SavingNinja

Savings Report #92

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Not much has happened this month, work is busy, AI is taking over, baby SN is growing fast.

Savings Report #91 - Grey and Wet

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Our net worth has stayed more or less the same at £1.2m, although the sheet also shows that it’s grown by £11k. The pound and dollar swinging so wildly is the culprit, there’s probably some errors in the way I’m tracking with auto-converting currencies to GBP, but I’m too lazy to change the sheet after all these years.

January was a slow month, returning back to normal after Christmas, Baby SN has been in a sleep regression since Christmas and we’ve not quite got back to normal yet.

The winter months definitely seem colder, darker, and wetter up here in the North. We’re lucky to be homebodies as we don’t go out much anyway - but we’re missing the USA a little bit more. It was cold in the winter, but it was bright and snowy as well.

This makes me worried about Scotland. Will it really be our replacement for the New England mountains? Or will it be even more dark, grey and wet. This year we plan to find out with a few Scottish trips planned now we’re close to the border.

2025 Reviewed - Finding Our New Normal

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Introduction

It’s that time of year again where I review our finances and post a general update looking back at the year gone and forward to the next one.

I still think that these annual review posts are one of the most important for me. Life retrospectives can give valuable insight into what’s working, what isn’t, and they can remind me about our family aspirations and goals.

This is my 8th one!

I attribute a lot of our successes in life to finding the time to pause, review, and think when writing posts like this. Maybe we wouldn’t have reached the same financial goals if not for these posts?

With that in mind, even though the blogging passion has died down within me, I still want to make sure that I dedicate a good amount of time to these posts and give them my all.

Alright, let’s move on to the financial review.

As always, click here if you want to skip the financial update and go straight to personal updates.

2025 Financial Review

£1,202,870 Networth (+£251,305)
£1,102,870 Excluding House (+£209,502)
£108,643 Contributed
£142,661 Interest Earned
£354,393 Pension (+£59,256)
£14,241 Contributed
£45,055 Interest Earned
£748,477 Pre-Pension (+£150,206)
£52,599 Contributed
£97,607 Interest Earned
£100,000 House Equity (+£33,276)

It’s been another stellar year for our finances. Our net worth soared by £250k to £1.2m.

2025 was the year that we sold our property that we’d owned for 8 years. We aggressively paid off our mortgage before the sale which meant that we didn’t contribute as much to the market as we would have done.

The property sold in November but the spreadsheet now lists £100k as ‘property equity’ - up from the previous £60k. This is because I’ve earmarked £100k in a savings account for our next purchase. I decided against investing this due to the frothy market, and I’m treating it as a de-risking lever as we think we’d like to purchase another home in the next 3 years. If the markets tank, I may reconsider and invest it.

Our invested net worth shot up from £930k to £1.1m thanks to another very good year of growth, and we also added the full £40k to our ISA’s.

I contributed the least I ever have to my pension this year. £10k for me and £5k for Mrs SavingNinja. That’s because I’ve been saving up my pension contribution allowance. I’ve decided to contribute £100k to my pension for the 2026 tax year - I still think it would be worth the tax savings to do so, and doing it as a lump like this will mean I save 65% tax on around £25k due to getting below the £100k-£125k loss of personal allowance bracket.

So for 2026, if I keep my job, I should be contributing roughly £110k to pensions and £40k to ISA’s.

I’m beginning to get more and more worried about needing to de-risk the more our net worth grows and the closer we get to really thinking about retiring. I know I should be reading about glide paths and equity allocation, but I’m being willfully ignorant right now as I luckily still have a well paid job.

I’m taking a bit of solace in the fact that Big ERN has said that it’s not crazy to hold 100% equities until the day you retire. And I’m hoping that the £100k cash buffer (for the house) will give me enough peace of mind for now.

I’m still hoping that our net worth will grow so much in the next 3 years that keeping 100% equities isn’t a problem. We’ll be able to buy a house in cash (or have a very small mortgage,) and our expenses will be so low that it won’t matter if the market tanks.

How much of this is wishful thinking, though, when we’re apparently in a mega-AI-bubble?

The reason I want to hold 100% equities is because I have a min-maxing mentality, but mainly because I think it will be simpler. I won’t have to worry about different allocations and buffers. I’d rather think about earning more in retirement or spending less if there’s a down year. I hope we can have the luxury of doing this.

Total Net Worth

There was a big dip at the start of the year, it looks like the biggest I’ve experienced since I started tracking with this graph. It swooped back up again by March, then continued on upwards. I’ll have to get used to big swings like this now that there is enough capital invested to feel the market turn.

Interest vs Contributions

You can see huge swings in both monthly interest and contributions in this chart. July was when we paid off our mortgage so I added the new house equity to the sheet. Then in November when we sold the house, we contributed £40k to our ISA’s.

Stacked, you can see the swing in interest earned, and then the bump for contributions starting in July.

Here’s a nicer representation of the yearly interest. I’m expecting a lot more to look like this going forward, maybe even dips that last years!

Lifetime Interest

Compound interest is continuing to go to the moon with this chart. Those tiny blue lines are starting to grow bigger as the orange line grows further and further away.

We continue to get very healthy annual returns, only 1 year in the negative! It’s crazy that at 15.97%, it’s still the third to worse year of my investing journey. If only we could get another 33% year like in 2019!!

Yearly Growth

Second best year of growth so far, not too far off last year.

Looking at this chart, you can see that this year was actually our best ever year when it comes to investment growth value. Even though in 2024 the markets returned almost 8% more, as our pot was a lot bigger in 2025, we earned more overall (thank you compound interest!)

It’s also the first year that interest increased our net worth more than our contributions did. I believe they call this the ‘infliction point’ in the FIRE community. When passive investment growth begins to exceed active contributions, and it should be celebrated.

Personal Life

Mundanity

On new years day, Mrs SavingNinja and I asked ourselves, how as the year gone?

We both said that it had gone very quickly and exclaimed, “What have we actually done??”

The year started with us moving back into our old, cramped, house. Sleeping on the sofa trying to work through Baby SavingNinja’s sleep regressions. Then my parental leave started and we moved again, 8 hours drive north, and settled into a new rental property while our sale went through.

The year was filled with packing and unpacking, twice. Before we knew it, it was winter.

We did get to go on a memory-making trip to the Bavarian Alps in between all of the moving, but other than that, the year has gone quickly because we didn’t do much. This is a shame as I had 6 months off, I thought we’d be doing more.

But in reality, this is what we needed. We needed life to become mundane again. Reading last years review , we were in a bad place, feeling lost and living too close to family which was too far away from our norm. I said that we need time to settle and adapt to our new normal.

This year has been mundane, but it was also healing. We’re in a better position now, we feel more like our old selves. We’re more used to Baby SavingNinja and he’s growing more independent each day. We have more space and time has healed our past traumas a little more.

In 2026, I think we’re ready to start becoming our adventurous selves again, as much as we can be with Baby SN.

Being a parent

This year I’ve started seeing some real dividends to having Baby SavingNinja. It’s not talked about much, but with a baby your life is genuinely a lot worse.

Through the screams, little sleep, and no time for yourself, you also don’t get much in return. A giggle here or a sleepy face there is all you can focus on when you think, “Why did I do this?”

This year though, more and more as he gets older, I’ve started to see what having children is all about. It’s still hard, but it’s a lot more rewarding now. Seeing him start to understand the world around him, learning to eat with a spoon and drink from a cup has bought real joy. Unadulterated joy, more pure from the quick frills of TikTok or gaming, it feels more everlasting.

He now graces us with the most genuine smiles I’ve ever seen when looking at us as he clearly says “Mama!” Or “Dada!”

I know this feeling of love is only going to exponentially grow as he learns to say “Love you,” and give us heartfelt hugs. Much like compound interest in the financial world, having a child feels much the same as they grow.

Looking forward

We’ve settled on the fact that it’s the right decision to not buy another property yet. Renting seems like the best choice financially, and also because we haven’t fully settled on the location we want to set our roots.

Flexibility is more important for us right now.

We’d like to spend 2026 exploring Scotland more. I’d like to visit enough to decide if it’s somewhere we could see ourselves settling in the future. In the UK we’ve been told that Scotland is the closest to what we like, (mountains and lakes!) so we need to go and visit and decide for ourselves.

Further on than that, I’m going to try and not focus on needing a long-term plan. This hurts a little as we had our long-term plan solidly in place when we lived in the USA and it felt good to know what lay ahead. But there are just too many unknowns to make one here.

Maybe there will be a return to office mandate? Maybe the market tanks? Maybe we get a job opportunity far away again that we can’t say no to?

Right now it makes sense to focus on the present. Focus on raising our son while exploring possible futures and enjoying what we have while our finances grow sturdier.

Goals

I usually review goals I set for the last year and set some new ones for the year ahead. But it’s starting to feel a little hollow. I’ve continuously failed to achieve literal goals that have been set and it feels like I should be trying to move generally in the positive direction than checking off paper goals.

I did mention last year that we’re going to focus on finding our new normal. I think we definitely have done that, that’s enough to be happy about I think.

General fitness has definitely suffered. I would like to do better in 2026, not just to be healthy, but because I know it makes me feel good as well.

For the first time, we also did a family annual review and set ourselves some personal goals for the year.

It’s mostly revolved around traveling more.

We’d like to visit Scotland on 4 separate trips of 1 or more nights each time. We still have planning to do to think of some more trips to take.

We’d also like to be more organized when it comes to weekly chores and activities, and have gone back to a planner that we created a few years ago.

I think that’s all for goal setting this year. I’d like us to continue to normalize, to regain more of our pre-baby adventurers spirit, to travel more and find our independent passions again.

Thanks for reading.

Let me know in the comments how your year has gone, I really appreciate it when you reach out to me via email or comments, I enjoy reading every one!

Happy new year!

Savings Report #90 - End of Year

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Happy new year!

I thought this month would be a good one financially, but the markets took a tumble on the very last day of the year.

This is a short savings report as I’ll be releasing my end of year review post in the next couple of days.

December went well, we hosted Christmas for the first time, we had fun but we’re also very tired.

I hope you’re all recovering from Christmas and feeling pumped for 2026.

Savings Report #89 - House Sold, Renting is Better!

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Propertyless

We’ve sold our house!

After a very bumpy road, we finally signed the contract in November and got the money.

It feels very liberating to not own any property.

The whole process was terrible and cost a lot of money. After owning the house for 8 years, I can confidently say it was a terrible financial decision. Bear in mind that we bought this house as a way to save money, we spent way less than we could have afforded at the time as we didn’t need the extra space. We refused to sell after 3 years when leaving the UK for less than we bought it for and rented it out for 5 years instead.

It’s pretty sobering to realize that we would have had more money had we continued to rent and invested the capital instead.

All of the boomer advice to “Buy property, you’re throwing money away renting!” is terrible. The value proposition only looks worse now that we’re in a high interest rate environment - much worse.

I found this handy rent vs buy calculator and I couldn’t find any way to make buying work out better.

Using our current rental property, a 3 bed in the north of England costing us £900 per month, which would cost around £300k to buy new, with a 25% deposit, the calculator shows that we’d be almost £100k worse off buying after 10 years.

You can see this summary here

That’s huge!

Have a go yourself and tell me your results.

Of course, we may have to buy in the future if there aren’t any suitable rental properties. If we do, we’ll make sure that we go into the purchase knowing that it is a worse financial decision that will also anchor us to one place.

Finances

November bought a pretty sharp decline in value for our portfolio. It had mostly recovered by the end of the month but still ended up 1.3% down. I think it’s already recovered since releasing this post, but I’ll see in December.

With the house sale, we received £220k into our bank account. We used around £35k to pay off the remaining IBKR margin loan, put £20k into two ISA’s, and put the rest into a current account earning 4.5% (Ulster Bank.)

Now there’s the tricky task ahead of us deciding what to do with this money.

Currently, we still have £45k in 0% interest credit cards owed that expire at different points with the earliest starting in March next year, so I’ll leave at least that much in the current account. I plan to not touch another £40k so our ISA’s can be filled in April straight away.

For now, I’ve marked £100k in “house equity” on the Super Savings spreadsheet. Right now, I have no idea if we’ll want to buy a house again in 2-3 years, so it seems sensible to leave at least that much in cash ready to put into a deposit. I’m also very aware we’re in an all-time-high for the market as well, and I don’t know how I’ll feel pulling £100k out for a deposit if we were in a massive bear market.

This kinda feels like market timing though… And I know that we could use margin to get a house deposit if we had to, £100k being about 15% of our general investment account, which would be pretty safe.

I need to do some more thinking on this.

Is it smart to leave £100k (plus the £45k in 0% credit cards,) in a 4.5% earning current account to potentially use in 3 years on a house purchase, (and a little bit as a de-risking strategy?)

Or should it be invested into VWRL in our general investment account - meaning we can’t withdraw it again without paying a huge capital gains tax bill due to UK capital gains being averaged (which is stupid) - and then we’d use a margin loan to front-load the capital needed for a house deposit if we need it?

Traditional advice would be to leave this money out of the market if we think we may need it. And with it being only 10% of our capital that we have invested, it doesn’t seem as bad as it would have if it was more like 50%. But at the same time, £100k is a lot of money to leave off the table if the market takes off to the stratosphere upon the shoulders of AGI, it could be a very costly mistake - but then would it matter if our £1m doubles or triples along the way? Would that £100k-200k potential loss out of £3m be worth it for some peace of mind that having this money set aside in case the market crashes would give?

What would you do? Leave me an email or comment below, any advice would be appreciated!

End of the year

We’re almost at the end of 2025!

I’ve started getting my spreadsheet and analytics set up for an end of the year post, it’s shaping up to be a very profitable one just like last year. I’m hoping there’s a santa rally to push us over the edge of another couple of milestones.

Christmas is going to be special this year with Baby SavingNinja being over 1, it feels like his first Christmas. It’s the first time we’re hosting our family as well! We’ve already began prepping the food.

Anyway, see you in the new year. Thanks for reading during 2025 and have a Merry Christmas!

Savings Report #88 - Hedonic Adaptation

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

October was another good month for the markets and for the value of the pound, raising our net worth even further. I’m just waiting for the crash at this point.

We’ve really settled into our windy northern home now, everything is unpacked and it feels like home already. Everyone that we’ve met up here has been noticeably nicer than where we previously lived in the South-East and South-West.

My family always joked that Southerners weren’t as friendly before I left for University in the South, but I never really noticed it. Now that I’ve moved back north after 14 years both me and Mrs SavingNinja (who’s a Southerner,) have noticed a number of different interactions have happened in only our first month that hasn’t ever happened previously. Little things like neighbors bringing us Prossecco when we moved in (this has never happened and we’ve moved a lot in three different countries,) our local DIY shop letting us take some wood for free to make a play kitchen for Baby SavingNinja, a whole family helping me fit a second-hand furniture haul into our car, people even wave hello when driving past on our country roads, this never happened in Devon.

I wonder if it’s just this area, or if Northerners really are generally more friendly than Southerners in the UK?

Parental Leave

I’ve got a little over 2 months left of parental leave now, and I know that will go quickly due to Christmas. I’m incredibly grateful for all of the extra time that I’ve been able to spend with Mrs SavingNinja and our baby. One thing that having this leave has taught me, though, is how hedonic adaptation applies to these situations as well.

Usually, this is a word we know in the finance world. You increase your salary, and you adapt to spending more, rather than saving, you get used to your new norm!

With parental leave, I’ve definitely gotten used to it. In-fact, it seems like I’ve had barely any time each day. The days are filled with looking after Baby SavingNinja, shopping, trying to tick off any tasks that may need doing. I feel like I may have actually had more time when working.

This observation has shed some light onto what early retirement might look like. Maybe it won’t be the idealized, “You’ll be able to do anything you want!” that a lot of people quip about. Hedonic adaptation will apply, you’ll normalize to post-FIRE life, and it will be just like normal life, with it’s own ebs and flows of boredom, stress, and happiness.

If this happens, why retire at all? I’ve actually missed work, missed the sense of purpose, my sense of identity as an engineer, missed catching up on the latest trends.

It’s highlighted to me that we definitely need some form of balance. I probably won’t want to quit all together. Finding a part-time job would be a good first step, and maybe keeping that part-time job indefinitely would actually be better than quitting all together.

There’s a lot to think about over the next few years as early retirement truly becomes an option. Right now, I think I won’t be lusting after, and sprinting toward early retirement as much as I have been in the earlier days.

See you next month!

Savings Report #87 - Moved to The North

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Very late with this update as I’ve had a very hectic start of the month moving to the north of England. We opted to do it all ourselves again - renting the van, loading, and driving 6h with no help and a 1 year old is a stressful experience - but we’re experts at it now. A lot of prep and using nap time well is what got us through it.

The house and place is much nicer than we thought it would be (we hadn’t seen it in person beforehand.) Life feels a little more similar here to what we had in America, albeit a bit more grey and windy.

There are so many new places to explore now we’re here. We are only 1h away from the Lake District and 1h 15m away from the Scottish border. Not had much chance to get out yet as we’ve been focusing on getting the house unpacked.

Now that Baby SavingNinja is exploring more, baby proofing has been top of our mind. We’ve just had to buy 3 different baby gates totalling £170! The staircase here is very dodgy and open plan, so we had to get a more expensive wrap-around gate for the bottom. This is probably the most we’ve spent on the baby since he was born as almost everything else has been second hand and refurbished.

Our house sale is still progressing but contracts haven’t been signed yet. We had some hiccups along the way with missing building regs, but everything worked out in the end. I have my fingers crossed that by the time the next Savings Report is out, the contracts will be signed. Selling will free up a lot of our capital and monthly expenditure which will be a big relief - I have to pay off those 0% credit cards early next year!

I’m feeling a post-idea coming along investigating the financials of our 8 years of house ownership when it sells. I have a feeling it will be a big financial loss, and I haven’t made a non-Savings Report post in a while.

Finances have done very well again this month as I took the snapshot on the 1st of October. As this post is late, stocks have tumbled since, but may be back up again by the end of the month. I’ve also taken out another £3.6k in company stock. I’m going to continue taking out company stock whenever I can as I’m too overexposed currently, but this has been tricky to do while staying under the capital gains thresholds.

All of the talks about being in a bubble has got me a bit jumpy - especially as we’re almost entirely in US index funds. Right now, I’m going to stay willfully ignorant, at least until the house sale has gone through and we need to decide what to do with the capital.

Until then, see you next month.

Savings Report #86 - Quick One

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

A quick update as I haven’t got much time this month. We’ve just got back from a big road trip and preparing for a move across the country; 6h each way that we’ll be doing twice with two rental vans on our own with a 12 month old - fun times. Good job we’re pro’s at moving house now that we’ve moved so much over the last few years.

Stocks did well, going up 2%, but I’m still selling company stock each month to pay down the margin loan we took out to pay off our mortgage, £29k left.

I’m more anxious to sell our house now that we have a large chunk of cash sat in it waiting to be re-invested when we sell. Currently the sale is still going through but I’ll always stay pessimistic.

If the sale doesn’t go through by March, we’ll have to take on more margin loan to fill our ISA’s, either that or stomach some capital gains tax to sell from our general investment accounts which I don’t want to do - the rates are too high and I’m sure we won’t be paying as much when we retire, either through moving country or an improved future tax policy.

I may have to do a smaller update next month as well due to the move. Until then!

Savings Report #85 - Moving Up North

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

We found a buyer for our house!

We accepted an offer quite a bit lower than we were expecting at £217.5k. I then began to panic when instructing a solicitor, as all of them said that they’d have to let the current mortgage provider know we’re living there, so my plan to wait until September to pay off the mortgage was foiled.

I then started reading about all of the bad things that could happen if we were caught living in a BTL. I thought the worst of it would be they’d force us to re-pay, but it seems we could go on a blacklist and not be able to get a mortgage again.

So, I promptly paid off the mortgage. This was frustrating as even though we were only 2 months away from the end of our 5-year fixed deal, we still had to pay £1700 in early repayment charges, triple what the remaining interest would have been.

But, I swallowed the annoyance and paid it off anyway.

The buyers then failed to get a mortgage and we had to re-list the property for sale. Doh!

It was a nice opportunity for some exposure therapy to wasting money, and at least we had some peace of mind.

Luckily, within a week, we had a new buyer - and this time at £225k, so we would have repaid early anyway.

Where to next?

We’ve settled on renting a property in the north of England, preferably close to the Lake District. We really loved it there during our visit, it’s much cheaper, has a lot of new places to explore (we’ve been in the South during all of our adult, English-based lives,) and it has good access to Scotland.

We still think long term that we would like to relocate to Canada (if possible.) We’ll stay in the UK as long as I have my job and my original stock grant which expires in 3 years. In the meantime, we’ll continue exploring the UK and if we fall in love with some place here, we can re-consider. I’m still worried that our capital gains burden may grow so big that we’ll be forced to leave - so we may need some intermittent step in the Isle of Man for 5 years after FIRE’ing to realize the gains if we decide to stay in the UK long-term.

Finances

Our net worth has shot up this month. It’s mainly due to paying off our mortgage, so £66,500 got added to the house equity figure. I haven’t included the margin loan or 0% credit card balances in this, which ended up being £37k and £45k and is assuming a £225k sale minus tax, estate agent, and solicitors fees.

For the next few months I’ll be paying off the margin loan as it has 5.8% interest so we should see a big bump in investments once the house sells and we redistribute the proceeds.

As well as this house equity addition, the markets also performed well, appreciating by £20k, this would have been £14k higher if my company stock (listed in “Other Investments” in the sheet,) didn’t drop so much after their quarterly earnings. The pound also recovered some value against the dollar.

So we’re now at £1.15m! Some notable milestones are close, we’re almost at $1.5m net worth. We’re also at £986k invested; very close to having £1m invested in the market, which feels surreal!

At this point, I feel we’re just continuing to save above £1m to buy a house that we want outright. £1m and a paid off house will be enough, surely!? I’m planning on continuing to work until my stock grant is paid anyway, hopefully that will be enough time to have enough.

Of course, Monevators post about the UK safe withdrawal rate being a lot lower (2.9%!) Makes me anxious that £1m won’t be enough…

I need to remember my Mustachian values, though, surely we won’t earn nothing in retirement. We’ll be in our 30’s, I definitely won’t be satisfied not doing something for myself business wise, Mrs SavingNinja still has yearly gigs and could bring in another £5k or more annually, £1m should be enough at this age where we’ll continue earning.

Then again, playing devils advocate, maybe the ability to earn more money will get harder and harder, especially with the new AI-era. The future is uncertain and it makes me anxious. This also means it would be increasingly unlikely that I could go back into my previous profession if I wanted to, the world is changing too much. If I still have a well paid job, why not make the most of it while it’s still there before I’m made redundant?

Hopefully, 3 more years and we’ll do so well financially that we’ll be safe beyond a reasonable doubt, then we won’t have to battle with these decisions. Maybe we’ll be at £2m by then? That should be enough… Right?

Baby Life

Baby SavingNinja is getting more adorable each day, and it’s getting easier - he’s sleeping well and not crying as much.

I’ve been enjoying my parental leave, although it has really highlighted to me that I get depressed and lost when I don’t have the focus of a job. I need to do something in addition to parenting to make me feel like I’m accomplishing more. I’ve started a couple of projects in the spare time that I get, one of them game development using Godot. This has bought me some more happiness.

It really is showing me that I need to have a plan before we pull the trigger with retiring early, I am definitely the type to go on a depressive spiral unless I know what’s next and have some passion projects to fill my time.

This is why I think it’s more important for us that we transition to post-FIRE life slowly, finding our place, finding our thing, all while still working before quitting, a slow transition instead of a harsh rug-pull. Luckily, fully-remote work makes it easier to do this.

At the end of this month we’ll be going on a European road-trip to visit some mountains and lakes. We’ll then be visiting Stockholm for a week, and we may need to move house in the middle, so I’ll probably skip, or do a very short financial-only update next month.

How was your month?

Side-note, what’s going on with UK politics? I’m hearing rumours of a wealth-tax, further increased taxes, even tying council tax / NHS payments to peoples income. We’ve also now got these silly Online Verification Laws blocking all social media? Under 16 year olds can’t use Instagram or X? What is going on? It’s making me want to leave even more.

Savings Report #84 - Buying vs Renting

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The stock market has gotten back into full swing now, funds sitting at the same price they were back in February. As GBP is 10% stronger, these USD denominated funds are still showing around 10% less, though, which means right now they’re still on sale!

I’m hoping to complete the house purchase before the USD rebounds then there may be a good profit from dumping an extra £180k in at a 10% discount.

House sale update

We’ve accepted an offer of £217.5k on our place. We’re thankful to have an offer, but this is way lower than expected. I even had the value of this property marked at £220k pessimistically in our savings spreadsheet 5 years ago.

We bought the place for £195k 8 years ago and I think we made a mistake getting a leasehold with no parking. We should have put more money in for a freehold with parking, we could more than afford it. I’d just read Early Retirement Extreme at the time and wanted to move into the cheapest place we’d be comfortable.

The problem is, we put in a new kitchen, a new bathroom, new flooring and a new boiler, amounting to over £20k. Those renovations make the property £215k, great, £2.5k profit right? No… It cost us around £5k to buy it (we had to pay stamp duty back then.) £5200 more to sell it - solicitors and estate agents are way more expensive in the South East. We’re £7.7k down.

If we account for the opportunity cost of our initial £30k deposit, which if I’d have shoved it in the S&P 500 8 years ago would be worth £147k now then this house purchase was a terrible investment.

I hear some of you saying, “What about the saved rent?”

Yeah, the mortgage interest alone was always about half of the cost that renting would have been, having the deposit invested would have more than covered it.

We even, stupidly, rented it out for 5 years! Adding a lot more anxiety and stress for barely any gain post-tax, and missing out on the best stock market rally ever… All because we didn’t want to “Sell at a loss,” 5 years ago.

It’s not even bought us much joy living here. It’s tied us down. Even right now it’s tying us down, the place isn’t big enough for a baby and it’s very inconvenient having to walk across a busy road to get to our car. But we didn’t want to pay for two places while we got this sold.

All of this is leading me to think, buying is a dumb financial decision. Or maybe we just made a bad choice when deciding what to buy? My parents have made £50k profit with every house move every 3 years up north. Luck maybe?

For the next few years, we’ll be renting again, but I’m hoping to find a better rental accommodation by paying a little more than we have in the past, maybe in the £1,500 per month range rather than the £1000 per month that we normally look for - we have started looking up north for a change of scenery and lower rents.

We won’t buy again until we’re absolutely sure on the location, and the property.

Paying the mortgage

We now have £116k cash sitting in a Chase savings account. £45k of that we have stoozed on 0% credit cards. I still plan on taking out a margin loan against our IBKR portfolio to make up the shortfall for £156k left on the mortgage by the time the fixed rate ends on October 1st, but we’ve done a lot better than I thought we would with savings and stoozing.

One more credit card application and we may not need to borrow on margin at all. The two cards I used which gave me the highest limit (£18k each) was Santander and MBNA. MBNA had a 2.99% fee to balance transfer, Santander was free.

Any recommendations for high credit limit 0% cards, let me know! How would people feel about a guide for stoozing? I couldn’t find a lot of info on the cash transfer method, but I’ve got the hang of it now.

If I wasn’t using this to pay off the mortgage, in the Chase savings account at 4.5% it would currently make £2025 per year. I got the £45k credit for a total of £500, some finish in 18 months, others in 33 months, it’s a good deal!

Now we just have to decide where we’re going to rent for the next couple of years.

Any suggestions?

Savings Report #83 - Margin Loan

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

A little update as I’m already late this month.

May was a rollercoaster of work and now I’m on parental leave for the rest of the year. We’re planning some trips over the next 6 months but have to get comfortable doing it with Baby SavingNinja - everything is so much more complicated now.

We’re still trying to sell our house, it’s caused a lot of hassle over the past 5 years, and more and more I’m thinking it was a terrible investment. We would have been better off renting and investing our deposit over the years and then we wouldn’t have been so tied down like we are now.

We still haven’t figured out what comes next. Due to this, we’re considering renting instead of buying again while we figure out what to do, then we wouldn’t be rushed into another house purchase as well. The only trouble is finding a landlord who will accept us, which proved difficult last time.

Our mortgage pay off with margin plan is ready to execute as soon as someone makes an offer on the house. We’ve amassed £96k in a savings account and we will take out a £60k margin loan. I had to do a bit of research to figure out how to withdraw margin in the UK - they blocked this in 2019 making it frustratingly complicated. With a little help from FIREVLondon I found out that I could buy GBP.USD to make my GBP balance positive and my USD balance negative, withdraw the GBP, then convert it to a negative GBP balance. So much faff when in the USA you can just withdraw the margin (I even had a credit card linked to my portfolio!)

I tested this out with £1000 and it seemed to work, so hopefully nothing goes awry when I do it with £60k in the next month or so. This will be 10% of my general investment account which is currently invested in VTI, so the portfolio would have to drop by 75% for it to be margin called, seems safe enough. I’ll also be paying off £5-10k per month and when the sale goes through, it will be paid off fully.

Savings Report #82 - Utility of Savings

Sat, 10 May 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

We’re still around £130k down since January. If this was 3 years ago, it would have been half of our networth!

When I look at our net worth chart from My Financial Journey , the dip still doesn’t look that bad compared to the huge gains last year.

This really just shows how much of a crazy year last year was, and how quickly you acclimatize to your new net worth number.

Maybe there’s more to drop? We’re still holding strong, and also collecting cash to pay off our mortgage in September.

We’re at £60k in cash right now, earning 4.8% in an easy-access savings account.

When the mortgage 3% fix comes to an end in September, I predict we’ll be at around £110k cash. This figure will include £18.5k from stoozed 0% credit cards. We owe £155k on the mortgage, so I’m still looking into borrowing the rest on margin from Interactive Brokers at 5.8%. This should be fairly low-risk with a £500k passive-index fund investment account, but I still need to do more research into it.

It’s been very strange not contributing to our investment pot. I hope we’re not missing out on an opportunity to buy low when the market is deflated. Aiming to pay off our mortgage in September is the first time we’ve really used our savings for the utility of it, so I keep reassuring myself that, it’s there to be used, right!?

Paying it off should make it easier to sell the house. We won’t be strapped with either an 8% rate or having to get a new loan. We also won’t have the risk of the mortgage lender finding out that we’re living here when we shouldn’t be as it’s a buy-to-let mortgage.

Using the IBKR margin is a lot easier too. No crappy retail banks to deal with, just borrow or pay it off whenever we need the cashflow.

Other News

I’ll be starting my 7 months parental leave very soon. I’m thankful that I got this approved and it validates that it was the right decision to re-join my current company. It’s insane to me that this is a benefit on offer and I’m still going to get my full salary when most other UK employers just give 2-weeks. I feel very lucky.

I’m both anxious and excited to spend that time with Baby SavingNinja. I’d like to treat it like a mini retire-early and see how it feels not having a full time job while looking after a baby with Mrs SavingNinja.

That’s all for now.

How was your month?

Savings Report #81 - Tough

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Skipping doing a full update this month. Not feeling the motivation. Markets are very down and they’re even more down from when I took this snapshot.

It’s not the markets being down though. Life with a baby is still hard and we’re still missing our american home. We moved back into our old place last month and moving was difficult. This place isn’t really suited to having a baby and we’re feeling the need to have more space even more.

All I’m doing is moaning, but I need to stop wallowing in it.

Until next month!

Savings Report #80 - Old New House

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Wow, what is going on with the world right now?

Trump is everywhere on my feeds and everything he’s doing seems super dystopian, but I’m unsure if this is as bad as it seems or it’s just my own social media algorithm, you never know these days - especially as I haven’t watched live TV for years.

The stock market is down, but we’re still over a mil. This month, I realized that I’d calculated our capital gains tax incorrectly when I attempted to utilize the £3k gain earlier in the year.

In most places you can buy and sell stock as different units, they each have their own buy price. That’s why most platforms allow you to optimize tax by changing the sell settings to FIFO (first in, first out) or FILO (first in, last out). But, the UK, being their awkward selves requires you to calculate the average of all of that stock and have that as your buy price, this is called section 104 holdings. There’s also some complicated as hell maths for if you buy the stock again within 30 days (annoying if you’re still getting monthly RSU’s like I am,) it gets even worse to calculate when you’ve sent some stock to your spouse like I have.

So, what I thought was a perfectly calculated £3000 capital gain was actually a £450 loss due to getting RSU’s within 30 days worth less. So, after days figuring it all out using a lot of spreadsheets and online calculators, I’ve sold another £8000 worth of stock. Hopefully, I’ve done it correctly this time and both me and Mrs SavingNinja have used up our £3000 capital gains allowances before the end of the tax year (unless my company stock drops again!) Stupid rules.

Cash Is Growing

We’re sitting on around £35k of cash right now. I’m still hoping we can get as close to £156k as we can before September so we can pay off our mortgage while we sell the property instead of moving to a retail price interest rate (around 7.7% last time I looked.)

I’m still planning on stoozing 0% interest credit cards to help us get there, but I’ve currently only got a single card with a £3500 limit (Barclays,) I’m hoping to find more!

I’ll make up any shortfall with a margin loan on IBKR as this will still be much cheaper than the retail mortgage rate. I think this should be relatively safe to do if borrowing £50-100k as the general investment account currently sits at around £500k, so 10-20% margin. I need to read up more about this closer to the time, though. Anyone got any advice?

House

On the topic of our old house. We’ve decided to move back into it. The tenant has moved out and we’re currently renting. We’re also not liking our current rental and are struggling to be accepted onto any others (with a cat and a baby.) That coupled with the worry of the house sale taking a long time, possibly even longer than a year, it made financial sense to move back in. It’s going to roughly save us £1300 per month in rent and council tax.

Last month we went on a trip to the house to see if it would be viable with a baby. While it’s not perfect, it’s manageable, but we probably wouldn’t want to stay there for longer than a year. It’s good in a way as it forces us to make plans for our future and where we want to settle long-term as we know that we’ll have to move again.

Savings Report #79 - Babys First Trip

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The market continues to be hyperbolic, recovering from the loss of last month and making up for it with a 4.5% increase.

I also moved my vested stock options into our main portfolio. These remain in company stock, which I know is risky, but I only want to sell when there is a tax advantage to do so, and it’s currently been rising so fast that the capital gain is too much.

So, January saw an increase of £60k already, £42k of that being in capital appreciation. I even withdrew a dividend payment this month instead of re-investing as I continue to stock-pile cash for the year.

Another goal was hit this month, £1m excluding property networth, which means we have £1m invested in the stock market. We’ll be witnessing huge swings going forward, I hope we can stomach it.

This month marked another tab in the Super Spreadsheet. My 8th year tracking finances every month. I still look forward to doing it every time!

Other News

We’re slowly starting to adapt to life with a baby. It’s still hard but it’s easier when you start to forget what it was like when it wasn’t hard.

He’s still not sleeping great but we’re getting through it, especially Mrs SavingNinja who is doing an amazing job. I definitely wouldn’t be able to do what she is doing with the amount of sleep she’s getting, or rather isn’t getting, and I’m thankful for her each day.

We’ve now transitioned him into a bigger cot a little further away from our bed. And we’re even going on a trip with him for a week in February, our first one! We’re excited to take him swimming and have a bit more time to relax away from me working.

During the trip we’ll also be visiting our rental house which is now being put up for sale after over 4 years as a BTL. I’m hoping the sale goes smoother than when we bought it 9 years ago. I’ll also do some maths afterwards to calculate if renting it out was even worth the stress this whole time.

Having the house gone will be a huge weight off our shoulders. I’m really not looking forward to dealing with shitty English solicitors again though, not after we saw how easy it was to buy and sell a house in Sweden - it literally took a week! Anyone got any recommendations?

By the next savings report I’ll find out if I’m eligible for any parental leave at work. They’ll either honour it and I’ll get 6 months, or I won’t get anything. There is a doubt if I’ll get it due to being laid off and then re-employed. My bosses are going to try, but HR might block it, wish me luck!

If I get it, it will make the next year much easier and we’ll spend it figuring out where we want to relocate to and going on lots of European trips, we’re not getting our hopes up until it’s been approved though.

Expenses

We’ve been tracking our expenses fully every month since we got back to the UK in June. The average based on that data was £2400 per month for 2024, £28,800 per year. Based on this, it looks like we are financially independent as our investment portfolio should support this annual expense at a 3% withdrawal rate. 2024 was a particularly expensive year as well needing to buy all of our appliances and furniture.

I’m glad we reached this milestone when I know I’ll still be working for a while, though, as I’d definitely like to build a much bigger buffer. We’d like to buy a bigger property wherever we settle so this will need to be accounted for as a future expense, I’d also like to know that our expenses can go up if needed as this figure is by no means set in stone.

I’ll continue to track expenses in 2025 to see if it goes up. I’m hoping we’ll continue to stay FI even if expenses creep up with the compounding of our portfolio until we’re fully confident that we can retire.

2024 Reviewed - Worst and Best Year Yet

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Introduction

2024 has been a crazy year for the SavingNinja household. It’s been our best year financially, but it’s also been one of the worst years for stress and anxiety in our lives.

We got laid off and lost our US Visa’s; needed to sell everything and move back to the UK unexpectedly; found out we were going to have a baby after being laid off; had to find a new job; a new place to live; a new car; buy everything to live again from scratch.

Then we had our baby and our life became 10 times more difficult. It was probably the worst timing in the world.

We’re slowly starting to settle again. And posts like this help me to put the year into perspective and stay positive.

This is a long post, so use the contents page above to navigate. I’ll start with the financial review first, if you’d rather skip right to the personal and goals section, click here .

2024 Financial Review

£1,000,614 Networth (+£356,749)
£933,890 Excluding House (+£356,749)
£188,025 Contributed
£168,724 Interest Earned
£295,988 Pension (+£99,065)
£52,273 Contributed
£46,792 Interest Earned
£637,902 Pre-Pension (+£257,684)
£135,752 Contributed
£121,932 Interest Earned
£66,724 House Equity

In 2023 reviewed , 1 year ago, I was amazed at the £200k growth in a single year and I talked about how £1m net worth may only be 3 more years away.

This year, the growth was £356k, and we reached £1m in 10 months!

The year was insane from a stock market perspective. I’m not going to pretend that this was due to my high salary or lucky investment picks. It was purely down to the market going bananas. My portfolio’s investment gains grew by a combined 30.59% in 2024.

The crazy-gains is what led to the £1m goal being reached way ahead of schedule. My contributions went up in 2024 at £188k, but not by a huge margin compared to last year where we contributed £120k. The £120k investment gains are what added the tailwind, or more like rocket fuel.

I think from this point on, if the stock market performs, our investment gains will outweigh our contribution amount, this’s something that as of today, has never happened when measured annually. I’ve heard this term described as the ’tipping point’ as contributing doesn’t matter as much anymore.

Of course, I’m more than expecting a huge down turn with all of this recent growth, in which case it’s back to the heavy-contributing!

Total Net Worth

I assumed the chart was going to dip again after leaving America last year, but it’s continued to shoot up. This is, in part, due to investing my severance. It’s such a sharp incline that I’m expecting a correction any day now, and it will surely see a dip due to not contributing as much going forward. Or maybe the compound interest will continue to lift the chart skyward?

Interest vs Contributions

You can see the contributions really bumping the chart up, as well as some remarkable months for investment gains. Many 5 figure gain months and November breaching a £50k gain in a single month!

Stacked, you can see that interest vs contribution was neck and neck for 2024. In fact, if we didn’t have the down turn in December, it would have beaten contributions. I’m hoping 2025 will be the first year that this happens!

Even with the stock market in April and December dropping by a big amount, the trajectory for the year has been nothing but up, gaining £130k in 6 months from May to November.

Lifetime Interest

To really show how wild 2024 was, this chart shows how my total interest earned has gone off the rails this year. 6X from £50k lifetime earned to £300k lifetime earned. Now I know that the first 5 years of investing was really getting the snowball formed.

Interest growth each year. I really wish I had more invested in 2019. I’ve only witnessed one year with a loss, in 2022, and it was only 8%. It’s going to be hard when we have to go through a big one.

Yearly Growth

I’ve really one-upped myself every year as shown in this chart. I really doubt this will continue in 2025, but I hope that it does!

Shows how interest has made a difference each year. In 2022 I almost contributed the same as in 2024, but the stock market did poorly then.

Personal Life

Back to Blighty

This year has been… Turbulent.

I’m kind of glad it’s over.

The year started off with a lot of sadness knowing that soon we would be leaving the USA. We also were full of anxiety as we had to sell everything we owned and figure out the logistical nightmare of getting back to England with our cat. Not to mention how we would start again over here, needing a car, somewhere to live, and a job.

At the same time, while in the US, Mrs SavingNinja became pregnant and along with a little excitement came another boat load of anxiety.

The trinity of losing a job, having to relocate across the world with no family or friends in the states, and finding a new place to live, and doing it while pregnant.

We trooped on though. We made the most of our last months in America and we got through everything.

It didn’t kill us!

In a lot of ways, it made us stronger. I don’t think we’ll have to go through the amount of change, and stress that came with it, that we had to go through at the start of 2024 ever again. As we went through that, we can go through anything together.

England has not been great.

We moved very close to Mrs SavingNinja’s family and it’s been difficult to adapt to living so close to them after 14 years away. In a lot of ways, they don’t hold the same values as us, and they haven’t respected our boundaries and need for some space, both during and after the birth of our child.

Postpartum has been a struggle. The birth was difficult, and we’ve struggled to adapt to our new life where suddenly everything is different and time together is a luxury. At the same time, we’ve still been grieving the loss of our American life. Despite our financial fortune, we’re pretty unhappy.

We will adapt though, we just need time to settle and let our wounds heal. To adapt to our new normal.

Job prospects, not all bad

What did turn out well in the end was managing to get back into the company that laid me off. This has led to some bitterness on my part as it’s difficult not to compare what my colleagues didn’t lose in the form of stock options which for me would have been worth over $500k if I wasn’t laid off. Remember this blog post ? I picked a risky option, and for my first 4 years working with my employer they were worth nothing due to the stock being below my grant price. As soon as I was laid off they were forfeit. If I hadn’t been laid off, they would be worth $500k, which effectively would have been 4 years worth of my stock grant rolled up into one.

It’s hard not to be bitter.

But, this job is still double the pay of the job I would have been in if I didn’t return.

Working back with this employer also gives me the option of potentially getting back to America, or even continuing my green card application. Time will tell if this will be possible in 2025.

We both think that we would prefer to go back to America. But we don’t want to get our hopes up. This was exactly the same feeling that we had before we went initially, it all felt too good to be true… “We want to do it, but don’t get too excited, it might not happen!” We were so close to becoming permanent residents, but it still fell apart.

Things would be different now as well. We have Baby SavingNinja to worry about. The move would be even more stressful than before. I’d also have to join a new team. Anyway, time will tell.

Easy money in the UK

A hobby that I picked back up mid-way through 2024 was getting money from bank account switching. We’d been away from the UK for long enough that we were eligible to all of the sign up offers again and the hourly rate is too good to miss out on, especially as bank account switching bonuses are tax free.

Right now we’ve been paid £1615 and another £375 is on its way. All tax free and from very little effort.

If you are organized and use a sheet and reminders, it’s easy.

Your active time will be spent setting up or cancelling direct debits, moving money in and out of the new accounts, or making debit card payments - I just move money into Revolut in £10 increments using the debit card - until the sign up bonus terms are satisfied.

I probably spend around 30 minutes in aggregate to sign up and fulfill the requirements all in for £150-£200 tax free (twice if you’re doing it for you and your spouse!)

Goals

Goal Results for 2024

Below are the goals were set for 2023 Reviewed .

1. Climb the 3 highest UK mountains

This one was a complete failure. About 2 weeks after setting this goal, we found out that Mrs SavingNinja was pregnant. We spent the year indoors or doing light walks instead. Hopefully when Baby SavingNinja is a little bigger, we can put this goal back on the list again.

2. Read 25 books

Also a complete failure. I only read 8 books. I thought I would get to read more non-fiction but instead I set myself the challenge to read all of the Harry Potters as I never did as a child.

This trend looks like it will continue as I really want to re-read Branden Sandersons’ The Stormlight Archives as the last one in the series is being released this year and they’re one of my favorite series. It took me about a year last time to read them all, they’re hefty.

3. Master interviewing

I regret the word master here. I did learn a lot compared to when I set this goal. I feel like I’m above average with System Design interviews now, and getting there with algorithms. In fact, I passed the first round to what is notoriously one of the hardest companies to interview for last February and the highest score for system design.

I’m still continuing interview practice to this day. I’m not there yet where I feel super confident, but I feel like I’m close, and I don’t want to lose the momentum that not having a job gave me.

Goals for 2025

I have even less idea what to set for 2025 than I did for 2024. Our life has been flipped upside down and it’s still not the right way up again. But let’s see…

I recently read Die With Zero and one of the parts I really liked in the book was the recommendation to split your life into age buckets (e.g. 20-25, 25-30, 75+) and set specific bucket list items them focusing on experiences.

Currently in the 33-40 bucket while Baby SavingNinja is under 7, we’ve added the bucket items of a luxury Center Parcs holiday, to do Tough Mudder again and to learn Italian. I would have loved to add more to the “do before you have a baby” bucket if I’d read this book a couple of years ago.

In the spirit of buckets, what should we really aim to do in 2025, focusing on maximizing happiness from experiences?

It’s tough to envisage any semblance of normalcy with a 3 month old, I don’t really know what we’ll even be up for doing - and we still don’t know where we’ll be living.

…

I tried for days to think of some good goals, and couldn’t!

I’m just going to go back to the cookie cutter goals and borrow some from last year.

1. Be comfortable with the NeetCode 150

I’m being specific this time, this is the definitive roadmap for data structures and algorithms. I’m already most of the way there, just need to solidify each category.

By the end of the year I want to be confident with all of the categories and be in maintenance mode, refreshing my knowledge less often to keep on top of it.

2. Exercise one day a week - building up a sweat

I don’t want to add this goal but I should. I know that exercise is important and I’ve been severely neglecting it as of late. I’ve tried so many different styles over the years to build a healthy habit. 10 pushups a day, exercise every other day, Yoga, running, Darebee , but I’ve always fallen out of the habit.

I can surely manage one day a week! With the caveat that it should be a good enough session that I break a sweat, whatever it is.

I’ll have to find a way to properly track this…

3. Do an activity with my son at least once a week

I’m already realising that I can sometimes be a little distracted. I’m constantly on my phone, constantly ruminating and planning, even when I’m watching Baby SavingNinja. I don’t want to live to regret not giving him my full attention.

This goal is to make sure I spend some quality time with him at least once per week. This will also allow my wife to have a break.

Of course I spend a lot of time with him in dribs and drabs, but I want to be purposeful with an activity and give him my full attention for this one.

Last year I wrote about potentially either moving to Scotland, moving back to London or leaving the UK again.

This year, we still don’t know what we will do. Luckily, I re-joined the company I was laid off from. But now the focus is entirely on our son.

For 2025, we’ll focus on selling our rental house, getting past the infant stage with our baby, and finding our new normal. At the same time, we’ll slowly start considering our long-term goals again when we know what options become available to us.

Happy new year to everyone reading this!

I hope your 2024 was great and here’s to a happy and prosperous 2025.

Savings Report #78 - I've Stopped Investing

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Happy new year!!

This is a quick one as I’d like to put more energy into writing the end of year review post.

