I hope it's been interesting for you, it's taken me a while to consolidate the information but I've found it a really worthwhile exercise and hopefully it will be quicker to put together next month. Thanks for reading and for all your comments to date, it's really encouraging to hear your feedback.

Do you hold an "emergency reserve" to fund future large bills and unexpected outgoings? If yes, I'm interested in your views on what you think is a reasonable size "reserve" in order to feel comfortable...