The market sank a bit in December but we still managed to stay above the £1m mark by the end of 2024, only just by £615. I’ve already created the charts for the 2024 yearly review and it’s been an insane year, both financially and otherwise really.

Piling Up Cash

I’m now starting to stock pile cash for a few different reasons.

My company updated their pension policy and now only allow us to change the contribution amount twice a year. So I’ve decided to put the minimum for the match in for now, then I’ll try and fill it up by £90k from September to April in 6 months (£60k plus 30k from this year carry over.)

This will allow me to potentially pay less NIC as my monthly salary will be much lower for these months. I’ll be able to get my income below the £100k personal allowance taper for 2025, and I’ll have more flexibility with the cash before September - great if I lose my job again.

We’ll also be trying to sell our rental house this year. If we don’t manage to sell it before September, the interest rate will go from 3% to 9%, so stock piling cash will also potentially allow us to pay off the £150k mortgage until we sell the house and can re-invest the cash.

Of course, this means that this money isn’t going to be invested in the market for quite a bit of time. But, now that our investments are at £1m, having a £150k cash buffer to allow this flexibility doesn’t seem like too much lost opportunity and it may also be a hedge for if the market falls. We’re currently at around £18k, which is sitting in a Raisin account earning 4.7% interest, and I’m transferring another £12k in under-water RSU’s from my company stock plan to sell and add to this account.

So, for the next 9 months, until September, for the first time ever, I’ll be contributing very little to our portfolio, I’ll just be leaving it at my employer pension match and minimum amount needed to get that. We may even sell more stock to reach the £150k from my RSU’s as we need to diversify anyway, we’ll only do this if the stock has negative capital gains or to use up both of our capital gains allowances.

As soon as the house sells, I’ll fill up our ISA’s and then in September start dumping a lot into my SIPP.

Student Loan Cleared!

As I cancelled my big pension contribution amount last month I got a bigger salary and ended up paying off my Plan 1 student loan! This would have lost me around £1k per month due to not maximizing Salary Sacrifice in 2025 so I’m happy it’s finally cleared, I’ve been paying this for the last 9 years.

Baby Nightmare

I wish I could say having a newborn is all roses, but it really isn’t. This month has been the worst yet, he’s going through his 4 month regression where his brain is basically waking up and he wails all of the time. He needs constant attention, and me and my wife barely have any time to do anything. We eat while sat on the floor with him while he wails, we go to bed at the same time as him in the darkness while whispering, we have to wear him in a wrap to get him to nap in the day while we bounce on an exercise ball in darkness.

One thing that has changed is we’re getting more used to not having any time of our own, it’s not as much of a shock as it was a couple of months ago. Sad really. People keep telling us it will get better though!

I honestly think if everyone knew exactly what having a baby was like, there would be a lot more people choosing to not have children.

OK, I better get to writing the 2024 yearly review! I’ll hopefully have it ready within the week.

See you then!

Savings Report #77 - One Million Pounds!

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

£1m has been breached!

November was truly phenomenal. My investments earned 5.9% in a single month, earning £52,000 in interest alone, pushing us over that sought-after figure.

£1m has always been our true FIRE target. Sure, when I first started blogging 6 years ago, my initial target was £300k (I hit this at the end of 2021 ) - This was because my expenses were £12k.

It then became £600k when I started combining my finances and FIRE goals with my wife, which we reached in November 2023 . Which was only a year ago, what!?

I knew that we would have children and that we wanted to buy a bigger, farm-like property, though. £1m felt like a good figure to aim for to feel really FI. £30-£40k a year to live on? Easy! We’ve never spent that much a year in our life.

Well, do we feel like we’ve made it? Are we ready to get off the treadmill right now?

No.

Hell no.

Maybe I should have realized that I’m far too much of an anxious person to ever quit work without overshooting massively what we need and being 200% sure about it. Maybe I’ll never even be able to fully quit?

But, right now, we have a 11 week old.

We’re the most displaced we’ve ever been after being forced to leave the USA. We don’t know whether we want to try and get back to America, if we’ll even be able to, stay in the UK, or live somewhere else entirely.

We have no idea what our cost of living is going to be wherever we end up, and we still want to buy a big farm property which could cost us £500k depending on where it is (interest rates are now astronomical as well.)

The tech industry is convulsing, if I lose my job again it seems it would be very hard to find another well paying one and I feel this will only get worse.

And to go back to my previous point, our net worth went from £600k to £1m in ONE YEAR! Only £130k of that was contributions. I’m not going to break the cardinal sin of passive investing and try to time the market, but it does really seem like we’re at an all time high, especially after the recent Trump Rally. It’s very hard to not see our net worth as a pack of cards that is going to come tumbling down.

So, yeah, maybe I’m just overly worried.

It would be much easier for me to quit work if we slowly transition into our post-FIRE life while still working. This should be possible at my current employer as they still allow working from anywhere within Europe (with the potential chance to relocate to the USA again.)

I will probably continue working and saving if I keep my job until we’ve decided where we want to live and what life we want to have. You’ve got to retire to something, right? And if I lose it, we’ll re-evaluate.

Keep me accountable, though. If you still see me releasing blog posts and making excuses years from now when our net worth is even higher, leave a comment telling me to stop, haha.

Making £1m is actually the last financial goal that I have, listed in my about page . The rest are:

Move to a rural farm-like property
Build a house (or a barn!)
Publish a fantasy novel
Develop a game and release it on Steam
Personally develop and release a successful mobile app

Looks like I better get to it.

Savings Report #76 - Too Tired

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Another big jump in net worth due to the stock market, the race is on to £1m.

Not a big update today, way too tired due to the baby and busy due to work.

We’re currently just surviving and trying to find our new norm.

Savings Report #75 - Having a Baby is HARD!

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

In September, Baby SavingNinja was born!

The birth was way more harrowing than I thought it would be and it really affected me to the point where I can’t imagine doing it again. Mrs SavingNinja, however, went through it like a champ.

She ended up being induced due to some risk factors, this is where the doctors stimulate labour. This meant 2 days in the hospital waiting to go into ‘active labour.’ Active labour happened at around 5pm on the second day and we then went through the terrible process of contracting and getting to 8cm dilated. The active labour went on through the night and into the next day for about 18h.

After all of that hard work and no sleep, in the end, the baby got stuck and we needed an emergency C-section.

The C-section itself was fine for Mrs SavingNinja but I nearly passed out when I inadvertently saw her cut open and I felt an overwhelming feeling of “What the fuck are we doing!?” and a feeling of the doctors defiling my wife’s body for this little baby alien that came out of her.

After this was a week of being shell shocked, having no sleep, while trying to keep this thing alive, contemplating our life decisions the whole time.

This is HARD!!!

Right now, Mrs SavingNinja is feeding every 2 hours, trying to get him up to his birth weight, our bodies have slowly started adapting to our new normal, Mrs SavingNinja is healing very quickly, and we’re beginning to feel human again.

We’re still in the trenches and right now can’t think how we’re ever going to have hobbies, go on hikes, or travel ever again. I’m going back to work in a little over 1 week, but each day it gets a little better.

We also love the little dude more each day.

Finances

In September we both used our £3000 capital gains allowances. I sold some of my RSUs and Mrs SavingNinja sold some stock from our VTI invested General Investment Account and we re-invested it, along with a top-up, into VWRL .

We also consolidated Mrs SavingNinja’s pensions into Fidelity and added another £5k, we’ve yet to receive the governments 25% top-up.

All of this combined meant we contributed an extra £25k net to our savings. Along with £16k of growth from the buoyant stock market our net worth grew by £40k and pushed us over the £900k threshold.

Only £100k more to go until we reach that big £1m!

Will we reach it before the end of 2024?

Pondering

The more our money grows, the more anxious and depressed I seem to get. We’ve gained £250k net worth since January. The pot is growing so fast that there is a sense of dread that we can lose it again just as quickly.

There is also a feeling of needing to ‘choose’ what we want to do with our lives after becoming displaced from America, and now displaced further with the new Scream Potato in our lives. The more we achieve our financial goals, the closer that big decision seems to get.

I know, of course, that I’m just too anxious, we don’t have to make any decision if we don’t want to. I just feel like we have to.

We’ve already committed to spending 2 more tax years (after this one) filling up our SIPP’s in the UK if I keep my job. Maybe we should just focus on that and exploring potential new homes via family holidays when we feel ready. I always like a good contingency plan, though. If I lost my job tomorrow, I’d want to know what we should do.

More on this contingency planning soon when we get caught up on sleep!

Fingers crossed the October budget isn’t too brutal and I’m really hoping that they don’t put in place an exit tax as that would be catastrophic for us.

See you soon.

Savings Report #74 - Pre Baby Post

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

August was a rollercoaster for stocks, dipping at the start of the month but then recovering. September seems to be going through a similar swing, but I took this snapshot before the drop.

We’re quickly approaching £900k net worth. Maybe next month will be the one? I’m still very hopeful to cross the £1m mark before the end of the year. Mrs SavingNinja’s old SIPP will be added to the spreadsheet in September as well as a lump sum investment into it, this will help us get there.

Baby SavingNinja is very close to being born. I’ve started a few draft articles exploring the best savings accounts for a child.

The Junior SIPP sounds very appealing. You can contribute £2880 per year and the government tops it up to £3600.

Doing this for a few years when your kid is born would set them up for retirement! Even just 1 deposit when they’re born would give them £250k in todays money at 60. Do it for 3 years and they have a £665k pension, pre-inflation.

I really wish my or my wife’s parents had done this for us.

Capital gains

I also have another draft blog post that I’ve almost finished exploring our capital gains tax problem. We’re currently sitting on $700k in a general investment account with £150k of capital gains that we’ve yet to pay tax on.

This leaves us with the headache of tax planning as this pot will continuing to grow exponentially, even if we need to take some out to fill our ISAs each year, leaving us with a huge potential bill at the end of the rainbow that could be avoided if we leave the UK.

This should be published soon, and I’ll need your advice on what to do!

Delayed savings reports

Baby is due very soon and I will probably be delaying the next savings report. Very excited and nervous about it all, but I’ll see you when I’m officially a Dad!

Savings Report #73 - Novel Update & Missing the USA

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The USD has weakened compared to GBP this month which meant a £15k change has only materialized as a £6k change to total (GBP denominated) net worth.

This month we filled the remainder of my ISA, so both mine and Mrs SavingNinja’s ISA’s are filled for the year.

I’ve also upped my salary sacrifice pension contributions to 58%, this will mean that I hit the £60k annual SIPP allowance by April - who knows if this will be around for another tax year. This will be our only contribution to savings for a while, I would prefer not to add more money to our GIA, so anything extra will stay in company stocks or go into a high interest savings account until April.

I had to do a lot of maths to figure out how much I needed to contribute to max my annual allowance. Why don’t pension companies make this easier to do?

I’ve now realized while writing this blog post that I didn’t account for the single month of SIPP contributions from my former employer as well, so I did the maths wrong and will have to lower the contribution amount a little bit.

Damn.

Other News

One more month left of not being in the baby-could-arrive-any-minute panic month. Mrs SavingNinja is getting bigger each day even more so than last month. We’ve been washing his clothes this month and preparing more of his room. It’s starting to get way more real that we’re going to have a new arrival in our party of 2 and for the first time, I’m starting to get more excited about meeting him. Hanging his little socks on the line really brought the excitement and made it more real.

I can only take 2 weeks off work as I didn’t accrue full holidays from ‘joining’ my former employer part-way through the year. We also don’t have any parental benefits as we haven’t been living in the UK for the prior tax years. I’m going to try and apply for extended paid parental leave at work if I’m still there after Christmas, but I’m not sure if this will go through.

This would have been 6 months if I didn’t get laid off.

I’m trying to not feel bitter about it, though, and be happy that I’ve got a job that pays well (or even one at all.)

Mrs SavingNinja - Novelist

Mrs SavingNinja’s book sales are going well for her first duet. We ran a free book deal along with paid promotions and this really got the sales and kindle page reads going. Since then she has around 75 reviews on each book and she’s averaged between $5 and $10 net profit each day. The revenue since May for the two books is now sitting at $1200, but we’ve spent almost all of that with advertising and subscriptions to services that help with ARC (advanced reader copy) teams and publishing (BookSirens and BookFunnel for those interested.)

We’re very happy that we are in the green, though! And she has gained a substantial amount of presence in the community with Amazon follows and newsletter subscribers. Most first time authors lose more than they make for their first books.

We know this is a long game. With self publishing, the more books you have in your backlog, the more profitable a new book becomes, and advertising becomes better.

She’s already 7 chapters into writing her second novel series which will be a contemporary romance and is going a lot smoother with all of her learnings from the first.

Mrs SavingNinja has also taken a break from writing recently to complete her seasonal work of marking GCSE English papers. She managed to mark over 1000 papers this year and has netted around £5000 for doing so.

This, along with her technical editing gig (which is now averaging at over £500 per month), and ramping up book sales, we think will be able to fill her personal allowance going forward each year. She hopes that as she writes more novels, this income will eventually replace the GCSE marking, and hopefully much more!

This makes us both really happy as it means we can stay being a fully remote working couple. We enjoy working together and getting all of this extra free time with no commutes. She is also enjoying building something for herself and has the artistic outlet that she never had as a secondary school teacher.

This is also great timing for having a baby as we can both look after him more easily and as her work schedule is her own, she can still continue with writing and editing and doesn’t have to stop work all together.

Life in the UK

We’re missing America so much. The wild mountains that were on our doorstep, swimming in the warm lakes in the summer, the beautiful trees in the autumn and the snowboarding in the winter. It was our perfect home. Being back has made us realize it even more.

We’re trying to remain optimistic that maybe Scotland will be able to replace some of these things, but it is hard to not think that we will never again be in a place as good as that.

15 minutes from our American home:

The UK seems grey, the British people here are less happy, there are no (real) mountains to climb, the lakes are muddy and cold, and we can’t snowboard each winter without traveling. The tax burden is climbing and the economy is getting worse.

Maybe I should continue working just to try and get us back to the US?

Savings Report #72 - Euro Millionaire

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

I like to document each of my milestones every Savings Report, and see them at-a-glance on the My Financial Journey page. So, even though it may not really mean anything, I’m happy to say that we’ve now reached the Euro millionaire milestone from our savings.

This milestone brings us one step closer to the big one; the million pound goal. Which is the main goal that I’ve been aiming for since the beginning of this blog. We’re £150k away, and it’s crazy to think that it might happen this year.

After the big £1m has been reached, I’ll continue working to build out that buffer. I’ll only consider fully retiring when we’re living in our long-term home and feeling relatively settled. I have no idea how much money we’re going to have to spend to buy a home that we’ll be happy living in for the long term so this may mean taking a little hit on our retirement plans due to the current high interest rates. This is a problem I’m leaving for 2 years from now when we sell our BTL and start looking for a property.

This month, I added £12,400 to my ISA. Next month, I plan to add a further £7600, meaning both mine and Mrs SavingNinja’s ISA limits will have been reached for the year.

I’ll also start counting my new pension contributions starting next month, so I should have a further big chunk to add to the savings spreadsheet bringing us closer to that £1m mark.

I’ve decided to invest 40% of my salary via salary sacrifice for now. I may increase this in the coming months to make sure that I get to the annual contribution limit before the end of the year. I’ve also opened a Fidelity SIPP and plan to consolidate my 3 other UK pension accounts into this - I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner, it’s going to make monthly accounting so much faster.

Other News

I’m properly back to work now with my former employer. I’m trying not to fall back into my usual overwork mode, but it’s difficult as an engineering manager to do this. I’ve been finding very little time for keeping up with my algorithm and system design practice, if I do have time at the end of the day, I’m too shattered and brain exhausted to do it. This is bad, as I didn’t want to be caught off-guard again with a layoff. And this is only going to get worse when the baby comes.

Maybe I need to start purposely trying to do a worse job at work? I could block out time slots during the week where I dedicate time to study. Sometimes I wish I never switched from being an engineer, where I had what seemed like endless time.

Mrs SavingNinja is now in her third trimester. She’s excited and nervous, I’m mainly nervous. I’ve found out over the years that I don’t get excited very often, I’m really a very anxious person, and I tend to over think and over worry. This consumes my excitement for most things. I’m still looking forward to meeting Baby SavingNinja, though. Our coming months will be filled with preparation, reading, and creating baby spreadsheets!

See you next month.

Savings Report #71 - Back in the UK

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Hello!

I’ve put this update off for two months now. So much has happened that I felt it would be too laborious to write about it all, but I’m forcing myself to try this morning.

What’s changed since the last Savings Report when I was leaving America?

Our net worth has crossed $1m on the spreadsheet
We moved to the south-west of England
We bought a spendy car (RAV4!)
I accepted another job
I worked at that new job for 2 weeks and then resigned
I started working for my former employer again, from the UK

Whew.

Oh yeah, and we’re having a baby.

Baby SavingNinja

The biggest change we’ve actually known about for a few months now. This added to the equation when deciding where we should live, what jobs to accept, and also, the spendy car.

We’ve been trying for a baby for a while now and it happened to coincide with getting laid off and having to leave America. Now we’ve settled in a bit we are more excited, we’ve started preparing, and have came to the realization that our lives will change a fair bit more in just a few months.

We’re still trying to stay frugal when it comes to baby purchases. We bought a lot of clothes and furniture second hand, second-hand baby things are so cheap!

We plan on using re-usable nappies (they’ve come a long way,) and Montessori-style re-usable toys. It’s going to be insightful to see how much our spending goes up.

Working Again

After several months of interviewing it turned out that my former boss got a backfill and wanted to bring me back from the UK. I’m very happy about this, although it was challenging to hand in my notice at my new company after only being there for a couple of weeks.

Going back was difficult to say no to. The pay was roughly 50% more, and the paternity leave is significantly better, not to mention it being easier as I already know the domain and people.

I’m still working remotely. And I still hope to continue prepping for the worst (another layoff,) although this will be challenging with the lack of time that’s coming my way. If I make it until past Christmas without being laid off, it will have been the right call.

Living in England Again

We signed for a 6 month lease in the countryside and have set up our life from scratch again. The plan is to stay in this location and rent until we can sell our rental property, which is just over a year away from completing it’s 5-year fixed mortgage. Then we’ll re-evaluate and consider where we want to buy.

Moving to Scotland sounds like it will fit the bill for rural living in the UK, but the plan is to travel to rural Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and see which areas we like the most before moving there.

Finances

This month I filled Mrs SavingNinja’s ISA with my severance money. I’ve also managed to transfer all of our stocks into her account so we will pay less tax when trying to sell stocks in our American general investment account (still over $100k capital gains to pay.) Next month, there’ll be more deposits into my ISA.

I’m hoping that we’re not too far away from reaching £1m net worth. If I keep my job, I plan to max the pension allowance going forward, with that and some continued stock growth, we’ll hopefully reach £1m at some point next year, at 33 years old, this will be quite the achievement! Just two years of American earnings seems to have propelled us by a lot.

We still don’t know yet if we are financially independent. Each month we’ll be tracking all of our expenses to find out, and of course this will change when Baby SavingNinja arrives.

Spendy Purchases

When we moved to America we were forced to buy a more expensive, nearly new, car due to the chip shortages, it seemed even buying an older car was expensive at the time.

Now we’ve, kind of got used to driving a nicer car. We liked the space, and the raised suspension of the Nissan Rogue (Qashqai in the UK), and the ease of automatic drive.

As we’re expecting a little one soon, I also didn’t want to buy an English banger again. And we had plans to travel around the UK in the car to explore… All of this is probably just excuses I’m telling myself.

But, I decided to research reliability and buy with the hopefulness of the car lasting 10+ years instead.

This meant we ended up buying a 2020 RAV4 for £18k. It was a huge purchase (although still cheaper than how much we paid for our Rogue in the US,) I’m partly blaming theFIREstarter as well for his advice of “just treat yourself, mate.”

I hope we don’t live to regret it. Toyota has a 10 year warranty and as it’s a (non plug-in) hybrid, the MPG we’re getting is over 60 even with town driving. It’s spacious for hauling furniture and a baby, and has a lot of great safety features.

It will have been a good purchase if we still have it in 2034!

A lot of our purchases seem to have tilted to reliability these days. We bought a Bosch washer-dryer and dishwasher which were more expensive but cost less energy to run and had 5 year warranties along with a good reputation for reliability. We got a Henry hoover with a turbine head for carpets instead of a Dyson or Shark. Usually we purchased like this for things like hiking backpacks, but now it’s with most items that we see value in them generally being better.

This may be lifestyle inflation, but the verdict is out for if this is cheaper in the long run.

See you next month.

Savings Report #70

Wed, 01 May 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

This is a filler update. I was so tired from relocating back to the UK from the US, selling and buying a car, finding a place to live, buying furniture, I couldn’t write an update!

I still took this financial snapshot though.

See Savings Report #71 for a full update.

Savings Report #69 - Bye bye America

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Checking in for one last time before leaving the land of the free.

I’m writing this on my last piece of furniture, my desk. I left it until the last moment to sell so I could be comfortable interviewing. I’m hoping I can sell it before we leave which is in 6 days.

Everything else has been sold! We managed to sell our car for $20k to a bulk car purchaser called CarMax, these guys offered $5k more than anyone else, and the process was super easy. We got a rental car for 2 weeks, and although it’s very ill-equipped to deal with the New Hampshire weather, we managed to fit all 8 of our suitcases in when we did a trial run last week.

We’re now sleeping on an inflatable double-air mattress, our sofa is going to go to our neighbor the day before we leave, and everything has been packed after numerous cullings of our stuff to fit the weight limit of 23kg per suitcase.

We’ve prepared as much as we can, and now all that is left is to hope that everything goes to plan next week. We’re waiting on the USDA to return our ‘approved’ cat travel forms (they can only send this 10 days before travel - and the mail service in the states is awful!) On the day, we’ll clean our rental property, then drive the 2h to the airport, I’ll get dropped off with 8 suitcases and the cat and I’ll shuffle my way into the lobby while my wife drops off the rental car in Boston and gets an Uber back to the airport. 15h later, my father-in-law will be waiting for us in Paris, we’ll then drive the 7hrs back to Devon via the channel tunnel and arrive just in time for dinner.

Whew, it’s going to be tiring.

Interviewing marathon

March has been jam-packed with interviewing. In the last week of March I had 3hrs of interviews a day for the whole week. I feel like I can recite behavior examples by heart at this point. I’m really hoping for an offer this week, I am pretty confident I’ll get an offer from at least one of the companies, but I’m hoping the others will respond too as they’re not my first choice. BUT all of them are fully remote and above £100k salary, so I’m very happy with that as it seems we won’t have to sacrifice too much while still being able to save a chunk.

There’s also a possibility of my former employer re-hiring me in the UK, as the only reason I was laid off was because they shut down the USA based teams and there’s a backfill opportunity. If this happens my salary will be around double the other potential companies which would be amazing! I’m not getting my hopes up just yet, but I’ll be over the moon if this can happen.

I’ve been quite impressed with the amount of roles that are fully remote and can offer London-like salaries. This is undoubtedly due to the much better remote software available post-COVID, I also think it’s because I’m interviewing for Engineering Manager positions.

Prior to my current position I was an engineer, I was solely in the mobile development space. My EM interviews have all been in the non-mobile space, web companies and infrastructure companies, scale ups and open source projects. It seems being an EM has opened up a number of different employment opportunities outside of my engineering tech stack background, and due to this, there have been more remote opportunities that hire globally. The remote-first trend is only going to grow as time goes on as well!

I’m thrilled that it looks like I won’t have to re-join the London commuter grind ever again. Maybe our chicken-coop building dreams are closer than we think.

Reaching $1m

This month also marked my official end of employment. It’s the first time I’ve been unemployed since I started my career almost 10 years ago.

It was bittersweet as at the same time, I got paid my 4 months of severance and it pushed the SavingNinja house-hold over an important milestone.

We became USD-millionaires.

I'm a millionaire!

Today marks the day I'm officially unemployed.

I did get my severance though and after adding that and my vested restricted stock options to our total net worth, it's stands at $1.034m.

We've crossed the $1m dollars threshold!
— SavingNinja (@SavingNinja) March 4, 2024

Due to the still roaring bull run in the stock market, we’ve now actually passed another milestone. We’ve became Euro-millionaires as well.

I’ve not updated this in my savings spreadsheet yet as most of the extra is cash. I plan to invest it when we’re back in the UK in ISAs, so it will get added then. Of course, it may not be invested if I don’t get a job and we need to use it to live.

Below is a screenshot of where this is coming from and the different currency totals.

The cash is in Interactive Brokers earning 4.84% (minus the first $10k.) The RSUs are what is left over from my last promotion at work.

I’ve not been including my RSUs in the past. I saw them as kind of bonuses that I’d sell eventually and add into my existing “main” portfolio where it would be included in our net worth.

I may still not include them in this spreadsheet as I don’t like seeing our net worth analytics jump up and down as I move investments around. I’ll be doing a lot of shuffling over the coming months as we transfer USD accounts into UK accounts and move cash into ISAs. I plan to sell the RSUs under Mrs SavingNinja’s name to pay less tax - the UK allows you to transfer assets and the capital gains liability to your spouse!

I’ll keep the savings spreadsheet as net worth of our long-term assets that I plan to not touch, so this cash and the RSUs should be added in the coming months and year.

It’s still nice to know that we’ve hit that figure in real terms non the less! We’ll just have to celebrate again when we’ve ‘officially’ crossed the line in the spreadsheet.

It’s crazy to look back at my financial journey and see that I’ve been posting these savings reports every month since 2018, when my net worth figure was £54k. If you’ve been with me since the beginning reading these updates, thanks for joining me on this wild ride!

I’m wondering, when will the ride end? I’m seeing a lot more contemplative posts in the near future about when to actually stop working and what to do with your life when you FIRE; that is when the second half of the journey begins!

See you next month when I’m back in the UK.

Savings Report #68 - All Time High

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The stock market is now back at its Pre-2022 all time high. Scanning the web, the sentiment seems to think that another crash must be coming. But then again, people have been saying that for the last year. Maybe this is the beginning of another 10 year bull run on the back of the wings of AI.

For now, it’s making our numbers look good. But I’m trying not to get too invested in these new net worth figures to brace for the inevitable drops which will hit harder due to the bigger pot. I only hope that I’ve got a well paid job by the time it drops so I can take advantage of it!

My job hunt has been fruitless so far, but I’ve got a few interviews lined up. It seems most will require me to move back to London on a hybrid model if I want to earn around £120k and up, otherwise I’d be looking at around £75k for most fully-remote companies (there are some exceptions.)

Right now, I feel like it would be worth going back into London for 2-3 days a week for a couple more years. This would allow me to max my pension contributions at £60k annually and bulk it out a bit more, as my UK pension pot only has £120k in it. This was good before, at 32, with the LTA in place, but with it removed, I want to load it up again.

Now that we have roughly £500k in our pre-pension accounts, continuing to save a lot for a couple more years into a pension would make it even easier to consider truly retiring early.

We also have 2 more years left on our UK buy-to-let mortgage, so we’ll be renting until that’s sold. This coincides perfectly with aggressive London-earning savings, then when we sell the rental and can buy another UK property, we can consider if we want to take a pay-cut and go fully remote to buy a house somewhere again. Maybe Scotland?

There are only 5 weeks left until we leave the USA to return home. We’re pretty stressed about it, selling items every day and making arrangements. We haven’t had any interest in the car, it seems most Americans buy via car loans from dealerships, so our chances of selling a $20k+ car to said random American is pretty low. It’s looking like we’ll have to sell at an extra low rate to a bulk car buyer or dealership securing a $15k+ loss in 2 years… It hurts to lose this much on a car, but we’ll take it on the chin as the price of moving to a remote US area and needing a car before we had a social security number and US license. We can’t wait to get a £1k UK banger again!

Next savings report we’ll be leaving in 1 week! I’ll try and write one straight away before we leave, I’ll be in full on panic mode, and probably living with no furniture other than an air mattress.

See you then!

Savings Report #67 - Are We Now FI?

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

January went slowly and quickly all at once. I can’t believe we only have 2 more months until we leave the USA and that terrifies me. We still have so many of our belongings to sell, including the car.

We’re planning on trying to sell the car toward the end of February and then renting one for a month, this will ensure we get the best deal as if we sold it to a dealer we were looking at a loss of around $20k.

Our flights are booked now, along with 8 suitcases and our cat, we’ve also scheduled a vet to do his flight certificates. As the UK doesn’t allow you to fly in without paying an extortionate fee to a specialized pet relocation company, (one of only a few countries in the world that require this) we have to fly into France.

Luckily, Mrs SavingNinja’s dad will pick us up from the airport and drive us back into England through the channel tunnel. This means we have to get cat health certificates for both France and the UK, but it’s still cheaper (and safer for him) than using the cargo hold.

The stock market did well again, pushing our net worth ever closer to that $1m figure. I received a 7 month severance along with vesting stock and a retention bonus from last year (ironically) from my employer so this should allow us to continue to fill our investment accounts for a while.

I’m planning on investing $50k of my severance into Mrs SavingNinja’s GIA’s in IBKR, I wish I’d done this sooner as I’m sitting on a $100k capital gain in my own accounts. In the USA, you can share your tax rates and tax allowances with your spouse, this isn’t the case in the UK, so we would have been a lot better off if we’d invested the bulk of our savings in her name instead, or split it equally, but it’s too late now. For what it’s worth, now that I’ve experienced the US system of sharing allowances with your spouse, I think not allowing this is stupid. A married couple who both independently earn £40k have more money after taxes than if 1 person earned £120k and the other was a stay at home parent, which is just insane. The UK tax system almost forces both people to work otherwise they will be significantly worse off than dual income households. If I’d been smart and invested our money in Mrs SavingNinja’s name, we’d be paying a lot less tax… /rant

I’ll put £20k into a savings account earning around 5.5%, we’ll use that as our emergency fund until I find another job. And for the rest, we’ll fill up our ISA’s as much as we can.

I’ve been looking into “expert networks” to earn some money on the side. It seems that as I’ve got some big name companies under my belt I can now give mock interviews and coaching services for a pretty good hourly rate, between $125 and $200. It got me thinking that doing a couple of those a week, continuing with my technical tutorials/books, and Mrs SavingNinja editing and kindle publishing, we could probably support ourselves financially. As we’re able to also draw out £24k per year from our investments using the 4% rule as well, maybe I shouldn’t be rushing to get a job so quickly?

In any case, I’d like to be able to live in the UK, with a job, for a little bit before trying the RE thing just to be sure. Before we left the UK we were only spending £24k per year, and that was with an annual £6000 of holiday spend and £2400 for my train to London, so effective RE minimum spend would have been £16k, with extra for holidays. I’m thinking that we’re pretty much FI, definitely if we continued with side-hustles.

Obviously it would be risky right now to do this, and our expenses are almost guaranteed to change, if we get a bigger house or have children, interest rates are higher now as well, so we won’t be quitting yet. But maybe I shouldn’t rush into the first job I find and use these figures to wait for the perfect one instead? Even if it takes a year. What do you think?

In other news, interview prep is going well. I’m learning better than I have done before for the algorithm part, I think I’ve passed the hill of complexity now and it’s just a studying game, I know the basics!

System design is also going well, I’m learning a new type of system each day e.g. “How social media networks are designed.” I’ve now got a pretty broad amount of systems that I’ve deeply studied under my belt. I’m learning more about backend engineering than I have before and how popular services like Kafka, Flink, MapReduce and Cassandra work.

Each day has been filled with algorithms and system design. It’s crazy how much you can learn when you don’t have a job!

I’m still a little worried about all of the continued layoffs, my chances of using everything I’m learning to get into Google or Meta is getting slimmer due to there not being as many positions. I’ve started the interview process for one particular position and I’m really hoping that goes well but I’ve got no more in the pipe if it doesn’t just yet.

I’m unsure whether I should be focusing on re-learning Android instead and going for engineering positions. As time goes by, if I don’t get an EM position, I’ll have to pivot to re-familiarizing myself with Android development and start applying for those roles instead.

Or maybe I can try contracting?

So many options!

But for now, I’m still on the lookout for Engineering Manager roles.

We’ve also been enjoying the snow and have gone snowboarding 4 times when the weather has been good. It’s been perfect going in the week when everyone else is at work, it’s so quiet! No lift lines.

I’m hoping that in next months report I’ll be able to share that I’ve got a job offer. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Have a great February.

2023 Reviewed - The End of Our American Dream

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Introduction

2023 was the first full year that we spent in the USA, our hopeful forever home. We saved the most that we have ever saved with a high income and working remotely in a low cost of living area. We explored many mountains, swam in many lakes, and we started to feel at home.

The year ended with the shattering news of being laid off and learning that we would have to leave the USA and return the UK.

This scuppered our plans of “settling down” which was one of our goals for last year and threw us right back into the fray of uncertainty and job hunting.

I’ve not thought about goals much for this year, as we’re still very unsure of what we even want to do. Writing this review post is going to be the first time I’m thinking about it, so you’ll be along for the ride.

2023 Financial Review

£643,439 Networth (+£200,056)
£576,715 Excluding House (+£200,056)
£119,915 Contributed
£83,944 Interest Earned
£197,224 Pension (+£45,956)
£22,708 Contributed
£23,807 Interest Earned
£379,490 Pre-Pension (+£154,113)
£97,207 Contributed
£60,320 Interest Earned
£66,724 House Equity

The numbers are almost too big to comprehend. Our household net worth has grown by over £200k, which is mind boggling. It was only 2 years ago when we reached our initial £300k net worth total, I wrote that it would take us 10 more years to get to £1m , which is what I thought our family needed to safely retire.

With our new £643k net worth, it seems that with £40k per year invested and moderate 7% growth, that £1m figure is only 3 years away.

How did we cut down what was 10 years away to just 3? We skipped 5 years.

Of course, the answer is moving to America and investing a lot during a market slump. I need to not forget that inflation has also ran rampant in the past 2 years. In 2022 it was 6.5%, and in 2023, 3.4%.

Combined, that same £1m target from 2 years ago should now be £1.1m. This is something overlooked by a lot of the FIRE community, including me. We figure inflation into our predicted investment returns, but we don’t adjust our targets.

This would be overcome by looking at annual spend and adjusting targets based on that, but that can be disparaging if people think that their spending is going up a lot, either that or people would cut even more from their lifestyle assuming that they should cut back when it’s really inflation doing it’s thing.

In any case, I’m proud of our numbers, and the stock market looks like it’s finally paying metaphorical (and figurative) dividends for being invested longer term, which is now about 6 years.

Moving out of the US again will definitely slow down our contributions, but I’m hoping that now our pot is sufficiently plump, the kickback on the gains will help us get over the finish line, even if we invest less than half of what we have been investing.

Let’s delve into the 2023 analytics!

Total Net Worth

The top chart is so visually pleasing. The data from it now spans over 5 years and it really shows how an exponential curve is forming. Year after year it’s getting steeper. Yeah, it could be because we came to America, we will see in the coming years if the curve continues to steepen!

Interest vs Contributions

2023 was an insane year for interest growth. You can see in this chart that it was sputtering for most of the year and then out of nowhere November and December were really great months for the stock market. We still invested around £10k per month, which was our goal for the year but the investment gains very nearly overtook contributions for the first time ever.

Here’s another chart showing each individual month interest change, 4 months were a loss, with September dropping by almost £20k!

Lifetime interest went bananas this year. Last year I was complaining about it only being +£33k, it’s now up by 4 times that in a single year. It really shows how out of the ordinary 2023 was for the stock market.

Interest gains tracked in the spreadsheet show a growth of 23.35%. It’s one of those years that makes me glad I invested so much up front.

I really hope we can continue with this momentum for a bit!

Now that I’ve been tracking our savings for 5 years, here’s a new chart to show growth and interest on an annual basis.

Goals Results

Below are the goals that we set for 2022 Reviewed , let’s see how we did.

1. Release two full length novels

This goal hasn’t been reached. I completely gave up writing with work taking up all of my time. Although Mrs SavingNinja has kept this up!

She hasn’t released as quickly as she initially wanted as this was her first time writing a full length novel, but she has learnt a ton and is confident that going forward, she will be much quicker. She has completely finished the first book in a duet and it is 419 pages long, book 2 is also half done.

We’ve both learned a lot about the marketing side of self-publishing too. She has been building out a TikTok following, created a website and newsletter, and a host of artwork for the cover, print version, and promotions.

Book 1 release is set for the end of January with book 2 being two months later. I’m going to run some paid adverts and I’m hoping this is the start of a new career for her.

Do you think I should share the book link here? The genre for this series is paranormal-romance, let me know!

2. Earn $1000 from total book sales

Not yet.

3. Visit 3 national parks

We managed to visit 1 national park - Acadia. Our other travel was taken up by a relatively stressful trip to Italy. I wish we could have gone to more national parks, especially now that we’re leaving. This will have to wait for a big American road trip.

4. Contribute at least $100,000 into pre-pension savings

Yes! We ended up investing over $150,000, $124k in after-tax accounts.

5. Exercise 3 times per week as a default

Failed miserably. I keep going through stints of exercise and then stopping. Now, with the layoff, I’ve lost all motivation. I usually have better luck when I try to restrict my diet as well as I feel healthier. We’re still both hiking a lot, snowboarding right now, and exercise on our new virtual reality Quest 3 (very fun!) but we’re still not doing as much as we should.

6. Don’t buy anything new

We started out doing so well with this goal! We got all of the way to May with only purchasing these items from a second hand thrift store:

Quiche dish $2.99
Large mason jars x2 $3.00
Champagne glasses x 2 $2.00
Old towels for car $2.50
Sweatpants $2.00
Napkin basket $2.00

Then things started to fray when we decided to move to New Hampshire. We purchased these items new which we needed for moving:

Moving straps $17.00
Tire cover $10.00
Mattress cover $5.00
Ratchet straps $5.00

Where we were moving there wasn’t a Costco for one and a half hours. This made us go a bit crazy when shopping at Costco (our favorite shop). The latter half of the year we went mental with purchasing. Here are some of the bigger purchases:

An electric piano
Knifes and knife sharpening block
Carbon steel wok
Dutch oven set
Quest 3 VR headset

I don’t know what happened to be honest. I think it was a mix of not wanting to miss a “sale” at Costco before we moved, and then as we broke the rules of the goal anyway, we slowly forgot about it.

When we found out that we were leaving the USA, we also bought a laptop each and a phone for me as tech is a lot cheaper here (and no VAT!)

The first half of the year of this goal did teach us that with a bit of restraint we could rely on thrift stores. I’m not sure if we will be able to do the same in the UK, but having a buying holiday every once in a while helped us keep our spending low.

Luckily, as Costco have such a good return period, a lot of our Costco purchases were returned when I got laid off ($1000+ worth).

Goals for 2024

It’s especially hard for me to set goals this year. I have no idea where we’ll work, what type of work I’ll be doing, or what country we’ll be living in.

Maybe instead I should focus on setting some more experience and non-work related goals aimed at improving our happiness?

Let’s give this a go!

1. Climb the 3 highest UK mountains

We’ve really enjoyed hiking up mountains in New Hampshire, I’d like us to continue this in the UK. There are 3 big ones: Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in England, and Snowdonia in Wales. I climbed all 3, 7 years ago, doing the Three Peak Challenge, but Mrs SavingNinja hasn’t climbed any. It shouldn’t be too difficult for us to climb all 3 at some point in 2024! Driving 5h is nothing now we’re used to the long distance driving we’ve had to do in the USA.

2. Read 25 books

I’ve fallen off the wagon of reading non-fiction books after a whole year of reading only that in 2022 . I’d like to make sure that I read at least half non-fiction, and non-fiction books are generally quicker to read, so a 25 book goal is a good catch-all.

Do you have any book recommendations for me? Next on my list are:

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Thinking Fast and Slow
The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast (reading this one now and it’s brilliant)
Scarcity Brain
The Comfort Crisis

3. Master interviewing

I’ve set this goal 2 years in a row and failed completely. Now shit has hit the fan and I’m unprepared. I won’t make the same mistake again, I’m going to completely master LeetCode algorithms and System Design, and I’ll continue even when starting a new job.

For this goal to be met, I want to be confident with all of the NeetCode 150 and confident passing a system design “design Twitter” style interview. I’ll also be purchasing LeetCode premium to force me to use it this year. I want to become an algorithm solving genius!

They’re the only 3 that I can muster!

I wonder what my goals will be when I finally quit work? Hopefully they’ll be full of house construction goals like Tony has set, I miss building things with my hands.

I’m unsure what 2024 will bring. Right now, I’m focusing my efforts on securing another job, I’m almost rushing back into it. Because my job was taken away from me and it wasn’t voluntary, I want to replace it straight away, maybe doing so is a bad thing and we should be taking a step back and trying to pursue what will make us happiest instead.

The issue is, the tech industry seems to be going through a down-turn right now, and these are our general options:

Move to Scotland and work remotely, eventually buy a nice remote property, coast until we FIRE.

This is what we’d prefer to do, but it comes with risk. Maybe I won’t be able to find a job remotely? Or if I do, and I get laid off again, will there be any more jobs? A lot of positions are being outsourced to other cheaper countries now as well, will I still be able to earn a big salary?

Go back to London and work in a big corporation.

The pay will be best doing this. But do we really want to go through the stress of working or commuting to London again? Not really, I’ve gotten used to having that extra time at home and with Mrs SavingNinja. But, for a high enough salary, maybe it will be worth it for a few more years?

Move to another country or Canada.

This could work, but we both don’t really want to be moving again so soon after moving back to the UK. We want to spend at least a year back home first.

London is looking like the safest option, it is still the place with the most job prospects, but it also fills me with dread. I’d like to find a remote position that still pays well, those companies do still exist, but it’s even harder to get a remote gig as a manager.

That’s another question I’ve been asking myself, should I continue pursuing a career in engineering management, or switch back to individual contributor? I’ve heard that it’s a lot harder to get a role as an EM, especially with the tech down-turn, but going back to IC so soon will feel like a step back. I’m prepping for both interviews anyway.

There are a lot of unknowns, I’m going to start applying in February, until then, I’m still preparing!

I hope you all had a good 2023, and here’s to 2024 being everything that we want it to be.

See you in February.

Savings Report #66 - Small Update

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

December bought another huge rise in the stock markets, almost 5%! We successfully contributed at least $10k per month for the whole of 2023. It’s been a very good year for our net worth.

After posting about my redundancy there isn’t too much to say in Decembers update. Go and read that if you haven’t already.

I have started updating the data for 2023 though and I’ll be writing my end of year update soon. I’m unsure what goals to set as I still have literally no idea where we’ll end up in 2024, or how much we’ll be able to invest, but I’m sure there are some goals I’ll be able to set.

See you in that post!

Redundancy

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0000

I rolled over in bed and thought, what time is it? The sound machine had turned off, that means I have between 0 and 15 minutes until my alarm goes off and it’s time to start my Monday.

I’d had a really nice weekend, one of the best in a while. Saturday was a hygge day, it was filled with baking bread, cooking, and playing co-op games with my wife. On Sunday, I wrote Savings Report #65 and we hiked for 2 hours to a lonesome lake on top of a trail. We talked about our future in the United States.

“I really do love it here,” she said. “I love the mountains, and the snow, and the trees!”

I responded, “I love it here, too. We’re only a few months away from getting to the point in our green card process where we’re not reliant on my employer to stay, we can buy a big house then, and finally get some chickens.”

We had been working toward this dream, a remote mountain life, for as long as I could remember. Now it seemed we were finally starting to believe that we’d made it here and it would become our permanent life.

Our finances had also skyrocketed since living in the United States. Another couple of years with our current savings and I was sure that money worries would be far behind us as the compound interest train really got going. Maybe retiring at 35 wasn’t such a wild dream?

I smiled as I grabbed my phone from under the pillow to start my usual morning routine of reading my work Slack messages and emails to prepare for the day. Sweden had already been working for 4 hours, so it wasn’t unusual to have a phone full of dozens of notifications waiting for me.

Opening Slack I saw a message from a senior executive on a general channel, “Today is a very hard day for all of us, emails have gone out to affected employees…”

I could feel my pulse begin to quicken as my skin prickling with heat.

Is it happening again?

Last January there had been a layoff, 6% of the total workforce had been let go in the hope of gaining profitability by being efficient. It was a harrowing time which took my org a long time to recover from.

I scrolled down to view my notifications again, I had one from HR with the subject, “IMPORTANT: Please prio…”

My heartbeat was now pulsing at a sickening rate. Was I affected? No, I can’t be, I had done such good work this year, I even covered my boss for his 6 months of paternity leave, I was delivery lead for a 25 team critical initiative which was going so well!

Usually these emails also go out to Engineering Managers who have someone on their team affected as well, it must be that, I thought.

I nervously opened the email and started reading. “We are laying off 17% of the company, unfortunately you are also affected…”

My heart almost stopped… Fuck.

I turned to my still sleeping wife. “Baby, I’ve been laid off.” “What?” she said. “I’ve lost my job.” She abruptly sat up, and looked at me, “What do you mean??”

I had 2 hours until my meeting with HR when I would be cut off from company systems and my laptop and phone would be locked. What followed was a daze of confusion, sadness, and messaging colleagues.

My manager had no idea, he was also angry, “I’d rather lose half of the other people than you,” he said.

It turned out that our area was quipped by senior execs to be more work around the work than work itself. Our org lead had been told to reduce costs by 50%. He made the decision to cut the whole of the US workforce, 30% of the staff, making it a Sweden-only org. USA personnel were expensive, costing more than double that of their Swedish counterparts. It made sense, but it didn’t make it any less shocking.

Some of the most brilliant and hard working engineers that I’ve ever known were let go that day, while some of the worst stayed. This alone kept the thoughts of worthlessness at bay as I battled the emotions that came in the proceeding days.

We found out we had no chance of staying in the USA, even if I found another job, it was like we were never here. To stay, I would need to find another sponsoring employer and I’d have to go through the H1B lottery with a 10% chance of getting it. Or I’d need to work for an international employer for a year out of the country first and come over on an L1, the same route I had taken to be here now.

We were definitely leaving.

We spent December planning our exit, listing things for sale, and trying to organize the logistical nightmare of moving across the continent with our belongings and cat.

I thought I had made it, a high paying job that I loved which was fully remote in a country I had been trying to move to for my whole life. Now it was back to the drawing board.

I had to study again, algorithms, system design, behavioral, if I wanted to get back into a top tier company, with more competition due to the economy, I had months of hell to look forward to.

I had the anxiety of joining a new company again and going through the first 6 months of feeling self-conscious with imposter syndrome before I finally settled in.

We had choices to make for what we wanted to do with our lives; move to Europe? Move back to the UK? Keep trying to get back to the USA or not? Move back to London or find remote work? A big burden of choice that we thought we wouldn’t have to make again.

Being laid off is a terrible experience, getting laid off while on a work visa is even worse, the worst experience of our lives to date.

You feel real grief.

Grief for the dream job that you were once so excited to join.

Grief for the friends that you worked with every day that have been ripped away without a real goodbye.

Grief for the disposable income that you have gotten used to.

Grief for the country that you have fallen in love with.

Grief for the life that you could have lived.

I’ll leave you with a link from a post I wrote almost 4 years ago, when I found out that I’d gotten my dream job and we were moving to Sweden, Something Happened .

I know we’re going to be fine, we’re in the best place financially that we’ve ever been, and my CV is looking stronger than ever, but it’s still hard not to be sad.

Thank you to everyone who has reached out over the past couple of weeks, it means the world to me.

We move back to the UK in April, that’s where we’ll plan our next move.

See you in the Winchester!

Savings Report #65 - £55k in 1 Month!

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

A note before reading

I wrote this update a month ago but I decided not to release it as the very next day, I got laid off and the SavingNinja family found out that we will have to leave the USA. When I wrote this I was feeling very hopeful about our future in the USA, then it all changed overnight.

As I’ve never missed a savings report in over 5 years, I’m releasing this now, and I’ll write a December savings report in the next few days explaining what has happened.

So, without further ado, here’s Novembers update, written by a blissfully unaware SavingNinja.

This month has been a killer month to be in the stock market. Our US stocks grew by a staggering 10.46% in interest alone, amounting to our total net worth going up by £55,000 in November.

This is more than I invested into the stock market in the whole of 2019, in just a single month!

I’m looking forward to the hopeful continued resurrection of the stock market as I’ve been stuffing our pot while the market has been cheap.

With the crazy rise we saw this month my total tracked APR for the year is now standing at 16.28% and it’s shaping up to be one of the best years in the stock market I’ve experienced, 1 more month to go until the end of the year.

This month has also made me realize just how much better the US stock market seems to do. Compared to this 10.46% US stocks rise, my UK accounts only went up by 6.33% and my Swedish accounts 2.66%. Why does the USA do so much better when it comes down to money and profit?

Of course, some of this could be attributed to exchange rates again… Actually, I’ll go and take a look at the GBP:USA exchange rate right now.

OK, the value of the pound seems to have gone up in November. On November 1st you could get $1.22 cents per £1, now it’s $1.27. So now I’m even more confused by the bad UK performance and good USA performance, what are your APR’s looking like?

Compound Interest

Over the years with our 80% savings rate, I’ve conditioned myself to not even think about compound interest, it’s too far away I thought, now it seems to be creeping up on us, it’s hard not to get excited again.

If we have a bull run ahead of us, it’s not too foreign of an idea to think that we could hit $1m in a year and $2m in 3 to 5 years if we stay in the USA. And at that amount of invested money, the freight train of compound interest will well and truly be moving and soon after purchases like deciding on a $200k or $400k house will not matter anymore.

Where will we be if there is a bull run for the next 10 years and we decide to continue working? $4m? $5m? It’s exciting to think! But then I’m probably just drunk on the recent market surge. I’ve seen similar optimistic and celebratory posts on the FIRE subreddit recently.

And what’s the point in collecting this much? When will enough be enough? Not long ago £300k was my FIRE target to be able to sustain £12k per year in the UK, or “Minimum Wage FIRE” for 1 person. This month, we’ve now crossed £600k, that’s enough for both myself and Mrs SavingNinja to retire on £24k a year combined. Our UK spending was half of that for a long time. But now that I’m seeing the possibility of it doubling, and doubling again, and again! It’s hard to resist. Is this one more year syndrome?

Winter is Here

Winter is well and truly here now we’ve had lots of snow and ice. We’ve bought some micro-spikes and gators to go hiking up the mountains in the snow and we’re excited to get back out there! It’s getting more challenging to get out of bed in the morning though with old, non-smart heating we have to get out of bed in the cold to switch it on. These were luxuries we’ve never been without before and we didn’t realize how much we’d miss them.

Christmas is coming soon and I’m excited to create my annual review and compile our analytics.

See you next month!

Savings Report #64 - Recovered From Italy

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

This month saw more red in the stock market. All of our accounts, in Sweden, the USA, and the UK did pretty badly. The US accounts fell by 2.72%, Swedish accounts 1.07%, and English a staggering 3.14%. Of course, I have no idea how much of this is related to currency exchange fluctuations as I’m measuring in GBP.

We’re still chugging along contributing around £10,000 per month into our investments. It’s very discouraging to see our total net worth drop the last couple of months even with these contribution amounts. This is the product of having a larger sum invested. Usually my contribution amounts vastly outperformed the drop or gain in the market so I’m not used to it.

But, it’s practice for those $100k falls that we’ll inevitably encounter at some point in our investment lives.

And if I’m seeing big drops now, hopefully there will be some big upward swings later. I’ll just keep calm and carry on investing!

Travels Last Month

Last Savings Report I left it a bit short. It was because I was absolutely knackered. After 3 weeks of doing an insurmountable amount of walking around 6 Italian cities, our flight back to Boston got cancelled due to a strike in Milan airport. We went through the stress of getting it re-booked although on the new flight, we had a layover in New York instead of Amsterdam.

The flight from NYC to Boston then got cancelled as well because of floods in the city! So, we were stranded in New York at about 30h with no sleep, feeling sick and exhausted.

We ended up having to spend $600 for 1 night in a crappy hotel half an hour away from the airport and then the next morning get a 5h coach journey back to Boston, followed with a 2h drive home.

It was mental. I know we were just incredibly unlucky, but it’s made us not really want to go on big trips anymore to the EU. Not for a while anyway!

We enjoyed exploring Italy itself, and I feel a lot more connected to my home country. But, we definitely didn’t add enough rest days.

The food was amazing, eating out was expensive but buying things like wine and cheese from the grocery store was insanely cheap, even in the big cities like Rome.

I was taken back by how amazing the old architecture was in Florence, Rome, and Pompeii.

Pompeii was especially breathtaking. It’s literally a 2000+ year old fully restored city which is still in very good condition, you can walk around people’s houses and see the original kitchen along with counter tops. I thought it must have been re-built, but it’s all original, it was kept in such good condition due to the volcanic ash that it was buried under.

The St Peter’s Basilica in Rome was also way more breathtaking than I thought it would be. The place is massive and beautiful, it seemed like a wonder of the world to me.

A negative of Italy that I wasn’t expecting, especially after living and visiting New York a lot, is how smelly and dirty Italy is in these main cities, worse than New York in my opinion. Everywhere we walked, we were walking in cigarette smoke. It seems Italy hasn’t caught up with the rest of the world that smoking is bad for you, it’s too ingrained into their culture. Everyone was smoking, we couldn’t escape it. I even got 2 cigarette burns on my rucksack and clothes. Every crevice of the streets and on the train tracks is filled with cigarette butts. It was the same in Bologna, Rome, Florence, Naples, Turin. They have an epidemic of cigarette butts.

There are also a lot of old cars driving around bringing a big smell of gas to the cigarette smoke.

When we were walking around NYC before getting the coach back, we felt like we were finally breathing fresh air.

To continue the rant, a lot of Italians seemed rude. I know that I’m sounding more like an American saying this, but it definitely was noticeable. Bar owners didn’t want to serve us, they either gave us dirty looks or left us standing there for a long while. Some cafe owners were still smoking inside while making espresso. Bus drivers and subway workers who were there to help seemed pissed off if you approached them, a lot of them just pointing and then becoming exacerbated if you made them verbally speak. There were of course people who were nice, but most were aloof or rude, it was draining. When we went into a bagel shop while in NYC on the way back the difference was like night and day.

Back in New Hampshire (US)

We’re well and truly settled back in at home now. In the last few days we’ve started looking at properties again, this time in the cheaper range of $250k or less. We’ve seen a few pop up that are renovation projects and thought it would be fun to work on a property while living there.

If we bought a property for below $250k there wouldn’t be as much financial risk if we had to leave America and sell it again. There may also be the possibility of renting it out.

We’re keeping our eyes on the market and seeing if a deal pops up. In the mean time, I’m learning as much as I can about wells, septic systems, and propane system costs.

It will be a long while until we’d be willing to spend $500k plus on a house, a green card is probably 2 years away and the interest rates are still high. We miss owning though, so a smaller project may be better if we can find one, with the hope of it being a good investment.

Winter Has Come

The temperature has dropped to almost freezing now. We have the thick duvet cover on and the air conditioners have been packed away. Now we’ll see how much the propane guzzling gas furnaces cost us per month.

How are you coping with the red markets this year?

Savings Report #63 - A Quick One

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

This is the latest I’ve ever released a Savings Report!

In September, we were in Italy for 3 weeks, we stayed in 8 different AirBnB’s and were met with a lot of trouble getting home. It left me too tired to think about doing a Savings Report.

As it’s so late in the month, I’ll leave this one short.

The stock market did terribly. Our trip went well, we saw a lot of old sights, although it was very tiring. We had two cancelled flights on the way home and we ended up needing to get a 5h bus journey from New York to Boston.

To top it all off, we found out that we had caught scabies when we got back so have had to cream up and wash the whole house.

The whole ordeal has made us not want to travel outside of the USA again.

That’s it!

See you in a few weeks.

Savings Report #62 - Acadia & Oil Change

Sat, 09 Sep 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

This month I have more pounds but less dollars than last month. The multi-currency set up is messing up our finance tracking.

All in, it does seem like the markets were a little red, losing over 1%.

We’re hovering ever closer to the three quarter of a million dollar mark, I want to get to that big $1m though! We’re up almost $200k since January so I’m hoping that big milestone isn’t as far away as it seems, especially if the market rebounds.

Acadia

We did a lot more hiking this month with a trip to Acadia National Park for 3 nights. Wow, this national park is beautiful, it’s along the coast of Maine with awesome hikes and pretty lakes in-land.

We hiked some of our most technical trails to date, our favorite called the Precipice Trail . A 2h hike which basically vertically scales a mountain where you use metal rungs to hold onto.

Here are some shots!

We spent the nights in our car camping set up, the drive was 4 and a half hours, which went quickly listening to the Death In Ice Valley podcast.

Mechanicing

It was time for our first car oil change this month. Instead of paying the obscenely high labor costs here in the United States, we bought all of the parts needed for an oil change: oil, oil filter, oil filter wrench, car ramps, oil pan and a funnel. And we did the oil change in about half an hour, all for cheaper than it would have cost a mechanic to do it - with the added bonus of not needing to go through all the effort to organize it.

Next oil change we’ll save almost $100 as we already have the car ramp which was the most expensive part to buy.

We’ve never actually changed our car oil before, which is odd as it seems like an easy DIY job. I’m thinking it’s not as common in the UK? Here, for our car, they’re recommending changing the oil every 5k miles or annually, that seems obsessive. How often are you changing your car oil?

Coming back to the EU

Next month, we go on our Italy trip. In fact, as I’m writing this update late, the trip is actually tomorrow. It’s the first time we’ll both be back in the EU since we moved to the USA last year.

It feels strange as the trip is a daunting one with around 15 hours of total travel time with lay overs, busses, driving, and flights, all to go somewhere that doesn’t feel exotic and would have normally taken a couple of hours.

It will feel even weirder when we’re going through this much travel headache to go back home to visit the UK. It will definitely put us off visiting.

We’re a little sad that we will be missing the beginning of ~~Autumn~~ Fall here as well - but still excited to see our families.

Savings Report #61 - Hiking & Swimming

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The US stock market continued to do well in July which saw our finances take another leap forward. I filled up both mine and my wife’s Roth IRA’s at $6500 each. The process to roll them over from traditional IRA’s wasn’t too hard, I did it all within Interactive Brokers. These accounts will act similarly to English ISA’s, growing tax free.

Monthly Spending

We’re not feeling the burn from contributing $10k per month yet. As we moved to a no tax state, the extra income has really helped us stay in the green after contributing that amount each month. Even with our new, higher rent, our expenses seem to only be averaging $3k per month.

We have just splurged on one of our most expensive holidays ever. We’ll be going to Italy for 3 weeks later in the year. The flights alone were $1200 now that we’re in the states - Italy is no longer a nice £100 for 2 people return trip!

The trip is happening as one of my cousins is getting married, we decided to take this opportunity to also see my parents, take a little road trip through Italy on our own, and then meet Mrs SavingNinja’s parents for 4 nights in the south of Italy.

We’re excited for the trip but now that we’re in the USA it does make it a lot more complicated. Getting to the airport will be a 2h trip, driving for part of the way and then getting a coach. Then we’ll be flying through the night with a lay over in Paris. If we were to ever visit Mrs SavingNinja’s parents in North Devon, it would be even more complicated.

We knew that it would be harder to visit family of course, we didn’t think that it would matter as we only visited once or so a year when we lived in the UK, but there was something about knowing that we could easily visit if we wanted to that felt comforting.

Writing

Mrs SavingNinja has now finished her first ever full sized novel, it’s been fully edited, the cover is made, and it’s gone out to beta readers. It’s around 300 pages long and we’ve both learned a lot throughout the process.

She’s already half way through the draft of the second book in the trilogy and we plan to release book 1 when we’re confident that all 3 can be released 1 month after another.

We’re both super excited to see how well this does, and I’m looking forward to getting my teeth into learning Amazon and Facebook ads. All we need is a little bit of success as an indication for this to be worth pursuing further.

I’ll keep you guys posted!

Other News

Summer is going well, we’ve spent a lot of time hiking beautiful mountain trails and swimming in lakes and rivers.

Here’s a view of Squam Lake from a hike we did before going in to paddle board.

New Hampshire is more beautiful than we were expecting and due to the mountainous landscape, we may even be starting to prefer New Hampshire over Vermont.

Savings Report #60 - Making Cheese & Saving Money

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

This month we added $15,000 after tax cash to our brokerage. I had some extra money lying around from a Swedish tax refund, so I topped up our regular 10k deposit.

The big deposit and a very good month for the stock market (almost 5% growth) meant we saw our biggest net worth change in a single month at £34k ($43k), a staggering $28k in stock market growth.

That’s almost a third of the interest we’ve earned in total since 2018, in a single month.

Crazy!

Maybe the compound interest flight is finally starting to take off.

Roth IRA’s

I got around to researching these american tax vehicles today. It seems that over here, the IRS likes to make things super complicated. But here’s what I effectively learnt.

Roth IRA’s are kind of similar to UK ISAs, you can invest money into them and the growth is tax free. With some differences:

The limit is $6500 per year, $13k joint, much less than an ISA!
You’re not supposed to be able to use this if you earn over $228k, but you can if you invest it in a different account first and then “roll it over” into a Roth IRA, which is ridiculous and just makes the IRS look stupid, it just means extra paperwork for high earners. (This loop hole has been open for the past 5 years.)
You can withdraw the initial investment, penalty free, whenever you want. You can withdraw the interest earned penalty free if it’s been in there for at least 5 years, better than an ISA here!

I assumed that these accounts were similar to a pension where you couldn’t access it until 59, but now I’ve found out that you can, I’ll be maxing this out ASAP, hopefully in July.

Accounts in the US are generally better. Tax rates for capital gains up to $84k per year (if married filing jointly) are taxed at 0%. So, if you’re a frugal FIRE type, most unsheltered investments are kind of like UK ISA’s in the fact that they’ll be tax free. Even if you go over that, the rate is only 15% up to $500k per year. Pretty low!

There is so much you can write off in the US as well, primary home mortgage interest, any other loan interest for that matter, home renovations, property deprecation, all sorts. Tax seems to be virtually 0 if you retire here.

Other News

My company has approved the green card process so it has now begun! I’ll find out in the coming months how long it might take from the lawyers.

Life in the mountains is going well.

There are still some frustrations with renting as I outlined in this rant to fellow blogger TotalBalance.

I don’t like that we’re not in control of what we have to live with, we’re at the whims of the landlord. There are so many things that we would replace if we lived here, like the 20 year old oven, or the half broken fridge. The cost isn’t too much for us, but we don’t want to replace it when it isn’t ours, and the landlord is a cheap ass (never thought I’d say that). There are 2 rooms upstairs which have skylights and they don’t open properly, meaning the office gets too hot on some days to work or game in, I found out that they’re 25 years old after I rang Velux to try and debug what was wrong with them.

We can’t force him to replace or repair them, and there are barely any locations this rural to rent, this was literally the only one at this price range ($1850!) So, we have to suck it up and live with the things that we don’t like and try to appreciate what we do.

It seems the US is catered toward buying. Although we’re still resigned to the fact that we should wait until we can indefinitely stay in the states (when we get a green card) before we buy as the agent purchase and selling fees are too high for it to be short term.

Other Other News, Cheese!

I ventured down a bit of a rabbit hole with dairy this month. I’ve created a spreadsheet comparing the difference between making and buying popular dairy products and how much savings it might offer.

I’ve always enjoyed making dairy products and started years ago before leaving the UK, but this month I went dairy crazy!

Some sneak peak conclusions from my initial experiments:

Yogurt is super easy to make and it’s 4 times cheaper to do so. It tastes a lot better too.
Fresh cream cheese is delicious, it’s also super easy to make if you have a blender, it’s 4 times cheaper to make it yourself than to buy philadelphia cream cheese. If you’re making a Cheesecake Factory style cheesecake (my favorite cake recipe), it will save you a staggering $11 per cheesecake if you make the cream cheese yourself.
Heavy cream. In the USA, it’s 10X cheaper to make heavy cream yourself, and guess what you have to do? You whisk milk and butter together, you don’t even have to cook it!! What the hell.

Mozzarella and cottage cheese is next.

Savings Report #59 - Moving States and Work Overload

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

So much has happened this month that I’ve been putting off writing this update. I’m so damn tired as well.

I know that introspection and writing these posts is something that brings me joy, and it’s good for my mental health, but then when life gets in the way they’re hard to do.

I guess it’s the same for exercising, eating healthy, and meditating. You know that you should make time for it, but it’s difficult.

It’s a shame that I haven’t been able to write some longer form posts as well, it’s been so long since I have.

The more “financially free” we become, the more overworked I become. I’ve heard this before as the Salary Man’s bane. The higher you climb in the corporate ladder, the more you’re paid but the less time you have and the more unhealthy you become.

FIRE was meant to change that.

But I feel we all, including me, have it within ourselves to want to achieve and want to climb, we want to say yes to more responsibility, a higher status. Being able to stop, to take a step back, with a FIRE pot at our backs, I think that will be the biggest challenge.

Moving to New Hampshire

We moved to the White Mountains, into a three bed rental costing $1850 per month.

It’s a barn conversion that’s nice but also old.

It’s not perfect, but the rental market here in rural USA is very slim if you don’t want to live in a crappy city like Manchester NH.

We’re paying more here that we were in Massachusetts, but we’re saving more money monthly as New Hampshire is state income tax free. This means that we’ll net about an extra $500 per month from my regular salary even with paying $500 per month extra for a bigger place. This doesn’t include any tax savings on vested stock, Mrs SavingNinja’s income, or sales tax savings.

We’re living in more comfort that we did in MA, we have a much bigger kitchen with a dishwasher. It’s crazy how much quality of life increases with a dishwasher, you save so much time! The office is much bigger and we have more space.

The location is beautiful. We don’t have much of an outside space and we still have 3 neighbors, so it’s not perfect yet, but it’s a nice improvement. We’re minutes away from some of the most beautiful New England scenery, a lot of hikes, mountains and swimming spots in rivers and lakes.

Here’s the view outside of our kitchen window.

The moving day itself was insanely tiring. As we have done for all of our other moves, we did it ourselves to save the most money. We rented a 20 foot U-Haul and naively thought that we could: load it with all of our stuff, fully clean our old rental, drive 3 hours, and unpack everything, all within 1 day.

We made it, but we’ve both never been so tired. We were working from 6:30am until 10pm, we used these cool moving straps to lift the heavy furniture and washing machine.

By the end of the day we had bruises, cuts, and rashes. We were broken for the next week.

Next time, I think we’ll have to stump up the payment to hire some moving muscle to help us load and unload the truck.

Double the Work

One of my peer managers got fired in May. It was kind of expected, he’d been burnt out for a while and his team was under-delivering for over a year.

As half of his team is based in the USA, I was given it in the interim. I’m proud of my own team and the processes I’ve introduced, so I was happy to renovate this team, and I’ve made significant progress in a short amount of time. But, I’m too eager in thinking how much I can take on.

I now have 12 direct reports. All requiring weekly one to one’s, 1.5 hour development talks, and two teams to shepherd. 7 people are also in the EU meaning that I have to get up early if I want to catch all of them.

To top this all off, my boss is going on a 2 month parental leave in mid-June. I’ve been given the reins of the whole product area as an interim area lead for this time. That’s a 60 person area, 6 more direct reports, and needing to interview and hire a new manager for the aforementioned team.

I’ve never been so overworked in my life. Most days, I have 6 hours of meetings. I’m trying to not get burnt out. I need to learn to value my own health and not say yes to everyone and everything, I’m too eager to please and now I’m in the position where I can’t please everyone.

Greencard

We’ve been in the USA for a year now. Time has really gone by quickly. This means that we should be able to initiate our Greencard application. I just need to get work to approve it first.

This means that it’s probably time to do an income and expenses comparison for the USA, similar to the Sweden vs UK breakdown post from 2 years ago.

I just need to find the time!

Savings Report #58 - Letting Agent Dumped Us

Fri, 05 May 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

As we continue to work toward our 2023 goal of investing $100k in 2023, on April 28th, I realized that we’ve crossed a pretty big milestone in net worth.

That milestone is, of course, half a million pounds.

My net worth figure will be shown properly in the next savings report; but I couldn’t help but make a tweet about it.

❗️With todays investment, net worth has crossed over half a million GBP. 💸 Half way there!

6 years ago, started with a negative net worth
4 years ago, hit 100k
2 years ago, hit my lean FI target of 300k

Here we come 1 million.
— SavingNinja (@SavingNinja) April 28, 2023

Half a million feels like a significant milestone.

And it feels like it’s almost crept up and surprised me.

Looking back over My Financial Journey , I suppose it kind of did. At the beginning of 2022 my net worth was £289k. How did it get to £500k in under 1 and a half years?

It’s certainly not compound interest, as our total interest earned is only around £50k, £18k of that being in the last 2 years; I’m still waiting for that mythical beast to show up.

It could be the fact that I combined finances with my wife last year, but that only accounts for £50k.

I think that it’s a combination of a few things. Yes, my wife’s 50k, and the interest gain of 18k, but also the fact that between November 2021 and June 2022, I wasn’t really investing. This was a time when we were waiting to move to the US and I was hoarding my income and creating a surplus of cash.

Between that time, the stock market was not doing so great, and in June of 2022, just after another 5% red month, we dumped almost 100k into VTI. Next month we saw a 7% green month.

I think we got pretty lucky with timing the market without meaning to. Of course, there’s also the fact that our household income has risen substantially. Since moving to the US 12 months ago, we’ve averaged £8k per month invested into the stock market, which is just insane.

All of this has contributed to the magical-like appearance of that half a mil milestone. It’s crazy to think that just 4 years ago we were celebrating getting to £100k net worth.

I hope that £1m surprises us even more.

Moving Soon

We’re moving states in a few weeks to New Hampshire. We are super excited to live in the mountains and we have slowly began to pack up the house.

We’ll be renting a U-Haul for the first time! It seems strange that back before we moved here, we were aware of all of these American things, like U-Hauls, and now we’re excited just to rent a moving van.

UK Rental Problems

Our rental in the UK continues to be a constant stream of anxiety. We really weren’t getting on with our fully managed letting agent, they’ve done the worst job ever over these past 3 years. Then, one day, after taking 10 days to respond to our request to pay us the rent, they decided to “resign” from being our letting agents.

They gave us 4 weeks to set up a new letting agent to take over.

This has been very stressful with a lot of long-distance calls to the UK, but we’ve finally found someone else who seems good to take over.

We cannot wait for the 5 year mortgage contract to end in 2 more years so we can sell the place. Thinking back, we would have preferred to sell it for 10k under asking before we left the UK, it would have saved us a lot of headaches. Simplicity is something that’s worth paying for.

How was your month?

Savings Report #57 - A Home in The Mountains

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

This month saw a little rebound in the stock market, but I’m unsure whether it’s currency fluctuations or actual investments shifts anymore. I contributed my usual $10,000 in our pre-pension accounts; then at the end of March I topped them up with another $6,900. The reason I added this additional contribution is because we’ve finally been approved for a credit card with a reasonable limit ($8000). We can now use the credit card as an emergency fund instead of keeping a lot of cash in current accounts.

These contributions combined with my usual pension contributions added up to the most we’ve ever invested in a month at $19,500 (ignoring last June when we moved to the US and invested our property equity).

Good Bye Winter

We got in one more big snowboarding car camping trip in March. This time we went to Saddleback, then Black Mountain in Maine. These were some of the best conditions we’ve experienced due to a snow flurry earlier in the month, it was an awesome trip to wave off the winter before we stashed our snowboards away for the year.

Moving States Still…

Last month I told you that we were moving states to New Hampshire and planned to buy a house. We’ve now decided not to buy a property, but we’re still going to move states and rent.

There were too many negatives to buying right now: Interest rates at an all time high, doom-sayers saying that the property market will inevitably crash, 10% fees when buying and selling with the possibility of getting laid off and having to leave the US. All of this combined with the fact that if we do end up getting permanent residency in the US, we’ll want to move again in 2-3 years anyway, renting was looking better. We ended up signing a lease on a $1800 per month property, this is $400 per month more than what we’re paying now but the property is much bigger (3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a dishwasher!) And with the income tax savings in New Hampshire we’ll still be at least $500 per month better off.

The best thing about the new property is…

It’s in the nicest location ever!!

It’s right in the middle of The White Mountains of New Hampshire. People from all over the world come here to see the fall colors, this is what we’ll see out of our window in October:

We’re really excited to live in our first truly rural property. It will be a nice trial to see if this type of living is really want we want in our dream home without taking on any of the land maintenance or purchasing risks.

There’s nothing else to report for March!

How was your month?

Savings Report #56 - A Promotion and Moving States

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

In February, I upped my pre-pension investment amount to $10k, I was hoping to stick with this contribution amount for the whole year, but this plan might change due to potentially buying a house, which I’ll get to later.

What do our figures look like? Almost half a million quid. That figure sounds insane to me. But with recession and lay-off anxiety about, the world isn’t back to normal yet, and it somewhat overshadows monetary totals when it could all change tomorrow.

February has been a busy month, we went on a big snowboarding trip up north, I got a promotion, and we’ve decided to buy a property in a new state. There’s a lot to talk about!

Snowboarding trip with a visit to French Canada

We went on a car camping snowboarding trip in February. We visited 3 mountains for 2 days each across Vermont. The highlight being Jay Peak on the border of Vermont and Canada, one of the biggest mountains in New England.

We slept in the car for 4 nights. We’re used to doing it now and slept pretty well in general, it’s very cozy. The most difficult thing is not showering after days of snowboarding, we had to make do with wet wipes. For 2 nights, to recoup, we booked a nice AirBnB across the border in Canada and went to a day spa.

We knew Quebec was French-Canadian, but we weren’t prepared for just how French it would be. Everyone spoke French, everything was written in French, even the road signs, the food was French. It was like we were back in Europe.

This was one of the cheapest snowboarding holidays we’ve ever done. Here’s our total cost:

$70 for fuel
$32 for a meal at a BBQ restaurant
$150 for 2 nights in a luxury AirBnB
$101 for a full day in a ‘Nordic Spa’
$353 total - £293

Of course, this doesn’t include the amount we already paid for our winter ski passes, which were $300 each. We’ll know how much each day’s ski pass cost us at the end of the season.

Each day, other than when we went to the BBQ joint, we ate pre-prepared cold meals like sandwiches and pasta salads, and we cooked for valentines day in the AirBnB.

For 6 days snowboarding, 2 nights in a nice AirBnB, and a day in a luxury spa, I think we did pretty well!

In March we plan on doing another big trip like this one to Maine to visit big resorts like Saddleback and Black Mountain with a couple of shorter weekend trips to New Hampshire.

So far, the car camper is really coming in handy.

Promotion at work

In February, I got a promotion at work to the second level of Engineering Management. I expected this as the first year on the job is meant to be somewhat of a training year, being promoted means that I’m now a fully fledged manager, although I’m effectively at the same level as I was as a Senior Engineer, just a little bit higher on the pay range.

With this, I got a pay rise, a new stock grant, and a retention bonus that will be paid if I’m still here next March.

For this equity grant, I’m not making the same mistake as last time , and I opted for restricted stock options.

This brings my total compensation to above a quarter of a million dollars per year, over 200k GBP. I’m extremely grateful for being paid this much for what I do, it’s roughly triple what I was earning a year ago. I really hope that we can stay long enough in the US for it to make a difference toward our financial goals.

Getting this promotion and retention bonus means I’m a little less anxious about layoffs, it means that I was marked as exceeding expectations and thus will not be on the bottom of the performance stack rank. Although, I do know that some people who were let go were high achievers so you’re not always safe, it sometimes comes down to your area and luck.

Why we want to buy a house in New Hampshire

In June we’ll begin our green card application to become permanent residents. We’ll need to stay in the same state from the beginning to the end of the green card process, which could take 3 years. Due to this, we started to discuss if we really wanted to stay in Massachusetts.

Our dream state would be Vermont, it’s so beautiful there, and it was on our list as the place to retire and buy our dream home. But during our travels, we’ve frequently visited New Hampshire, you have to drive through there to get to most places in Vermont. New Hampshire as a whole isn’t as nice as Vermont, but there are rural areas on the border which are almost identical.

New Hampshire has one key difference: no state income tax, capital gains tax, or sales tax. They get all of their state funding from property tax.

Due to this, as long as we don’t buy a $1 million dollar home, with our household income we would save a shit ton of money each month. We would be able to invest at least an additional $2000 every month, with added savings in capital gains on our growing US portfolio.

We love Vermont, but we don’t believe it’s $2000+ dollars a month better than New Hampshire. This is almost covering our current living costs of around $2500 a month (with a $1400 rental cost). If we found a modest house in New Hampshire for under $200K, it would mean that we would be able to invest over $150k a year, potentially more - £125k a year in savings!! We don’t know how much we need to retire in the USA yet, it’s complicated when you have to factor in health insurance, but doing this move should certainly super charge our FIRE journey.

We just need to find a property that we’ll be comfortable in, has good internet, and hopefully won’t lose too much in value, oh and I need to not get laid off. As soon as we get permanent residency, we’ll buy a bigger place.

Other tidbits

Mrs SavingNinja is 1/3rd of the way through her first full length Romance novel. It’s going very well and she is proud of her work so far! I’m excited to start work on the advertising side of the business, I’d like to build an automatic TikTok bot to advertise on a number of different accounts.

We’ve just filed our first US tax return. This amounted to a combined 150 pages, 4 different postages totalling $40 to deliver, and old fashioned hand written checks to the government. Next year should be easier when we’re no longer split year residents, as we can e-file.

Work is going very well, but I’m still very anxious of a second round of layoffs happening later in the year. If we buy a house now and we had to leave the USA, we’ll lose roughly 10% of the home value in the stupidly high US buying and selling costs. I really hope this doesn’t happen 6 months after buying a home - but we may take the risk anyway as rental costs are high, and there are next to no rental options in rural New Hampshire, we’d be better off buying a $70k trailer home to live in for the next couple of years.

OK, rambling over!

How did your month go?

Savings Report #55 - Car Camping and Snowboarding

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The markets really are ping-ponging all over the place.

For the last 6 months we seem to either be making $10-$20k or losing $10-$20k. Thankfully, the trend seems to be upward. Our net worth is now at a similar level to last November.

I finished topping up our emergency fund in January, so it should be the last month where we invest only $1000. Hopefully it’s $10k per month from now on!

Layoffs

As I was expecting for the last couple of months, my company did a round of layoffs this month. 6% of the workforce. I woke up one Monday and panicked as I saw a meeting invite with my boss and his boss as well as a layoff email. I turned out to be safe, but one of my direct reports was not.

The atmosphere at work is pretty horrible right now, everyone is anxious, even the people who were not affected. Will there be more? I hope not!

Due to this, we’re trying to enjoy all of the time we have right now in the US, as we never know if we’ll be asked to leave. Getting a green card is a long ass process which is at least 3 years away, if I get laid off before then, we’ll have 4 weeks to pack up and leave the country.

Car Camping

For those of you that don’t know, when we bought our first car in the USA, we took the back seats out and turned it into a camper. We installed a wooden platform and cut a memory foam mattress to the right size. For winter, we bought cold weather sleeping bags with the intention of traveling to different mountains for snowboarding over this winter season.

In January, we tried this out, we visited 2 mountains and snowboarded for a total of 4 days. Birkshire East in Western Massachusetts and Waterville in New Hampshire. We did both of these in two consecutive weekends and they were a great success!

We didn’t freeze in -10 degrees weather, the sleeping bags did their jobs. Although we did have an issue with the plastic of the car freezing and then melting in the day and soaking everything, we have some plans to try and mitigate this next trip.

We are absolutely shattered from doing this for two weekends, I think this is more from the snowboarding than sleeping in the car, but it certainly didn’t help. For the next trip, we might take a day or two off to recover.

We also managed to do a 4 hour cold weather hike on a different weekend with an overnight car camp in January (this was the first time we tried out sleeping in the car.)

We saw some beautiful frozen lakes in Western Mass, although it wasn’t fun when our water bladders froze.

February

What’s in store for us in February?

I think, more snowboarding, we plan to do at least one longer trip when we go to Jay Peak in northern Vermont. We may have to throw in a couple of paid accommodation so we can shower and recover if we want to go for more than a couple of nights, but that’s OK.

To start hitting our yearly goal of going to at least 3 national parks in 2023, we would like to go back to Yosemite in the Spring, depending on the cost. We went there for our honeymoon and are dying to get back. Arcadia in Maine is something we’ll probably do in the Spring as well as it’s so close.

How was your January?

2022 Reviewed - A Year of Learning

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Introduction

2022 has been a a hallmark year for us. After living in Sweden for 2 years, we set our sights on the USA. We decided that we wanted the USA to be our home, got business approval, went through the Visa process, and relocated to the USA; all within 6 months.

2022 was the year that we started to pursue “settling down” with our sights set on a post-FIRE life in a forever home; getting to The Land of the Free bought us one step closer. Getting to the place that we’d been dreaming of shattered some grass-is-greener preconceptions, of course. But now that we’re seasoned travelers we expected this and we know that we’ll acclimate after the 6 month mark (which is right now).

Goals have been hit, perceptions have changed, and we’ve become new versions of ourselves along the way; more refined and wordly versions; building out our mental maps of the world with each cross-border relocation.

2022 Financial Review

£443,383 Networth (+£138,804)
£376,655 Excluding House (+£128,948)
£161,025 Contributed
-£20,206 Interest Earned
£151,268 Pension (+£14,506)
£23,394 Contributed
-£8,513 Interest Earned
£225,377 Pre-Pension (+£114,457)
£127,233 Contributed
-£14,376 Interest Earned
£66,724 House Equity (+£9,853)
£10,389 Contributed

My net worth flew past the £400k milestone. This is, of course, because it isn’t my net worth anymore, it’s our net worth. I need to get used to saying that.

When the SavingNinja household moved to the USA back in June, we finally combined our finances. It no longer made sense to keep them split as my wife is not working full time (yet) and she forefeitted her career as a teacher for us to move to the USA and for me to get a bigger salary.

Combining our savings saw around £55,000 added to these figures, mainly from my wife’s equity in our UK and Swedish house.

This year saw an absolutely massive contribution amount of £161k, this would have been huge even if we disregarded my wife’s contribution; it means that in 2022 we deposited more than half of what our total net worth was at the beginning of the year into savings.

This came from a combination of investing our Swedish house sale proceedings and a relocation bonus.

These contributions carried us through the worst market conditions that we’ve experienced to date. However, we still lost £20,210 in the financial market turmoil by the end of the year. I hope to see this recouped as soon as the market recovers.

Over to the graphs.

Total Net Worth

There was a huge spike in June, then up and down the big dipper of 2022, ending on a down. Our pre-pension investments also overtook our pension investments in June, woohoo!

Interest vs Contributions

These are my favorite charts as it really shows how the market performance is effecting the portfolio. As you can see in the interest stacked chart at the bottom, ending the year £20k lower happened mostly in December.

In both October and November the portfolio surged by over £15k per month, recouping the losses from -£31k in September. But then December saw another £20k drop pushing the portfolio into the red.

Looking at the interest earned in the lifetime of my investment journey (starting in 2018), it’s looking pretty bleak. I’m still up £33k since 2018, but in September I was 1 bad month away from being below £0 for my portfolio lifetime… I should have shoved it into a current account instead, eh?

We’re £20k off being where we were in November 2021 for portfolio lifetime earnings.

Goals Results

Let’s see what my goals were for 2021 Reviewed and see how I did.

1. Move or set up for a move out of Sweden (A+)

Goal definitely achieved!

In February , I got business approval to relocate to the USA. It took 2 months from deciding last Christmas to do this to make a case for the business and get approval; then after just over 3 months of applying for a Visa, we moved to New England last June .

2. Try to get to the US (A+)

See above!

3. Master 1 algorithm a week (F)

Complete fail, I lasted about 4 weeks. As soon as I found out that my company would sponsor us to relocate to the USA, I figured there wasn’t much point in doing this anymore. I also had very little time as I was rushing to finish my second technical book. Now, I’ve restarted this journey as you never know when you’ll need to interview again. I’m trying to do an algorithm a day on Grind75 .

4. Read nothing but foundational learning books (A)

Last year, after reading Naval’s book, I decided to boost my foundational understanding of the world by reading nothing but non-fiction for a whole year. I’m happy to say that I succeeded and it was a great experience.

At first, I missed my fantasy novels, especially as I read mostly before going to sleep, but soon I found books that were informative, and interesting. I learnt so much and I feel that with forcing myself to do this, I’ve gained a new found love for learning from reading. And although I won’t be restricting myself to purely non-fiction going forward, I think at least half of my books will be learning based ones. My wife also joined me on this journey and feels the same.

Here’s all of the books that I read in 2021 from best to worst. Some were so bad and long that I couldn’t finish them.

The Order of Time (This book blew my mind and I couldn’t put it down. It was as gripping as any epic fantasy, very well written.)
The Lessons of History
Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Steve Jobs
10% Happier
Meditations
Utopia for Realists
Six Easy PIeces: Essentials of Physics
The Rational Optimist
Write to Market
The Complete Guide to Fasting
Dynamic Reteaming
Skin in the Game
Leonardo da Vinci
Fingerprints of the Gods
The Mars Mystery
Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class
Mein Kampf

There’s still a long way to go to build out my general understanding of the world at a foundational level. I focused on history and science a lot in 2022, I need to pick up some books about economics and mathematics. As I failed to finish the two last books, I’d like to learn more about Marxism too, I’ve been recommended Karl Marx book , but I seem to not do as well with older reads, I find them generally not well written and boring.

5. Release version 1.0 of my app (F)

This is the second year running that I’ve completely failed this goal. I didn’t even get close. I stopped working completely on this app when I realised that I wouldn’t be able to release it while living in the USA until I get a green card. My Visa only allows me to earn income for the company that has sponsored me. I’ll probably not add this goal again for a while.

6. Reach £300k invested assets (excluding property) (A+)

Goal achieved. Even if my wife and I didn’t combine our finances, this milestone would have been hit.

I’m pretty happy with what we’ve achieved this year. Even though the markets did not perform, we invested the most into the stock market than we ever have by a long shot. We also moved across the atlantic into a property that we’d never seen in person with our cat in tow, achieving a lifelong dream in the process. Thanks 2022!

Goals for 2023

This year I’d like to focus on two things: travel and my wife.

With travel, I’m going to assume that I won’t get laid off and we’ll be able to stay in the USA, if this doesn’t happen things will of course change a lot. For Mrs SavingNinja, let my explain what I mean…

Since moving to the USA, we vowed to keep having the possibility of working remotely. We want to move to our dream remote homestead before we FIRE. To do this, we’ll need to make sure that we can both work remotely so we can continue to support ourselves and invest while we start living our next, rural, life.

My job as a software engineer / engineering manager is already remote but my wife, both in Sweden and the UK, has always worked as a teacher in schools; switching to a remote gig requires a bit of reinvention.

This year, we’ve tried a bunch of things, some that didn’t do too great, and others that show promise:

Opening up an Etsy candle shop
Editor for books and technical blog posts
Remote English as a language teacher on Preply
Freelance International English Literature teacher for US IB kids (usually private school)
Self publishing Kindle author

The candle shop didn’t do too well, too many cheap candles coming from China. Number 2, 3 and 4 are bringing in steady income which is growing. Self publishing shows a lot of promise.

My wife working isn’t to make ends meet, it’s to bring her fulfillment, and as we’ve found out this year after she has released a 3 part series of short stories, she enjoys writing more than everything else. The income from self publishing is far below her other ventures right now, but the possibilities and fulfillment factors are far better.

Being a self published author doesn’t just require you to write, you have to… Research, edit, advertise, create and manage mailing lists, websites and newsletters. It’s a full business, and I’ve decided to join her on this journey. This is why I’d like my goals this year to focus on my wife, and growing this business together.

1. Release two full length novels

I’ve not yet released a fiction book, I’m still in the research phase but I plan to write a full length novel this year. This book will be published under the same pen name that my wife is using. The goal is set to 2 full length novels as my wife plans to release one too.

One of my life-long goals is to write a fantasy novel, these books won’t be in that genre, but it will be good practice!

2. Earn $1000 from total book sales

This is an ambitious goal for a new author with no mailing list, but I think with a bit of luck, and if we manage to publish before mid-year, it could be achievable. Income from my 2 existing technical books won’t count.

3. Visit 3 national parks

We’re living in America, we should make the most out of it! We’ve also spent $100 on an annual national park pass, so my frugality monster wants to get the most out of it. We’ve got our sights on Arcadia in Maine, revisiting Yosemite in California, and road tripping to a middle America national park.

4. Contribute at least $100,000 into pre-pension savings

I want to contribute at least $100k from my pay check into investment accounts in 2023. Who knows if we’ll be able to stay in the USA? We need to save as much as we can from my American salary while we can. I plan on upping my contributions to $10k per month in February and hopefully sticking with it.

It doesn’t make sense to set net worth goals anymore as these will be achieved according to the whims of the market.

5. Exercise 3 times per week as a default

I’ve been up and down through out the years with exercise. For the last 4 weeks I’ve been exercising every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I hope to continue that as a default for the whole year and make it a life long habit.

6. Don’t buy anything new

We’ve both felt that we have made a lot of purchases this year, it was to be expected as we arrived in the country with nothing, but we definitely went a bit overboard. We’ve challenged ourselves to not buy anything new for 2023. These are our rules:

Our groceries will remain the same
We’re allowed to buy anything if it’s second hand from a thrift store
We can make an exception if it’s smart dress for a wedding (We have an Italian wedding to go to in the summer.)

Our biggest challenge will be not buying anything that’s a good deal from Costco, but most items are much easier to thrift in the USA, especially clothes.

I’ll be very happy if we achieve all of these goals. They have taken a very different shape to my previous yearly goals . I think it shows that we are maturing and becoming more fulfilled; our goals are no longer total net worth targets, or promotion and relocation related, they’re based on health, fulfillment, and travel; with a healthy contribution target.

Midway through this year we should be able to start our green card process, we’ll be one step closer to moving to our rural life. Maybe next year we’ll have some goals revolving around that!

I hope you all had a good 2022 and are looking forward to what 2023 might bring.

What goals have you set?

Savings Report #54 - Christmas at Home

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Happy New Year!

I hope the coming year will be happy. I’m still wracked with dread about potential layoffs, I really don’t want another job, or to leave the USA.

The markets in December plunged again, leaving our portfolio about $20k down from stock depreciation since the start of the year, about 8.44% down. Surprisingly, a lot of that in just this month with $19,010 of value being lost. With our portfolio now almost at $500k invested, we’re going to have to get used to these big swings. More to come in the end of year review blog post!

I’m keeping my pre-pension contributions to $1k for January so I can confidently have a minimum of $20k in my bank account for emergencies. In February, these will jump back up to around $8k hopefully. We need to get back on track for that $1m saved goal.

Christmas at Home

December was a good month. It was the first Christmas that my wife and I stayed at home without family and it was a very chilled Christmas. We made a gingerbread house, cooked and ate a lot of food, watched Christmas films and played games on our new PC’s. We’re completely hooked on Raft right now, a survival raft building game.

As I’m sure you’ve seen on the news, there has been some severe weather here in New England. The coldest it got to was -16 degrees celsius in Massachusetts. Sure, this is cold, but it’s nothing like the -37 we had in Sweden for 2 straight months last winter. Americans seem to be afraid of the cold and rain; we’ve still been going on runs, with the addition of some thermals.

We still haven’t tested car camping in this weather yet, but we hope to do so in January before the snow (hopeful snow?) comes.

How was your Christmas?

Savings Report #53 - The Robots Are Coming!

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Another month has passed, bringing us closer to Christmas. I’ve finished work for the winter now as I had to use up my remaining vacation days. We plan to spend our first New England winter eating American festive food and traveling to local snow resorts while car camping.

Car camping was good in the summer, I hope it’s not too bad in the snow! We’ve kitted the car out with winter sleeping bags and have gotten ourselves some good thermal underlayers, we’ll also be picking up some Costco winter tyres later in the month.

The Numbers

Our investments have gone up considerably again as the market continues its recovery. I had a bit of a scare this month as my emergency fund almost depleted, we had a few big events crop up at once: purchasing the components to build 2 gaming PC’s for myself and my wife, an expensive work trip to New York which I had to front before getting it repaid, the tenants in our UK rental moving out and along with not paying the last months’ rent they left a looming huge repair bill, including a potential roof leak problem. There was also the possibility of needing to pay $2000 for a dental insurance claim that got rejected (the dentist luckily let us off). All of this made me worried that in the US I need a much bigger emergency fund. I’m aiming for us to have $20k in the bank, we should get there by reducing my pre-pension contributions down to $1k for December.

ChatGPT

With ChatGPT taking the world by storm this month, I feel like everything has been completely flipped on its head.

The power of this thing is insane and it will completely change a lot of industries, especially software development. With ChatGPT as an assistant, what usually takes weeks of work by teams of engineers can be done in days by a single person.

It can be used beyond coding too in industries like marketing, blogging, news, and even novel writing.

Remember how difficult it was to learn something new before we had Google as a search engine? ChatGPT is the next iteration and it’s way more powerful.

I closed my $25k position in Alphabet this month and purchased more VTI directly because of ChatGPT. I’m now no longer holding any single stocks, it was probably the best course of action anyway.

I’m urgently trying to think of ways that I can utilize ChatGPT to build something before the whole world starts doing it.

Anxiety

I’m still anxious about layoffs, this month my boss asked me to rank my reports, not a good sign.

I’m hoping that due to me now being a manager, I may be a little safer, but I think my position is a lot more precarious now than it was as a top performing engineer (what I used to be a year ago). Engineers can easily join new teams, but managers can be cut as teams can be self driven and managers can run more than 1 team; especially as ChatGPT will soon mean teams can be a lot smaller.

To safe guard myself, I need to start contributing to the delivery and programming as well as managing, I should maybe brush up on algorithm practice too incase I need to interview. I’ll still be devastated if we have to leave the USA, but it will be better if I have another good job lined up if I do get laid off.

Looking Ahead

When I think about next year, I’m anxious, but I’d suspect as the year progresses I’ll feel less so. If I’m not laid off in Q1 and there are no more warning signs, I hope I can start to feel a little more secure. I have 6 more months until I can request that my company starts the Greencard process, if I get to this point and they agree, I’ll be happy.

I’ll write a more full accounting of this year and my future worries in the end of year review for 2022, a damn lot has changed this year!

Until then, have a great Christmas and I’ll see you in January!

Savings Report #52 - Layoff Anxiety

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

It’s that time of the month again.

This time, I’ve made an effort to write a good Savings Report. I’ve recreated my writing ‘flow mode’ by sitting away from my phone with a coffee, early morning and with ‘Peaceful Piano’ playing on my headphones.

Doing this is like a magic trigger to get me to write. My brain knows it’s writing time as I did this for years in the earlier days of Saving Ninja while commuting to London on the train each morning.

Part of the reason I’m not writing as much is because I’m not able to recreate these ‘flow’ conditions. Now that I’m in the US, my day starts at 7am instead of 11am to ensure there is enough time with my EU colleagues. It’s a lot easier for me to write after a morning exercise and meditation while being fresh, rather than after an 8 hour day when I’m exhausted.

I thought that, as I’m a morning person, moving to the US and working earlier in the morning rather than later at night would be better, but what’s really happened is my company gets my most productive time instead of me.

Maybe I need to start getting up at 5am?

Big Fluctuations in Savings

I’ve reached the half a mill dollar mark again after a slight recovery in the stock market combined with another month of contributing $13,000.

One thing that has become apparent to me when looking back at previous months, is how much currency changes warp my portfolio. I now hold three currencies; SEK, GBP and USD and in recent times these are moving up and down a lot.

For example, in my last savings report , my total GBP net worth was reported as £413,688, and my USD net worth $461,262. With currency fluctuations, these two figures are now £402,296 and $474,026. This warps my figures each month, so if you’re reading this and seeing a big difference between how my portfolio and your own is reacting, it’s probably due to this.

Contribution Slow Down

October was the second month of contributing $8000 to our pre-pension pot and $5000 to my 401k (US pension). For November I contributed $6000, although I think I’ll have to slow completely down for the next couple of months.

After two big offsites at work, which I have to pay for and then eventually get reimbursed, as well as combined dental and health care costs, and purchasing PC components during pre Black Friday sales for me and my wife (more on that later), I seem to have… Not much money left for an emergency.

For the first time in a long time I’m eagerly awaiting my next pay check as I’m a little worried.

Before the interest rate hikes, I could have borrowed on margin from my Interactive Brokers account (I have a handy debit card for it) if there was an emergency, but right now I don’t fancy paying more than 6% interest.

I’m now aiming to have a stable, $10k+ in my checking account from now on. Realistically, I should probably aim to have more of an immediate emergency fund, if we ever had to leave the country in a hurry or pay for a big medical bill upfront before getting it reimbursed, I’d feel a lot better. Especially as we still can’t get a credit limit above $300 per month here.

I’ve reduced my contributions for pre-pension down to $1000 for next month, keeping the pension contributions at $5000 as I’d like to hit the 401k limit before December. I may be able to ramp it up again in December. we’ll see.

Layoff Anxieties

As I’m sure you’ve all been hearing in the news recently, tech is going through some dark days. There have been mass layoffs in multiple growth companies; Twitter, Facebook, Lyft, Netflix. If layoffs aren’t happening, there are hiring freezes, and everyone is nervous.

This is happening as capital is now more expensive and these companies are generally not yet profitable and they need capital investment to sustain themselves, so most are trying to become more lean and self-sufficient.

My own company has announced a hiring freeze for the whole of 2023. They are stating it’s a precautionary measure, as they’re in a better place financially than most who have already started laying off, but if the economy continues to trend downward, layoffs seem inevitable.

Of course, I’m anxious as hell! I’m a top performer, about to get a promotion, but if layoffs happen it will probably be on a department level, not a performance level.

If I were to get laid off, we would have 4 weeks to vacate the country. I’d have to go from having the dangling carrot of a huge net savings amount back to being jobless in the UK, before I’ve managed to truly take advantage of increased savings in the USA. I’d also have our dreams ripped away from us, something that we’ve been trying to accomplish for the last decade, when we were so close from getting a green card and being able to stay.

The only thing we can do now is hope. I’ve also been entered into the H1B lottery, if I’m one of the 1 in 3 who gets this Visa, it will be able to function as a back up visa to stay in the USA if I need to find another employer.

This is all doom and gloom thinking from me, I have no reason to think that I’ll be laid off, it’s just very hard to not be anxious with what’s going on in the tech world right now!

Christmas and PC Gaming!

Before my anxiety of potential layoffs grew, I started collecting pre Black Friday sale PC components for both myself and my wife to build us gaming computers. The last time I did this was 8 years ago, before I found the FIRE movement when I was a spendy-pants and my wife had my older gaming PC.

I lost these computers in the move to Sweden and the US and I think it’s now time to buy into this hobby again, we miss it too much! The PC component market has come down tremendously in the last 12 months, I managed to build two 4k 60FPS gaming PC’s for around $1000 each. This would have cost more than $3000 each 12 months ago in Sweden. This has been hard to spend, but with my increased disposable income and the lower cost, we decided to do it for a hobby that we both love; PC gaming.

I’ve had increased anxiety about it with my worry of layoffs, I started the builds thinking we would be building for the future, but if we had to leave the US we would be forced to sell them within 4 weeks for a huge loss. I’ve been on the verge of returning the components a couple of times already, but right now we still want to go ahead. We’re planning on having our first Christmas alone at home here in Massachusetts and having gaming PC’s was a big part of our excitement to do that.

I hope you had a good month. I’m hearing a lot of worrying news from the UK, 3 Prime Ministers in 3 months!? Is it as bad as I’m hearing from this side of the pond or overblown?

If I had to leave the USA, should I not come back to the UK? :)

Savings Report #51 - A Busy Month

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 13:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Another huge month of loss! My biggest in real terms yet.

The markets are in turmoil and the price between my portfolio currencies is going haywire. It almost seems pointless to report the figures monthly.

Nevertheless, I’ve continued to dump money in.

In September I invested $8000 into my pre-pension accounts, I assumed this would be a regular contribution although I’ve moved this down to $6000 already to re-fill my emergency cash coffers a little more quickly. $6600 was put into my new American pension, a “401k”, I thought I was done with pensions although with the market down-turn it seemed a good opportunity to fill my US pension with seed money that can compound tax-free when the market rebounds; so I’ve set myself the target of maxing it for this year even those I’ve just started.

The maximum amount for a 401k per annum is lower than the UK at $20,500 (before employer contributions) so it should be achievable.

Other News

I’m super late this month posting the Savings Report, this is because at the beginning of the month I went back to Sweden for a company offsite. Then I visited the UK and now I’m back in the US, but am really sick! The gathering of a large amount of people at this time of the year seems to invite illness every time.

Being in Sweden was nice, you don’t realize how beautiful a place is until you leave. Being in Manchester, however, made me realize how nice Sweden and the US (where I am in Massachusetts) are. I really don’t miss the northern scally shouting across the station walking around with cigs hanging out their mouths and spewing racism and hate. The UK seems to have gone down hill since Brexit, or maybe I’m just realizing things more?

As I’m bed-bound, I’m not feeling full of words. We’re still acclimating and trying to feel settled; I don’t think we’ll fully be there until we own our own space again.

I promise to sit down and give a full introspective about the USA soon, when we know what our plans are and we’ve got a good sense of our budget.

See you next month!

Savings Report #50 - Car Camping and Vermont Lakes

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Hello dear readers.

I just realised that last month was the 4 year mark of consecutively posting Savings Reports every month.

I remember seeing bloggers like Quietly Saving and TheFIREStarter who had been around for similar times back when I started and being in awe of them, thinking, “I hope I can keep this blog going for that long!”

The truth is, Savings Reports are really easy, I gain more than the community gains for writing these. I look forward to updating my spreadsheet each month and sitting down for some quiet reflection time, it’s therapeutic to me and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. Unless, of course, something catastrophic happened and I needed to go off-grid for a while.

The time of posting a weekly blog post that isn’t a Savings Report is long gone, now I only post when I have something to say - which doesn’t seem to happen a lot.

Finances!

My portfolio moves somewhat differently these days. This is happening as I hold three different currencies across my retirement and investment accounts: SEK, USD, and GBP. There are huge fluctuations between the USD and GBP right now which means our numbers are all over the place.

In August, I added $2k to my investments which was a left over amount in an account that I closed. September will see the start of some more regular investments which I’ve started off at $8k per month. I should also see the first deposit into my company Vanguard pension scheme, which I think will be around $2k per month.

I’m unsure if I’ll be able to keep up with $8k per month of investments for long. My tax burden is higher until we submit our first tax return at the end of the year, I should also be getting my first promotion as an Engineering Manager at that time so it will be easier to hit my $100k per year invested goal then.

I still have no idea what our normal monthly expenses will be, we’ve bought too many new things that we needed to replace after leaving Sweden and we haven’t normalized yet.

Other news

We converted our car into a camper by taking the back seats out, building a platform, and cutting a memory foam mattress to size. This was one of the things that justified us spending a bit more money on a larger SUV!

I can just about lay down flat in the back.

The first trip that we took to try out our new home on wheels was to the beautiful Vermont town of Wilmington, which was about 2 and a half hours away from our house.

We spent 2 nights in the car in a free camping spot and it was super comfortable! We don’t have any cooking equipment for camping yet so we survived on snacks, some pre-made sandwiches and eating out.

Another thing that we learnt is… Vermont is stunning!!

I always thought that Vermont was the place for us, but now that I’ve visited, it’s way more beautiful than I ever thought it could be and it’s definitely on the list of states we might retire in.

We spent the weekend exploring. We found a beautiful crystal clear lake where the water was silky smooth and warm, it shot right up to the nicest place that we’ve ever swam, ranking higher than Sweden!

We plan to go back many times over the Fall months to see the different colors of the trees, whilst not spending too much and camping in the car.

See you next month!

Savings Report #49 - The Land of Excess!

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 13:00:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

It’s so nice to be writing this Savings Report in my favorite editor: Visual Studio Code.

This is the first post that I’ve written since migrating TSN to a statically generated markdown site using Hugo and it’s an absolute joy.

Everything being local and in markdown means that I can use templates and scripts to help speed up the creation of my content. I write Bash scripts for a living now so this is a big plus!

I no longer have to copy and paste the same Savings Report content that you see at the top of this post every month, I don’t have to use the sloooow WordPress media editor to upload the cover image, all I have to do is use my newly created create-savings-report.sh script and it will automatically create it in the correct place and pre-fill a lot of the dynamic meta data.

Here’s a peak at the script if any of my fellow nerdy readers want to check it out:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

replace_string_in_file() {
  local file="$1"
  local old="$2"
  local new="$3"

  regexp=$(printf %s "$old" | sed 's:[$*./\[^]:\\&:g')
  replacement=$(printf %s "$new" | sed 's:[\&/]:\\&:g')
  sed -i -e "s/$regexp/$replacement/g" $file
  rm "$file"-e
}

print_escaped_title() {
  local title=$1
  local escaped=$(echo $title | awk '{print tolower($0)}')
  escaped="${escaped// /-}"
  escaped="${escaped//---/-}"
  escaped="${escaped//\#/}"
  escaped="${escaped//\?/}"
  escaped="${escaped//\,/}"
  escaped="${escaped//\!/}"
  escaped="${escaped//\^/}"
  echo "$escaped"
}

title=$1
image_name=$2
slug=$(print_escaped_title "$title")
file="content/all-posts/financial-tracking/savings-report/$slug/index.md"
images_dir="content/all-posts/financial-tracking/savings-report/$slug/images"

hugo new --kind savings-report $file

mkdir $images_dir
mv $image_name $images_dir

replace_string_in_file $file "\$title" "$title"
replace_string_in_file $file "\$slug" "$slug"
replace_string_in_file $file "\$coverImage" "$image_name"
replace_string_in_file $file "\$coverAlt" "${image_name%.*} cover image"

Pretty neat code block that Hugo can generate too huh?

Alright, enough of me nerding out about how awesome Hugo is! Let’s get down to business.

Half a mill club!

We’ve reached half a million net worth!!

Well, not quite in British pounds yet, but who cares about that Brexit-riddled currency anyway? We’ve crossed the milestone in Dollars and Euros.

This month actually marks the sharpest increase in capital gains that we’ve ever had. I didn’t contribute anything and our net worth increased by $28.5k. Am I feeling the tinglings of compound interest again? I can’t wait until I’m stuck in the tailwind of this wonder of the world and our regular monthly gains out-perform our salaried pay.

Next month I’m hoping to start investing regularly again, my US pension should also see its first deposit in the next Savings Report.

Here’s to the next half a mill!

Getting familiar

It’s been 2 months since we moved from Sweden to the USA. We’re definitely starting to feel a little more settled. We’ve slowly purchased all of the conveniences that we left behind in Sweden.

We bought some rugs, a nice bed frame, a good TV, blinds and curtains. I even splurged and bought an Xbox One to tide us over until we build some gaming PCs again, we’ve been having fun on some local co-op games like It Takes Two and Unravel Two .

The weather is humid and hot here in Massachusetts. I didn’t realize that it would be this humid. It reached 95% humidity one day this month, it was like swimming through the air. To combat this along with the daily 35-38 degrees heat we have now accumulated 3 air conditioners.

We’re spending a lot more money on products here in the US. I’ve surmised that it’s due to these points:

Products are cheaper, which eliminates the bad value anxiety that I have.
There are sales all of the time from outlets like Costco and events like Prime Day.
I earn more money.
I pay a lower tax rate.
My expenses are less.
We are fairly confident that we want to stay here for the long-term, so we’re not afraid of buying more/higher quality things that will last.

The United States really is the land of excess. I’m realizing that now that I’ve been here a little longer. It’s subtle at first, and it’s hard to really pin-point what it is, but there is something quite dystopian about it here.

Maybe it’s that there is valet parking for everything, even when you go to the shopping center or doctors…

Or maybe it’s the oddity that every supermarket has a bag packer at each till, and each fuel station has someone standing there waiting to fuel your car and take your card meaning you don’t even have to get out…

Amazon’s default delivery time is under 2 hours…

There are wine stores the size of football fields, and Walmart’s the size of stadiums…

There is just so much excess and money flying around, it means that nothing is free and there is a service for everything. If there’s a way to save a little bit of time or energy, people seem to pay for it; like valet parking or bag packing and a million other small and almost unnoticeable things to a tourist.

I think that’s what gives the place a dystopian feel. I don’t see any simplicity, frugality or sustainability, just a lot of excess, waste, and laziness. It’s the polar opposite of Italy, Sweden, and to a lesser extent, the UK.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m new here? Maybe this is what is destined for every country the further they advance their technology, improve their economy and embrace capitalism?

It’s not all doom and gloom. I do still like it here, and I think it will be the place that we set our roots. As we are in the land of excess, if we don’t fall into the US of A’s trap and we keep to our monk-like FIRE principles, we will be way better off financially here.

And it sure is a beautiful country.

See you next month!

Savings Report #48 - I'm Back In The Game!

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 14:44:01 -0400

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

I’m now back in the market, phew!

During my second week in the US, I managed to open an Interactive Brokers account. I then proceeded to shift the bulk of our finances from our international accounts into Interactive Brokers. They flagged the transfer as ’large’ and it then took about a week to prove that I wasn’t money laundering.

It actually seemed to work out for the best as in the time that a large portion of our wealth was out of the market (a little over a month), there was a pretty big drop. And 2 days after I re-invested, there was a 4% gain in a single day!

As you’ll see from the spreadsheet snapshot, the net worth figure has spiked by a lot. This isn’t just because of the accidental market timing, this month marks the time that Mrs SavingNinja and I have combined our investment pots.

We knew that we were going to have to do this at some point and now seemed like the perfect opportunity, here’s why:

My wife is without a job for the time being, and in the US, things are much more expensive so I have to pay for now. We made the decision as a family to move to a place where my salary would be much higher, but hers probably much lower. Teachers got paid a good amount in Sweden! We paid for our Swedish house deposit and car equally, but wanted to invest it together when we got the money back (more on this later). We won’t be FIRE’ing without each other anyway, so we may as well track the real goal! I still believe that keeping your finances separate is better for your relationship and financial goals. We still aim to do this if she gets a job that can pay for half of our expenses.

Around £50k of the increased net worth is from my wife. This came from a combination of her half of our UK house equity, and her half of our Swedish house equity. We sold our Swedish property and put all of that money into the stock market, and our UK home is still being rented out. This is why the Total Property Equity stayed more or less the same as my wife’s half of the UK house was added but all of our Swedish house equity got removed and added to the pre-pension pot of stock market investments.

This additional influx of cash from my wife as well as some extra from my relocation bonus and spare cash meant that we were able to add a hefty amount to our pre-pension investments. I sold all of my investments inside my Swedish tax-sheltered account (ISK) and English ISA, this amounted to around $127k, and, in turn, we bought $245k of investments; a $118k increase in the stock market.

The $245k was split, 90% VTI ETF, and 10% Alphabet stock.

After losing my Tesla stock when relocating to Sweden, I’ve become inclined to allocate a small fraction of our portfolio to ‘risky bets’ that I have a personal interest in. Alphabet is the new Tesla for me! It’s also the easiest way to own a little bit of SpaceX.

VTI is a broad index fund, although it is US-centric. I’m OK with this as I have UK exposure in my UK pension which is locked to a certain type of UK-weighted index fund, although I may consider diversifying our dollars a bit into another ETF when the investments grow.

This cash is also not in a US tax-sheltered account, as they don’t exist! But in the US, capital-gains tax is favorable and is between 0% and 15% depending on your taxable income when you sell.

Interactive Brokers and Margin Loans

Margin loans are a lot more popular in the US, and with Interactive Brokers, the interest rates are extremely low. I wanted to invest all of our cash from the Swedish house sale in these cheap markets instead of holding it for purchasing a house in the US (which we’ll try and do in 1 or 2 years when we qualify for a mortgage) and I’m confident that our portfolio is big enough to be able to borrow a fair amount on margin.

I intend to fund any bigger purchases like a car or an unknown expense via margin. As long as we don’t go above 20%, the risk of getting margin called is extremely low. This means we currently have around $50k available to us at a 20% margin. As we hope to have around $10k spare each month, the ability to pay this off relatively quickly also reassures me of its use.

The plan is to invest aggressively, and when the time comes, to fund the majority of our next house deposit via margin and then pay it off. Doing this means that we don’t have to keep a large portion of our wealth outside of the stock market for an unknown amount of time whilst we’re looking for a property.

This, of course, goes against all conventional wisdom of an emergency fund and house deposit, but I feel confident that if we don’t go above 20%, we’ll be good, and the risk is worth the reward! After we purchase our house, I think it will be best to always be 20% leveraged into the stock market. What do you think?

For context, historically Interactive Brokers offered margins as low as 1.2%. Right now, with the fed interest rate hike, they’re at 3%.

Settling Into the USA

There isn’t much to update you with here.

We’ve had a tremendous amount of trouble buying a car here. Not only are they extremely expensive and low in stock, but when we eventually bought one we couldn’t register it due to not having a US driver’s license. Over here in the States, you need to manually pay tax and get a physical license plate once you buy a car, they’re registered directly to you and not the car itself, so without registering it, it’s illegal to drive.

As we decided to live in a cheaper, more rural area, not having a car means that it’s basically like we’re in prison. We don’t even have a grocery store within walking distance, we’ve been stuck inside the house for a month now.

I’m hoping that this gets cleared up soon with a visit to the vehicle registration office (the RMV) on Friday. We have a car and insurance that’s not being used!

More on a comparison of the US to the UK and Sweden soon when we’ve been out and about a bit more :)

New SavingNinja Site

As I’ve been tweeting, I’m moving SavingNinja to a new platform: Hugo.

WordPress is ancient technology that’s on its way out. Hugo is a super-fast, Markdown-based, static site generator. I’m tired of having dodgy slow websites that crash all of the time, all wrapped in an unsecured WordPress shell. There is no need for this site to have a database or a server. Moving to a static site generator allows me to work in my preferred markdown environment, and have a super-secure, blazing fast website that is free. I can even work in Git and improve the website safely in separate branches (doing that in WordPress is so difficult!)

I’ve migrated most of SavingNinja already, I just have to do some more cleaning up and get my URLs ready to be redirected to the new structure. I’m hoping that this will be the last blog post that I make on WordPress.

From what I’ve seen so far I am SO impressed with Hugo. Building SavingNinja with it is like a dream, it just works! I initially thought that static sites couldn’t have comments, but there is a way to enable them using platforms like Disqus. You can even enable Google analytics and email marketing, so there really is no downside to leaving WordPress!

What does this mean to you? Not much. You’ll still get email updates and the URL will remain the same, you’ll just be welcomed to a different-looking site next time you visit. It may start off looking a little basic, but I plan on iteratively making improvements to the aesthetic over time.

I’ll post on Twitter when the switch is complete!

Savings Report #47 - Landing in The New World

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 13:37:51 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

I’ve landed in New England.

Right now, the Ninja household is going through that momentary relocation struggle of not being able to do anything.

Want a Home Depot order online? Sorry, you need a debit card linked to a US address.

Want a US debit card? Sorry, you need a social security number.

Social security number takes 5-10 business days to arrive if we’re lucky.

It’s not much different for my work. I’ve needed to re-enroll in everything as it’s effectively a separate company, I can’t get paid until I have a US bank account.

We don’t even have a car!

The chip shortage in the USA is a lot more pronounced than I’ve witnessed in Sweden and the UK, 10 year old used cars are going for 90% of the MSRP of their new counterpart. Due to this, we thought it would be better to just buy a new one, a Hyundai that had 5 years full and 10 years limited warranty as we weren’t equipped to deal with the worry of a used car right now in a location where a car is a necessity.

This car hasn’t arrived yet, and I think it will be delayed for quite a while. We may be home bound for a month or two at least.

Buying Second Hand Furniture

Moving countries multiple times really makes you think twice about buying new furniture. Our £1800+ new corner sofa in the UK couldn’t be sold, our $800 new IKEA sofa in Sweden sold for $150.

All kinds of furniture and white goods sell for a fraction of their retail price, even if they’re only 12 months old, the depreciation is greater than a car! We didn’t want to make the mistake of buying new again.

We rented a van last week for the first two days of our arrival in the US and as well as stopping by at Costco (I missed you Costco!) and Walmart, we went on a second hand furniture scavenger hunt to deck out our empty home.

Here’s the haul…

Collection of old stuff - FREE!

On Facebook marketplace we found this guy who was clearing out his Mum’s house, we got to go in and pick up anything we wanted. We’re going to sand and refurbish everything.

That old suitcase? Clean it up, fit legs to the bottom and it’s a nice side of the sofa table.

Our favourite find was this old chest, it’s solid wood and metal. We’re going to re-condition it and fit a glass top to turn it into a coffee table.

40 Year Old Solid Wood Furniture - $20

This guy was selling the furniture “from his youth” which he said he purchased for $3000 40 years ago, for $20!!

Came with a big mirror

This furniture was HEAVY, but we managed to get it up the stairs eventually. We’ll sand them all down and refurbish them with new handles and either paint or varnish.

Corner Sofa - $50

Our treasure chest find was definitely this sofa. It looks pretty similar to our £1800 UK sofa, it was in great condition and it fit our living room perfectly. For only $50!!

We may have had to drive 1h to get it, struggled to fit it into the van, and then had to take the bottom panel off to get it into the living room, but it was worth it.

We’ve definitely been converted to used furniture, I can’t ever imagine spending $1000+ on a sofa again, people are literally throwing them away just like we had to do in Sweden and the UK.

Finances

I’ve frozen my finance reporting for this month as I had to withdraw my Swedish ISK and English ISA until I get a Social Security Number and open an investment account over in this new land. That mixed with our Swedish house sale, and my relocation allowance I have around $250k (minus $23k for the car) waiting to be dumped into the stock market. I hope the markets continue to drop slightly until I can get re-invested!

This is the first time in over 4 years that I haven’t looked at, or reported on my savings spreadsheet . It’s making me anxious. But, hopefully it will be OK next month - this month will show as a ‘relocated to the USA’ in the savings report list .

See you in July!

Savings Report #46 - Should You Tell Landlords What's in Your Bank Account?

Wed, 04 May 2022 06:48:53 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

I’m so stressed!

The move from Sweden to the USA is happening in exactly 1 month’s time, there’s still so much to do, we’ve yet to find a place to live on the other side and we still have a lot of stuff to sell and give away, including our car.

This move is so much more stressful than the last as I’m still working full time and my work load right now is more than usual. When I moved to Sweden I didn’t care about my company as I was leaving, work load had reduced a lot due to COVID, and I had a few weeks off during the move.

Right now this is what we’ve accomplished:

Both myself and my wife have our US Visa’s
Flights to the US are booked (1 month to go!)
Hotel is booked for a week prior to the move in Stockholm whilst our house is cleaned for sale
House is sold, car is listed on a selling site

In the next couple of weeks I’m going to have to sell all of my investments in my UK and Swedish non-pension accounts and exchange the currencies to dollars. I’m doing this to make my tax return easier when I’m a US resident. I just hope that the stock market doesn’t shoot up in the 4-6 weeks it will take before I can invest again.

I’m already finding out how a lot of things in the US are weirdly different. We need to fill out forms to even enquire about rental properties, in these these forms we have to list personal information like how much is in our checking and savings accounts and this form goes directly to the landlord. I feel a little weird informing them of how much we have saved and what our salaries are, especially as we’re applying to properties that are cheaper than most. This seems like the perfect set up to make us targets for crime; or maybe I’ve been watching too many US TV shows?

Short one this month as I have so much to do.

See you when I’m in the US!!

Savings Report #45 - Packing Up Shop

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 10:54:10 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

There was a big recovery in March with my portfolio rising by 4.14%. This almost reversed the loss in January of negative 5.13%.

Since I began investing in 2018, I’m pretty sure that each time there was a huge loss, the most it has ever taken to reach that same net worth again has been 2 months. It’s the same now, January saw my net worth drop from £304k to £292k, and by the time March was finished I’d re-hit my previous net worth all time high. I believe this is because of the power of investing during a dip, it makes the recovery time less.

My net worth is now £308k, I’m UK-lean-FI again!

Packing Up Shop

It was only last month that I told you all that we will be relocating to the USA. It seems like it is now just around the corner, our visa appointment is booked for the 20th of April and we are going on a ‘pre-move trip’ for Easter to scout out some potential neighbourhoods.

From some comments in my last post, I realised that I hadn’t shared where we would be going in the US, I don’t know how I missed this crucial bit of info. We will be moving to the east-coast of the USA to Massachusetts.

My company is mainly located in New York and Boston so we are limited to the eastern time zone. My main work mode will still be remote working so we plan on initially moving to the Boston area and renting an apartment, then when we can buy a property (I’ve read we may not be able to for 1-2 years), we’ll move further out west to rural MA and start seeking our rural farm property, this has been our dream for a long time!

There’s also the option of rural Vermont which is only 1h away from most of the western-MA locations we are looking at, maybe the Frugalwoods will be our neighbours? A state-switch will probably have to wait until we have our green cards in 3-4 years.

Selling our Swedish Property

We’ve already sold our Swedish house to one of our neighbours, without even listing it on the market. After only having it for a year we thought that we may have lost money, but we actually made about £20k after the estate agent fees and tax (in Sweden they take 33% of your property profit even if it’s your main residence), so we actually made a pretty good decision to buy instead of rent for the last year. Previously we were paying £1500 per month in rent, so we’ve effectively saved £38k with buying, the risk was worth it!

Buying and selling property in Sweden is worlds apart from the UK, it’s so easy. All we had to do was sign one document that is managed by the real estate agent and it’s done. Next we’ll meet again with the buyer and estate agent on the hand over date, transfer the money, and hand over the keys. Why do the British make this process so difficult?

How Are We Feeling?

We are both really excited to move to Boston. We’re so excited that if the Visa appointment is completed earlier, we may just go early. I feel guilty for not thinking about missing Sweden, but right now the US just seems like such a better fit for us, maybe we’ll miss Sweden once we’ve left?

We’re excited about:

Being able to talk to people without saying “Sorry, I can’t speak Swedish” before every encounter.
Being able to find information online via Google about anything and everything.
Being able to book a doctors appointment and use a banking app on our own (Everything is in Swedish, we literally have to go to our Swedish friends to help us get past the doctors multiple-choice phone line).
Having better customer service on the phone and in person (they really treat you badly here, maybe partly because we can’t speak Swedish, but customer service is notoriously bad anyway.)
American food. We’re fed up of Swedish pizza and kebab - that’s all they have in our town.
American national parks.
Exploring America easily (north and south).
Being able to buy alcohol during our grocery shop and at the weekend.
Better value tech, we’ll be building gaming PCs at 1/4 of the price.
Going to Costco again, we love Costco!
Getting Amex cards again with free airport lounge access and points!
Being able to invest more than double as what we can now.
Being entrepreneurial (Sweden makes it impossible to earn any additional income as a ‘side-gig’).
Getting a cheap American truck.

Bring on America!!

Savings Report #44 - The American Dream

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

This update was difficult to prepare as I don’t think I’ve ever been as busy as I am right now. I signed up to co-author a technical book last year and I’ve now just begun the writing phase in which I need to write a 4000 word chapter every 2 weeks.

It has been insanely difficult to keep on track; I need to spend every Saturday and Sunday writing. When I signed up for this project I didn’t know that I’d be transitioning from an Engineer to an Engineering Manager and how much I’d have to learn in this new role.

I also found out this month that the SavingNinja family will be beginning another adventure. One of my goals for this year was to try and move to the USA. I’m happy to say that my employer found a business reason to relocate me and I’ve now signed a new US contract. Due to the move being classified as a business reason, we’ll be getting a full relocation allowance, along with accommodation for the first month, paid flights, and even a 3 day all expenses paid trip for myself and my wife to take beforehand.

The visa process has been initiated and they estimate that it will take to between 6 and 8 weeks, but it could be longer if we’re unlucky (hopefully no invasions will happen).

This is absolutely awesome! But… I need to spend each weekend writing for the next 4 months.

I don’t want to forfeit this book as it’s a project that I’ve wanted to do for a long time and I’ve put so much work into it. I can’t push back the project by months as I have a co-author, along with tech editors and a company with schedules to work toward. So, it looks like we’ll be trying to get rid of all of our stuff, including our house and car, and move to the USA from Sweden with a cat, all whilst having to spend each weekend writing and holding down a demanding full time job as an Engineering Manager (when two of my peers are on parental leave and I’m aiming for a promotion before the end of the year).

So, yeah, I’m damn busy!

I honestly don’t know how we’re going to manage it. But I’m excited nonetheless.

I’ll do a full post about relocating to the USA before we move (or I’ll try to). I’d like to write down my thoughts beforehand so I can see how they compare to the real experience when we arrive as this is something that I’ve worked toward for my whole professional life and I’d be the first to admit that I’m probably thinking of America in a deluded “land of dreams” perspective.

Other News

There’s a war with Ukraine and it’s scary living in non-NATO-Sweden, I hope we can relocate to the USA before anything escalates. The Swedish SEK has devalued against GBP so much that I’m now being paid around 10% less GBP than when I first started at my current company, even after 2 pay rises and role changes. The stock market is down the toilet and my company stock is almost half of what my grant price is; the stock now needs to grow 400% in the next 3 years if I want my grant to be worth anything, not looking good!

Savings Report #43 - FIRE Goal Un-Reached

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 07:47:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

I’m no longer financially independent.

This month saw the biggest drop in my portfolio since I began investing; wiping out almost half of the gains I made in the whole of 2021.

Well, I can’t say that I didn’t expect this to happen. There is always going to be a drop in the market, part of the reason why we see so much growth is due to volatility. But, it’s still a little bit disheartening.

Only looking at my figures once a month definitely helps with this bad feeling. I see that some people on Reddit are super stressed, and even losing sleep over the markets dropping. This seems crazy to me, maybe these people probably shouldn’t be invested in equities.

I’m not phased too much. Although maybe if I had actually retired 2 months ago, I’d be more than a little annoyed!

My contributions have gone back down to the normal level of around £3k. This figure jumps around each month due to the currency prices of the Swedish SEK fluctuating against the pound, but it’s more or less around £3k.

Even with this massive drop, I see that my total net worth has only dropped to what it was between November and December, so it’s barely lost a month. This is cheating a little as I contributed a lot more in the last months. I can’t imagine how many people would be flipping out if there was a 50% drop!

Other News

We’re going on a snowboarding trip next week. This time in Norway, the drive is only 6 hours and the resort is meant to be one of the best for snowboarders. I’m excited to be present again. Focusing on nothing else except carving down the mountain, this is one of my only escapes from my racing mind.

Projects

I’ve been getting pretty good at writing Python scripts since I joined my current company. So, when I ended up with 74 quotes from my recent non-fictional reading that I wanted to post on Twitter I thought, “Why don’t I build a Twitter scheduler?”

As I’ve set myself a challenge of reading only non-fictional, foundational learning books in 2022, I’m sure to be finding out a lot more useful insights that I’ll want to Tweet. To use a commercial scheduler like Crowdfire you have to pay $8 per month, and even then you can only schedule 100 tweets, building one myself was my only option!

For the techies who read this blog, this explanation is for you. If you know nothing about programming then I’m sorry, but feel free to stop reading now, I’ll see you next month.

Twitter Bot Tech Stack

Heroku

Heroku is amazing. I’ve talked about this service before, and used it a couple of times. Heroku lets you store micro-services for free, and it’s the easiest thing ever to get up and running or copy a project because they run everything via GitHub. When you push to the GitHub repo for your server, it’s automatically re-deployed, and this works out of the box. I’m not a backend engineer but I find this easy.

The Twitter bot server (which is really just a Python script) is hosted on Heroku for free. I am also using a Heroku Scheduler addon so the script will be ran every day at 5:30pm. Heroku gives each user 1000 free server hours per month, and this bot only uses around 2% of that allowance, so it will stay free forever.

GitHub

I store the tweets that I want to schedule in a YAML file on my own private GitHub repository. I push to this repository when I want to add new tweets, normally after I’ve finished reading a book. I’ve constructed the YAML to include metadata for each tweet: The tweet String, a tweet ID (which is a unique hash that I generate), a tweet type (if it’s a quote, a personal tweet, a question, a post re-share etc.), Twitter handle if it’s a quote, hashtags, category, things like that.

Redis

This was the first time I’ve used Redis cloud, it was so easy I can’t believe I haven’t used it in the past. Redis is a simple, lightweight, and super fast, key-value pair database store. I used this to store Twitter ID’s as keys and the date they were last tweeted as values. I wanted my Twitter store to randomly post tweets that hadn’t been posted in a long while (months) so I needed a fast database to store the last tweeted dates. This is also hosted on the Redis free tier which will be free forever! They really only charge for large scale applications.

Python

The heart of the Twitter bot is Python. This Python script connects to my GitHub twitter data private repo, pulls in the YAML file and parses the tweets. It then randomly selects a tweet from the list and checks Redis to see if the tweet can be posted, when one is found that hasn’t been posted in a while, the Redis value is updated with the current date and the Python script connects to the Twitter API and posts the tweet.

It’s that simple!

I now have a YAML file where I can store all of my tweets, and I know that the Twitter bot will post one from the list every 24h.

I had so much fun with this project that I’m trying to find other similar projects that I can work on. I may even add a user interface for inputting and viewing tweets so that eventually it could be a service that could be sold… Although I’d have to switch to AWS or GCP for the servers and Twitter data then, and create account-linked user shards. But, it could be a super fun project! If I didn’t have a full time job, I’d have so much more time to build things like this just for fun.

I wonder if there is a way I could build a product and sell it as is? Without thinking about turning it into a business or getting customers, just build a tool and sell it. That would be cool.

How was your month?

2021 Reviewed - Are Goals Bad?

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 09:08:23 +0000

I’m ending this year with both a high and a low. The high being that my financial independence target of £300k was reached in December 2021 , and the low is that during Christmas both myself and my wife caught COVID.

We’ve lasted for over a year in a mask-free state in Sweden, commuting to work, going out for drinks, and we never caught the virus. We go back to the UK for Christmas and then when we arrive back in Sweden we’re positive; what a plague-ridden country the UK has become! :]

We’re feeling very fluey now and have horrible coughs, but we’re not too bad. But it’s a horrible start to the new year. As cases rise, I’m wondering how many of you are experiencing a similar start after going home for Christmas?

On to the review! 2021 was my first full year living in Sweden, how did it go?

2021 has been a hallmark year, whilst at the same time feeling insignificant.

There was a new home purchase in April, followed by my biggest financial growth year to date when I thought that I wouldn’t be able to invest much.

I achieved my ambition of becoming an Engineering Manager, I now don’t do any coding in my day job.

Oh, and I hit my FIRE net worth number of £300k.

A lot has happened, all good things. But just like my feelings when I finally expatriated from the UK, these goals being hit have left me feeling glum. I perhaps invest too much thought and energy into doggedly pursuing these goals, that I believe there will be some kind of euphoria when I hit them; when I don’t get that euphoria, hitting them seems to have an adverse effect.

I was dead set on becoming an Engineering Manager, as soon as I got it I started thinking, “Shit, what now?”

I know this is how future planning works. I know I need to start living more in the present; that I won’t gain happiness by hitting some kind of arbitrary goal. Maybe it’s an addiction?

I just hope that when I finally do get to my ‘final destination’, when I finally do think… ‘Yeah, this is where I imagined that my family will settle and start living our lives.’ That I can start living in the present. I hope that I won’t instead spiral into a depression until I set more goals…

2021 Financial Review

£304,579 Networth (+£111,196)
£247,707 Excluding House (+£87,686)
£78,207 Contributed
£32,973 Interest Earned
£136,762 Pension (+£30,110)
£10,944 Contributed
£19,135 Interest Earned
£110,920 Pre-Pension (+£57,567)
£43,738 Contributed
£9,867 Interest Earned
£56,871 House Equity (+£23,509)
£23,509 Contributed
£33,362 House Equity (+£2,331)
£2,331 Contributed

There may be slight inconsistencies across the charts and figures. This occurs due to the Super Spreadsheet dynamically looking up the exchange rate for my different held currencies (USD, SEK, and GBP) and dynamically updating my net worth.

Subscribe to SavingNinja to get access to all of the same juicy charts for personal use.

£112k of growth. By far my biggest year of savings ever.

My networth grew past my initial financial independence goal of £300k with my biggest growth area being my pre-pension accounts.

This year saw an additional bump in net worth gain due to buying a new house in Sweden and adding that asset to my tracked portfolio. My house equity total increased by almost double with an additional £23,509 being added. My pre-pension pot gained £57,567 with £43k being contributed into my Swedish ISK and £15k being earned in interest across my English ISA and Swedish ISK.

My pension grew by £30,110, this is much more than I thought it would grow as all I’m gaining is my employers automatic deposit and interest growth, I’ve stopped contributing anything myself into a private pension now. Normally, it should increase less if we didn’t have insane 16% stock market growth. If it continued growing this much, at 16% per annum (which is ridiculous) and my employer continues investing £870 per month, I’d reach the UK lifetime allowance at the age of 41, and it would be worth £23m by the time I retired (whew, compound interest!) This is, of course, very unlikely to happen and I won’t be working for the next 30 years, hopefully…

My networth chart is growing steeper and steeper, although I expect it to level out a little in 2022; I don’t have any more matched betting money ready to deploy like I did for our Swedish house purchase.

I added my Swedish home equity to the savings sheet in April, and deposited some extra cash into my company stock in May. From June onward I began slowly emptying my spare cash until I was back at a 3-month emergency fund.

Interest earned has been staggering this year at around £33k, this has doubled my lifetime interest earned since I began investing in the stock market, it now stands at £54,300.

My forecasts show that by the end of 2022, I should have over £300k of investments, even at 0% growth, and I’ll be approaching £175k pre-pension, liquid investments.

Goals Results

Below are my goals from 2020 Reviewed .

1. Apply to at least 2 management positions (A+)

I definitely achieved this one, I applied to a total of 2 management positions in 2021 and on my second application, in October, I got the job. I even managed to stay in the same team. I did this by doing two things: Getting an Engineering Manager mentor which I met with each week. And starting a portfolio listing all of my leadership initiatives and achievements.

When changing into an EM role from an engineer, the main thing that your hiring manager will be looking for is proof that you really want this and that they should give you the chance with no prior experience. Joining the official mentorship program myself and mentoring an associate engineer helped me gain some 1:1 coaching experience too!

2. Become comfortable at my new company (A+)

I feel way more comfortable at my company than I did at the beginning of 2021. So comfortable that I got the job of Tech Lead and then Engineering Manager within my team. I think most people feel awkward and impostery when they start a new job, especially one that’s so different from previously worked at companies, but it’s just a natural feeling that you overcome with time.

3. Start saving at least 50% of my salary again (A+)

A+! I wasn’t sure how much I was going to be able to save in Sweden, but my savings rate shot up to 75%+ again after realizing that our Swedish Budget was better than our UK budget .

4. Release version 1.0 of my app (D)

I have been working on my app, and it’s got to a pretty good state, but it’s far from being ready to release. A lot of my spare time has been spent writing which has left me with very little time to program. A lot of the initial set up has been completed, now it’s just the UI and some more features to develop, hopefully 2022 will be the year that version 1.0 is ready!

5. Reach £200k invested and £250k net worth (A+)

I blew this one out of the water. When I set this goal my net worth was only £193k and I hadn’t planned on contributing much. This soon changed as we bought our Swedish house. I’d suspect that I won’t be able to contribute as much anymore as I no longer have any matched betting savings to supplement my contributions.

Pondering New Goals

Over the course of 2021, I and my wife have thought a lot about if Sweden is the country we want to settle in forever.

We’ve come to the conclusion that Sweden isn’t our place. As I expanded on in Savings Report #40 , we still want to try living in the USA. If we can’t move there, we’d like to go back to the UK until we can. Sweden’s salaries are low, my subsequent salary in the UK will be more than 30% higher, and the cost of living is lower.

Employers have to pay more than 100% of their staff’s salary again as tax in Sweden, so less of their total employee spend goes to the employee. This is the opposite in the US where my subsequent salary will be 150% higher, as barely any tax is taken off my employer at their level.

Of course, money isn’t the only reason we would like to leave, but it’s a strong one. Another reason is I’d like to start living our FIRE life. Now that I’m working remotely there is no reason not to.

We want to go and live in a rural area and build something. Why not do that right now?

I like my job, I’m not desperate to leave it, even if I were FIRE I’d probably continue doing it. Not living our end-goal dream right now seems silly.

The only blocker is not being in the country we would like to stay in.

Living our post-FIRE life early would mean investing in a larger remote property, and focusing on spending more and digging in our roots. I don’t want to do this in a country where we might leave. We’ll only ever get the cheapest property unless we knew we were going to stay for the long term.

So, my 2022 goals are going to be focused around that, starting to live our post-FIRE life right now. And doing everything I can to move in that direction, which right now is getting to America.

Goals for 2022

1. Move or set up for a move out of Sweden

I know that I don’t want to stay in Sweden indefinitely, it doesn’t make sense financially or for happiness. By the end of 2022 I’d either like to be living outside of Sweden, or have a plan set up for moving out of Sweden.

2. Try to get to the US

I’d like to make a big effort to get to the US in 2022 so we can start living our post-FIRE life right now. This would involve trying to get there whilst maintaining my current position, or applying to US-specific internal positions within my company. If this fails, I’d like to consider applying to another multi-regional company.

3. Master 1 algorithm a week

I’d like to slowly re-build my technical interview skills by mastering 1 algorithm a week. This will be needed if I can’t get to the US within my current company. Having a solid foundation of algorithms is also a really good skill to build for if I ever wanted to try to work at Google (I have a referral from an ex-colleague now!) Real algorithmic understanding takes a lot of time to learn, it’s best to go slowly and be consistent and purposeful with learning this knowledge, like building a muscle.

4. Read nothing but foundational learning books

After reading Naval’s almanack , I’ve decided to put down my fiction books and read nothing but non-fiction for a whole year. I’ll be focusing on foundational learning books for physics, maths, philosophy, economics and history. A post about this is to come!

5. Release version 1.0 of my app

This is a missed goal from 2021 . I’d like to continue to strive toward a version 1.0 release. I may miss the mark again as I’ve got a lot on my plate with work, a 6 month book to co-author, and all of these goals; but if I make a considerable dent I’ll be happy.

6. Reach £300k invested assets (excluding property)

As my focus turns more to the non-monetary, it’s still nice to set one financial goal. Reaching £300k in the stock market seems like a nice target (currently I have £247k excluding property).

Alright, bring on 2022!

Savings Report #42 - Lean-FI Goal Reached!

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

I’ve made it to my initial financial independence goal of £300k net worth! This has taken me around 4 years of saving, with the last 42 months being tracked on this blog . This should, on paper, cover my current expenses indefinitely, although the sequence of returns risk would be huge due to having a lot of my net worth locked away in my pension.

I’d need to make sure that my pension bridge didn’t run out before I could access my pension. I would, however, be really comfortable ‘barista FIRE’ing’ and working / earning some income from my hobbies such as writing . It’s a nice feeling to think that if anything ever happened to my main job, or if I became burnt out, I’d be able to support myself switching to a part-time, or hobby-style employment - which is what a lot of young FIRE seekers are trying to achieve!

I’m in the fortunate position that I love my job. So this ’lean-FI’ figure is just the beginning. I need to double this to have enough for Mrs SavingNinja to FIRE too, more than that is then needed to account for us potentially increasing our spending above £12k. I think £1m is a nice goal for our family.

£1m according to my calculators with my current savings rate would take another 10 years, ouch. I’d like to start trying to transition into a post-FIRE life sooner instead of deferring until a figure is reached, this should be doable now that I’m working remotely. We just need to decide which country we want to settle in!

Trying to decide what our post-FIRE life will be, and starting to live it, is a better goal than a monetary one now that I’ve reached a considerable amount invested. At least now I won’t be worried about my family missing out on any huge gains - just like the 16% gains from this year! I’m super glad that I invested aggressively pre-COVID as it meant that this year alone the interested earned has been around £33k. Without this growth, I wouldn’t have reached this £300k target so quickly.

Back in the UK

It’s strange how memories work. Your strongest memories are what persist from your past, remembering only the extremes of a person or place. The passing of time corrodes your memories into a patchwork of these extremes.

This is the first time I’ve visited the UK since moving to Sweden in 2020. It seems that both myself and my wife have experienced this warping of memories during our visit. Our memories of what we missed from the UK were extremes, we were only remembering the good ones. In contrast, we didn’t realise what we love about Sweden until we came back to the UK. To name a few…

The rugged nature of where we live in Sweden simply can’t be found in the UK, the type of nature where in just 5 minutes of walking outside of our house, we can get on a kayak, paddle to an island and camp for a night in an idyllic spot by the water and light a fire in complete, unowned and untouched nature.

The fact that everyone is quiet on public transport and in general public places in Sweden. As we arrived at Manchester Airport, the first thing we were met by were the plethora of security cameras on the station, and then a loud racket as a cockle of chavs drunkenly made their way up one of the platforms with an office chair and kicking about a traffic cone. Then when we got on the train we could barely think as two northern ladies were talking and cackling behind us across the aisle of the train. This would never happen in Sweden, and we’ve got used to it.

A person always has to be on guard, analysing each thought to see if it is truthful or a misrepresented truth. This trip back to the UK will definitely mean that when I return to Sweden, my eyes will be a little more open.

Happy New Year!

Thought Experiment #11 - Spend It All

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #11.

A question is posted with the hope that many bloggers will join in and answer with their own post, creating a series of different view points to a single question. Below is the question asked for this Thought Experiment.

You’ve decided that you no longer want to save any of your income toward FIRE each month. Instead, you’re going to spend it. How would you use your new disposable income?

Tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #11

SavingNinja

One Million Journey
Indeedably
Total Balance
Quietly Saving

After moving from the UK to Sweden to live in a very affluent suburb of Stockholm, I’m surrounded by million dollar homes. Nestled in between mammoth sea-front properties is my cheap in comparison, £315k, 69 sqm ‘mini-villa’.

The 6 properties in front of me are triple in size and double in price. Surprisingly, some of the owners are not much older than myself and Mrs SavingNinja, they all have young kids and work as accountants or in the IT industry. I always think, “Could it be our family living in those 200 sqm, sea view properties if we didn’t save 75% of our salaries toward FIRE ?”

I’ve always wondered what life would be like if I spent a lot more of my income. If I threw away all of my financial independence and frugality ideals and thought, “Fuck it!” I’m going to live a normal, spendy-pants life.

What would that life look like?

Savings… What Savings?

First things, first. I need to find out how much extra income I have to spend. Luckily, the SavingNinja household recently created a Swedish Budget spreadsheet for the post Sweden Vs UK ; let’s open that.

The budget spreadsheet says that as a household, if we saved nothing toward retirement and FIRE, we could spend almost £5000 extra per month. That sounds like a lot, but how far can 5 grand really go? Writing this I realise I have no idea! I’ve never spent more than minimum wage before, this should be interesting.

To make things more realistic as there are probably some discrepancies within our budget, I’m going to bring the extra spending limit down to £4000; better safe than sorry. (I can’t help myself can I!?)

A Big House

A big house is the one thing that I’m lusting over more since moving to my neighbourhood. So, the first point of spending, and I’d suspect the largest, is a house! What could I buy with my disposable income in Sweden?

My bank told us last year that they would be willing to lend us up to 8,690,000 SEK. If we had £250k to spend on a deposit, that’s almost a £1 million budget for a property.. If we sold all of our assets (excluding our pension,) and both of our properties, we’d just about have enough to have that as a deposit; luckily there is no stamp duty here, otherwise we’d have no chance!

I’ll set 11,690,000 SEK as a maximum budget and go window shopping. Be right back!

8,000,000 SEK (£660k) would get us this Downton Abbey-esque property about 5 hours north of Stockholm. 450 square meters of living space sat on 5 hectares of land. A little too big, maybe.

Up on the maximum end of the budget at 11,500,000 and it buys this beautiful farm-style property very close to the city of Uppsala.

It has one 283 square meter main house with three double garages, a gym, and a pool, and a whole separate 123 square meter rental house. This might actually pay for itself!

Check out this bathroom…

Alright, could we actually afford this?

Looking at a mortgage calculator for Handlesbanken, it would cost us 6,570 SEK (£542) in interest and 28,297 SEK (£2,336) together with repayments. That is insanely cheaper than I thought it would be… My budgeting self is thinking, “What!?” we’d only lose £542 per month to live in a £1 million property!? We’re getting severely ripped off for our UK BTL mortgage at £300 interest.

Of course, this is for the really low rate of 1.39%, but even if it went up by double; it’s really not as bad as I thought it would be. Let’s buy it!!

Currently, we spend 10,500 SEK (£867) per month on our property, so taking that off our new home cost of £2,336 leaves us with an increased spending of only £1,469. That leaves us with £2,531 left to spend_._

That has blown my mind. I thought getting a house this big would leave us with almost nothing each month. We haven’t even spent half. And the fact that there is a rental unit that is 2 times the size of our current house would cover all of the property maintenance and bills (maybe even more).

This has made me rethink how much we really should be spending on property, especially if you can make some money with rentals. But of course, remember that this doesn’t take into account the opportunity cost of not investing the £250k deposit.

A Fancy Car

The best way to spend a shit ton of money? A private car lease. Let’s go for the best of the best, a Tesla Model S with all of the trimmings, 21” ‘special’ alloys, extended insurance. A 3 year lease for 14,695 (£1,216) per month. My stomach just hurt thinking of spending that much. How is it almost 3 times more expensive than the interest on a £1 million house? People actually spend this much on cars?

Alright, I need to rein that in a little bit and go for a Model 3 instead at 6,730 SEK (£557); cars are more expensive in Sweden than the US or the UK, I’m not a millionaire!

Let’s throw in a Range Rover lease for my wife for 6,995 SEK (£579). I couldn’t find an American-style truck to lease in Sweden, which is what she would prefer.

Taking off £1,136 for the family cars and that leaves us with £1,395 left to spend.

Beer Money

Here in Sweden there are a lot of sophisticated wine bars in food market halls and shopping centers. They’re always packed full of people drinking white wine in the middle of the day, we’ve never stopped at one of these places as for a small glass of wine, it’s about 120 SEK (£10) which is mind bogglingly expensive to us.

Although, in this Thought Experiment, I’m spending it all! So, it’s only natural that I join all of the other Swede’s and drink expensive wine in the middle of the day when I go shopping.

Allocating two £10 wines per week for both myself and my wife comes to £160 per month, a small price to pay for feeling special whilst shopping; £1,235 left.

Luxury Food

We’ve not tasted real Parmegiano Reggiano since moving to Sweden, at £30 per kilo it’s just way more expensive than what we’re willing to pay. I’m adding in £100 per month for artisan cheeses, meats, and other food treats. £1,135 left.

Increasing The Holiday Budget

Our current holiday budget is £3000 per year and we’ve managed to go on a winter snowboarding trip, as well as a summer holiday at this budget. Spending more would allow us to go on more trips, and stay in nicer places, tripling the budget to £9000 sounds like a reasonable spendy-pants number for a spend-it-all type of couple. That’s £500 per month extra. £635 left, almost there!

Conclusion

£635 per month seems like a reasonable figure to leave free. With our new £1 million house, there are sure to be a lot more expenses cropping up; we’ll certainly have a lot more space to fill with things, a lot more things to repair and maintain.

There are other things that the money could be spent on if nothing else came up. We could upgrade our wardrobes, shop in more expensive places and buy more designer clothes. I definitely don’t feel like I cheap out; I buy clothes for their quality and durability, not the price, but you can always spend more.

We could also buy a couple of horses to go on our property as we really enjoyed horse riding last summer. After the initial payment for the stables and horses, it would cost around £250 per month for both and would cover feed, insurance, and vet bills.

A large £1m house, two fancy lease cars, multiple luxury holidays per year, expensive cheeses, wine whilst shopping, and horses.

That sounds like a pretty extravagant lifestyle.

But I can never imagine myself spending this much.

I was under the impression that this Thought Experiment would be pretty realistic and that it would portray an accurate representation of what I would spend my income on, but it turns out that it’s pretty damn hard to spend it all. Sure; I can see us increasing our holiday spending, there have been some pretty nice hotels that we have ditched in favour of a cheap AirBnB. I can see us buying that Parmigiano Reggiano; but I can’t see us spending £160 per month on food market wine, or spending £1,136 per month on car leases.

I can’t see us buying a £1 million house any time soon, I’m definitely not going to be selling all of my investments just to cover the deposit. But I could see us buying a £500k house. Especially if it had rental potential on the plot, or if it’s our “forever home”. I’m really shocked at how little extra it costs in mortgage interest to go all of the way up to £1 million; it almost seems silly to not get a bigger place.

All in all, I’m grateful for this Thought Experiment as it has made me realise that I shouldn’t keep idolising my neighbours in the big sea-front properties in front of me. We could easily afford the same properties, or bigger; we just choose not to. Instead, we’re pursuing something that we believe will bring us greater happiness: financial independence. When we’re ready for our ‘forever home’, we won’t hold back, and we’ll go for a property that ticks all of our boxes, and when that moment comes, we’ll be thankful for saving more earlier when we were able and willing!

Savings Report #41 - So Damn Close!

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 07:30:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

So close.

If the stock market doesn’t crash before Christmas, December will be the month… The month where I complete the SavingNinja FIRE journey of reaching £300k and I begin venturing into uncharted territory.

I’m excited!

This has only happened due to the stock market blazing upward again, I’m unsure what’s going on to prompt another 3% gain, can someone let me know?

The Long Night

Winter has arrived in force here in Sweden, it’s currently -8°. Our winter tires are on, they’re required by law to be studded over the next few months, and the Swedish landscape is looking more like a frosted cake each day.

When we do leave Sweden, I’ll miss the very wintery winters, and the Swedish obsession with candles, coziness, and Christmas window decorations.

Heading Home for Christmas

We are hoping to travel back to the UK for Christmas and New Year, the flights are booked and as-of-yet not cancelled. The rising COVID cases across the globe are making me feel very anxious, but we’ve not seen family or the UK since we left for Sweden 1 and a half years ago; I feel like we need to take on a little risk to try and visit home.

If all goes to plan, the next Savings Report and End of Year Review posts will be written in the north of England and Edinburgh!

Fancy Shed

The shed project that I wrote about last month has now been finished. Mrs SavingNinja and I are in love with it.

We can’t wait to begin our next big construction project. Maybe it will be an American barn?

A New Thought Experiment

Do you remember Thought Experiments ? Questions to the FIRE blogging community where we’d all make a post on a certain topic.

It’s been a long time since the last one . Over a year!

It’s about time for another one. I’m unsure if we’ll have many participants as I’ve not been keeping up to date with new FIRE blogs, but I wanted to write this post anyway as I think it’s an interesting topic that delves into happiness and exploring lives that most people live.

If you’re interesting in joining this special Christmas Thought Experiment, head over to the landing page to read the question and participate. You’ll have a whole month to write your response and it will go live on the 1st of January.

Savings Report #40 - Construction and Management

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 12:18:39 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The stock market did very well this month, I gained £4,860 in interest to go along with my £5,582 of increased contributions. Part of this sharp rise is due to my portfolio being 3% invested in my company stock which increased a lot this month, I hope it stays this high!

I really really want to hit £300k net worth before the end of the year as this is the figure that I set out to get when I started SavingNinja 40 months ago to reach financial independence. It will also mean that I reached this goal before turning 30 years old at Christmas, so I can be one of those smug FIRE-types who say “I achieved financial independence before I was 30!”

I’m also pretty excited for two new milestones: Hitting £250k in the stock market, and having my pre-pension pot grow larger than my pension pot. The pre-pension pot has mainly grown from a huge increase in contributions this year after I decided that I was done with my pension pot, more than doubling what I had in these accounts before coming to Sweden.

Before coming to Sweden in August of last year , my investments have gone up a lot more than I expected. Looking back I’m always in awe of the growth, especially as I wasn’t able to contribute as much when I first moved. My net worth has grown by £112k, £88k of that outside of my pension.

August, 2020

My portfolio graph is becoming steeper and steeper, maybe I’m finally starting to feel the tailwind of compound interest?

It will be a happy day when my investments regularly earn more than my monthly contributions, although that’s probably still a few years away!

Our First Construction Project!

We’re building a shed from scratch. This may have not been the most frugal option, and it has taken a long time, but with our neighbours tools in tow we decided that if we were serious about building our own house in the future, we better experience building something on a smaller scale now.

We started off by digging our garden for the base of the shed. Then we filled it with gravel, built a subfloor and placed it on stone slabs. Then we laid the floor, built the framing, and panelled the whole thing.

It’s taken the better part of a week with both me and my wife working all day, way longer than we thought it would take! But we are happy with the result, and we both learnt a lot. The last thing to do is the roof, and we’re using some Swedish technique of making the roofing felt raise up in the corners and then capping the edges with metal trims that hover over the roof called Vattbrädesbeslag.

The cost has also been a lot higher than we initially thought, at around £800. Still cheaper than if we would have bought a shed of this size and quality pre-fab though and our little house definitely needs the extra space. After the roof, we’ll be adding shelving along one wall and replacing more grass outside the shed with gravel.

Becoming an Engineering Manager

One of my goals for the year was to apply to two Engineering manager positions as I believed this type of role would suit my skills better and also aide my career and American relocation ambitions. I’m happy to say that this month, after 4 hours of interviews, I accepted a job in my current company as an Engineering Manager!

I will be line managing 8 engineers on a critical team, and I have to say; I’m scared shitless. Imposter Syndrome is running rampant as I’m the youngest Engineering Manager in my product area but I feel that I will be a good manager, way better than a lot that I’ve encountered in my career so far, so I’m hoping that this feeling will wear off after a few months in my new role.

I know that this will be a huge career change for me, as right now I identify completely as an Engineer. I don’t see myself as a ‘manager’ who doesn’t code. I feel like people will also see me differently on my social feeds and in person, I won’t be ‘one of the Engineers’ anymore. It feels a little weird. But ultimately, I’m excited for a new challenge and I can’t wait to get stuck into some ’leadership’ books and courses.

Sweden

The cold, long winter is starting in Sweden, it’s already getting dark at around 3pm and the temperature is beginning to drop below zero. After some deliberation the SavingNinja household has decided that we don’t want to stay in Sweden forever. And if we don’t want to stay here forever, why wait?

I’ll be speaking to my manager after Christmas to let him know that we will only be staying in Sweden for one more year. I will say that we will prefer to relocate to Boston, but if we can’t, we’ll go back to the UK until we can move to America. Half of the team that I will be managing are actually located on the east coast of America, so it should be easily doable for my company to relocate us on an F1 Visa.

I feel like we (or rather me) won’t be fully happy until we’ve at least tried living in America. I’ve wanted to move there for most of my life, and I still have that dream of living on an American homestead. The main reason that I studied so hard to get into my current company was to be able to relocate to America. We’re so close now, we may as well go the whole way. The language barrier is difficult in Sweden, and I’m too selfish to appreciate the socialist ideologies that are adored here. I need to live in America to either finally ‘start living’ or to burst my American Dream bubble.

Monthly Round-Up

Pixel 6 Event
- The new Pixel looks amazing, sporting Google’s new Tensor chip it’s capable of some pretty sweet things like instant voice translation and removing objects from your photos with the tap of a finger.
Metaverse Facebook Keynote
- Facebook is changing their name to Meta to show their fully invested into the new Metaverse accessed via augmented and virtual reality. Although the video was cheesy and creepy as hell, I’m happy they’re doing this. They’re bringing the Oasis to life, which is awesome!
Roblox
- Apparently this has been around for quite a while, but I only just found out about this game recently. It’s a game where anyone can create any other game with minimum game development knowledge required. It’s like a cross between Minecraft and Garry’s Mod . Find it on the App Store or Google Play for free. I’ve been enjoying playing on Squid Game recreations.

How was your month?

Savings Report #39 - A New Decade

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 06:30:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

I increased my monthly savings by another £1,200 this month as I realised I’m probably keeping a little too much as an emergency fund at around £13k. After calculating our budget last month , this figure would cover 12 months of expenses for both me and my wife, and she has a few thousand pounds as an emergency fund too. These new monthly contributions should see my emergency fund drop slowly over the coming months until it’s at a more appropriate level.

Goodbye 20s

My wife turned 30 years old this month, I’ll be following suit in 3 months time. This also marks the time that we’ve been in a relationship: a decade. It only seems like yesterday when I met an excited 19 year old in freshers week of University, an exotic southerner to my Mancunian self - I’d never met one before!

The 10 years that proceeded have been filled with new things. I was shown that beautiful beaches do exist in England as I was bought out of my northern bubble. We’ve travelled all over the UK, lived in three different countries, lived in 7 different houses together and bought 2 of them; we’ve built careers and got married. What will the next decade bring?

Managerial Pursuits

One of my goals this year was to interview for an engineering management position at least twice, or get a role. I’ve already interviewed for one a number of months ago and even though my 4h of interviews went “really well” they decided they needed someone with more hands on experience.

I’ve since been focusing on becoming an EM within my existing product area. Last month I was given the role of Tech Lead of the product area and I’m now in the leadership groups and meetings with all of the other managers. I’m running my own ‘Tech Steering Group’ of 10 engineers (although without the line management,) and I’m gaining all of that invaluable leadership experience.

I have more interviews coming up to for a level 1 EM role, but I’m doubtful I’ll get this as they may need a higher level for this particular role too (I’ll find out before the next Savings Report.) But with my new TL role, I’m hoping that transitioning into an EM is only a matter of time. Hopefully sooner rather than later!

Monthly Round-Up

Framework laptop
- A fully modular and repairable laptop that is as good as a MacBook? Yes please.
Ninte
- A software manager for keeping your favourite utilities and programs up to date. Have you ever used CurseForge to manage Addons for games like World of Warcraft? This is like that but for your Windows software.
Glary Utilities
- Ninte led me to a few other awesome utility software, including this one. It helps you clean up your PC, repair problems, update software, and tighten up your security! It got a little annoying as it kept prompting me to buy a license, but disabling it from launching at start up solved this.
TeraCopy
- A safer and quicker way to copy or cut large amounts of data on your Windows PC. I used this to transfer around 50GB of wedding photos and was super impressed by the speed! I don’t know how they do this.
Amazing Pixelart
- I started using my old personal Twitter account that I set up when I was a budding game developer. I fell in love with this account and their pixel art. Scroll through them for a while and see how amazing they are! They invoke a certain nostalgic and calm feeling.

How was your month?

How Expensive is Living in Sweden?

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 06:31:38 +0000

Before moving to Sweden everyone told me how expensive it would be to live here. Even fellow bloggers scoffed at the prospect of the _Saving_Ninja moving to Sweden!? The country with one of the highest income tax and VAT rates in the world! I wouldn’t be able to call myself the SavingNinja for much longer, they said.

When I first arrived here, I found it hard to swallow the insanely high food prices, it seemed everything that we usually bought back in the UK was at least 3 times as expensive, sometimes even more than that. Eating out was another big shock, paying over £25 for a main course per person is the norm in any type of restaurant here, even for a burger and chips.

Your average McDonalds meal will cost around £10, and a 440ml ‘Swedish pint’ of beer in most restaurants will also cost you around £10. Don’t even ask about the cost for a bottle of wine. I thought we would be spending SO MUCH MORE, my FIRE plans would be sullied for sure.

Now that I’ve lived here for over a year, and I’ve settled into a house that I’ve bought with my wife, it’s about time that I go back to the Budget Spreadsheet and calculate our expenses. So, now it’s time for the moment of truth, how much more expensive is it to live in Sweden over the UK?

Is Living in the UK Cheap?

One of my most popular SavingNinja posts was this one; How to Live Off 10k Per Year . It documented what my living expenses were living in the UK and what I did to reduce costs and live on under minimum wage whilst still living a high-quality life.

The TL;DR of that post is that my mandatory yearly spending was £7,856. Adding in £1,500 per year for holidays, and £150 per month on spending/miscellaneous money, that came to £9,356 per year. Which everyone found crazy!

I had people at London meet ups bring up this same blog post even years later saying how impressive that low level of spending was. I’d like to take credit for it, but really it wasn’t that hard, once I’d reduced my cost for the big expenses like my car and my home, everything else came naturally - I’m a cheapskate by nature!

This old post will be the perfect yard stick to compare against my Swedish spending now that I’ve filled in this years Swedish budget on the SavingNinja Budgeting Spreadsheet . Remember, the £10k per year post was released before I started commuting into London, after that my yearly spend went up to around £11,153.

England Vs Sweden The Big Budget Battle!

I’ll create this budget a little differently than the How to Live Off 10k Per Year post. Instead of naming my own expenses, I’ll state the total cost for both me and my wife, then split it at the end to compare. Some things are slightly different, between me and my wife’s expenses, for example she has to spend £7 per month for her SIM card, I get mine from work; she also has slightly increased costs for buying gifts for her family and commuting into Stockholm on the bus, I’ll omit these differences in the list below for comparisons sake as the prior post focused on my expenses alone.

Food: £50 per month
Now this is kind of cheating a little bit. My company pays around £200 per month after tax onto a food card which is meant to cover lunches when working from home, but this same card can be used to buy normal groceries so I’ve docked £200 off the food budget for both me and my wife.

BUT, at effectively £250 per month, I’ve got to say, this shocked me! I thought Sweden would be WAY more expensive in this category. But it seems that even though some things are 3 times more expensive, some food items are about the same price as they would be in the UK, and some food items are even slightly cheaper. We just stopped buying the really costly food items and found new cheap favourites.

Salmon is one of those things that works out cheaper, in Asda the cheapest fresh salmon would cost you around £11 per kilogram, or £19 for a half-decent looking salmon. In Sweden you can get a really nice full salmon for £8 per kilogram.

We still cook our favourite meals from scratch, buy a fair amount of alcohol (although we now buy box wine as it works out as £5 per bottle, just like in the UK,) and we buy lots of vegetables and fruit. Good cuts of steak are not actually priced too high here either, in-fact, we’ve definitely snagged a few deals by buying in bulk and freezing. All things considered, a 25% increase in food costs isn’t too bad (if we didn’t have the food card paying for most of it.)

UK food: £200 - 75% decrease
Winner: Sweden (kinda)

Housing costs: £890 per month (mortgage, ground rent, house insurance),
The mortgage we had in the UK (before we got an employee discount mortgage loan) was £638 per month. Our Swedish housing costs £253 more. A little higher, but not too bad considering we’re in a more expensive home here. We paid £195k for our UK house in the South East, in Sweden for our sea view property we paid about £300k, our loan is roughly 25% larger.

There are also some other things to consider. We don’t pay council tax here, and our water bill and bin collection is included with the ground rent. Combined, these two expenses came to £144 total each month in the UK, taking that off the £253 difference and a £109 increase seems like a steal considering the house price difference.

UK housing: £782 - 12% increase
Winner: draw

Bills: £95 per month
The only bills we pay in Sweden are electricity and internet, gas isn’t very common here. The electricity bill comes to around £74 per month and the internet, £21. My company pays for my phone and an unlimited service plan. We actually spend less on TV here as we now use my wife’s parents Netflix account for free. There’s no such thing as the TV license here either (not that we paid it in the UK anyway!)

UK bills: £100 - 5% decrease
Winner: Sweden

Transportation: Insurance £568, tax £96, fuel £120, service/repairs £1,400 (hopefully less!)
Total: £784 - £2,184 per year
This car is the first ever car that me and my wife have split equally, as we both don’t need one for work. We bought this compact van to make our life a little easier and so we can go on more trips around Sweden without worrying about renting a car. We also hope that leasing the car out on GoMore will cover at least half of this cost (we’ve leased it out twice already!) The low fuel cost of £10 per month is because we barely use it, it sits on the driveway waiting to be leased out most of the time, and the two times it’s been rented they’ve even left us with a bit more fuel in it.

We preliminarily budgeted for £1,400 per year in service and repair costs. This could be higher or lower, but we’re hoping it won’t cost us much as it’s only a few years old (famous last words.)

Miscellaneous: £35 per month
£25 for pet expenses, mainly food, and £10 for essentials like shampoo, bubble bath, and toilet roll. Over the years we’ve become more zero-waste so we don’t have many consumable purchases. We use hankies that my wife made out of old shirts, we have Swedish cloths for cleaning and reusable napkins instead of kitchen roll, and we compost and recycle everything so no bin bags! My wife has everything reusable; MoonCup , and a Magic Make-up Remover Cloth , saving over £100 per year. Our clothes wash better with an EcoEgg and it saves us SO MUCH compared to buying consumable detergent. Next level is a bidet.

Holiday pot: £3,000 per year
We decided to keep our holiday pot exactly the same, we definitely didn’t spend all of this the last few years but we hope to try to in the coming ones. To gauge this figure we calculated our total expenses for the snowboarding holiday we went on last Christmas. This was in a pretty expensive area of Sweden and adding up the costly 7h train tickets (which we booked first-class,) two 6-8 day ski-pass’s, 10 nights stay in self-catering hotel-style AirBnB apartment right next to the slope, and some fun money for restaurants, it came to £1,460 total.

We realise this was the cheapest we could go for a snowboarding holiday of that length here, and for the next one we may want to stay somewhere a little nicer with a sauna - at least for a few nights - but we also realised that if we went on a summer holiday, we’d spend way less. Our summer trips generally involve a bit of a pricier plane ticket and then slumming it in an AirBnB and exploring each day.

One of our favourite holidays was to the Czech Republic and the total for that trip was under £500 for the both of us, even with eating out most days! We managed a week in New York for under £1,000 for Christmas a few years ago. We explored all of the Swedish West Coast this summer and only paid the price of fuel as we wild-camped.

We think we’ll be able to go on a snowboarding holiday every year and continue exploring the world for £1,500 per person each year, but we don’t mind increasing this if we need to!

Luxury Pot: £1,500 per year
This has actually dropped considerably. Our previous budget had the luxury pot total amount at £2,400. In the past I was accounting for upgrading our house like renovating the kitchen and bathroom. Here in Sweden, I don’t feel like they’re is much else to do, at least not for the next year.

We tried to add up what big things we might buy per year, even if we were to buy one big-ish thing like a SteamDeck , or a new snowboard, or a shed, we’d still come under this amount; so £1,500 seemed like a nice figure in case we wanted to buy something extra. We’re lucky that we bought all of the things we needed/wanted when we first moved here before doing this budget!

Fun fact: I haven’t bought any new clothing for at least 2 years. I still want to decrease the amount that I do own so everything can fit into a backpack.

The Grand Reveal!

So, there you have it, our Swedish budget complete. Here are the figures:

Necessary Expenses
Between £13,204 and £15,388 per year combined.
£6,602 - £7,694 each.

This depends on if the compact van costs us anything in yearly repairs, how much those cost, and if we’ve not leased it out to cover some of the expenses. We’ll account for the maximum, but expect the minimum.

But, hang on a minute…. Even £7,694. That’s UNDER the necessary expenses total of the 10k Per Year post which was £7,856. Whaaaat!

Using the 25x rule, this essential spending makes me effectively 138% FI based on a net worth of £271k.

Mind blown.

What is actually going on here? Sweden should be more expensive. The answer seems to be the employee food card accounting for £2,400 of our food budget each year, this warps things a bit, because if I truly did retire, I wouldn’t have access to this. I also wouldn’t have access to the employee phone and plan for that matter. But even still, adding on £1,200 still brings the maximum per person to £8,894 - not too much more than the aforementioned post. And certainly way less than my London commute budget.

I think this points to the fact that Sweden isn’t more expensive than the UK. If you live a pretty minimalistic life anyway, and adapt your grocery list to new tastes, it’s kind of the same. And over here, you won’t be strapped with £50k student loan debt, you’ll get 12 months fully paid maternity and paternity leave, and you’ll never have to worry about health care, even old-age live in costs are paid for (you won’t have to squander your inheritance paying for nursing homes like in the UK!) Not to mention the free child care.

That’s pretty cool.

Adding Luxury to The Mix

We decided to budget for £4,500 in total for luxury, which is the £3,000 holiday pot and an ‘anything else’ luxury pot. This brings our total figures to:

Total Expenses
Between £17,704 and £19,888 per year combined.
£8,852 - £9,944 each.

This puts us way below the £24,316 London commute budget and around the same as the £9,356 each budget in the 10k Per Year post .

If we manage to stick to this budget, it should allow us to save 76.93% of our total take home pay. 83.85% for me and 63% for my wife. This is a number is similar to our post-London budget prediction, but in that one I was saving £40k per year into a pension, tax free. This one see’s most of that 83.85% going into my pre-pension pot, which is awesome!

I’ve got to say, I’m pleasantly surprised that we managed to stay under the £10k per year mark.

Maybe I should stop moaning about how expensive Sweden is?

Caveat

I know what a lot of you are thinking. You’re not truly FIRE, most of your investments are in a pension. Yes, yes, I know. I could argue to you all day about building a pension bridge , and about side-hustle income like my new writing gig . But the truth is: I’d probably struggle if I did quit today. It would also be foolish of me to do so, what happens if we have children or want to move to some place else? Our budget will surely change.

But this post is an exercise in statistics and budgeting. I never intended to actually retire when I reached my ’leanFI’ number. I plan on staying with my current employer for at least another 4 years, and working in some capacity after that, along with creating many more passive income streams . This should make the exercise of ‘would I actually be able to retire?’ purely theoretical. When I do break out of the cave I should be a lot more safe, or fatFI as some like to call it.

But that’s not to say I can’t call myself Theoretically FI right now! :]

Savings Report #38 - Becoming a Book Author

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 07:30:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The markets rebounded a little this month earning my portfolio a 2.33% gain across the board. I’m in slightly uncharted territory right now as my net worth and invested amount goals for the year were 250k and 200k. I flew past those figures already and there are still 4 months left of 2021!

Getting Paid to Write

I didn’t read much when growing up. I’m embarrassed to say that the amount of books I had read at the age of 21 could have been counted on one hand. But since my wife got me into reading 8 years ago, I read books almost every single day. I now find reading a good novel more enjoyable than watching TV and I can happily say that I’ve got over 100 books under my belt, most being 500 page fantasy behemoths!

Reading changed my life for the better, not just as it’s an enjoyable and relaxing hobby, but as it also led me to becoming a better writer. In a world where writing is becoming more important, even in software engineering , I can confidently say that I attribute a lot of my successful job applications to good writing. SavingNinja definitely wouldn’t exist if I didn’t enjoy writing either, one of the reasons I created this website was to hone this particular skill, and it’s certainly improved as can clearly be seen by looking at some of my older posts.

This has all led to one of my long term goals of wanting to publish a book. I dream of being FIRE in a mountain cabin somewhere, writing each day and watching as a new world materialises out of my thoughts and dreams.

Last month I was given the opportunity to trial at a company who would pay me to write, $400 per article, in fact. A hefty sum for doing what I normally do for free. I’m happy to say that they accepted me as an author and I’ll be writing for them in addition to continuing my main job as a software engineer.

What’s even better is these articles are technical tutorials, so I get to study and learn something new about a programming language, then write about it, and get paid at the same time! It really is a dream gig for me, and I attribute it all to reading, and writing on this blog.

I had my first tutorial published in August, and to my surprise it was requested by Google to be added as a chapter in an upcoming book. I need to send in my bio and a headshot for it to be printed on the book as an author. Dream accomplished!? Not quite… I still have that dream of publishing a book as the sole author, but this is one awesome step that I didn’t think would come my way this soon.

My next tutorial is almost finished which will explore building a mobile game in a modern multi-platform programming language which adds even more things that I love; video game development! I actually studied video games programming at university but never made a game after I left. Who would have known that it would take money to entice me to do what I love?

Monthly Round-Up

WinDirStat
- Best program for deleting files and making space. This software is incredible for someone who doesn’t have a huge hard drive and needs to regularly make room, it’s free and intuitive.
How writing can advance your career as a developer
- As referenced in the post above, I found this article by Stack Overflow really inspiring, and made me even more thankful for this blog!

Not much for the round-up this month I’m afraid!

How was your month?

Savings Report #37 - Swedish Road Trip

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:52:01 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Another month, another slow upward climb of my finances.

My pre-pension pot is growing quite nicely, almost at that special £100k figure. Although it sucks that £60k of that is in a UK ISA which would be subject to 30% capital gains tax if I ever withdrew it whilst living in Sweden. I really should have withdrawn it before I left the country. It was so difficult to predict whether to withdraw, as if I ever came back to the UK, I would have preferred to leave it in.

It’s really unfair how the Swedish tax system works in this regard. They should just take capital gains for when I moved here, not from when I first deposited. Then I wouldn’t have to battle with the thought, “Should I move back to the UK?” Just to withdraw from my ISA and sell our UK house.

Van Life

We fought against our frugal nature and bought a vehicle. A little compact Renault Kangoo van, 2017 with 80,000 km on the clock. It cost £6700, here’s the reasoning:

We want to explore Sweden whilst we live here. We’re already realising that we probably won’t stay here forever and having a car will mean we can explore more as where we moved to is off the beaten track and public transport isn’t great.

We could rent a car for a reasonable price, around £35 per day. For our next trip, exploring the Swedish West Coast, we’d need a car for 2 weeks, this would cost around £500.

We figured we’d have to rent a car for at least two trips per year, one in the summer, and one for snowboarding in the winter (trains are actually more expensive than renting a car!) That’s at least £1000 per year in car rentals for trips. In addition to that, having a car would actually make our life here a little easier:

Being able to shop at the cheaper grocery places and not pay a £5+ home delivery charge.
Going to the main shopping centre (15 minutes drive away) without having to pay £7 each to get there and back on the bus.
Taking the recycling to the closest bins without having to cycle for 30 minutes with a bike cart.
Being able to use the car to go to doctors appointments etc.
Small day trips around our area become much easier, certain places turn into a 10 minute drive instead of a 1h, £4 bus trip or a 30 minute up-hill cycle.

The final straw that broke the frugal, car-free, camels back for me was that we wanted to go on a hiking trip to the Swedish High Coast. This trail would take a week and there was no public transport to get there. I really didn’t want to pay £350+ for a rental car that would sit being unused for most of the time whilst we hiked.

So, we’d save £1000+ on trips (and actually go on the trips instead of not wanting to,) and we’d make our life a little easier in the Swedish suburbs. Now why did we choose a fairly expensive compact van?

£500 banger vehicles don’t exist in Sweden, and mechanics are expensive. So one of those car-hacks was out of the question. I also didn’t want to spend £1000-£2000 on a fairly old vehicle that could end up costing a lot with repairs. But then we thought of the car rental app that we had been using, GoMore.

GoMore is like AirBnB for cars and vans, we have used it multiple times to rent a moving van as it was always the cheapest available option. The company provides insurance for the renters and takes a 20% cut of the rental price, the last person we rented a van from said it covered the cost of his van!

So, we bought a vehicle perfectly suited to renting out for picking up furniture or moving. We added roof racks and will buy an add-on trailer. The hope is to be able to rent out the van for at least 5 days per month at around £35 per day. After fee’s and taxes we are hoping this will cover a chunk of the depreciation, repair, and opportunity costs of the vehicle and when considering the reduced holiday costs (by not having to rent a vehicle or catch a train,) may even save us money.

I’ll do a full post once we’ve owned the car for a year!

First Swedish Road Trip

Now that we had our little compact van, there was no excuse to not go on a road trip. We loaded it up with wild-camping gear and headed out to the Swedish west coast.

Sweden really is something, I’ve never seen sights like I did on this trip. Thousands of islands off the coast of cute little fishing villages. Beautiful beaches and crystal clear waters.

We camped on top of rocks by the sea, and by runic burial grounds smattered with wild flowers.

Monthly Round-Up

Steam Deck handheld PC
- The cheapest ever gaming PC, these things look amazing! Mrs SavingNinja pre-ordered one, they will be perfect for when we move again as we’ll be able to bring a gaming PC with us without having to ship a massive PC tower across the country.
Vim Adventures
- A game that helps you learn Vim. I think programming games are the future of learning how to code, you can just play a game and bam you’ve learnt something :]
What is the most unforgettable Reddit post that everyone needs to read?
- Another interesting Reddit super thread full of interesting stories.
Google Doodles olympics
- Have you played this yet? It’s a game that you can play from Google search, it goes waaay beyond Google’s dinosaur game.
Allkeysshop
- Searching for the cheapest game CD key has never been easier! I used to have to look at all of the CD key websites individually, this website aggregates them.
Noclip
- Fly through some of the most iconic game design levels, really interesting if you’re into game development and want to see how to model a game environment.

Savings Report #36 - 3 Years of Savings

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 08:27:44 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

This is my 36th Savings Report.

I’ve been writing to you, every month, for 3 years in a row. Crazy, right?

Let’s use this anniversary to take a trip down memory lane…

I posted my first Savings Report in 2018 at 27 years old with £24,954 in total investments, ****£14,154 in my pension and £10,800 in my pre-pension accounts.

I owned my own home with my fiancee which we purchased a year prior as our first property and I personally held ****£26,628 in equity.

My total net worth was ****£51,583.

“My first savings report! I’m hoping to do these once a month.”

Savings Report #1

On my 13th Savings Report I reached ****£100k net worth on the same month I got married.

On my 18th Savings Report I passed my goal of having ****£100k invested in the stock market.

On my 36th Savings Report, this one, I reached ****£200k invested in the stock market, it took 1 year and 6 months to grow from 100k to 200k.

My biggest investment loss was in March 2020 which saw my portfolio drop by -13.35% at -£14,613.

My biggest investment gain was in November 2020 which saw my portfolio increase by 11.04% at ****£15,294.

With interest and contributions combined, my portfolio grew an average of 4.88% per month, an annualised increase of 77.14%!

I shared on my 18th Savings Report that I would be taking an Algorithm specialization course in preparation for a year of trying to get into a large tech company.

On my 24th Savings Report I shared the news that I’d be moving to Sweden to start working for my dream employer.

On my 26th Saving Report I posted for the first time after expatriating from the UK to Sweden.

In 3 Years…

Net worth: £51,584 → £259,287

Pension: £14,154 → £124,270

Pre-Pension: £10,800 → £78,835

House Equity: £26,628 → £56,183

Got married ✓
Dream job achieved ✓
Left the UK ✓

What will the next 3 years bring?

Reverting Back to GBP

As you may have noticed, I’ve changed everything back into GBP from dollars. I was fed up with having to convert everything in my head back into pounds every time I looked at it, it was creating a kind of disconnect from my savings. So, even though most of my earning and investments are in dollars and Swedish Krona right now, I’ll be converting it into GBP automatically on the spreadsheet.

However much I don’t want to be British, I need to just come to terms with the fact that my brain works in British pounds!

I’ve still kept the multi-currency display for dollars and euros with the ability to change it in the Super Spreadsheet .

Our First Harvest

Our garden is looking beautiful right now.

We’ve had a lot of problems with slugs, caterpillars, and black flies, but the Ninja household took each problem as they came and solved each one. We’re now starting to get some bountiful harvests.

Calculating my Expenses

I wanted to make a new budget when our expenses settled down after moving into our Swedish property last April, but everyone is so ‘Lagom’ here that they’ve not even bothered to send us our bills yet.

I’ve even rang the internet company half a dozen times asking if they have all of my details and why they haven’t sent us a bill? They’re awful.

Imagine having to beg a company to charge you in the UK? All of these bills will probably come through with a big bang at the end of the year when they finally decide to do some work.

We finally received our first electricity bill which was a lot higher than we were expecting. In Sweden the main bulk of your electricity for each area is provided by one monopoly, in my case Eon for the ’line charge.’ This came to around £70 last month and it’s mostly fixed, we’ll have to pay another fee on top of this for usage but we can change that company and I shopped around for the cheapest deal (they’ve yet to send us the bill…)

Even though we haven’t had all of our bills fully through yet, I think we have pretty solid idea of expenses so I’ll do the budget spreadsheet soon to figure out our true outgoings (or close-to-true.) Then Mrs SN can start investing again and I can be sure that the 36,000 SEK I’m contributing each month isn’t too much.

Monthly Round Up

Espanso snippet manager
- I spent years trawling the internet for a free text expander that wasn’t absolute rubbish. I’ve finally found the one!! This piece of software is incredible and very intuitive. It allows you to save any kind of text behind a keyword and whenever you type that keyword, it will print, no matter where you’re typing. The settings are handled beautifully in yaml and it even has a brew install option.
- Remember a few reports ago I said I had a trial writing an article for a popular coding tutorial site? I used Espanso exclusively for wrapping HTML tags like:
  
  ;bold for <em></em>
  
  and
  
  ;link for <a href=\"\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"\\_blank\"></a>
  
  It saved me a bunch of time. You can also text expand with scripts and in-built functions like and , the possibilities are endless!
- And it’s cross-platform!! And FREE!
My work is providing a Herman Miller chair and standing desk for my home office, posh.
- I always wanted to try these legendary chairs, but my frugal sentiment never took the plunge. Now I’ll have one bought for me, yay for not having a dodgy back!
Esparanto
- A language created to be a universally spoken second language which can be learned in one hour. How friggin cool? I might pick this up on Duolingo .
Pod cooling mattress
- A water cooled mattress with its own water pump that can heat and cool you. This is perfect for me as I always want to be cold in bed. Why does America have all of the coolest things?
GitHub Copilot
- The future of coding is here. An AI pair programmer which can help you spot mistakes and suggest solutions as you code. Created in collaboration with OpenAI. Are we one step closer from robots taking over programmers jobs? I better get to my FIRE number quick. Sign up to the beta with the link above.

Savings Report #35 - I'm Turning into a Spendy Pants

Sat, 12 Jun 2021 07:30:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

Hello guys!

This is the latest I’ve posted a monthly update in almost 3 years. Sorry about that.

I’ve been experiencing some site outages due to going above 100% CPU on my free Google Cloud hosting tier. This started randomly happening so I was reluctant to upgrade to the standard tier. I also don’t yet have a desk set up at my new place so I don’t have access to my work station where I would normally manage this website. This somewhat delayed the update.

I seem to have got it under control now, but I’ll be leaving the 5 second delay to connect to the site switched on for the time being. When I have my workstation set up, I’ll be trying to migrate to a GeneratePress theme which is a lot more speedier and modern.

My long term plans are to build the website myself and switch to static hosting. This will mean comments will be gone eventually, but I think that Twitter is good enough for interaction.

Anyway, back to the Savings Report! Better late than never.

My companies stocks dipped very low this month and I know that they should be worth much more so I took my emergency fund and invested around £10,000 into them.

I know this goes against all conventional wisdom, but I’m genuinely excited about their future plans so I thought that if I hold long term, I should be fine. The stock increased by about 10% in a few days.

I have a little over 4 years left for my companies stock to grow by 100% for a big share scheme payout (this is different from the £10k I just bought personally) so I got a little disheartened when it dropped to lower than the price it was when I joined, but there’s still plenty of time left, so here’s to hoping!

I also increased my regular monthly investments to 36,000 kr (currently about £3100,) the Swedish government is paying me back around £6,500 in overpaid taxes in June so I’m going to use that to refill my emergency fund a little faster.

More Frivolous Spending

We spent around £1,850 on Kayaks this month!

As we live in the archipelago of Stockholm, we thought that we should enjoy our time in Sweden to the upmost and explore the islands via kayak. We even got some camping equipment so we can make the most out of Sweden’s ‘Freedom to Roam’ and go on some long kayak and camping trips.

As we don’t own a car, these babies are the next best thing.

Is Sweden turning us into spendy-pants? It could just be the change of scenery, or the fact that my net worth is now around a 1/4 of a million quid. Or maybe it’s because I’m not rushing to FIRE anymore? I enjoy my job and I don’t have a terrible 3 hour round-trip commute.

Who knows, but at least this was one of the goals that I wanted to achieve, to spend more money, remember the guest post I wrote for Mr1500 ?

But I should try to turn the tap down a little bit, since moving to our new place last April we have spent:

£1080 - LG CX 55inch OLED TV
£650 - Second hand Kawai ES8 electric piano
£1850 - Two Kayaks and accompanying equipment
£250+ - Wood and soil for multiple raised beds for growing vegetables
£3000+ IKEA/other furniture for our new place (we had to get everything!)

That’s almost £7,000. But I have split this with Mrs SavingNinja so I guess you could call it £3,500.

It’s still an awful lot of money, more than we’ve ever spent, but we did have to buy literally everything here; in the UK we lived mostly with hand-me-down furniture from the in-laws. But this spending has led to a nice realisation: these purchases have not really affected my ability to invest.

Now that I’ve actually spent a fair whack of money and seen that the world isn’t falling down around me, I don’t think I’ll feel as bad when buying small things anymore, maybe I’ll even be able to buy one of those expensive motorway service station sandwiches eventually without feeling terrible.

If we ever did move back to England I know that I’ll feel like everything is an absolute bargain after being exposed to the 4 X prices of Sweden. There was no better place to move to forcefully increase my spending (although I didn’t think I’d buy more things in general!)

Monthly Round Up

DeFi investing
- I’ve been looking into decentralised investing this month, or DeFi for short. It’s technology that uses the blockchain to create an investing platform that is not owned by anyone, but a collection of people on a decentralised platform - or so it should be!
- I actually invested around 1000 GBP into it to try out a technique called yield farming, this is where I’m effectively the lender to people wanting to borrow and I earn these weird coins as a reward for providing my liquidity to the platform.
- Not impressed so far, there are so many different skins of websites because there is zero regulation. Seems a bit like a Ponzi scheme backed by a decent idea. As everything is ‘decentralised’ how are people meant to choose the best platform? There are no regulations and no laws.
- Platforms I’m ‘invested’ in so far are Cream Finance, Shushicoin, and Bao
- I wouldn’t recommend this as to the cost to execute trades on the Etherium blockchain is ridiculous, my investment instantly dropped to around $700 just because of transaction fees, and it would be a similar cost to withdraw it.
Heroku
- I found out about this awesome service this month when I wanted to host an email-bot server for Slack. Heroku lets you run tiny servers for free and you can set them up (or clone them) directly from GitHub. Whenever you push to GitHub, the server gets redeployed. It’s the easiest I’ve ever found setting up a server, and it’s free.
- I’ll be using this for mini projects like Slack bots going forward!
- The cool thing about it is even if you don’t know much about server development, you can find another Heroku server which does something similar to what you want to accomplish, fork and clone it in seconds, then just edit your project via git to change little bits. Super easy.
Web Alert
- I’ve been trying to buy a 30 series GPU to try out crypto mining. Due to the current shortages I needed something that monitored stock statuses. Someone at work recommended this nifty little app. You can load a website and click on any HTML element and it will refresh it every 5 seconds and let you know when it changes, it will even keep previous revisions, and it’s free. So cool!
- If I ever need to monitor stock or keep revisions of websites I’ll be sure to use this in the future, it’s been working really well so far. It’s really cool how your phone is the server too, so there is no cost to them to provide the app (unlike the other GPU stock tracking software which pings you and requires servers to run.)
Reddit Lore
- I stumbled upon a the concept of ‘Reddit Lore’ which led me to a huge old Reddit post titled: Throwaway time! What’s your secret that could literally ruin your life if it came out?
- This post is from 9 years ago and went down in Reddit history coined as the biggest and most disturbing Reddit post of all time.
- It took me weeks to read it all, but it was worth it. Some of the commenters revealed shocking secrets, but what makes the post cool is a lot of them came back to their posts and edited them years later with updates. A few even came back every couple of years to post an update. I’ve never read anything quite like it and it highlights how unique Reddit is.
Tuplas
- I fell down another Reddit rabbit hole describing ‘Tuplas.’
- These are completely separate entities a person can forcefully create for themselves who will behave completely independently from your own consciousness. Although it hasn’t been scientifically proven yet, people have argued that these are what imaginary friends are when you’re younger as it’s easier to create a ‘Tupla’ when your younger.
- Read through some posts on the Tupla subreddit if you dare or try searching through some wikis and YouTube.
- It’s all very interesting, I read one post that explained how God could be a Tupla for many religious people, when they have an epiphany or ‘holy experience’ where ‘god spoke to them,’ this could just be a Tupla that they’ve created in the form of their God. The ‘proven’ theory behind forcefully creating a Tupla shares many things with religious ceremonies (prayer which is like meditation, reaffirming the belief that he is real, continually giving attention to this figment of your imagination.)
- I don’t think I’ll be trying to make a Tupla any time soon to see if the theory deserves merit, interesting nevertheless.

Savings Report #34 - Adding a New Property to the Portfolio

Mon, 10 May 2021 07:30:00 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

In April we moved to our new property in Sweden, we detailed the full account in last months Savings Report . This month, it was time to add my new house equity onto the SN Super Spreadsheet.

Our house in Sweden cost us 3,495,000 SEK, which equates to roughly £300k. We paid a 15% deposit (the minimum here,) so £45k; and we split it equally. That’s where the additional £22,500 in ‘Total Property Equity’ is coming from in the spreadsheet, my half.

Adding that to my existing house equity from our home back in the UK and it brings my total property equity to almost £56k, nearly on par with my Pre-Pension Pot and it brings my total net worth to £236k, staggeringly close to my original FIRE target of £300k which I set when SavingNinja began .

I still don’t know how much we’ll have to pay for bills in this new place, as soon as we find out I’ll be vigorously ramping up my monthly savings again to try to re-compensate for lost time, my goal was originally to hit my lean-FI target before I turned 30; this gives me 8 months.

They Grow so Fast

Remember those baby tomato plants we planted 2 months ago ?

Here they are now:

They’re huge! And taking up most of our living room. Sweden has had an unseasonably cold April so we’re waiting for another few weeks before putting them in the raised beds outside.

Home Sweet Home?

It’s starting to feel a little more like home here after the move last month . We had our final IKEA order arrive last week and now all of our clothes have a place to live. The office section of our bedroom is almost clear, although I’ll be sitting on the sofa while working for a while longer as in June, my company is sending everyone ‘premium’ desks that can switch to a standing position along with ergonomic chairs, so I thought it would be best to wait for this rather than buy my own one now.

There haven’t been any other association meetings since last month, we have met quite a few of the neighbours though and they’ve all been really nice. Surprisingly most of them are mid-thirties, in tech, with young toddlers and we have quite a lot in common, other than the babies!

Everyone told us that Swedish people won’t be friendly or neighbourly, but we were more friendly with our Swedish neighbours in a week than we were for over 3 years in our UK property. I’m guessing the forcing of us being in an association brings us together, or it could just be because we lived in a shitty maisonette in the UK with dodgy neighbours.

There’s not much more I want to talk about this month. I feel like it’s gone so quickly because we spent most of it unpacking!

There are a couple of posts I’d like to make soon, it’s been a long time since I posted anything but savings reports, these will be:

Being a landlord, the financials
Cost of living in Sweden
Our Composting Journey and Living Without a Bin (Mrs SN)
My experience with yield farming in the DeFi space

How was your month?

Savings Report #33 - Keeping Up With the Johanssons

Sat, 10 Apr 2021 08:09:15 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The stock markets had a bit of a resurgence, although they’ll probably drop again next month. I passed £200k net worth. But all of this reporting is getting a bit mundane, don’t you think?

It was a little more exciting when I was contributing more heavily and seeing my stash grow by huge amounts each month, but now it almost feels like observing a wave coming in and out, or reporting the weather. But it’s worse because I don’t track the markets, I have no idea why they’re going up or down, I just look at my numbers like a good passive investor, so there’s not much I can say other than, “Looks like they’ve gone up again this month.”

I do enjoy writing my journal entries each month though, so I don’t want to stop these monthly ‘reports,’ although I might skip the financial commentary unless something spectacular happens from now on, but still upload the above financial snapshot image.

We Own Two Houses

“We own property in multiple countries.” Sounds posh, eh?

We’ve effectively moved ‘out to the sticks’ in Sweden, about 1 hour north of Stockholm. This is fine for me as I’m now fully remote, but it’s a bit of a nightmare for Mrs SavingNinja as she has to get 3 busses into work. She’ll be trying to switch careers into something which she can eventually do remotely this year. If she’s successful, we’ll be truly untethered from a single location and we can pick our perfect spot in the world.

The location we’ve moved to is really beautiful, all of our neighbours own multi-million pound mansions with their own private jetties, as theFIREstarter said to me, I have to be careful not to fall into the trap of ‘keeping up with the Johanssons!’

I feel like we’ve bought a shed in their back garden.

We feel happy here, but I seem to always have the feeling of impending doom deep in my gut, maybe this is just my natural state?

Here’s how the first week went…

Easter Weekend

We rented a van for 2 days to move out of our Stockholm apartment and do some big shops. The move went well but it was a mad rush to do everything as we also purchased SEVENTY bags of soil and a bunch of wood to make our raised beds, we haven’t put them up yet… We’re thinking our maths must have been wrong, surely we don’t need this much!?

They’re now sitting outside of the house waiting for better weather

Monday

We built a compost bin out of pallets that we found on our street.

We don’t plan on paying the £50 per month to have our bins collected. Especially because this doesn’t even include recycling, we have to take all of our cardboard, plastic, metal, glass etc to a recycling centre no matter what (it’s crazy there is no service!)

So, we came up with the brilliant plan of recycling all of our food waste into this compost bin, Mrs SavingNinja did a lot of research before moving here and we’ll hopefully be fine. We plan on throwing some things down the toilet, like stuff picked up from the hoover and left over cat food, but all food waste and cardboard will go into the compost and everything else will be recycled. If there is a small amount of waste we just can’t get rid of, Mrs SavingNinja is going to have to take it into work in a small bag to dispose of secretly!

Side Note: All of our neighbours must think we’re crazy-green people as we’re the only people in the association of 12 houses without a car or bin collection. Little do they know that we’re just tight frugal.

Tuesday

Our big IKEA order arrived with our bed (we’d been sleeping on the floor up until this point,) sofa, kitchen table, one storage unit, and some other bits. We spent most of the day assembling.

This produced another side-affect; a lot of cardboard and plastic. We decided to take our first trip to the ’local’ recycling ‘centre.’ We filled up a box and a couple of IKEA bags and started walking, after getting past the two neighbours that offered to take it for us whilst giving us weird looks, we were on our way!

The Swedish authority recycling map said it was a 10 minute walk away, which it was, ish. But there was another problem, the map had failed to tell us that it was only a ‘centre’ for cardboard… And it was already full and overflowing. Ahhhh…

The closest center which takes all recycling is a 30 minute walk away.

This kinda sucks, I thought we were living in a green country? They don’t have any service to collect recycling and they just expect you to own a car?

We stuffed the cardboard into this one bin as much as we could and hauled everything else back to the house.

We purchased a…£100…bike trailer (cheapest we found,) for online delivery which should come in a week’s time. Hopefully this will make our recycling problem more bearable as it cuts the 30 minute walk into an 8 minute cycle, which isn’t too bad. If we have to get a car I’m going to be sad.

Wednesday

Organising the house, trying to put some clothes away in our one set of drawers, we also built a small shed behind the house to put tools etc. in.

We bought the bricks and shed when we had our van!

This was also the day we had our first ‘association’ meeting. Nothing prepared me for how weird this would be. There are 12 new build properties on this plot and we’re all part of an ‘association’ so we pay about £180 per month to a pot to cover the grounds, buildings, and other things of all 12 properties, kind of like ground rent in the UK for a flat, but all 12 families manage it themselves through meetings.

The estate agent told me that we’d be able to do anything that we liked to the garden as long as it isn’t permanent, e.g. make raised beds, put sheds up, as long as there is no concrete foundation. But in this meeting everyone was asking permission for everything, apparently you need permission from the local authorities (and the association) to even extend your decking. We’d already built a huge compost bin on our garden boundary by this point, and bought the materials for 4, rather large, raised beds.

We didn’t say anything, and we’re hoping we can just ask for forgiveness afterwards. It’s going to get pretty hairy if they say we need to ask for permission.

What followed was them deciding on a colour we should all conform to for awnings. And then deciding on what specific building numbers to get and saying everyone needs to buy them with their own money, after shooting down a couple who had already bought their house numbers and saying that they’re too hard to see. It seems they want us all to be identical clones.

This isn’t really the type of people we are… We want to be alone in the woods, not involved in all of this politics which seems to be happening in just the first meeting.

Thursday And Friday

We spent the last two days of our week off on making another IKEA order and continued organising. We still had a lot of furniture we needed to get and we wanted to make sure we got it right as it’s impossible to return anything without renting a car.

What Have We Learnt?

Life is actually really hard without a car. It’s harder when you’re not in a city, and when you’re in Sweden.

Hopefully it will get a little better after we have settled in and fallen into a natural groove.

But this was always our half-way house, we’ll spend the next 2-3 years planning our next adventure whilst hopefully not getting too annoyed by the associations ‘rules.’ It’s a beautiful place, but not quite what we want long-term. The point of buying was to stop spending the ludicrous £1500 rent in Stockholm. The mortgage interest and bills only amount to around £500 between us here, at the cost of ’locking in’ our decision for at least a couple of years.

I think it was the correct move, even if we have to get a car!

Random Thoughts

Life is a Picture - Wait But Why
- I really enjoyed this post, I need to investigate the Ted Talk that he linked to as I certainly would benefit from more investigation into the happiness topic! It describes perfectly the notion of ‘The Grass is Always Greener’ and how most people feel this way, and it’s described in a humorous Wait But Why way.
- Here’s the Ted Talk: The surprising science of happiness
Living a FI update
- Really honest and raw post about how Living a FI’s life went after he retired 5 years ago. A sobering read which a lot of us FIRE-types would benefit from, life isn’t static.

Savings Report #32 - I'm now a Farmer

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 08:56:39 +0000

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

The stock market has been a bit flat lately. In other news, I’ve started saving into a pre-pension account again, I’ve opted for 12,000 Kr per month at the moment which equates to around £1000; I hope to increase this as my personal financial situation settles even more.

Packing up Again

It’s now under a month until we move into our new Swedish property. We’ve begun packing up all of our belongings again, by this point it feels like a regimented process. The boxes that we’re using are the same ones that we used when moving from England, and then we used them again moving to this apartment after our 1 month short-term lease when we arrived in Sweden. This will be the third time! Some of them look a bit battered, but it’s nothing a lot of brown tape can’t fix, I’ll actually be a bit sad throwing them away.

This will be our first property with a garden, and a modestly big one at that. So, as it’s our dream to own a farm/ranch style property in the future, we thought we would use this one as a v0.1 to see if we like farming! We have absolutely no idea what we’re doing, and we’re unsure if anything will actually grow, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

To start things off, we bought a few seed starter pots and sowed beetroots, leeks, dill, sprouts, sprint onions, and San Marzano tomatoes. I love these tomatoes and they’re very expensive to buy in the supermarket, especially here in Sweden, so I planted a whole tray and a couple of other smaller ones with just these tomatoes. Remember, we don’t know what we’re doing here, I just like tomatoes…

It was only afterwards that I realised how much space even 1 tomato plant needs, especially San Marzano plants which can grow up to 5 feet tall! Bugger, I’ve planted 27 of them. My garden is going to turn into a tomato farm.

I figured out that we’ll need to build a raised bed which is 44cm high, 100cm wide, and 200cm in length to plant 8 of the tomato plants, we’ll also need to build some sort of trellis for them to cling on to. We’ll have a lot of building projects to do as soon as we move in as the plants will need to be transplanted not long after our move in date.

Speaking of construction projects, we also plan to build one of these:

And this sexy Swedish fence:

Good job I’m now working from home indefinitely now!

Random Thoughts

I passed my probation at work! There hasn’t really been an official ‘Well Done,’ as I was expecting, more of a, “Yeah, 6 months have passed, so your probation is over.” It’s silly how nervous people get over these things, but that’s a small weight off my shoulder at least, I’m now an official permanent Senior Engineer at a big tech company. Woohoo!
I’ve applied to become an author for a popular technical tutorial website, if I get the gig I’ll be writing an article every couple of months at $600 a pop. This can also lead to being an author of books released on the same website where the pay is a percentage of the profits. Hopefully all of this blogging will have prepared me enough for the writing side. I’m having a ‘Tryout’ in mid-April, wish me luck!
I’m going to be applying to a management position at work soon, this is the next progression step that I want to take. I’m also going to a leadership conference in April to prepare for the job. I’m hoping that by the end of the year, I’ll land, or be very close to landing, a engineering management position. But, I’m not going to doggedly pursue it like I normally do, I’m happy with the level I’m currently at, and I’m going to enjoy the ride, I need to stop focusing so much on progression and achievements.
I’ve been looking into Digital Gardening thanks to Mr RIP , check out this awesome explanation by Maggie Appleton. This led me down the path to setting up my own ‘Personal Knowledge Management’ (PKM) system in an awesome piece of software called Obsidian , I’m actually writing this post in Obsidian right now! The purpose of a PKM is to have your notes and documents linked in a knowledge graph so you can easily see and explore your thoughts, like a second brain. Watch this video if you want to learn more. It’s made me think that I want to turn these entries into more of a journal post rather than a financial report with a stipend of personal thoughts, more to be explored here.
I also found this cool shared bookmark tool when searching through productivity software, I’ve been meaning to sort out my messy bookmarks! Raindrop IO

Thanks for reading! How was your month?

Savings Report #31 - I'm a Quarter of a Millionaire!

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 08:30:00 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off $20,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 15k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 20k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

I spent DAYS updating the Super Spreadsheet to support dynamic / multi currency. But looking at it now, I hate it. I guess when you’ve used a specific format for 30 months in a row, it’s hard to change.

My main salary is now in Swedish Krona, but I also hold a UK pension and ISA, and a large part of my new salary (in the form of stocks,) is in USD. So it kind of made no sense to continue documenting my net worth as GBP, and as of right now, I’m still smitten with the idea of eventually moving to the US, so the USD seemed like the best currency to convert everything to.

But…it’s weird, I’m used to tracking my net worth in Great British Pounds; this has been my yard stick for measuring my progress, I feel like I’m a little in the dark when just looking at dollars. For now, I’ve added a conversion next to the dollars for GBP so I can refer back to it until I (and you,) get my bearings.

So, yeah, I’ve blasted through my quarter of a million DOLLARS goal! Not quite as good as pounds, but maybe I can celebrate both achievements in this new, multi-currency, world?

Tech Debt

Of-course, now that I’ve moved countries, and currencies, this invalidated a lot of my pillar posts like My Journey to Financial Independence in the UK , in fact all of the history on that post is now a little weird and switches from GBP to dollars, should I just go ahead and update all of them?

Even the top section of these Savings Reports which states what my expenses are is now incorrect. I’ve changed ‘£12,000 worth of expenses per year’ to ‘$20,000 worth if expenses per year’ this is quite a bit higher than £12k, but it’s also, of course, plucked out of thin air as we still have no idea what our nominal expenses will be in Sweden. This also links to an article where I explain my ‘£12k a year expenses,’ which is now, also, wrong! There is a lot of tech debt to deal with, maybe I should be relying less on circular dependencies?

When will I hit FI Now?

Plugging my new $20,000 figure into the spreadsheets’ FI calculator, it states that I have almost 7 years to go. This has grown dramatically from the 19 months which is stated at the bottom of this website. Although, my years to FI formula is calculated based off the years’ average savings rate, which is currently not much, but should be increasing soon! When it does, my time remaining should drop again.

Meme Stocks

I never was against picking some stocks with a very small percentage of my portfolio. So, when I saw some Reddit posts on GME at $88 and then the day after it grew by 300%, I grimaced. I then threw £100 on AMC, BB, and Nokia and lost 50% almost instantly.

I’m taking the loss on the chin though. It’s still a very small percentage of my portfolio, and my thoughts are; I bought these as a hedge against another meme stock growing ridiculously. So I’ll either keep them until they triple in value, or go down to 0; knowing that I’m more than likely to lose it all. If one of them does ‘YOLO’ like GameStop did, I’ll use the profits from that for more risky r/WSB style punts.

Buying a Second Home

We’ve just signed the contract for our new Swedish house, and we hope to move in around April. We’re really excited to move into this place as it’s very unique. It’s actually smaller than the flat that we’re currently renting, but, it’s fully detached with a garden, and it’s only 4 minutes walk from the sea.

It’s actually a new build which comes with a top of the range kitchen, under floor heating, along with an iconic European metal roof which is sharply sloped to fend off the heavy snow falls.

We’re paying around £300k for it with a 15% deposit which is more than we’ve ever paid before. The house also comes with a £200 monthly union fee which covers the building and common area maintenance and insurance as is the style in most of these Swedish new build areas. Trying to navigate the Swedish paperwork, it seems this fee also contributes towards a mortgage which was taken out on all of the buildings (there are 12 of them,) so really the property costs more than £300k, but it’s hidden behind this community fee. When I calculated all of this, I thought the builders must be raking it in!! But, like most things in Sweden, tax is so high that it’s mainly the government that is raking it in.

What made me feel better about these fees is that this cost (the purchase price and monthly fee) is actually way lower than if we’d bought in central Stockholm, this place is about a 1h commute out of the city. We were considering some flats which were 30 minutes out of the city costing over £350k with a £350 monthly fee (although this fee did include electric and heating too.)

Working from Anywhere

Annoyingly, straight after we signed the contract for our new property, my employer announced a new work from anywhere initiative. Employees can now work from anywhere within their existing region (EMEA for me,) receive the same salary and they will contribute to the employees bills and office equipment, they’ll even pay for a co-working space if they don’t have an office where you choose to live. This marks the first steps toward a distributed-first work place, as I’m sure will become the new norm for a lot of people post-COVID.

This has proceeded to send us into options overload with thoughts like…“We can work from anywhere, why would we choose Sweden?” But due to Mrs SavingNinja still having an in-the-office job at a school, and COVID still restricting travel, not to mention that we’ve just closed on a house purchase, we are kind of ignoring this new information for now. We’ll settle for at least a couple of years whilst we plan our next course of action, but this certainly changes the future dramatically and will definitely warrant a full post!

How was your month!?

2020 Reviewed - A Very Weird Year

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 09:43:11 +0000

2020 has been a very weird year.

It’s been so weird that I even have to check myself to see if I’m not actually experiencing a very strange lucid dream.

The year started out relatively normal. I was excited for the year to begin after hitting my long awaited £100k invested goal. I was rested after having a nice Christmas break at the in-laws house. I wrote about how good I was feeling, how everything was ‘coming together,’ my parents were hoping to retire to Spain before 2021 after a stressful 50 years of working, I had vowed to study and apply for a dream job; I was raring to go.

Little did I know that within 3 months, I’d never go into London for work again, we’d be getting police warnings for having a picnic in the park, and the whole world would be locked down.

The Lucid Dream Began

When we were consigned to working from home in March, we were pretty damn happy. As you all know, we rarely went out to spend money, all of the things that we enjoy doing; hiking, playing video games, reading, were still mostly doable. In-fact, as a household, we’d be saving around £400 per month in commuting costs. It was a win-win.

We found ourselves having a lot more free time, so we filled it with baking and cooking. We made, for the first time; fresh pasta, pork-pies, croissants, cinnamon buns, paneer, and peshwari naan bread. Life was good.

Not forgetting about my 2020 goals, I used some more of our COVID-gifted free time to study hard for tough interviews. Then, the unbelievable happened: The moonshot that I was aiming for to get experience succeeded, a tech-giant wanted to relocate us out of the UK, in the middle of a pandemic.

The much more difficult (but way more exciting) option of getting hired at a tech-giant like Google or Facebook. This would also give me a much better chance of making it to the USA.

From 2019 Reviewed

A Virus Ridden Trip

In July, we set sail across Europe with our cat in tow, we’d packed up our lives and were relocating to Sweden so that I could work for my dream employer. The lucid dream got more surreal.

That brings us to today, we’ve been in our new home for 6 months, all sense of normalcy has gone, we’ve had to reset and re-calibrate. I’ve lost all will to study and write, our minds are still shaken up, what are we doing in Sweden?

2020 Financial Review

Despite the pandemic, my savings increased substantially. This was mainly due to the hugely inflated contributions at the beginning of the year where I was saving between £7000 and £8000 for 5 months. However, this almost stopped completely as soon as I found out we were relocating to Sweden.

Let’s take a look.

£193,383 Networth (+£58,493)
£160,021 Excluding House (+£56,162)
£46,905 Contributed
£11,590 Interest Earned
£106,652 Pension (+£43,345)
£32,397 Contributed
£10,948 Interest Earned
£53,191 Stocks & Shares ISA (+£15,273)
£11,000 Contributed
£4,273 Interest Earned
£178 Other Investments (-£2,455)
£178 Contributed
£5,611 Interest Earned
£33,362 House Equity (+£2,331)
£2,331 Contributed

There has been an overhaul to the Super Spreadsheet again, that’s one of the reasons for this review post being so late! I’ve added the ability to input and track multiple currencies, I know that this is probably not a very desired feature for most of you, but it was needed for me as I now have savings in Swedish krona, British pounds, and US dollars. One cool new feature is that you can easily switch currencies to see what your FIRE fund looks like in another country. I’ll be posting an update soon to explain how you can use the new spreadsheet.

Subscribe to SavingNinja to get access to all of the same juicy charts for personal use.

Financial Growth

My networth increased by 43.36% this year at £58,493. This is actually lower than last year’s growth which was £69,262, but the percentage difference is lower still as 2019 stood at a 175.46% increase. As I stated in my 2019 Reviewed post, I’ll probably never see growth like that again.

My accounts now stand at £193,383 networth and £160,021 excluding-property. I’m hoping that I’ll soon be able to reach the £250k networth and £200k invested goals, but I’m sceptical of this happening in 2021 as I’ve yet to begin saving properly again.

I filled my ISA by £11,000 and it grew by £4,273. I won’t be saving into an ISA anymore as the tax-free status is void now that I’m not in the UK. I’ll be saving into a Swedish ‘ISK’ instead which is their (slightly worse) version.

I contributed £32,397 into my pension and it earned £10,948 in interest. The gap between my pre-pension and pension accounts will grow increasingly larger as I move forward due to workplace contributions and moving country. It’s a good job too as a pension seems to be the only thing that persists when relocating due to pension treaties.

Last year, I was happy that I’d reached £100k total investments, this year, my pension alone is worth more than that! It’s pretty awesome to think that no matter what happens in life, I’ll still have a healthy pension when I retire.

If I don’t contribute anything into my pension again and I withdrew it at the age of 60, with an average growth of 6% per year it should be worth £658,585. If I continue to contribute £3000 per year from workplace contributions (right now my workplace is contributing £1000 per month,) it will be worth over £1m.

This golden-retirement was mostly from heavy contributions for the 2.5 years that I worked at my last company as that workplace pension account alone has over £95k within it. It’s crazy when I think that I theoretically ‘completed’ my pension in only 2.5 years, never having to think about it again. I’ll also be able to avoid the super tax as all of my further contributions will be earned in different countries.

This chart illustrates the heavy investments that I bought at the beginning of the year, which then almost completely stopped. I didn’t see the interest gain traction for those investments until November.

You can see from this chart that my portfolio was in fact down for the year all of the way until November, but ended the year being £11,590 up. Contributions still vastly outweighed my investment gains, although I suspect this will change in 2021 due to a very low contribution amount.

Here’s how my investments have grown over time. In March due to the huge drop, my total portfolio was down by over £12,000! Although that quickly recovered and as it stands I’m £21,371 up since I began investing in mid-2018. Which brings my total investment gain since the beginning to 17.23%.

This is probably my favourite new chart. It shows the total earned via contributions and interest stacked for each of my accounts. You can see that in March, whilst still being above water in total, my pension and ISA interest earned was pushing my iceberg down quite a lot, although it soon bobbed back up in the later months. My ‘other investments’ remains below water as I withdrew my Tesla earnings in August and they’ve yet to be reinvested as I’m saving them for my Swedish house purchase (which should be happening soon!)

Looking Ahead

It’s very hard to predict how much I will have invested in 2021, which sucks, I’ve never felt this blind since I began my FIRE journey. We’re currently looking at property to buy in Stockholm as it is a lot cheaper than renting. And with the 15% deposit that we need, along with all of the costs of moving and furnishing a new place, I’ve halted my monthly saving with the hope of not being completely skint when we buy.

As it stands I have around £60k waiting to be used for moving, and depending on what we purchase, this may all be needed for a deposit, which will leave us with very little, or nothing at all for purchasing a bed, sofa, etc. (We’re in a furnished rented apartment at the moment.) If we have to use all of that for a deposit, we may even have to take a small loan from family or the bank to allow us to buy some furniture. Either that, or sell some of my ISA investments. This may actually not be a bad idea as Sweden will normally want a 30% cut of any ISA profits when I sell, but if I only sell and move in a little, it may go unnoticed.

As soon as we’ve bought a place and furnished it, I’ll know how much I can safely start saving again, although we’ll also have to refill our emergency funds; this may mean that we save almost nothing this year, which absolutely sucks. At least I have a decent enough amount invested to not feel too left out when the market grows.

Goals Achieved

Below are my goals from 2019 Reviewed .

1. Reach £200k total net worth (C)

So close!! My spreadsheet tracks my networth as £193k, although I did withdraw around £9k from my ‘other investments’ which will be reinvested in the form of house equity soon, this would push my net worth to above £200k. So, I’ve marked this as a solid C for effort.

2. Complete a 6-month Coursera Specialisation in Algorithms (A++)

I completed this course, it’s now a shiny certificate on my LinkedIn profile. This course kicked off my further learning into advanced Computer Science theory and is what landed me my dream job! Here’s the course if you want to do it yourself.

3. Apply to at least 2 tech-giant companies (A)

OK, I didn’t apply to 2, I applied to 1… But the first company hired me. I don’t think I thought about that eventuality when writing this goal, so I’ve awarded myself an A!

4. Get a new job which is higher pay / in leadership / a tech-giant (A++)

This goal was knocked out of the park!! I landed a senior tech-giant role with higher pay and the prospect of leadership very soon. A++.

4. Go on more than 1 holiday (A)

This is pretty funny that I set this goal and then COVID hit. I did, however, manage to go on a Christmas holiday to northern Sweden. And moving to Sweden in-itself was a holiday as we stayed in Belgium, France, and Germany whilst traveling here.

Goals for 2021

Alright, what do I want to achieve this year?

1. Apply to at least 2 management positions

I’ve set myself up on the path to becoming an Engineering Manager, and I want to apply to at least 2 positions this year, preferably more. Or, of course, apply to less and get the role. The reason I want to go down this path is two-fold; One, I think I’ll enjoy it. I’ve always been enjoyed talking with people and optimising approaches/methodologies, and the servant-leadership model of managers at my company seem like the perfect fit to my personality. And two, getting relocated and a Green card in the USA is a lot easier when you’re a manager and using an L1A Visa, you can even get citizenship within 1 year, instead of the usual 4+. Moving in this direction is also a lot easier than moving further along from Senior in the technical progression ladder.

2. Become comfortable at my new company

Becoming comfortable and feeling at home in my new company has been a slower burn due to COVID, but I’m getting there. I’m hoping that after this year, I’ll really feel like I fit in and stop feeling like an imposter. I need to make sure that I continue to study the systems at my new place and that I don’t get docile, which is very easily to do when working from home; otherwise I’ll run the risk of never feeling like I fit in.

3. Start saving at least 50% of my salary again

I’m really hoping that at some point this year I’ll be able to start saving again. 50% has been plucked out of the air because I’m still not sure what our eventual savings will look like when the dust settles. I’ve purposely not looked as I don’t want to go down the extreme-frugal route again and end up living in a studio apartment; we’ve got a nest egg, we should be able to breath a bit and not be allergic to spending money .

4. Release version 1.0 of my app

Since the beginning of last year I’ve been working on my most ambitious app yet. Without giving too much away, the app combines two of my favourite things; cooking, and frugal shopping. The app is actually quite far along but is extremely complex with user accounts, real-time databases, and backend services, and since moving to Sweden, I’ve not touched it! I’ve set myself the goal of working for at least a few hours a week on the app so I’m hoping that it will be ready for version 1.0 at some point this year.

5. Reach £200k invested and £250k net worth

These figures seemed like a reasonable target. I think it will be pretty hard to achieve the invested target unless I start saving again pretty quickly, we’ll see how the markets behave.

Alright, bring on 2021!!

What goals have you set for the year?

Savings Report #30 - Goodbye 2020

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 13:15:01 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

We had another good month of stock market growth, with my funds increasing by roughly 2.5%.

I wonder if we’ll see this growth rise further as the world starts to gets back to normal?

The stock markets levels are already above what they were when we crashed back in March.

I just missed my 200k net worth goal for 2020, boo! But back in July I did sell £8,224 of my Tesla stocks. This cash is still waiting to be reinvested (as part of our Swedish house purchase,) so we will see this re-enter the SavingNinja portfolio as ‘House Equity’ very soon. So maybe I kind of did hit it?

I’m still unsure if I should have a cash section in the spreadsheet, as normally I wouldn’t like to hold very much of it above my normal emergency fund, I also don’t want my normal spending to effect my investment savings reports.

Other News

The SavingNinja family finally got back on the snow over Christmas in northern Sweden. We had fun snowboarding on our new boards , the weather was pretty cold and windy, but Åre really was a winter wonderland.

We’re hoping to get our again in early March!

The trip cost us £763 each for an 8 night stay with 8 days on the slopes, which I think was a pretty good deal as Åre is notorious for being expensive. Here are the cost breakdowns:

£850 for 8 nights in an AirBnB with a kitchen, it was right next to the slope (ski in, ski out.)
£215 for two return train tickets in first-class (we treated ourselves as it was a 7 hour journey!)
£462 for two 8-day lift passes.
We cooked and bought booze as we normally would have at home, with one restaurant visit as a treat. (There is nothing like bringing a hip flask of peppermint schnapps up the mountain with you!)

Even though I think that we got a good deal, this was still £1,526 between us which we could have invested in the stock market. It’s still a hard pill to swallow. The cost of lift passes are just crazy, maybe we’ll have to start hiking up the mountain. Although, maybe we should be making the most of it now before we have kids?

Blogging

The site seems to be working pretty well on the Google Developer Console free-tier. I’ll continue to monitor it for a couple more months and if it is still free, I’ll write a guide on how to set up your blogs as well.

I’ve been meaning to update my theme for the last couple of years, I hope 2021 will finally be the year that I get that done!

Sweden

We’ve been here now for 5 months, it is still not really feeling like home. We have committed to staying here for a minimum of 3 years though! And we’re still looking for our first Swedish house to purchase, maybe we’ll start to feel a little more comfortable when we move out of a flat?

I’m also still on my probation at work for 1 more month, even though I’m sure that I’ll pass, there is always a thought at the back of your head whispering that you won’t, so it will be a relief when the first 6 months are over.

It’s still like COVID isn’t really happening over here, although we’ve never experienced life in Sweden pre-pandemic. We still got to go on holiday, everything is still open, the only thing which is frustrating is that my workplace office is still shut.

It helps that we don’t have live TV either, there isn’t much COVID coverage on Netflix :)

2020 reviewed is coming up soon! As well as a new set of graphs, the savings spreadsheet will also become international to support my new multi-currency portfolio. I’m planning to have the option to input an array of different currencies and have the spreadsheet automatically look up the exchange rate and convert it into dollars.

How was your Christmas?

Savings Report #29 - Hacking the Pension System

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 12:54:53 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

What goes down must come up. This seems to be the markets 2020 motto.

After losing £4,200 last month , £15,300 was gained in November!

This push bought my investment portfolio flying over two important targets - over £150k total investments, and over £100k pension investments, pretty cool.

After some more research (it seems incredibly hard to get accurate information in Sweden,) it seems that my Swedish ‘occupational pension’ is theoretically the same as a UK private pension, meaning I can withdraw from it at the age of 55 currently. This means that I can include my Swedish pension savings in these reports, woo!

My employer is paying the equivalent of £1,045 per month into this pension which I’ve set to invest globally via Avanza Global , this seems to be the closest thing to a world weighted passive index fund, so I’ve added £2,090 to the pension contributions this month and I’ll add this each month going forward.

Today I Win…Two Pensions!

Looking at the rules of the Swedish and English pension systems, it seems that they both do not take into account any overseas private pensions. This made me think a little.

Hitting the £100k UK pension figure before the age of 30, some people would suggest that I no longer contribute as I run the risk of hitting the £1m lifetime allowance before I draw from it imposing a *dramatic tone* super-tax.

As I moved to Sweden as soon as I was ‘done’ with my UK pension, I believe this means I can start a new pension pot which will be completely separate from the UK lifetime allowance and affectively go over the normal UK threshold by not rolling my pensions into one.

This is cool! Although there is one problem; Sweden doesn’t have a lifetime allowance, this is mainly due to them having no ‘25% tax free lump sum,’ they’ll also not observe the UK pension tax free lump sum. This probably outweighs all of the benefits of hacking the LTA by moving out of the UK, although it may be beneficial if I end up moving back to the UK - we’ll see.

Getting back on Track

I opened up my first ISK, which stands for Investeringssparkonton. Try and say that after a couple of pints. This is the closest thing Sweden has to a British ISA. It charges a wealth-tax which equates to around 0.375% of the total invested, this gets charged whether the markets rise or tank, which sucks, but is apparently better than paying 30% on any capital gain.

Right now I’m only adding 100 SEK per month, which is the £88 that you see in ‘Other Investments.’ I may separate this out into a different category if/when I begin to contribute more.

Right now the Ninja family are trying to buy a property in Sweden, you can offset things like renovations and mortgage interest from your ludicrously high tax bill over here, and rent is extremely high, so by buying we’ll be able to save a ton more money, and we plan on staying for a minimum of 3 years, so buying definitely works out better.

Due to moving and needing all of the money we can get for the 15% deposit, furniture, and other moving costs, I’ve held off on resuming my normal monthly savings for the time being. As soon as we’ve moved and things have fallen back into a regular routine, I’ll ramp it up again!

Other News

This month I realized that I was being royally ripped off by the web hosting company that SavingNinja used, they were charging me $30 per month, and I’ve been paying this figure for over 2 years, so I began to look for a new hosting solution.

I’ve been working with Google Cloud a lot more in my new job , and so I know how damn cool and capable it is. I’ve also been a Google fan-boy my whole career, AND being a professional engineer, who better to manage hosting SavingNinja than myself?

So, I set to work migrating this website to the Google Cloud platform, and you’re now viewing this blog post from the cloud! And hopefully having a good experience?

Better yet, I’m using Googles Free Tier . So this website is being hosted for free and I’ll save around $360 per year. Why didn’t I do this sooner?

The migration process was smooth and I believe anyone could do it. I had a few outages at the beginning, but now things been have been ironed out everything seems to be stable. I even have server logging, analytics, and daily back-ups being made.

Remember when I asked you which share options I should take all the way back in July. Here’s an exciting update with how they’re doing.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I took 50% ‘Option B’ and 50% ‘Option C,’ the medium and high risk options.

The graph looked like this:

Now, after only 3 months, my stock options are at the 30% growth mark. If they continue to grow like this over the 5 years that they have, we could be looking a very large pay out. It may even mean instant FIRE in 5 years.

Here’s to hoping.

Snowboarding

I still plan on going Snowboarding in the north of Sweden over Christmas. Everything is booked and so far it’s not been cancelled. Remember how sad I was last March when my snowboarding trip to the Swiss alps was cancelled?

This year, myself and Mrs SavingNinja even bought our first ever snowboards, we normally rent, but as we won’t have to pay to travel with snowboards this year due to catching a train instead of a plane, it seemed like the economical choice.

Check them out!

We’re super excited to hit the slopes on our very own boards, it will make this Christmas extra special, which is what we need after this dire 2020. I just hope our trip doesn’t get cancelled again.

How was your month?

Savings Report #28 - Brick Walls to Climb

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 08:20:12 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

The markets are tanking again!

And this time I don’t have my own contributions propping my numbers up, so I’m feeling the full wrath of seeing my net worth drop month after month.

There is so much uncertainty right now with Brexit and the presidential election that I feel this turbulence will only get worse.

I did actually try to open my first investment account in Sweden this week to try and invest a bit whilst the market had dropped, but, as with everything in Sweden, there is no accessibility for English-only speakers, all we have are badly translated Swedish websites (I don’t understand why as more than half the people in Stockholm don’t speak Swedish, but almost everyone speaks English.)

This resulted in my opening a Nordnet account and only realising afterwards that they seem to want an 0.8% fee to buy into a Vanguard ETF domiciled in Ireland; by the way, Sweden have a stupid rule which bans Swedes from investing in US funds… WTF? You have to buy Swedish-only funds, or ones domiciled in the EU…

So, the only way to buy into Vanguard is via an ETF which tracks a Vanguard index that is listed in Germany or Ireland. BUT these have higher brokerage fees. Is taking 60% of my income and charging 25% VAT, not enough for you Sweden, you have to ban Vanguard too?

Anyway, watch this space, I should hopefully begin investing again by the next savings report, even if I have to pay extortionate fees.

The Swedish Pension is Rubbish

I found out that my employer pays roughly £1,100 per month into my Swedish private pension. This is cool, I thought. I even went as far as to include it in this savings report, but then I removed it when I found out that you can’t access your Swedish private pension until the age of around 68 (and it’s being extended.)

This makes it worse than the UK State pension, so I’ll not be considering it in my savings just like I exclude the UK state pension, as it’s simply too far away. From what I’ve experienced with the Swedish tax agency so far, I’d have less faith in this being around than the UK state pension when I reach that age.

New York

In other news, I’m working closely with my New York counterparts at work and it seems that if I wanted to, there is a high possibility of relocating to New York in a year or so. I don’t want to throw Sweden out of the window just yet, but as the US was always my initial goal; and I am kind of money-focused; this is something that we’ll seriously have to consider if the opportunity came about.

Premium Bonds Locked Away

I tried to withdraw my premium bonds this week as this will be a house deposit for Sweden and I wanted to change the currency into Swedish Krona before Brexit. They needed my phone number to confirm the withdrawal which I no longer have access to, this required them to send a temporary password, to my old address.

Now I have to go through the effort of requesting a withdrawal via post. Such a pain! I just hope that I don’t get blocked when trying to move this money out of my UK bank account and into a Swedish one, as I won’t be able to ‘pop into a branch’ like they normally require you to do.

Other News

Stockholm has increased some COVID rules, although nothing like the UK. The Swedish authorities tend to ’lightly suggest’ rather than enforce rules. I just hope our Swedish snowboarding holiday over Christmas won’t be effected as we already had our Swiss snowboarding holiday taken away from us last March.

Work is going well. 3 months left until my probationary period ends, I’ve had good feedback so far. I’m working with some extremely talented people from Google and all over the world, I’ve not actually met any other British people yet!

Making friends with people from Uruguay, Brazil, Iran, Armenia, to name a few, is very eye-opening; we’ve already gone to 2 house warming parties and tasted cuisine from countries we had never even heard of before. Stockholm, and specifically my company, is the most internationally mixed I’ve ever been, and it’s great! Also, more than half of my colleagues are women, and the amount of female programmers I’ve worked with in the past can be counted on one of my hands; my company really has their pick of the bunch!REPLACE slug: savings-report-28-brick-walls-to-climb

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 05:48:13 +0000

We arrived…over a month ago!

I wrote a post within the first couple of weeks here but it just felt very forced and rambling, not great at all. I’ve then not had the motivation to write anything, it doesn’t help that I’ve become obsessed with ‘Jane The Virgin’ and have been job hunting.

So here’s a TL;DR of my other post - We had a lot of issues with shipping our boxes, right up to the day before they were collected. 3 days before we were due to set off we had to come up with a travelling plan B as my dad (who was driving us to Germany) was getting cold feet due to COVID. There were cat issues throughout the journey as well as issues with my parents motorhome. The exciting sauna and pool on the ferry were closed due to COVID (how did we not foresee this??) and an electric scooter accident on our 2nd day in Sweden resulted in me having a ginormous bruise and swelling on my chin and a very banged up knee that still hurts now!

So, I rambled about all of those things for a while as they were very fresh, but in retrospect, not very interesting to read about. We got here in one piece and everything pretty much went smoothly.

What I would like to talk about now are the pros and cons I’ve found to living in Stockholm and things that surprised me about it here.

Let’s start with the positives

The laundry rooms. Off to an exciting start, I know. Seriously, they’re very cool. In the UK I’m used to just having my washing machine and then an airer or our JML DriBuddi to dry my clothes. The only time I’ve used communal laundry rooms is during our first year at uni and when we lived in France for one summer, so they’re fairly novel for me.

There’s a room with multiple washing machines, there are multiple tumble dryers, and a drying cabinet, this is where the fun begins! I have never seen a drying cabinet before and they’re so awesome, Google it if you, like me, have never heard of them before. Even better, in our new apartment building, there is an ENTIRE room where you can hang your clothes to dry. There are ropes across the ceiling and an industrial heater and fan, it’s great for drying bedsheets, etc.

Queuing systems. Everywhere has a special queuing system that requires a little paper ticket, we used to have them in the UK at butchers. They use them for everything here; the bank, the tax office, even the customer service desk in the supermarket. My reason for loving this is twofold; you don’t have to stand in line, you can just sit anywhere and wait for your number to be called. This is great for Mr SavingNinja as he hates queuing! The second reason is that I find people here to be rude sometimes, I will talk about this more later but I think the queuing system prevents more rudeness.

Nature. I’m sure you’ve heard that there’s a lot of nature here and there is but maybe not in the way I thought. I was thinking there would be more vast woodland closer to the city but there isn’t (as far as I’ve seen) but there are parks everywhere. There are nice big parks on the outskirts of the city but also small ones in really unexpected places in the city; it’s lovely. I imagine that if you’re working in an office you could just pop outside for 20 minutes and sit in some greenery to have a coffee or some lunch, very refreshing.

Fika. This basically means a coffee/cake break. What’s not to like? I don’t drink coffee so I’m sure once I go back to work I might get some funny looks for not enjoying fika as I should, but then I had that issue back in the UK too; I was one of the only teachers I knew who didn’t consume coffee like it was my life-source throughout the day. But I am 100% onboard with consuming cinnamon rolls like they’re my life-source. Double thumbs up from me.

System Bolaget. I was led to believe that we were going to have to become a lot more sober moving here, we read and were told that all of the alcohol was extortionate. I am going to discuss this more below but for now, I love the government-run alcohol shop; it’s clean, organised, and strangely fun.

Recycling. This point is double-edged. You may know from my previous post that I try to be as eco-friendly as I can, which is great here as Sweden’s recycling situations is one of the best in the world, I suggest you research this if you’re interested. We pretty much recycle everything other than kitchen waste. However, there is a catch, read on for the negative side of this.

The not so positives

The beds. In every apartment we have looked at the beds have been two single box type beds pushed together with a mattress topper. Coming from a super king-sized Simba mattress means that I’m used to an extremely comfortable night’s sleep, I’m not getting that here. The topper slides down frequently and just isn’t comfortable, I know we could buy a new comfier topper but nothing beats a proper mattress…especially a Simba one!

The postal service. Back home I would often moan about deliveries being left on our doorstep on a fairly busy road, I miss that. Packages very rarely get delivered to your door here; you will get a text or sometimes a note through your door telling you to go to the nearest service point (ours is a 20-minute walk away) to collect your package. I realise this is because all postmen/women/people are on bikes but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. We had to carry a very long and awkward 15kg parcel between us for 20 minutes…in the rain! I know this isn’t the end of the world but it is a bit inconvenient.

Recycling situation, again. You’ve read the positives regarding this point but there is a negative although it does make me seem lazy and a little entitled. We have to take all of our recycling to recycling points, which can be 10 minutes walk away and are often overflowing. I know I know, it’s not that bad but it grates on us simply because we are paying so much tax that we feel we should be able to recycle in our building and have it collected with the rubbish like we did back in the UK.

Lack of Amazon and general ability to compare things online. So this may get better over time once we’re used to everything but we really miss having Amazon and knowing all the places online to look for cheaper products. Any time I would want to buy something back in the UK I would always check Amazon first then have a general Google to ensure I’m getting the best price.

We have the option to order from the German or UK Amazon and pay extra for delivery and customs charges, but that defeats the point of a good price. As I said, I’m sure we will get used to the Swedish online shops but right now I just really want Amazon back, especially as it’s Prime Day right now. And don’t even get me started on the fact that there’s no Costco here!

Surprises

So there’s my itemised pros and cons list, some things seem petty but a lot of it is just mildly inconvenient. There are also a fair few things that surprised me due to established expectations being wrong, some were a happy surprise, others, not so much.

Happy Surprises

Facemasks. The beauty kind, not the COVID kind. My favourite Garnier face mask can cost about £4 in certain shops in the UK, it’s only £2 here, sometimes less. Not a necessity but good for if I feel like treating myself.

Alcohol. As I said, we were thinking we would move here and become very sober as everyone told us it was so expensive to buy booze. It is not. You can get a box of wine that’s equivalent to 4 bottles and it works out as about £4 per bottle, and it’s a great wine, we regularly buy the Casillero Del Diablo. Happy days.

Everyone speaks English amazingly well. We have travelled to many different countries and most people can speak English at least a little, but here they are fantastic at it and actually love to speak English, whereas in some countries we have found people do it begrudgingly. I always try to learn at least some of the language for wherever I go as I hate feeling rude and just assuming everyone can speak English, but here it’s hard for me to speak Swedish because everyone wants to switch to English as soon as I talk.

This is neither a positive or negative - the fashion here is great; not necessarily in the way you might think though. I feel as though I’ve gone back to the late 90s or early 00s. There are flared everything, neon boob tubes, and platform trainers. It’s just a delight to look at.

Not so happy surprises

Broccoli. OMG the broccoli is so expensive and it’s my absolute favourite vegetable, we used to cook with it all of the time. Broccoli in the UK is about £1.39 per kilo, in Sweden it works out as £5.19 per kilo. There isn’t much else to say about this, I just really miss broccoli.

Rice. Again, really expensive. In the UK - £1 per kilo, in Sweden - £3 per kilo. I think this can be solved if I find a cheap Asian supermarket or keep trawling the web.

Flights. We were lucky that we were so close to Gatwick and Heathrow airports as flights from there were much cheaper than elsewhere. Flying from Stockholm is pretty expensive in comparison, even flying to northern Sweden…the same country!! I miss seeing the £50 flights from London to Amsterdam or Germany or wherever. I wish we had made the most of it when we lived there.

I’m not cold. I was expecting to be wearing thermals in October and looking forward to lots of snow in December - February. Apparently there had been barely any snow in Stockholm last year and none that settled. I’m not saying this was the only reason I came to Stockholm, but it was a huge positive for me. I love the cold and the snow but it’s currently colder in the UK. Fingers crossed for a big temperature drop and for some snow this season.

Rudeness. I find people here as a whole to be kind of rude, not in your face rude but ‘standing in the middle of the walkway on your phone’ rude. I’ve found myself getting so annoyed at this so many times, but Mr SavingNinja doesn’t get as annoyed as he’s an ‘abandon my trolley in the middle of the aisle’ person. It just bugs me when people don’t take their surroundings and other people into consideration, and I’m sure this happens all over the world, I’ve just experienced it a lot more here. People in the Swedish expat groups I’ve joined agree with me and regularly make jokes about it, so it’s not just me.

Difficult processes. All processes here seem to be so much more complicated. You need a special person number before you can get a bank account, this can take months (ours was quick thanks to Mr SavingNinja’s company,) you can’t get a bank account until you have this number but you can’t get a job until you have a bank account. Some banks won’t give you an account until you have a job, see, difficult! You also need something called Bank ID to access most things online, you can’t get this until you finally have a bank account (I’m just getting mine now, in October!) Swish is something that is widely used here, especially if buying something from Facebook etc. Can’t have that without Bank ID.

Mo’ Kids Mo’ Money

When I started writing this post I googled the best things about living in Sweden, just for inspiration. On paper it all sounds great; amazing maternity/paternity leave, heavily subsidised childcare, lots of holidays and free education. These are great benefits but don’t affect us at the moment. We don’t have kids, we both had a great holiday allowance in the UK and most of the masters/bachelor degrees are in Swedish…obviously! If we were to stay here long-term then I guess we would see the benefit of paying such high tax if we had kids but at the moment we are just paying high taxes for, seemingly, nothing.

There are other things such as clean water, equality, affordable health care and good internet that are always touted as great things in Sweden, but we experienced all of that in the UK too.

Displaced

This post seems very negative, which it kind of is, but we haven’t been here for that long and are feeling displaced without seeing much gain. It will take us a while to get used to everything here and to see the positives of moving to Stockholm; we had settled into our comfy life at home and now everything is different.

Always Look on The Bright Side of Life

Things are actually starting to look up already, I start my new job in 3 days! It was hard work job hunting here and really demotivating, I’ve never really been out of work since I was 16 so I felt useless and lost. Hopefully going back into teaching and getting stuck into life here will make me look on the bright side of things. The education system in the international schools here seems amazing, I can’t wait to not have to do feckless paperwork and teach for an exam. Here I just have to teach the skills, not to the constraints of an exam board, and it’s freeing and purposeful.

Hopefully, my next post will be filled with joy and I will have discovered great money saving tips to living a little more cheaply in Stockholm.

To anyone living in the UK, go and have a battered sausage and chips for me, I miss them enormously.

Savings Report #27 - Has it Only Been a Month?

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 13:22:12 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Man, I’m exhausted.

I feel like it’s been an absolute age since I wrote my last savings report .

So much has been changing that my brain is having a hard time keeping up, and I feel tired.

I just want to go home and cook a meal in my nice kitchen, have a bath in my nice bathroom, and then go to sleep in my Simba bed, but I can’t, this is my home now. It’s going to take a long while before I feel as comfortable as I did in the UK.

I didn’t think that I would feel this way; displaced. I thought the thrill of traveling would override all else, but after the thrill has died down, your body will inevitably miss the comfort and seek it out. Undoubtedly I will settle, but it will take time.

There is no point in focusing on savings, even though this is a savings report. I’m still recalibrating after my move to Sweden . I’m unsure when I’ll be saving regularly again, probably not until well into 2021.

The Move

We moved out of our corporate housing and into a more permeant lease a little outside of Stockholm this month. The rent is astronomical at around £1,400 per month, this is the highest we’ve ever paid. Although we plan on staying here for only 6-12 months until we can purchase a place; we’ll end up spending a lot less on mortgage interest even if we get an apartment which costs over £300k.

I’m feeling a little better at the new apartment as we were able to unpack all of our boxes from the UK, the cat is feeling more settled too!

Our Rental

We’ve found tenants for our house back in England. We managed to get a 12 month contract at £1,000 per month, although they can’t move in until the end of October. I still don’t know how much we’ll end up actually making from the rental, if anything, I’m waiting until the tenants have been in for a couple of months before I do the maths and write a post to collect my thoughts.

How did your month go?

Savings Report #26 - We Made it to Sweden!

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 06:48:35 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

We made it to Sweden!!

I’m sitting in the corporate housing right now, a coffee in hand, my cat by my side (not traumatised), writing this post.

Surprisingly almost everything went smoothly, but still, what a journey it was! If you’re wondering what I’m yapping about, the Ninja family drove across Europe with our cat so we could move house and I could start working for my dream employer in Sweden.

Get over to the Ninja Instagram page to see some photos of every leg of our journey, courtesy of the new marketing manager, Mrs SavingNinja .

It’s a good thing I didn’t move country and all but halt my savings contributions until I had over £100k invested .

If I did, I wouldn’t have anything to write about in these monthly updates.

August saw my net-worth grow by £5,640. This puts my wealth back up to before I took my Tesla ‘alt-investment’ out last month . Any higher from £175k and I’m in new territory!

I was hoping to make it to £200k net-worth in 2020 but unless the stock market really shoots up, I’m probably going to miss that goal as I won’t be contributing much - if anything - this year whilst I see where the dust settles on our new financial situation.

Saying that, my new employer does pay into some kind of pension scheme, but I need to investigate to see if it’s even worth adding to my FIRE calculations. I read that you may not be able to take anything out until way into your 60s (post coming soon.)

Other News

Mrs SavingNinja is releasing a post soon about moving to Sweden, so more to come from her in this space soon.

For me, my dream job has begun. I’m still pretty overwhelmed at the amount of different things that I need to learn and set-up, I’m trying to figure out how I’ll ever be able to write another SavingNinja post again!

I’ve also learned many more ‘cool’ things that I didn’t know about before joining, like my employer giving employees a ’lunch’ card and topping it up with over £200 per month (enough to pay for our groceries, even in Sweden); Being able to order your own company Amex card and spending on it whenever you go out with work colleagues, and being able to buy my own £500+ curved gaming monitor and ergonomic chair which I get to keep as my own (I think this one is mainly due to COVID remote working.)

Everyone I’ve met is super-friendly, my manager is the nicest person in the world even offering to lend us his personal car if we need it. It’s definitely shaping up to be one of the best employers I’ve ever worked for and I can’t wait to get stuck in!

Landlording

We’ve not yet got all of the certificates required to lease out our house back home, our letting agent (after some long stints of not responding to us,) has finally got our property marketed and says they had ‘7 viewings in one day’ (don’t know how much of that to believe.) Fingers crossed this will be rented out soon so we don’t have to foot the bill for council tax and mortgage payments for long!

I’ve been avoiding looking at my company stock price , I thought I’d just wait until I was given my grant price. I found out in one of my induction meetings that I’ll need to first pick my options and then a month later I will be given my grant price. I’d assumed the grant price was my first day. So that sucks. Or maybe it won’t? Depends on the price!

Blog

Coming up will be Mrs SavingNinja’s post about our move to Sweden. She’ll be writing a little more for the time being as she’s yet to find a job here.

One thing that we’ve noticed about being in Sweden is the shocking lack of blog posts comparing things like bank cards, and the extreme struggle to even find fee information on Sweden’s banking websites.

As we need to find an account ourselves, we’ll be releasing a post detailing the picks (if we can find the info!) These Swedish posts will probably be a bit dull for our English readers but remember if it’s tagged with ‘Sweden’ you can skip them.

How is everything back at home? By the way, COVID virtually doesn’t exist over here. They actually recommend not wearing a face mask! And we’ve seen mass gatherings of University induction days on the parks (literally 100’s of people sat with each other and playing games.)

It’s also staggering the number of people running, we’ve not seen any people that didn’t look in-shape, even grandmas are running and look fitter than me. Maybe that’s why the Swedes are not as worried about COVID, because their cardiovascular systems are generally higher? I need to get to the gym!

Savings Report #25 - We're Almost There

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 06:30:56 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Another month, another pretty underwhelming savings rate.

The downside to moving country is that the FIRE pot has to flat line for a little while. Hopefully for a steeper return in the long run.

I contributed £1,451 to my pension in July, it’s increased a little due to my employer deciding to up their percentage contribution, and I’ve continued to invest nothing into my ISA as I prepare for moving to Sweden and absorbing a lot of unknown costs.

July is also the month which I’ve realised that I probably won’t be able to jump back onto the Tesla train for my ‘Other Investments.’

Goodbye Tesla

I sold my 10 Tesla shares on the 1st of July for $1,123 per share with the hope of withdrawing from my Trading212 account (use my referral link to get a free share worth up to £100) and using up my years’ capital gains allowance before I became an expat, and in the 3 days it took to withdraw, the share price had shot up to over $1,400!

I really lost the game with Tesla, I think it was inevitable really as there have been so many times when the stock could have jumped up when I didn’t hold them resulting in never being able to buy back in again. It just sucks that I didn’t want to sell; I just wanted to save some tax!

It’s been a thrilling ride with Tesla over the past 12 months, in July last year I bought my first 5 Tesla shares for $239 per share, I then bought 3 more at $338 per share in November and 2 more for $618 per share in April this year.

All in all I’ve spent $3,445 on Tesla shares, and I sold them for $11,784; in 12 months! Yeeeess, I know they could have been worth $14,500 if I’d sold them 3 days later, but I shouldn’t focus on that! I still made a return of over 300% in 1 year, which is insane.

It’s a 500% gain on those first 5 shares!

I’ve now decided to put this money into premium bonds to join my other cash savings which we’ll use to purchase a house in Sweden in a years time.

As we’ll now be using our UK house as a buy-to-let, we won’t be getting any money out of the mortgage to purchase another home, so this $12k has allowed us to not need to worry about saving for another deposit (we now have £40k in premium bonds waiting to go.) I just couldn’t stomach buying a speculative stock that wasn’t Tesla too :(

If it ever does drop back down to below $1,120, give me a shout on Twitter so I can buy them back!

Other News

By the time the next savings report is live, we will be living in Sweden and I would have just started work at my dream job . That’s if Europe doesn’t go on lockdown as we are meant to be driving through France, Belgium, and Germany in order to get into Sweden.

Moving country is stressful in the best of times, it’s been much more stressful due to COVID. Trying to organise everything in the UK, whilst also trying to get the house ready to be leased (along with the countless decorating and certifications that needed to be done) AND applying for a BTL mortgage, has been an absolute nightmare.

Add in the anxiety of maaybe not being able to actually get to Sweden and losing out on all of our travel costs and corporate housing along with not having anywhere to live due to the weird rule that you can’t live in your own BTL and oh man… I don’t know how we’re still functioning; maybe we’re really not?

All of this and I really should be preparing to start my new job!

We’re Almost There

I moan a lot, I know.

BUT, we’re almost there.

The decorating has been mostly done; we’re almost packed; our mortgage has been approved; everything has been booked.

I just hope that our plans don’t have to change due to COVID, I hope that we manage to get there before Germany shuts their borders…Or France. Or the over 50s get quarantined (we’re enlisting the help of the in-laws for part of our journey.)

There is a lot of hoping! But all we can do is wait, in a little over 2 weeks, we should be there.

If All Goes to Plan

Thank you for everybody who helped me pick a share plan . I think I will go for 75% Option B and 25% Option C, but this may change depending on the price of the stock when I join; the ‘grant’ price. I’ll let you know what I pick in the next savings report.

I also plan to write a post about our new buy-to-let when we have tenants in: the costs, hopeful profits, and the pains of setting it up.

Whatever happens, it’s going to be a huge month for the Ninja household. Make sure you follow us on Instagram to track our journey to Sweden!

Employee Share Scheme: Which Option to Take?

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:00:00 +0000

When I start work at my new place in August, I’ll have only a week to decide what type of share options I’d like. This is a decision that I’ll have to stick with for 4 years! It’s also a decision that will see me earning huge amounts, or nothing at all.

I’ve read through the share program and I’ve been left baffled, it’s super complicated. So, in this article I’ll work my way through the documentation, nothing will be omitted, and you guys can help me decide which option to choose.

A Big Chunk of Money

A good chunk of the compensation with my new employer is paid out in a share scheme in the form of dollars. It currently amounts to $126,000 base value over the course of 4 years. This figure may be less or much more depending on the options that I choose, and there are 4 options to choose from, let’s call these: Cash, Option A, Option B, and Option C.

The Options can be mixed up e.g. 25% of each or any other percentage of the base value distributed amongst them, we’re not limited to just picking one.

Let’s dive into each of the options in a little more detail.

Cash Option

This is pretty self explanatory, when picking Cash; each month you’ll get a cash amount added to your salary, although this will be 90% of the total base amount.

So, 90% of $126k divided by 48 (months in 4 years) gives you the cash amount of $2,362.50 per month.

Option A

This option is what you would find in most share schemes. Each month, 1/48 of your base value will ‘vest’ and you’ll be awarded with a share in the company which you can either sell or keep.

The benefit of Option A is you’ll only pay the share price at the ‘grant’ date (when I joined the company.)

So, with a $2,625 base value figure each month, if the share price of the company was $100 per share when you joined, you’d be awarded 26.25 shares each month, no matter how much the share price has gone up (or down.) This is guaranteed each month, and you can sell or keep the shares.

One thing to bear in mind here, is how horrible the Swedish tax system is. There are no tax incentives to share schemes in Sweden, you’ll have to pay your income tax rate each month on the total amount of shares you received based on current value, not grant value. For me, this is 54.5%, that means that of those 26.25 shares, I’ll only receive around 12. Of course, this same tax is taken if the Cash Option is chosen, so it doesn’t factor into the decision too much, it will just mean the total reward is more than halved.

Option B

This is the first of the riskier options as it will only be ‘exercisable’ (available to sell) if the share price crosses a certain threshold, in this case it needs to go up from the initial share price. If it stays flat or goes down, you will get zilch!

The way this option and the next option work is you’ll only get the difference between how much the share price has risen in profit, but this will be added to a multiplier. With Option B, this multiplier is 4, and the ‘exercise price’ is the grant value.

So using $100 as an example grant value again, if the share price goes up to $150 in 4 years, you’ll get the base value ($126k) multiplied by 4 ($504k) divided by the grant value ($100), this will give you the number of ‘options’ which you can use to buy shares: 5040.

You’ll be able to use each of these options to purchase a share at $100 and instantly sell it at the market value of $150. So the actual gain will be $50 x 5040: $252,000.

Option B becomes more profitable than Option A only if the stock grows by more than 34% in 4 years, anything less and it becomes considerably worse, all of the way to the grant value where Option B will be worth nothing, but anything more than 34% and it will become exponentially more profitable than Option A.

Option C

This is the riskiest option, like Option B, it can only be exercised after crossing a certain threshold, in this case 50%. If the company stock doesn’t grow by at least half of the value at grant within 5 years, you’ll get nothing.

BUT, if it does grow by that amount (the stock has more than doubled in the last couple of years alone,) you’ll get 8 times the base value in options. The difference here is that you can’t buy the stock at grant value, you have to buy at the exercisable value, which is 150%, so using the $100 grant value, if the stock has risen to $200 in 4 years, you’ll be able to buy the stock at $150 per option. And as the options get multiplied by 8X the base value, you’ll have double the amount of options as Option B: 10,080.

So, using the 100% growth metric, buying 10,080 stocks at $150 and selling for $200, you’ll get $504,000.

Like Option B, this option becomes exponentially more profitable than Option B, but the threshold is 101%, for example, with Option B, 100% stock growth equals the same $504k figure ($100 buy for $200 sell, multiplied by 5040 options) as Option C’s 10,080 x $150 buy and $200 sell. Anything above 101% and you’ll be benefitting from that 8X multiplier, but anything below 100% and you’ll be losing out.

Comparing Stock Options

Let’s compare all of the options together based on all being sold after 4 years depending on growth.

Value after 4 years of growth

_0% gain _
Base value: $126,000
Cash Option: $113,400 / (after tax) $51,597 ← Ouch!
Option A: $126,000 / $57,330
Option B: $0
Option C: $0

_10% gain _
Base value: $126,000
Cash Option: $113,400 / $51,597
Option A: $138,600 / $63,063
Option B: $50,400 / $22,932
Option C: $0

_25% gain _
Base value: $126,000
Cash Option: $113,400 / $51,597
Option A: $157,500 / $71,662
Option B: $126,000 / $57,330
Option C: $0

-- 34% growth Option B surpasses Option A –

_50% gain _
Base value: $126,000
Cash Option: $113,400 / $51,597
Option A: $189,000 / $85,995
Option B: $252,000 / $114,660
Option C: $0

_75% gain _
Base value: $126,000
Cash Option: $113,400 / $51,597
Option A: $220,500 / $100,328
Option B: $378,000 / $171,990
Option C: $252,000 / $114,660

_100% gain _
Base value: $126,000
Cash Option: $113,400 / $51,597
Option A: $252,000 / $114,660
Option B: $504,000 / $229,320
Option C: $504,000 / $229,320

-- 101% growth Option C surpasses Option B –

_125% gain _
Base value: $126,000
Cash Option: $113,400 / $51,597
Option A: $283,500 / $128,993
Option B: $630,000 / $286,650
Option C: $756,000 / $343,980

How to Predict Stock Growth

That’s what this is really about, trying to predict how much I think the stock will go up…

Do I think the stock will go down? Choose cash.

Do I think the stock won’t go higher than 34%? Choose Option A.

34%+ Growth? Option B.

Will the stock more than double? Option C.

But, looking at everything a little more closely, we can analyse how much gain difference there will really be, and if it’s worth the risk of not getting anything (or getting a very low amount.)

With Option C, do I really think the stock will grow 125% in value? I mean it could, but if I really wanted to predict that, why not put all of my personal cash in it? It will be less risky than choosing this option, as we have to remember, if it grows by 50%, which is a fair whack, there will be nothing to gain, where as with option B I could have got $252k.

The difference to gain for the amount of risk added is even less when you add 54.5% tax into the question. Looking at the second, after tax figures, the difference between Option B and Option C at a 125% gain is only $57k. At almost $300k gained after tax, I’m not going to be too mad. So is it worth throwing away $115k after tax at a 50% gain for the possibility of $57k on top of $300k at a 125% gain? Or worse still, gaining the exact same if the stock doubled in value with Option C at the risk of losing a lot more if it didn’t double in value.

And realistically, if the stock rose by 100%, I’d rather sell it right then. I wouldn’t want to be holding on to the rollercoaster thinking “When should I sell my Option C stocks as anything above 100% is gaining 8X the value!” I’d end up holding onto them and run the risk of the market crashing and it being worth nothing again. I’d run the same risk with Option B, but a 34% threshold is a lot smaller than a 101% threshold, I wouldn’t be as panicked.

The POWAH of Spreadsheets!

Whilst everything prior to this has been sitting in my drafts folder, I decided to make a spreadsheet to help me decide on which option to take. I calculated the difference between the 3 Options from a 0% gain to a 400% gain, check it out here .

You can see in the chart below that they’ve been quite smart about how they’ve structured the scheme with appetite to risk.

You can see the astronomical differences between Option C and Option A if the stock did perform well. But you can also clearly see that it’s about perspective.

If you zoom in on the graph instead of looking at 150%-200% gains (you can’t rely on that, if you could, why invest in a passive index fund!?) You can see that the chart starts to look a lot different.

And when you take a hefty tax bill into account, the risk-reward ratio seems even less worth it.

But, I’ve also got to bear in mind that this could also happen…

If the stock jumped from $100 to $400 in 5 years, the difference between Option C and Option B would be $700k after tax, almost 50% more, with a total of $1.6 million net gain being made.

Looking at Stock Forecasts

The dreams of riches would have normally made me want to choose Option C. There is one problem however; the stock in question has stayed flat for the previous 2 years, but has grown by 100% in the past couple of months.

This is a HUGE bummer. To reach that multi-million dollar payout of 400%, the stock only has to grow by a further 100% from its current high to earn the company’s current employees their payouts. But for me, joining a mere month too late, my prospects of it growing by 400% (800% if I’d joined a month before - which would be an $8 million payout by the way) are extremely low.

If I’d joined when I got my offer instead of waiting for 3 months, I’d be looking at reaching the threshold for Option C within the first month of the 5 year growth period, almost guaranteeing a multi-million dollar payout. I certainly feel like I’ve missed the boat.

Instead, if I choose Option B, and the stock doubled, I’d be looking at a $500k payout at 100% growth rather than a $3.5 million payout with Option C at 400% growth (if I’d joined a month earlier.) Or worse still, if I join and the stock reverts back to it’s start of the year value and drops by 50%, then doubles again over 5 years, I’d be awarded with absolutely nothing as I would have locked in my grant value at the current high.

This is something I’m massively struggling with! Something that should be an employee benefit is turning out to be a surefire route to disappointment and frustration due to joining at specifically the wrong time, when, even if the stock continued to rise, I’d be working alongside multi-millionaires who had joined directly before me, or worse, I’d be awarded with nothing due to joining during a bubble.

Que Sera Sera

As my wife keeps saying, there is no point in worrying about what could have been. I really wish I could just ignore the past values and future predictions and be happy. I wish I hadn’t done this post; ignorance is bliss; but I have, and I’m going to have to try to not be frustrated or envious, no matter what Option I choose or what the stock does in the future.

I’ll just continue to study, enjoy myself, work on my career and save. Maybe one day I’ll have another chance to win the lottery in a share scheme?

What Option would you choose? How would you get over the fact that the stock had just doubled directly before you were given your grant price?

Savings Report #24 - Moving Country is Hard!

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 09:17:36 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

This month has marked the lowest month I’ve ever contributed to my savings.

It’s the first month since the inception of this blog that I’ve contributed nothing to my ISA, and even back in August 2018 I contributed more to my pension.

This is, of course, because I’m moving to Sweden in August. I have no idea how much money I’ll need over there, or how long it will take for my wife to get a job, so I’ll be throttling the contributions down to about this level for a long while.

Luckily, my current and future employer both contribute a fair whack to my private pension, so I’ll still have something being added each month!

Stocks have continued a sharp increase putting my portfolio back in the green, although since taking this snapshot, they do seem to have slumped slightly again.

Tesla is still propping up my entire portfolio with a growth of 15%; it’s crazy that this started out as a £1k fun investment and is now holding up a six-figure portfolio!

However, there is sad news for me and Tesla. In the UK we have a personal allowance for capital gains of £12k per year, in Sweden this doesn’t exist, it’s 30% on ANY gains. As I had about £3k of profit from Tesla in Trading212, I attempted to sell and withdraw the funds to save £900 of capital gains tax with the hope to reinvest.

Click here to get a free, no questions asked, share worth up to £100 from Trading212. You just have to deposit £1, then you can withdraw all of your money!

This happened the day before Tesla shot up by over 10%!! My trading platform takes 3 days to withdraw and I’m thinking I might have lost my chance to buy back into Tesla, which sucks.

I sold for $1,123 per share, they’re now hovering at around $1,200. If they don’t drop back to below my sale price in the next month then I’ll have to add the investment to my ISA instead.

Other News

Preparations for moving to Sweden have been…painful. For once in my life, due to the unprecedented COVID-times, I’ve been unable to forecast and plan; to have that taken away from me during one of the more significant parts of my life has been difficult.

Our journey to Sweden has changed 3 times already. We’ll now be driving to the edge of Germany, getting a 10-hour ferry to the south of Sweden, and continuing with the drive into Stockholm for a further 7 hours.

I just hope no more borders shut. If Germany shuts their borders, we’ll be looking at an even longer drive!

What to do with our UK Bricks?

It was our intention to opt for simplicity and sell our UK home. We were growing tired of the place and the profits (or lack-there-of) and added Swedish tax complications hardly seemed worth keeping it when we were gone.

Unfortunately due to COVID, we’ve had absolutely no interest. So, we’ve decided to give leasing a try, at least until the market picks up again. This had added to our already full plates of preparation and planning, but after the initial investigation we feel like we’re at a good place now.

We were aghast at the high street letting agent costs… 18% per month for full management, £600 for finding tenants, and then £600 each year to renew!! 12% of the cost of maintenance just to let the contractors in and check if they did it afterwards… Absolute bandits.

Thankfully, we managed to look past the paid for comparison sites and find some local letting agents. We’re now very happy with the people that we found who charge a flat 10% rate and £175 tenant finders fee (with a £50 renewal,) and no stupid extra charges.

Our beautiful hallway

The house needs some electrical and painting work and a new carpet laid in the downstairs rooms. Normally, myself and Mrs SavingNinja would not shy away from painting, we did an awesome job in our hallway.

But we sold all of our painting stuff a couple of weeks ago thinking that we wouldn’t need it anymore. We literally gave over £100 worth of stuff (including paint) away for a tenner.

So, we got some painters quotes…

£500 to paint a single room!!!!

Fuck that.

We’re now going out to re-buy rollers, paint, sandpaper, and a scraper to do it ourselves and we’re really kicking ourselves here.

We even sold our step ladder…

New Job

I haven’t had much time to get excited about my new job. I’m so preoccupied with moving to Sweden that I sometimes forget about the new job completely.

Working at my new place will be unlike any other place I’ve been. Some parts of that have already become apparent with how organised they are when enrolling new employees.

My current corporate bank takes a minimum of 2 months to enrol new employees once they’ve started. You can forget about them starting the process before they’ve joined! One third party contractor has been earning a day rate for over 6 months and they’ve still not been successfully set up with a development machine, she’s been watching Udemy videos the whole time…

My new employer however has already contacted me to ask which mobile phone and laptop I would like so they can order it now.

No more working on second hand old machines too. They will be ordering a MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM and an i9 processor, and an iPhone Max. I would never order these things myself, it’s almost too much. Who needs 64GB of RAM? But it’s nice nonetheless, and I’m hoping that it’s a predicate of more nice surprises to come.

I’ll be staying in employee funded corporate housing for the first month in Sweden, while they try to find us a rental. We’re hoping to buy a house after the first year as it should save us a lot of money and then we can get back to increasing our savings rate.

Something Happened

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 06:30:00 +0000

The Ninja household is going to be changed forever.

Something happened which was so unexpected, so alien, and yet so perfectly aligned to the current and future goals that I’ve mused about on this very blog. So, strap in and brace yourselves for…the news.

One blustery morning 3 months ago I was contacted out of the blue by an internal recruiter for a certain company. Said company was one of those companies, you know, one of the companies that I’ve been training for . No, no, no, it wasn’t the actual Google, but they get pretty close to Google in fame, world-wide offices, and difficult interview notoriety.

“We think you’d be a pretty good culture fit and we’d love for you to apply for our central team!”

Omg, I thought, I’m not ready!? Yeah sure, I’ve done a year of training; I’ve completed an algorithm module on Coursera from Stanford University; I’ve got a Kanban board in my spare room with about 100 algorithm sticky notes on it; I’ve read The Algorithm Design manual and Cracking the Coding Interview; I’ve had a session with programming all-star RetireInProgress ; BUT I’M NOT READY!

“Wow, you guys are like…my dream company, I would love to apply!!”

Two Months of Hell

What followed were probably the worst two months of my life. As I’ve learned from University, there’s only so much brain intensive work I can do in a single day; if I go over that boundary I end up getting pretty severe headaches which seem to never go away.

With my first set of 3 interviews arriving 4 weeks after the initial screening interview, I studied every morning and evening until bedtime, I worked all weekend - non stop! Soon I needed to start trying to relax as my head was exploding, but I was determined to give this my best shot.

It’s just training, I thought; I’m never going to ACTUALLY get the job, I know I’m not that good and I’ve met plenty of people way better than me.

My brain exploded again when I was told that I’d passed the first 3 interviews and they’d like to invite me to 5 more interviews all in one day in another 4 weeks time. OMG! I thought, but also; ooohh nooo!

I’m not going to lie, mostly what I felt was dread. After going through what would happen in the 5 different interviews with the recruiter I knew that I would be getting no sleep for the next 4 weeks. I had a ton of studying to do; I basically had to rewrite a whole project using a different language, and study like mad for subjects that I haven’t spent much time on like System Design.

My amazing teacher-wife set me up with a study schedule so I would not feel as overwhelmed, quizzed me every day on trivia, and watched me fumble my way through System Design explanations. TheFIREstarter even gave me an hour mock interview one Friday night!

28 sleepless nights later and the big day arrived. Normally they would bring me to their office for this interview day, but of course, it was all remote due to COVID. Magically I felt fine and ready to go on the actual day.

When it All Changed

A few days of suspense later they told me that not only did they want to offer me the job, but that I had also done so well on all of the interviews that they had no negative feedback and due to this they wanted to offer me the position of Senior Engineer (<– this is HUGE!)

This was the perfect role for me! It was on a central team where I’d be shepherding in new technologies and advocating developer standards whilst learning how the infrastructure works in one of the most well-known companies in the world for best-in-class infrastructure and tooling.

They also saw my passion for communication and leadership, along with my desire to build and lead teams so they agreed to train me specifically toward an Engineering Manager role that I could hope to achieve within 2 years.

The company and position held would also be a shining star on my CV; afterwards, if I moved on, I’d be super desirable.

But for both me and Mrs SavingNinja, the thing that added the most to the excitement (which begot more nervousness) wasn’t any of the above.

It was the fact that the position I was applying for wasn’t located in the UK.

A new life, in a new Place

I’ve written about my wanderlust before ; my ever-increasing desire to leave the UK and go on an adventure; to seek greener pastures in a faraway land. And now that opportunity is finally here…

My new job will be located in Stockholm, Sweden!

Yes, you heard it here first, I’m moving to Sweden in about 2 months time. It even feels strange to say that myself.

I’ve been talking about moving away for so long that it feels strange to think that I’ve not actually done it before. This will be the first time! And it’s kind of terrifying. Will the reality of moving live up to my dreams?

Both Mrs SavingNinja and I are so excited! We’re finally going to be in a place where we can go snowboarding every season; enjoy beautiful hikes every weekend; and celebrate Christmas like there’s no tomorrow!

Even the schooling system is much better over in Sweden, which is great for Mrs SavingNinja with her teaching degree. They have free education (we might get Masters degrees), free childcare, and 6 months of fully paid maternity and paternity leave (you never know.)

The one drawback to this move will be…our FIRE goals.

Happiness in Exchange for Money

Even though I will be getting paid more in my new position, the potential for matching my current savings rate will be severely reduced. This is because Sweden has some of the highest taxes in the world .

Stocks which I will receive as a big part of my compensation package will be taxed at 60%, and then a further 30% will be taken off any growth since they vested…ouch. This is a huge difference to countries like the US or UK where equity-related bonuses get taxed at a lower rate than income!

Sweden is also notorious for being expensive with a lot of things needing to be imported and an additional 25% VAT burden. All of these taxes along with a housing crisis which sees Stockholms flats match central London prices, along with no ISA equivalent and no capital gains allowance (and a 30% flat rate tax to boot) make Sweden absolutely terrible for a FIRE-pursuer.

As we’ve orchestrated our current life specifically for FIRE we have seen our essential household expenses drop to under £15k per year ; Our mortgage only costs us £100 per month in interest and we spend under £150 per month on food. This will go completely out of the window in Stockholm, we’ll be spending a minimum of £1,500 per month on rent alone.

But…I’m still happy to be doing this.

One of my goals for 2020 was to spend more money and be happier, and I feel that this is the perfect opportunity to achieve that goal: I will gain unequivocal experience and improve as an engineer and person beyond what I thought capable of; my wife and I will be able to go on an adventure and explore the Nordic regions whilst pursuing our favorite sport; The company has offices in New York and San Francisco which brings me one step closer to achieving my American dream with an inter-company transfer. These things are worth taking a savings cut for.

SavingNinja no Longer?

I actually have no idea how much I am going to be able to save. I don’t truly know how much everything is going to cost and I’ll have to rediscover all of the financial tricks that I have learned over the years. There isn’t even a way to invest in Vanguard! I’m really going to be starting from square one again.

From an initial perspective, I’d hope to be able to save at least 50% of my salary. This will likely depend on how quickly Mrs SN can get a job. We are also selling our home in the UK and plan to buy one in Sweden after 1 year which would see our savings rate increase further. So, hope is not completely lost.

Where does this Leave the Blog?

Well, I guess I’ll have to change the name of the post series ‘My Journey to Financial Independence in the UK .’ SavingNinja will instead have to become more international. I may even have to change my savings to be shown in dollars rather than pounds as I have no intention of ever moving back to England.

I’m sure I’ll have a lot to think about with adapting to a new lifestyle in Sweden and I’ll want to share what I’ve learned along the way. For this I’ll create a new tag called ‘Sweden’ so for those of you that aren’t interested can skip it.

I’ll continue of course to blog about my quest for happiness and saving. I’m hoping that the move will allow me to gain a little more insight by experiencing life in two very different cultures.

Moving to Sweden will also mark the revival of the long-dead SavingNinja Instagram account, as this time I might actually have some things to take pictures of! I will also be partnering with Mrs SN who has a lot more Instagram knowledge than me; so make sure you follow us if you want to see our adventures play out.

Follow SavingNinja on Instagram here .

A lot of Planning to Come

I’ve now got a new Kanban board in my living room with all of the things that I need to research before I move to Sweden in about 2 months time! These cover topics like where should I invest my money? Can I leave my UK bank accounts and investment accounts open? How do you live frugally in Sweden?

Sweden doesn’t even have services like Amazon or eBay, there is going to be a lot to learn! I’ll be making a blog post about everything along the way.

If you know anyone in Sweden or in another Nordic region who can offer me some advice, especially around how I can find a Vanguard-esk alternative, please comment and let me know below.

Have you ever been to a Scandinavian country? What should I expect? The first time I visit will be on a one-way flight!

The FIRE Movement Wasn't for Me

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 07:30:00 +0000

It’s about time I introduced myself.

Mr SavingNinja has mentioned that I was going to do an introductory post and maybe some further posting, so here I am, Mrs SavingNinja.

I have been with my husband since the beginning of his financial journey, and I’ll admit that sometimes I have been hard to convince and sometimes (in the beginning) I wasn’t fully onboard.

Hey, Big Spender

My mum is a ‘SpendyPants,’ a great big giant one. My dad has always worked super hard, too hard sometimes! He worked his way up through a company before eventually becoming the joint owner when I was 14, whilst doing this he also worked on other projects for people well into the night and started his own business with my mum.

Whilst he was doing this my mum would spend. I’m assuming they had savings, as my dad isn’t stupid, but my mum didn’t work and had access to the accounts. When I was really young there wasn’t as much money to spend, but as my dad started earning more my mum liked to buy more.

Sometimes it was only little things; whenever she stopped for petrol she would always get us a chocolate bar, whenever she went and did a big shop she’d often get us a treat each (mine was frequently a Beanie Baby,) and we’d regularly get new clothes. She also went CRAZY at Christmas.

Now this sounds a lot like me moaning about having things being bought for me, but bare with me, it’s the preface to my spending habits.

When my dad became the owner of his company, my mum ramped up the spending. Nowadays she’s ridiculous and it’s just kind of accepted. Their house is full of expensive crap, she regularly gets a fancy new car, likes to do the food shopping in M&S, and she probably has about 10 times the amount of clothes that Mr SavingNinja and I have combined.

Read more about my families spending habits here .

I would probably be a bit of a SpendyPants myself if I had married someone else.

Independent Woman

When I was a teenager I worked three jobs and spent all of my money. I would rarely ask my parents for money (unlike my brothers) and would spend all of my hard-earned cash on petrol, junk food, new outfits from Topshop every Friday, and fun nights out.

Going to Uni made a bit of a difference; I was unable to get a maintenance loan as my dad earned too much money, so I had to rely on weekly money from him for food, rent and anything else. I learned to budget a bit more but Mr SavingNinja still had to save me from my unofficial overdraft a couple of times a year.

Fast-forward to now and it makes me so happy that I have an emergency fund and am even putting money into a Vanguard account!

It’s taken me a lot longer due to a minimum wage job in a nursery, teacher training and then working my way up the teacher payscale, but I got there.

My Favourite Things

It was a struggle; I like nice things.

I like a variety of clothing, I’m a girl, I have the option of dresses, skirts, trousers and shorts. I like plain clothes, patterned clothes, pretty clothes, casual clothes, fancy clothes, rugged clothes, all the clothes! I was never a girly girl; I own about 1 handbag but a fair few rucksacks, I own one fancy pair of heels (my wedding shoes!) and 4 different pairs of boots, so I don’t want a wardrobe displaying all my pretty shoes and jewelry, I just like to have options. Some days I want to be girly, some days I want to be sporty and some days I like to wear my lumberjack shirt!

I also love buying candles and bath bombs and blankets and face masks and all that girly crap. But I’ve managed to rein it in, even though it can be a struggle. I will only ever get a Lush bath bomb if it’s a special occasion but even now their appeal is starting to wear off. I only ever buy my face masks or candles from places like Home Bargains or The Range and only if I don’t have any at home already.

This all sounds really petty but I was spending way too much money on this stuff. And I didn’t need to.

Now, I love being frugal. I love coming up with ways to save money and finding the best bargains on things we need, sometimes still on things we don’t need, but nobody’s perfect.

A lot of the time my love of being frugal goes hand in hand with my love of being eco-friendly and low waste. Sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes the frugal option is not eco-friendly and I have to decide what I feel more strongly about in that situation.

Road Less Traveled

Mr Saving Ninja finally got me fully on board with Financial Independence …it just took some pitching. When he first started talking about FI, I thought it would just be a ‘phase’ and he’d forget about it within a few months and move on, he had done this with other things before! But this was obviously not the case.

Once he’d pitched the idea of us retiring on some far-flung ranch with us at home with our kids and having chickens and cows (these things were important to this Southern girl!) I was convinced. I still struggled (and still do) with some of it; there were habits I had to unlearn and slight sacrifices to be made but it would all be worth it in the end.

The other thing that motivated me was going to the premiere of ‘Playing With Fire,’ with Mr SavingNinja and theFIREstarter . Seeing the struggles that Taylor went through (especially the want of a nice car) really resonated with me and encouraged me to work harder towards FIRE.

During the viewing, I actually had so many ’epiphany’ moments that I wanted to talk about and write about, but once at the pub afterwards they just vanished. It’s something I want to revisit; I want to watch the documentary again and maybe write a post about my thoughts and feelings.

I Got Bills, I Gotta Pay

One aspect of our finances that some people struggle to understand and that I had to get used to was splitting our expenses . As I’ve said, my dad worked and my mum didn’t, so the thought of not sharing our income once we were married was a bit weird for me. But why should it be?

Why would being married, or living together mean we have to then pool all of our money together? What’s changed? I still go to work and do my job and he goes to work and does his. The only unfair aspect in my opinion is that I believe I work harder in lots of ways but get paid a fair bit less, this however, is due to the industries each of us work in and that can’t be helped.

I was a bit… disgruntled when Mr SavingNinja first discussed this with me, but now, I don’t see why; why should he have to pay more towards the house than me, or the bills, or food? We are both using equal amounts of house, bills, and food! It makes me feel like I was being an absolute princess when I got a little irked about it, his job is not to ‘keep’ me, as my dad would say. His job is to love me, respect me, and cherish me, not pay for me!

Another aspect of this is expenses that aren’t essential. I stopped going to the hairdressers, I’m trying to grow my hair long but suffer from really bad split-ends, to combat the expense of going to the hairdressers regularly I bought some professional scissors and researched how to make a decent hair mask. However, Mr Saving Ninja spends money on getting a haircut, I don’t want to pay for half of that! I like to spend a silly amount on Vitamin E oil from The Body Shop for my dry face, I’m sure Mr Saving Ninja doesn’t want to pay for half of that!

Anyway, I’m rambling. The point is, we are happy splitting our expenses, it works for us. We can’t moan at each other if we spend our own money on things we want. I grew up with my dad moaning at my mum for buying another new microwave or replacing the perfectly great year old curtains with brand new ones. That’s not going to happen in this household as we keep our own money and, thankfully, our financial goals are aligned.

Just to reassure anyone though; if I were to lose my job or had to stop working, or I were inexplicably drowning in debt, Mr Saving Ninja would obviously support me financially, as I would him.

If I was a Rich Girl…

Wanting to spend money is still a regular struggle. I want to be FI but I also want a big house filled with lovely things, a nice car and a swimming pool. I know that being FI will be so much better for us and more beneficial, but sometimes I waver when I see an amazing house that I know one day we could afford if we didn’t retire early. There are sometimes worries that we’re sacrificing having fun on expensive holidays, eating out at fancy restaurants, etc. and that we will still end up working to retirement age or regretting our decision, but I just need to think about priorities and the future that we want, and to trust that we are making the right decision now.

The thought of the chickens and the cows helps too.

Savings Report #23 - Back to Break Even!

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 07:30:00 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Stocks have well and truly recovered and due to buying whilst they were on sale, I’ve now broken even with the book cost.

Who knows if we’ll have another drop? The market seems to be very sporadic at the moment, so I’m just grabbing some popcorn and watching the show whilst continuing to invest as normal.

I managed to re-purchase my 10 Tesla shares after trying to time the market last month . Lucky too as they had another great month by laughing in the face of COVID and rising 21.8%!

Maybe these shares will eventually be enough to cover the cost of a Cybertruck? Only about 400% gain to go, if Tesla carries on at the rate it’s been growing then that might come in as little as 12 months, haha.

Other News

The world seems to keep spiralling into despair, the only glimmer of happiness being the recent successful SpaceX astronaut launch .

I’ve kind of stopped reading the COVID news now, I really have no idea if we’re coming out of lockdown, having a rebound, or what. All I know is that offices are going to stay shut for at least the rest of the year.

Instead, I’ve been focusing on personal growth, my mission to pass a Google like interview has been at the forefront of my mind so my lockdown has been full of whiteboards, YouTube videos, and problem-solving.

I have some exciting news to share on my progress with the interview training soon, so hold tight!

Savings Report #22 - I Failed at Market Timing!

Fri, 01 May 2020 07:30:00 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Errrrmmm…

£10k interest earned in a single month? Ok…

Does that mean we’re no longer in a bear market?

I thought it would be a lot worse than that!

Then again lots of people keep saying that there will be another fall. It does seem really strange that the entire world is still effectively on lockdown and we’ve seen this huge gain, what’s going on?

I actually feel a little peeved off as due to a complication with my share dealing account this month I didn’t invest into my ISA on the normal date of the 2nd, but instead much later on the 20th, after the stock market had another huge rally.

This has been the case for a lot of the ‘bear market’, by sticking with my normal monthly deposits, I seem to have invested on a rebound every time. I kind of want there to be more crashing so I can pick up more bargains…

Anyway, I upped my ISA contribution to £3,000 this month and I also contributed another £5,398 into my pension via salary sacrifice; I’ll be leaving both contributions set to this amount until August; I’ll then reduce them to the amount that they need to be in order to hit the £40k SIPP and £20k ISA allowances.

My Tesla investment shot up gaining £1,623 in value, I then decided I’d try to ’time the market’ and sold all 10 of my shares for $725 each. This is now sitting in cash in my Freetrade account.

Tesla then shot up a little more right after I sold which made me feel a bit uncomfortable; I feel like I’ve made the wrong decision by selling as I was holding Tesla because I believed in the company and wanted them to be a really long hold, not because I wanted to make a quick buck. I’m now worried that I might never be able to buy them back if they stay above $725, which will make me sad :(

Other News

£465.

That’s an awfully low figure.

That’s how much my monthly expenses are during the COVID lockdown; it’s my normal expenditure minus any luxury spending, minus the holiday pot, minus the god-awful £200 odd I spend to commute to work.

That’s £5,580 per year. Or, in FIRE terms, £139,500 needed to be financially independent (using the 25x rule).

It’s an encouraging number. If I could get to the financial position to cover these base costs outside of my pension, I’d be extremely happy. I could fund all other expenses (holidays, luxury) by post-FI related entrepreneurial activities; I’d hope that with enough time on my hands, I’ll be able to release a couple of successful pieces of software. If all else failed, I could pick up a side-gig for a couple of weeks to fund a luxury holiday.

I’d like to try and hit that base figure in passive income before I retire, then everything would be perfect!

Meditation

I’ve got Headspace for a whole year. I used their family plan offer so it only cost me £12.50. I’m hoping that completing some of their courses will give me back some of the control over my emotions that I seem to have lost.

I just need to actually stick to a routine; has anyone else found that during lockdown they seem to be less productive and get less done?

Usually, cycling to work each day contributed to my exercise routine, without that I’ve been reluctant to do anything else. I’m dreading to look at the scales to see how many kilograms I’ve gained!

Holiday Blues

Once all of this is over I really want to splurge on a holiday, after all, our trip to Switzerland in April did get cancelled. Not being able to go on holiday is making me really want to go on one and not care about money as much.

Maybe COVID will help me break out of my frugal shell and appreciate the value that spending money on experiences can provide? People always say that you don’t realise how much you love something until it’s gone.

What is first on your list when the lockdowns are lifted?

What adventures will you go on?

Thought Experiment #10 - COVID-19 Edition

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 08:01:28 +0000

To get the creative juices flowing again in these strange times, what better than a Thought Experiment to reconnect with the Financial Independence community?

We’ll try a different approach with this one; we’ll have no deadline. If you want to take part, write out a response to the question below and I’ll feature your article in this post, I implore all other participants to do the same.

Unprecedented events create new experiences. What fun, misadventure, or positive discoveries have you encountered while locked down?

- Thanks to in-deed-a-bly for his eloquent words

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #10

Mrs SavingNinja

in-deed-a-bly

PathtoLife2

Total Balance

Money For The Modern Girl

Quietly Saving

One Million Journey

The FIRE Shrink

Dr FIRE

TipsToFIRE

NinjaBudgeter

Mrs SavingNinja kindly took the reins for this Thought Experiment for her post debut. Don’t worry, she’s still working on her introductory post which will be next up.

When I first looked at this thought experiment I didn’t think I had anything to write about. Lockdown has been fine. Just fine. But, as I banished myself to the bed with a mug of green tea to try and write something, I realised that maybe I have made some positive discoveries and had some fun.

People Care

I naturally like to live my life quite horizontally (hence banishing myself to bed to write!) I wouldn’t say I’m lazy as such, I just have quite sloth-like qualities. So on the evening of March the 16th, when I declared that I was taking a vow of solitude for the good of mankind, I was rather looking forward to lazing in bed all morning, having a relaxing lunch with my husband and playing on games all afternoon.

At this point, schools were still open and I was annoyed about it. How dare Boris put lives at risk because he doesn’t want people to get bored on lockdown too soon.

I looked at the newsfeed on The Guardian website every half an hour to see what was being done and I regularly got updates from my school. My school had partially shut by the Wednesday as people were self-isolating as per the new government advice. By Friday they had a ‘Skeleton staff’ and were only open to one year group, the following week it was the children of key workers only and some vulnerable students.

I was happy that action had been taken but I then found myself feeling really quite sad about the teenagers that were at home in really unpleasant and abusive environments. As a Head of Year I get to know all about my year groups’ family and home lives, the evening this all occurred to me was spent worrying about the teenagers with alcoholic and abusive parents.

The point of this depressing tangent is that despite the fact I have been to a few interviews recently that are not in the teaching industry, I do actually really care about these kids.

So, positive discovery number 1 - Even the teachers that hate their jobs and want out, really freaking care about the students they meet, even the stinky, swearing awful ones. Especially the stinky, swearing awful ones.

I Love Baking

I love cooking so much and I love that with cooking there’s a lot of room for creativity. The recipe says 2 garlic cloves, I’m going to creatively add 6. The recipe says a small glass of wine, I’m going to creatively add a large glass and then creatively drink the rest.

I also love changing recipes. When Mr SavingNinja wants to make something that I’ve previously made for him, it’s impossible for him to follow the recipe and get it right because I always change it and make it mine.

When it comes to baking I’m pretty sure you can’t do this…much. Baking is a science. I can’t add a creative amount of yeast or eggs, that would ruin the recipe. So I stayed away from baking, I let him bake the bread and make the pizza bases. Maybe I was scared that as it’s very precise I could get it wrong and ruin it. I don’t like to be wrong.

But it turns out I’m good at baking! I have made croissants! I made a pie! I bossed cinnamon rolls! And I’m having so much fun. This was a very pleasant and tasty positive discovery.

Cringe Fest

I’m sorry to now get cringey but the next positive discovery is that I actually really like my husband.

So many people can’t wait to go back to work and can’t wait to get some time away from their other half. I see so many posts on social media about how they’re sick of their husband/wife etc. I know some of these are partially in jest but I’m actually going to be really sad when we have to go back to work and not spend this much time together anymore.

We are lucky, in a way, to not have any elderly relatives to worry about or help care for during this time and our families both live at other sides of the country, so it’s just us and our emotionally unstable cat. I love it.

I’m looking at this as practice for our retirement. Can we spend this much time in close contact and still be happy and get on? Damn right we can; I’m even happier! I’m definitely mentally ready for retiring together, I just hope we get to spend a bit more time in the great outdoors.

Negative Discoveries

There is, of course, going to be some negative discoveries during this time. These aren’t earth-shattering, heart-breaking discoveries, just things that I need to look at. The main thing being my lack of self-motivation.

No matter how much time I actually have I’m not going to want to exercise and I’m never going to actually want to go for a run. Going for a morning run during lockdown lasted three days.

I have always said that if I didn’t have to start work so early I would work out in the morning. That was my excuse for not doing it. I was always tired when I got home from work and wanted to cook, eat, watch TV, go to bed.

I now have no excuse and I still don’t want to do it.

I could also spend an entire day on Reddit. This is not good. I could be learning new things, tidying the house, exercising! Some days I’m super motivated and get loads done and feel great, but most days I’m sad about getting out of bed and then barely move from the sofa.

This is something to address before retirement and I need to find a way to motivate myself so I don’t become a depressed couch potato.

But hey, if all else fails I’ll just bake more cinnamon rolls.

Savings Report #21 - M-m-m-my Corona

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 07:30:00 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

In March I recorded the biggest loss since I began investing.

My portfolio dropped by a staggering £13,613 in a single month, about -13.35%.

The total gain on book cost in January stood at a healthy £9,866 and now it is negative £12,167.

As it’s only been a short amount of time since I began investing, with a huge ramp-up just before COVID-19 wrecked the stock market, I haven’t had time to earn prior stock gains so my total portfolio is seriously in the red.

I still believe that in my position, a bear market is a good thing (unless we begin a 10-year-long great depression) so I’ve ramped up my contributions and will continue to do so.

I increased my salary sacrifice slightly in March and deposited £5,239 before tax, I also added an additional £2,000 into my ISA. This bought me to the first year that I’ve ever maxed my SIPP and ISA allowances…

This would call for a celebration if it didn’t happen at the WORST time possible. As I was rushing to max my ISA and pension before the end of the tax year I ended up contributing £28,000 in the 4 months leading up to the COVID bear market. That’s absolutely decimated my total interest earned as most of my savings were made right before the drop.

To try and balance out my heavy savings at the peak, I’m going to continue saving heavily. I hope to increase my ISA contributions to £3,000 this month and leave my pension contributions at around £5,300.

This month I also invested £1,000 into Freetrade but it’s currently sitting in cash. I did this as I wanted to buy more Tesla stocks if they fall below £350; I see my ‘Other Investments’ section as a fun-fund and I’m going to try and time the market!

So far, my heavy contributions have managed to keep me above £100k invested. But another fall like this month would probably see me dip below this milestone.

Other News

COVID-19 has seemed to put a halt on everything, this month has really shown that and I’ve started to become a little frustrated. I’m not worried about financial loss, I know that with continuing to contribute, I can hopefully mitigate my net worth decline. But what I am worried about is the lack of progression.

This year was meant to be a pivotal one for progression . I’d finally begun to feel happy with where I was in life; we’d decided to go on more holidays and increase our happiness over the next two years; my goal was to climb the career ladder and find a new job, my wife had dreams of beginning a new career in London and had attended her first successful interview, which she aced…

Then COVID-19 hit and stopped everything. My wife’s potential London employer withdrew, it will be much harder for me to progress my career, and it looks like we’ll be going on no holidays this year.

There’s still no light at the end of the tunnel as to when we can get back on track, and for me that’s terrifying. With my fast-paced and analytical brain, I hate the thought of losing a year or two to stagnation; of staying in my ‘pre-FI’ life for longer; of freezing in time.

I’m starting to get in the depressive slumps again…

Maybe that’s because I forgot to take my cod liver oil tablets for the past two days?

Blogging

Yes, I’ve been absolutely terrible. I had pretty bad writers’ block before the COVID outbreak, now the will has gone completely. There just seems nothing worth writing about when this is the only thing on everyone’s mind.

Not only that; I got my best writing done on the train to work, which is of course not happening right now.

I feel that there’s going to be a few more diary entry months before I can get back to any quality content. I’ll focus on apps and interview training until I get out of this funk!

Coronavirus

Myself and my family (even the ones in Italy) are all OK. Luckily, we’ve all kept our jobs as well. I’ve actually been working over the weekend as there is so much support needed for COVID-19 programming, I’ve not worked this hard for a long time!

I should have been Snowboarding during Easter. I think that being cancelled is one of the main reasons that I’m down as it was my first foray into ‘happiness-first.’

We did get all of our money back for the flights, AirBnB and trains - so I guess we’ve got more to invest!

How are you coping?

Savings Report #20 - You Knock me Down but I get up Again

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 07:30:00 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Woooow - the markets flipped out big time.

My portfolio dropped by £7,420 in value, this wiped out a lot of the interest I’ve ever earned since I began investing. My ’total earned interest’ figure dropped from £10k to £2.5k in the space of a couple of days. Ouch.

Luckily, I’m still in my accumulation phase and with my continued hefty contribution of £5k into my pension and £2k into my ISA, I almost reversed the effect of this huge decline; but my total net worth still dropped by £204.

Actually, looking at all of my savings reports this month marks the first one ever where my net worth has actually decreased.

Sure, I’ve had some months where stocks have declined a lot (by over £2,500), but due to my massive contribution amount I’ve always ended up adding something onto my net worth anyway.

Maybe I should be rejoicing as this probably just means that I’ve finally got a decent amount invested? Enough to feel a hit like this.

Anyway, buy whilst they’re on sale! The markets will surely recover (they have since writing this!) I will be leaving things exactly as they are and depositing the same amount and at the same time no matter if what the markets decide to do. Simplicity is beautiful.

Remember, the worst thing you can possibly do is sell at the bottom, so don’t!

April is Approaching

One more month to go until the end of the tax year. I’ll be continuing with my big contributions next month, then I’ll have to review how much I want to lower it to after April.

What do you guys think is going to be announced in this years budget?

There are fears that the higher-rate pension tax relief is going to be scrapped. That would be a bit of a blow to my savings going forward - but I’d be glad I managed to max the £40k limit at least once. I’d just hate to see a lot more money disappearing in tax, but I suppose it’s got to happen at some point as I should ease off the pension sacrificing soon.

I’m considering going with a £1,666 per month ISA contribution amount per month after April - or do you think I should fill it up straight away then leave it for the year?

Or maybe I could put £9k in on the first month and then 11 months of £1k each? I don’t necessarily need such a big cash buffer (which is currently being held in a Marcus account,) but I do like having that cash there and deciding how much to transfer into my investments towards the end of the tax year, especially as I’m looking at switch jobs this year (or review contracting again).

But maybe it’s just silly to have over £20k held in cash when my expenses are only £10k per year ? What do you guys think?

My ‘years to FI’ number has gone down to 1 year and 10 months. This is due to the first two months of the year having above normal monthly contributions so my savings rate average is being set to 87%. I should probably change how the average is calculated as the contributions will be going down by a lot in the coming months, but it will still take a while for my average savings rate to drop back down.

I was speaking with someone the other day and they were saying that my 6% estimated post-inflation figure for growth is a little unrealistic. It got me playing with different growth rates in my spreadsheet calculator and the new FICalc app

I was quite shocked when I found out that when you’re savings rate is so high, interest basically does absolutely nothing. In fact, I’d probably be better off just not investing at all.

If I up my predicted investment growth from 6% to 15% my ‘years to FI’ figure goes from 1 year and 10 months to 1 year and 7 months. That’s exceptional growth to save, what, 3 months?

If I lower my predicted investment growth from 6% to 0% my ‘years to FI’ goes up to…

2 years and 1 month.

Yeah, I’d have to work an extra 3 months. If I had no growth at all, I’d still ‘retire’ in around 2 years.

Maybe this is just cause for me going with a heavy bond portfolio instead of 100% equities?

Analysing this more closely I realised that for the ’extreme’ FIRE pursuer seeking retirement in 5 years or less, compound interest is virtually useless.

If you truly did begin drawdown as soon as you hit your number then you’d never ever feel the effects of compound interest. The magic won’t happen. It only really starts if you’ve accumulated for more than 10 years.

This made me feel a little sad; if your able to save 75%+ of your salary and become FI in 5-7 years, you would be a very happy early retiree; BUT, if you’d instead continued to work, the compounding effect for that extreme saver would be ten-fold. You’d potentially have created generational wealth, but you’re ’throwing it away’ for early retirement.

For example, instead of quitting work at 30 years old with £300k, I could continue saving the same amount until I’m 35 and I’d end up with a pot of around £780k. With no further contributions, that could turn into a hefty sum at 55…

£3,170,000…

That’s with no additional contributions after the age of 35.

Am I willing to throw away over £3m at the - still relatively young - age of 55 for a life of £12k per year leisure at 30?

Hmm, kinda!

But realistically, I’m probably going to meet halfway. I’ll definitely continue to work in some capacity after 30, but I’ll be focusing more on other things rather than solely my savings rate.

I really want to get SOME of the magic of compounding through-out my life. In order for this to happen, I’ll probably look to get to around a 2% withdrawal rate, that way I’d hope that the pot will continue to grow even in drawdown.

Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to have enough passive income to mean that I don’t have to drawdown my stash at all?

But yeah, something to consider: to extreme FI pursuers compound interest doesn’t mean shit!

Other News

I bought the cod liver oil capsules that Nick recommended, I’ve been taking them for a little over a week now.

I think I feel happier.

I noticed that my eyes almost seemed to stay open wider after the first day. It’s extremely hard to know if this isn’t just a placebo effect though. I did feel a little sad for one day, but my mood generally seems to be up. It’s only been one week so I’m unsure what I’m really expecting!

I’ll probably just continue to take them for now as they’re not too expensive when having one a day (sub £10 per month). Although I do think that mindfulness and consistent meditation may give me the same or a better effect; so I’d like to get back into that. I just need to find the time… I’ve still only read half of a book from Project Happiness :(

Algorithms

I’ve started to make a little bit of progress with my interview training . This is because I’ve begun to focus only on a singular subject rather than skitting around to a lot of different Computer Science problems.

I’ve actually started a SCRUM board in my office and I’ve been adding each problem that I solve onto it via a sticky note with some hints on each. This has helped motivate me to try and solve at least 1 problem per day.

My current area of study are Trees and Graphs . I’ve also been using a new note-taking tool called Roam Research to store all of my training notes; it’s been absolutely awesome - go and check it out!

Leetcode has also been invaluable as my one-stop-shop for Computer Science problems (especially as I can make a bookmark for a certain subject like this .) I’ll probably purchase their premium subscription soon so I can start doing mock interviews.

Coronavirus

It seems like the world is going crazy over the Coronavirus. I’m just hoping that we can still go on our snowboarding holiday in April as we fly into Milan!

The UK seemed to have finally got out of Brexit limbo and then this virus hit. Has the world always been one crazy thing after another and am I only now getting old enough to start observing the anarchy? Or do we not normally have this many life-altering events happen so close to one another?

Blogging

This month has seen virtually no blog posts. I seem to have developed extreme writer’s block. Since I moved to my laid-back approach, I’ve been unable to begin anything new from my drafts list. I’m hoping this will pass soon.

Mrs SavingNinja has still got a half-finished introductory post that she begun writing last year, unsure when that will get finished, she’s really busy with work right now.

A lot of my effort is going into interview prep and app development . I still have two really cool app ideas that I want to get out there and I’m also in the middle of developing an app for my father-in-law. Life is busy right now.

These saving reports are, at least, easy to continue writing - so I’ll keep you guys in the loop!

How was your month?

Download the First Ninja Mobile Application!

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 07:30:09 +0000

Since November I’ve been working on SavingNinja’s very first piece of software - a mobile application that contains all of the same useful calculators in the Super Spreadsheet and today marks the day that it’s available to download.

The app is called FICalc, and it’s available on both iOS and Android !

FICalc is the first of many applications that I have planned to help my fellow Ninja’s achieve financial independence quicker and easier. The app is currently only version 1.0 and with your help, I plan to add more tooling and improvements as time goes by; so let me know what you’d like to see in the comments below.

Download FICalc on Android and iOS today - it’s free. Leaving a good review on any store would help immensely (thanks if you do!)

FICalc is a collection of financial calculators that can help you on your pathway to financial independence. FIRE calculators are prevalent on the web, but many calculations need to be done whilst on the move and quickly; that’s where FICalc can help as it’s quickly accessible on your mobile phone.

FICalc stores your input data for ease of use on return visits, and your financial simulations are illustrated with animated graphs and charts (charts coming soon.)

Compound Interest Calculator

Enter your starting pot, yearly deposit amount, years to compound, and predicted investment growth and hit calculate.

The calculator will tell you how much your money will have grown within the given years. It will simulate monthly investment returns and deposits to accurately calculate the result.

Hit analyse to see a month by month breakdown of your growth for your total pot and total interest earned.

Drawdown Calculator

Enter your starting pot, annual drawdown amount, and predicted investment growth and hit calculate.

The calculator will tell you how long your money will last by simulating your monthly investment returns.

Hit analyse to see a month by month breakdown of your drawdown for your total pot and total interest.

This is a good calculator to use to figure out how to build your Pension Bridge.

FI Calculator (Financial Independence Calculator)

Enter your starting pot, yearly savings, projected investment growth, and withdrawal rate, and hit calculate.

The calculator will tell you how long it will take for you to reach FI (Financial Independence) so you can potentially retire early. This is the point when the interest growth will cover your yearly expenses.

Hit analyse to see how much your pot has grown each month and how much interest you’ve earned.

What is FIRE? (<– Read this if you don’t know)

The Future of FICalc

This mobile application is for you. Which features would you like to see added to FICalc? If it’s not on the list; let me know in the comments below.

Personal Profile

An area of the app which will hold your current bio (networth, income, expenses, savings rate, age etc.)

Personal Profile will show you at a glance how long you have left until you are FI (‘Financially Independent’) it will count down each day and update accordingly with options to add or remove cash amounts and ‘recalculate.’
Additional Data Analysis

Currently the application shows networth totals and total combined interest gained. This feature would add a suite of additional analytics including month by month interest, different market returns (upper bound, lower bound), expenses covered, and ‘percentage to FI.’
Dynamic Calculations

This feature would allow you to change your savings rate dynamically on the graph page to see instantly how your results will change.
Vault

Do you want a part of the app dedicated to storing useful FI related articles and notes?

Savings Report #19 - Life is a Rollercoaster

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 07:30:00 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

January saw the stock market take a bit of a tumble and I lost £491 from my ISA and £305 from my pension.

It’s actually quite strange how I lost so much less from my pension as I have almost double the amount invested.

The majority of my SIPP is invested in a work-place pension scheme and I’ve chosen the option of ‘Passive World Index Tracker.’

I assumed it would be pretty similar to Vanguard LS100 but the difference in capital lost this month has showed me that it isn’t.

I only hope that when the market goes up, I won’t be losing too much money in this work fund!

I do plan on transferring it into Vanguard after I leave my current employer, which will hopefully be this year.

My Tesla investments grew by a staggering £881 this month (it actually grew by a further £500 on the 31st of January but I took the snapshot before this), gaining me back all of the interest that I lost in my passive funds! This is insane considering how little I have invested. My ‘Other Investments’ fund has actually grown by over 100% from Tesla alone in the past 3 months.

I also got a free share by opening up a Trading212 account. Use my referral link to get a free share worth up to £100 yourself, you only have to deposit £1 to get the free share; it’s extremely quick and easy!

My net worth is almost at £150k which I’m very happy with as it was only July last year when my total net worth crossed the £100k barrier.

It’s growing very fast, although I have to remember that I’ve been dumping a lot of excess cash into my ISA and pension before the end of the tax year arrives in April so it won’t be growing this fast all of the time.

January marks the first month of my rush to max my £40k pension contribution this year. I’ve got two more salary sacrifices to ensure this happens. I’ve actually upped my sacrifice again from 75% to 82% as I calculated that with the current contributions I’d be around £800 under the £40k limit; luckily my employer allows me to sacrifice up to 85% of my base pay.

It feels great paying barely any tax and zero student loan repayments and knowing that these savings are helping to increase my FI fund. In April after my full years’ tax status has been calculated I’m also hoping for a big rebate as HMRC took away my whole bonus in 2019 as tax.

Other News

Retire In Progress was generous enough to give me some invaluable advice on how to best prepare for an interview at a tech giant (thanks to Indeedably for the suggestion of reaching out).

We chatted for quite a while about the interview process; what to expect; how best to train for the difficult problems; and all of the red flags which I should try to avoid.

I gathered a lot of useful intel, but I also ended the call thinking damn; it’s hard! It’s like…really really hard. I’m not just talking about the immense pressure that you’ll be under at your 4 or 5 interviews (one after another), but the questions are hard as well.

Have I really got the cahoonas to even attempt one of these interviews?

I don’t know, I definitely don’t feel like I do right now.

I’ve set up a rigorous training schedule but I’m struggling to find the brain-power-time to commit to it each day. Couple that with failing miserably at seemingly easy questions and it’s starting to get me down.

I’m just going to continue slogging through for now and hope that things begin to get a little easier, I’ve still got over 4 months of preparation time left.

Blogging

I’ve been a little light on the info posts lately. I’ve been spending some more time on website improvements like the interactive charts in the My Journey So Far page.

I’ve also been spending all of my creative writing time on a guest post for a friends blog which should be ready for release in February, so, unfortunately, it will probably be another somewhat quiet month…but I’ll let you guys know when the guest post is out so you can go and read it :)

Happiness

Of course, due to being so happy prior to Christmas , my mood has crashed a little in January. It was inevitable that this was going to happen, what goes up must come down - just like the stock market.

I’m trying to reassure myself that it’s just my mood fluctuating but my dampening mood of lethargy and unexcited-ness for the future is not very pleasant.

I really need to try and combat these swings more, I can’t just keep pointing at FIRE as the answer. I’ll have to do some more investigation into meditation and potentially go to the doctors about it.

I currently feel that it’s not severe enough to go to the doctors, and I don’t want to be taking all sorts of pills, so I’m unsure whether that’s even an option. In any case, I’m thinking that they’ll just tell me to practice mindfulness and meditation - that’s what they told me to do when I complained about weekly migraines.

Do you think I should just stop being a baby and realise that everyone in the world has mood swings and is depressed every so often?

Anyway, I hope that February can get me across £150k net worth!

How was your month?

About

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 07:30:27 +0000

Hi there!

I’m a person who is obsessed with the FIRE movement . I found out about FIRE after a friend introduced me to Mr Money Mustache in 2017 and gave me the amazing book titled Early Retirement Extreme . After reading that book, I was hooked!

I started this blog in 2018 to document my financial progress and preach about the wonderful philosophy of the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement.

SavingNinja has changed quite a bit over the years as I’ve found my place in the blogging world. I’ve created guides ranging from investing , to side hustles . I’ve created philosophical posts which discuss points of view about minimalism , frugality , wealth distribution , and happiness . A series which I called Thought Experiments that posed questions to the Financial Independence blogging community.

So many different types of content has been published from this blog, I’m not sure if I can call it a FIRE blog anymore. But, one thing has remained the same: I’ve always posted my real financial figures every month.

Each month, I update my financial figures in the SavingNinja Spreadsheet and share a Savings Report that documents my net worth for the month and an update for my life. Creating a Savings Report is now a ritual that I enjoy immensely, I treat them like a personal journal and I don’t intend to stop!

Over the lifetime of this blog I’ve: Got married, landed my dream job, moved countries, moved countries again, changed careers. I’ve also grown my net worth to over $400k, beyond my initial FIRE target. All of this, every month, has been documented and can be viewed on the My Financial Journey page.

Who Am I?

OK, enough about the history of this blog. Who am I and what’s my story so far?

I’m 34 years old.
I was born in Italy but grew up in the north of England.
I started my career as a Mobile Software Engineer 12 years ago after completing a degree in Game Development.
I worked in the South East of England and London for the first 6 years of my career.
I then moved to and worked in Stockholm, Sweden for 2 years after I landed my dream engineering job.
I transitioned into Engineering Management and emigrated to the USA (Massachusetts) with the same company this year.
I got married to my wife 6 years ago, and we’ve been together for over 14 years.

I have some long term ambitions…

~~Get a job at a global tech company~~ (2020)
~~Transition into Engineering Management~~ (2021)
~~Reach LeanFI~~ (2022)
~~Publish a technical book~~ (2022)
~~Relocate to the USA~~ (2022)
~~Reach $1m net worth~~ (2024)
~~Reach £1m net worth~~ (2024)
Move to a rural farm-like property
Build a house (or a barn!)
Publish a fantasy novel
Develop a game and release it on Steam
Personally develop and release a successful mobile app

Stay in touch

Reach out to me. I always enjoy hearing from readers.

Follow me on Twitter
Email me at savingninjauk [at] gmail.com
Find more social media links on the home page

Subscribe for free to get updates from this blog and get access to SavingNinja tools by going to the Subscription Page

My Journey to Financial Independence

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 07:30:27 +0000

Woah, Woah, Woah… Hang on a minute. This isn’t a real SavingNinja post; this is a page disguised as a post! I’ll be keeping this page updated every month and you can now find it under the ‘Savings’ menu option at the top of the site.

I’ve been tracking my journey to financial independence since August 2018 and publishing the full details on SavingNinja every month. Below, you can find all of my Savings Reports along with some interactive charts which will automatically update each month.

Subscribe now to keep up to date with my progress and get exclusive access to all of my spreadsheets and charts for your own personal use.

Learn how to Save for Financial Independence

Are you thinking of taking early retirement? Do you want to accelerate your FI journey to the maximum of your ability? Retire years earlier than your peers? Saving well is the key to achieving financial independence. Below I’ve collected the best resources from this site and elsewhere which will allow you to increase your savings drastically and get closer to your FI dream.

What is FIRE?

If you don’t know what FIRE Financial Independence Retire Early actually means then start here.

Find out how people are planning to take early retirement at 40 or lower and how you can too.

How to Calculate your Savings Rate

Learn how to calculate your savings rate when aiming for financial independence. There is one thing that matters most; getting the Maths right! You don’t want to end up having to go back to work if you choose to retire early.

Figure out how to do the Maths or use the premade compound interest calculator for Google Sheets and Excel here .

The Boggy Marsh Part 1 and Part 2

The secret financial blueprint that a lot of financial independence bloggers don’t talk about; time! Read this detailed two-part series which explores how important time really is when aiming for FI.

If you’re young or trying to convince a young friend to start their FIRE journey, definitely check this one out!

How to Bridge to your Pension

The question I see crop up the most from fresh FIRE pursuers is “How do I retire early when I can’t access my pension until 55?” As over half of my savings are going into my pension that’s the main question readers ask me.

This article will answer that - find out how I’m going to bridge to my pension and how you can too.

You could be working DECADES extra if you decide to not save into your pension, so this is a must-read!

How to Increase your Savings Rate

Last year I saved over 80% of my salary. A high savings rate will make achieving your financial independence dream a reality in no time!

Read this article to find out how you can increase your savings rate without reducing your quality of life.

How to Work in the City on a Budget

Do you think living in an expensive area like London or the South East of England will restrict your ability to save for financial independence? Wrong!

I own a home in the South East and work in London and live on £10k per year. Read this article to find out my best money-saving tips whilst working in the city!

FIRE Orientated Budgeting Spreadsheet

The first step in your financial independence journey should be to create a budget. You need to know what you’re spending your money on in order to save more and understand how much you’ll need in order to be FI.

Read this article to find out how to use the beautiful Saving Ninja budgeting spreadsheet and calculators.

Download the excel personal budget template or use it directly within Google Drive. You can use the spreadsheet for bills and everything in your household budget monthly or annually along with a dynamic FIRE calculator baked into each spreadsheet.

Super Saving Spreadsheet for Financial Independence

Get access to a full financial independence FIRE dashboard with access to over 15 charts made with Google Sheets and Google App Scripts.

Track your FIRE journey meticulously with this super-spreadsheet or grab an Excel downloadable with Excel FIRE calculators written in VB code.

Should you Include your House in your Net Worth?

Find out why you’ll be working years extra if you don’t include your house in your net worth and why including it is vital to the Maths of financial independence.

How Anyone can get a Student Discount

Did you think that you needed to actually study to be a student? Find out how anyone can get a student discount and get access to all of their juicy deals like 10% off Macbooks or 50% off Amazon prime!

Note: the vendor described in this post is no longer accepted as an educational institution, but with a little savvy-ness, you should be able to find a qualifying one.

Being Rich has nothing to do with your Salary

This was one of the first articles that I’d ever written (even before SavingNinja came into existence.)

In it, you’ll find out about my strong philosophy of what it means to be rich and why you should care.

Following these philosophies is what allowed me to detach myself from the materialistic norm and focus hard on saving instead.

Spending less Makes you Happier

This article again predates the age of this website. I talk about how I believe that spending less money makes you happier.

I’ve since debunked this notion a little with the discovery that I need to spend more in some cases to maximise my happiness but all of the points made in this article still ring true.

Subscriber Hub

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 07:30:27 +0000

Below is a list of all of the SavingNinja tools and spreadsheets. Leave a comment below if you have any feedback or requests.

2019 Reviewed - Things are Looking Up

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 07:30:47 +0000

It’s that time of year again where I create the charts, review the data, analyse, and seek to improve.

Looking back at 2018 reviewed I’m aghast at how much I’ve forgotten and shocked at the amount that can get accomplished in a single year. That’s why these posts are so important; not just for personal finance but for all of your goals.

The clarity that journaling gives you means that you can achieve anything that you set out to do as you’ll have time to reflect, analyse and get incrementally better!

Let’s get stuck in.

Introduction

2019 has really been a pinnacle year.

There was a wedding, lots of traveling, saving has gone through the roof with multiple milestones being hit; The SavingNinja audience has grown exponentially, and things are looking promising career-wise. It’s the first year that I’ve properly felt content and excited since I left University almost 6 years ago.

Up until 2019, I’d felt like I was slugging my way through the middle bit of growing up; saving for a house, climbing the career ladder, and starting my investment snowball from nothing. Now, in part due to reaching six-figures invested over Christmas , I feel like I’ve finally made it to the good bit - I can start to live a little more.

Like last year, let’s start with the finances - we are a personal finance blog after all!

2019 Financial Review

There has been a considerable overhaul to the Analytics section of the Super Spreadsheet . Google Sheets didn’t have all of the forecasting functions that Microsoft Excel had, so I had to manually forecast all of the future data. Luckily, this actually made the results better! I was able to forecast growth depending on 5 different investment return predictions.

To house all of this new data, the spreadsheet now contains a ‘Chart Data’ tab. This tab amalgamates all of the separate yearly data into one set and also calculates extras such as forecasts.

The Chart Data tab allowed me to create a whole suite of new charts in the ‘Analytics’ section (over 15 - I may have gone a bit overboard!) These charts now show data spanning all of the way back to 2018 and will be updated every month.

Subscribe to SavingNinja to get access to all of the same juicy charts for personal use.

£134,889 Networth (+£69,262)
£103,858 Excluding House (+£66,154)
£56,007 Contributed
£13,255 Interest Earned
£63,307 Pension (+£39,734)
£31,981 Contributed
£7,753 Interest Earned
£37,918 Stocks & Shares ISA (+£23,787)
£19,000 Contributed
£4,787 Interest Earned
£2,633 Other Investments (+£2,633)
£1,918 Contributed
£715 Interest Earned
£31,031 House Equity (+£3,108)
£3,108 Contributed

Financial Growth

Networth soared this year with my pension and ISA pot both surpassing my house equity total. My net worth has increased by a whopping 175.46%; I doubt I’ll ever see that kind of growth in a single year again.

I filled my ISA with £19k contributions and gained £4,787 from stock growth in 2019. It’s nice to finally see my ISA pot surpass my house equity at £37,918, especially as last year my pension had only just achieved this feat.

My pension is now a behemoth with £63,307 invested. This has grown almost 3 times the size of the measly £23,573 that it was at the beginning of 2019.

I’m going to have to seriously start considering stopping my pension contributions next year due to lifetime allowance concerns when my pension pot grows above £100k.

2019 was a very good year for stocks as my portfolio grew by 23% earning a combined growth of £13,255. Very different from the -£3,474 that I made going into the year.

My contributions still vastly outweigh my interest gains, but you can see that slowly starting to change as my pot grows larger with my biggest gain being in June earning £3,399 in one month; almost beating my lowest contributions amount of £3,500!

How Stocks Performed in 2019

Stocks rose by a huge amount this year. I have no idea how with the Brexit turmoil and Trump rampage, but it’s been the best year for growth I’ve ever seen.

The amazing returns bought me out of the deep trench that I was in at the end of 2018 and into the all-clear. My interest earned since I began tracking now stands at £9,781.

I’m Still Increasing my Savings Rate

Although my savings rate has always been high at around 75%, it almost touched 90% by the end of the year. At such high numbers, it takes a huge amount to move by a single percentage point, so although the chart doesn’t seem like it’s grown much, the difference in contributions vs 2018 has been monumental.

I wouldn’t have been able to achieve such a high savings rate without taking advantage of the generous government tax saving schemes (I’m paying zero tax for the next 4 months !) Or the huge amount of tax-free income I earned in 2019 (over £20k).

Monthly Contributions

My monthly contributions have increased almost every month as I earned more and spent less. I never would have dreamed of contributing over £7,000 into stocks for two months in a row before I started my FIRE journey a couple of years ago.

My change in mindset has been huge and I’m lucky to have adopted the FIRE mindset before I started earning my current salary.

December was the first time ever that I surpassed £10k in net worth gains in a single month - which is 10% of my total investment portfolio!

Contributions are very much still king at the moment.

The below chart shows my total contributions and interest earned since July 2018 on top of the £48k I already had saved.

You can see the difference in my monthly contributions (and some interest gains) over the last 18 months below.

I hope to increase them further in 2020!

Forecasting

Last year’s forecasts were actually pretty accurate. Forecasts become harder to predict the larger your pot as stock market swings can affect you more drastically, so this year I’ve added 5 different predictions ranging from 0% growth all of the way to 15% growth.

Of course, we could still see a net loss if a correction occurs, but I’m putting my faith in the market to return at least 6% over the super long term; so it should even out.

It’s pretty unlikely that I’ll reach my £200k invested milestone in 2020. If stock markets grew by 15% I’d still be £23k short. Although I am planning to increase my contributions further this year and you never know, we might have another 30% growth year?

It would only take 3% growth, however, to hit the £200k total net worth goal, which would be absolutely awesome!

It’s looking pretty promising that I’ll surpass the £100k milestone for my pension pot in 2020, especially as I’ll be contributing more into it. I’ll have to explore the Lifetime Allowance a little more in 2021 as with 30+ years growth, a lot can happen with £100k!

My ISA pot continues it’s slow chug up the curve. The £20k limit slows down my ability to kick-start the compounding snowball somewhat so I’ll be lucky if it hits £100k by the end of 2021.

Goals Achieved

1. Reach £100k net worth (A++)

£135k net worth and £103k investments achieved! I blew this goal out of the water thanks to side hustles and increased earning.

2. Finish renovating the house and get a valuation (B-)

We’ve laid new wood flooring, painted the hallways and skirting boards, renovated the kitchen and bathroom, and installed a new boiler. We do still have to fit a new carpet and replace the front wall (or change it into a driveway), so it’s a B- for this goal.

We’ve decided that we’ll be staying here for at least another 2 years now so there isn’t as much rush to get everything finished at the moment, but I’d still like to complete everything as we’re so close!

3. Marie Kondo ** the house and simplify** (B)

We did Marie Kondo our biggest category; our clothes. Remember the 20 full bin-bags of clothes that got donated to charity? That was tough, but our life has been better ever since.

The only problem is, the meticulous organisation has started deteriorating as we’ve accumulated more things without getting rid of others. We will have to Marie Kondo the clothes again in 2020, but hopefully this time it will be way easier.

We successfully Marie Kondo’d the papers and kitchen, although that was way easier than we thought it would be. The only one left is the Loft of Dread, which we will be doing soon.

4. Get married! (A++)

Yes! We got married and everything went better than I could have ever imagined; there’s not one thing that I would change.

Looking Forward

I feel like 2020 is going to be a bit of a pivotal year, where things will change drastically - hopefully for the better.

Last year I was feeling down with the sensation of being stuck somewhere that I didn’t want to be; wanting to get to my destination faster. This year solely due to my growth in 2019 I’ve felt a renewed vigor.

I can see my FI target approaching fast (only two and a half years away) and I am confident that my salary and saving will increase more as I climb the career ladder.

I can almost taste the finish line and it’s making me enjoy the present more; the pursuit is exciting again. I’m also feeling the strain in my shoulders relax when it comes to spending on what makes me happy, with the vow to go on at least one snowboarding holiday per year.

I have the financial independence movement to thank for all of these feelings.

Next Steps for my Career

I’m approaching the 6th year of my career and the 2nd year at my current employer, I feel like it’s about time I level up. I can feel the itch and excitement to move already building; I need to progress.

I’m already in a senior role in a top FTSE 100 company, to level up again I’m going to need to put in more work - much more work than I’ve ever done before.

This is why you’ve heard me begin to ramble on about taking courses and enrolling in MA degree programs over the last 6 months. The type of role that I’ll have my sights on next will need a lot of preparation if I’m going to pass the interviews.

The feeling of advancing my career wasn’t really present at the beginning of last year. I’d started making a killing with Each Way Betting . I was also sure that I would go into contracting and hit my peak earning potential without much preparation required.

Through-out the year, IR35 dampened the contracting dream (at least for now), and the bookies started banning my accounts and killing off my tax-free money trees.

That left me with the ambitious and more demanding option of climbing the corporate career ladder with:

A) The much more difficult (but way more exciting) option of getting hired at a tech-giant like Google or Facebook. This would also give me a much better chance of making it to the USA.

B) Moving into a leadership position in the FinTech industry (my current industry). This is the natural next step for me. It would come with the higher salary (and progression) that I crave, but it would also invoke more stress with less working from home, more office politics, and no exciting projects.

I could, of course, re-visit the notion of contracting after the IR35 woes have settled down, but I want to at least try my luck with the tech-giants. If I fail, it will only bolster my ability when interviewing with other companies.

Improving my Happiness

I mentioned previously that I have a problem with spending money . As my six-figure investment pot came into view (and probably due to thinking about the above post,) I’ve started to be more considerate when thinking about how I can spend more to increase my happiness.

I’ve already booked a family snowboarding holiday in Switzerland at the beginning of April, and we plan to go to Canada later in the year. I want to make sure that the increased spending goes solely on things that will bring the most joy, but I’ll maybe have to experiment a little.

Going into 2020 I’ll be forcing myself to seek additional happiness without thinking about the monetary cost. I’ll be taking a leaf from Brandon over at The MadFIentist and starting a happiness spreadsheet to ensure that I meet this goal. It’s worked for my finances, it could bolster my happiness too!

Blogging

Last year I was worried about the need to release content every week, I’ve now decided that I’m going to focus on quality content and site improvements.

There is so much that I want to do in 2020 that it will be insanely hard to keep up with the 1 post per week schedule, so I’m going to go down a ‘post if I have time’ route and try to stick with a minimum of 1 every fortnight.

The Thought Experiment series I enjoyed very much and loved seeing the responses by sometimes 15+ other bloggers. But this, like most things, has started to become tedious.

I don’t want to have to force a new experiment out. I’m going to create a dedicated post for all of the Thought Experiments and release a new question only when there is something exciting to discuss. I’ll potentially write a post myself first and then decide if it should become a Thought Experiment. I’m still open to suggestions.

Blogging Statistics

Now I’ve never shared my blog statistics before. I don’t like the idea of doing so as I don’t think blogging should be measured by a metric, it should be measured by the quality of content. Most of the time a high page count can come from a few lucky backlinks or Google rankings and not by writing something awesome.

But, I have to share it; just this once! I have to because my page views are nearing a very special milestone…

My page views have been almost identically tracking my investment total for the past year! I was REALLY hoping that they would cross the 100k milestone at the same time as my investments over Christmas!! But they were just shy of the goal :)

Goals TL;DR

Reach £200k total net worth
Complete a 6-month Coursera Specialisation in Algorithms
Apply to at least 2 tech-giant companies
Get a new job which is higher pay / in leadership / a tech-giant
Go on more than 1 holiday

Let’s get going!

Savings Report #18 - 100k Goal Achieved!

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 07:30:57 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

I have 100k invested in the stock market!!! I wasn’t sure that we were going to make it as I needed some investment growth for two months in a row to hit 6-figures before the end of 2019. The growth was in fact so good that it was overshot by almost 4k.

Along with my second ISA-filling month of contributing £4500 into my S&S ISA, £2737 was also earned by investment gains; £581 from Tesla (the ‘Other Investments’ section) alone!

This was the first month ever that my monthly change in net-worth has grown by over £10k.

I’ve been waiting to reach this 6-figure goal ever since I wrote Being Rich Has Nothing to do With Your Salary all the way back in August 2018 when I only had 25k invested .

I had already started to feel more inclined to spend money on increasing my happiness as the 100k goal grew closer; I’ve vowed to go on a snowboarding holiday at least once a year from now on. A week in Switzerland has been booked for April, and just having it in the calendar has increased my happiness levels immensely as I’m looking forward to it so much.

My ‘years to FI’ figure has dropped by a couple of months to 2 years and 8 months which would make me 30 years old, although, I’ve set myself a stretch goal of achieving my FI figure of £300k before the age of 30 which means I’ll have to decrease my ‘years to FI’ number by 8 months.

My savings will be increased in 2020 as I’m hoping to fill my ISA and pension pots by the annual allowance (for the first time ever), so this should knock off some months.

I’ve actually increased my salary sacrifice at work to 75% in the hopes of reaching the 40k annual pension allowance by April. This will see me pay zero tax or student loan payments for 4 months (woo!)

The untaxed 25% of my salary is enough to cover my expenses, but I’ll be using my cash savings to continue to pay £1k per month into my ISA - I’m also expecting a small bonus in February which should help tide me over into the new tax year.

Other News

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and didn’t spend too much money on gifts and booze. This year has been a very special one for the Ninja family as we finally tied the knot and got married and our savings rates have never been better at 82.35% for me and 60% for Mrs SavingNinja (we keep our finances separate ).

2020 should be the year where Mrs SavingNinja opens her own ISA as she’s now got a hefty emergency fund which she’s built up whilst still contributing a lot into her pension.

We’ll be discussing our future goals in the upcoming 2019 Reviewed post; 2020 is bound to be an exciting year and I can’t wait for it to begin!

School

Last month I talked about the decision to enroll in a Computer Science Masters degree course. Upon thinking about this a little more, I’ve decided to postpone the degree and instead take a paid Udacity ‘specialisation’ course on Algorithms whilst I apply to FAANG companies.

The main reason that I decided to postpone the degree was that upon further pondering, I realised a big part of its allure was to help with FAANG potential and in-turn moving to the USA; if I were already working at one of these companies, or living in the USA, I probably wouldn’t pick up an MA just yet.

Also, the Algorithms section of the degree probably wouldn’t have been taken in the first or even second year and this is the main course that would have helped with my interviews.

Considering these things, it made sense to take an interview-centric learning path in the beginning - even if I had to pay a little (I think it’s £49 per month for the Udacity specialisation) - and apply to these companies first to see where I stand. I can then re-evaluate taking the MA next year.

Upcoming

I’ve been light with the details of how my finances have changed in 2019 as next week will be the release of the ‘2019 Reviewed’ post which will see the analysis of 2019 and the predictions for 2020.

I’ve also got a couple of exciting announcements to make in January for new tools that I’ve created and developed *hint* to help fast-track our financial independence goals whilst working together!

The Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 07:30:46 +0000

Update: With the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet being over one and a half years old, it was about time it got modernised and bought into the fully online world of Google Sheets and away from Microsoft Excel.

Reminder: To download the sheet for your own use, Subscribe, and the download link will be emailed to you!

As of December 2019, all functionality can be used on Google Sheets, this includes the ‘Years to FI’, ‘Drawdown’ and ‘Compound’ calculators. There is no longer any need to install Microsoft Excel and download the files, although there are still Excel versions available on the Ninja page which all of my subscribers have access to.

The below article has been updated to include screenshots and instructions for use of the new Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet online version.

I track my savings with the most powerful software in the world!!… Microsoft Excel Google Sheets!

Excel can do a whole lot more than most people think it can. As well as being an awesome data entry tool, you can enhance your sheet to the point of it being a fully-featured form. You can even add Python and Visual Basic code to run complicated macros that calculate anything you want.

The beauty of Excel really shines when you have a lot of data, you can do tons with it! Animated pie charts, interactive graphs, anything! This is why it really shocks me when people use or even pay for external software to track their expenses and savings. With Excel, it’s fully customizable, so you really can get a tailored product. It’s pretty damn easy to do too… Sure you might spend a little bit of time Googling how to structure a certain formula, but you’ll get it in no time.

I made a mega Excel sheet especially for Saving Ninja readers. I wanted it to be as simple as possible to track your monthly savings, but also provide the most useful stats possible. I even went the extra mile and added some Visual Basic code to calculate the expected time in which you’ll reach financial independence.

The document assumes that you have a budget and you know what your annual expenses are expected to be. I have a separate Excel document (and now Google Sheets as well) to calculate my budget, find that here .

It also assumes that you know your house value (if you own a house) and your mortgage interest rate. I wanted to track my savings as effortlessly as possible, so I added formulas that use your mortgage interest rate to automatically calculate how much house equity you have paid off every month.

The predicted investment growth is used to calculate your ‘Expected Time To FI’. This updates when you click the ‘calculate’ button. The Visual Basic code (or Google App Scripts code) which runs when you click this button recursively simulates future months based on your average savings rate.

It adds your predicted investment growth to your investment pots and also adds your house equity. The recursion stops when you’ve successfully got enough savings to retire on (using the 4% rule).

This section of the Excel document also shows lots of useful information based on your savings so far such as total pot worth, total growth and total interest earnt (in the current year).

The next section of the document is where you’ll be updating your total pots each month. It will then use these figures to calculate how much interest you’ve earned and how much your pots have grown (or decreased). All of the orange boxes are user inputs; the rest is automatic. As you can see, the house equity (other than the starting figure) is calculated automatically based on your monthly contribution.

Finally, you’re monthly contribution section. Here you’ll enter how much you’ve contributed each month. It will use these figures to calculate your savings rate and figure out how much interest you’ve earned since the previous month.

New Additions

Draw Down Calculator

A lot of people will be trying to calculate how much money they need in their ISA to last them until they reach their pension pot. For this, I built the Drawdown Calculator. This is detached from all of the other data on the Spreadsheet (other than expected annual return). You simply add your Pot and your yearly drawdown and hit ‘Calculate’.

It then iterates month by month, drawing down and adding interest until you finally run out of money. It will let you know how long it lasted in the ‘Years Until Depleted’ cell.

Compound Interest Calculator

Calculate all of your compound interest until your heart’s content! Input your pot, yearly deposits and months of compounding and hit the calculate button.

Analytics

The Analytics tab will predict your future growth based off the data that it has gathered for the year. This is split into 4 charts:

1. Total Net Worth

2. ISA Pot

3. Pension Pot

4. Investments Excluding House Equity

A Note on Google Sheets

The Google Sheet that you will have access to is the actual one that I will be updating each month. As I will be inputting new data online instead of uploading the Excel file each month, there are no longer file ‘versions,’ it will always be up to date.

This version is ‘View Only,’ to take a copy of the sheet for your own data, you must be logged into a Google Account and click on the ‘Make a copy’ option. This copied sheet will then save into your Google Drive where you can edit the inputs and use the calculators.

The Google Sheets use App Script to run the calculators integrated into the spreadsheet. When you click on a ‘calculate’ button for the first time, you will have to grant the script permission to run inside your Google Sheet. You will also see a ‘suspicious app’ warning pop up to warn you that the scripts will have the ability to edit your sheet data.

I’ll be using this spreadsheet each month to update my savings and to help me share with you guys how much my savings have grown. I am adding features monthly and now with Google Sheets integration, you’ll get access to new features as soon as they’re developed.

Each year, a new tab will be created and the previous years’ analytics added to the ‘Analytics’ tab. You can also duplicate the ‘Savings - Blank’ tab if you want to quickly start a fresh set of data with your own inputs.

The Google and Excel spreadsheets (along with lots of other content) are available on the Secret Ninja Page which all Saving Ninja subscribers have access to. I’ll also be starting a subscriber-only newsletter in 2020.

If you’re not a subscriber yet; you can find the subscription box in the top, right-hand widget panel. It’s free, and you can always unsubscribe if you don’t want to keep in touch.

I’ll be using this page as a landing page for any special requests or questions regarding this spreadsheet. If you have any feedback or even if you’ve found it helpful, please do leave a comment below; I’d love to hear from you!

Thought Experiment #9 - A Brave New World

Sun, 15 Dec 2019 09:39:40 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #9.

At the beginning of each second month, a thought experiment question will be tweeted under the hashtag #ThoughtExperiment and everyone is invited to participate with their own posts, these will then go live together on the 15th of the next month (you can still join in after this date). Below is the question asked for this Thought Experiment.

You’ve arrived at Firearto, better known as ‘Earth 2.0’, an exo planet located over 200,000 light years away. As you walk down the exit corridor of your spaceship along with another million colonizers you think to yourself: What will I do here? Firearto is a planet that has no monetary system, all of your needs are provided for by FSY (Firearto Space Corp). How will you live your life?

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #9

SavingNinja

Othalafehu

Merely curious

A brave new world, with the time to explore it. That was the marketing slogan that FSY has thrown around for the last century. Every 5 years a new ship leaves Earth with around 1 million colonists on board and begins what will be a 100 year and 200,000 lightyear journey towards what everyone thinks will be their new life of bliss. A life filled with adventure and relaxation with the time to smell the flowers on a pristine, unravished, new planet. That’s if we humans don’t destroy it in the 100 years that it takes to get there! We have a knack for that.

FSY’s biggest trick up their sleeve is FOMO; fear of missing out. No one wants to be left on a dying rock whilst everyone else is over on Earth 2.0 having all of the fun. FOMO is what happened to me. 5 years ago my 65-year-old parents eloquently announced at their retirement party that they had been accepted by FSY on the next Firarto coloniser ship and would be leaving in the following month. GREAT was the first thought that popped into my head. . . No inheritance for me. Part of the FSY enrollment plan requires you to donate all of your earthly assets to them to help fund your journey, “You won’t be needing them where you’re going,” they assure you.

Beyond the shock of my inheritance going ka-poot was the extra-double shock of realising that I’d never see my parents again. In fact, I’d almost definitely be dead from old age before they even woke up from the FSY cryogenic sleep tanks.

“We want to taste the fresh air again,” was their lazy excuse for why they’d skip out on seeing their grandkids grow up. Yeah, yeah, I thought; you just want some peace and quiet!

After a tearful goodbye to two giddy 65-year-olds and going back to work for the season, a lot of emotions began to whack me off balance. Do I really want to continue working for the next 20 years? Should I be content with monotonously clocking in and clocking out of my death cubical like an emotionless, very tired, cyborg? Only to get home and have no energy to do anything other than sit with my family like a potato and watch shitty TV?

NO.

That Brave New World poster was starting to look a hell of a lot more attractive. I didn’t want my parents to be living it up on the party planet whilst I stewed in my grave after living a long and laborious life of work and misery. So, I signed my family up to the next coloniser voyage - and was accepted!

The Beginning of the Rest of our Lives

I rubbed my tired eyes as I stood in the exit lobby waiting to disembark. My whole body ached - sleeping for 100 years will do that to you. All of my family were standing next to me in their FSY issued jump-suits and jackets. I felt like a newborn child seeing the world for the first time. As I looked around at the other colonisers, I realised that they all had similar doe-eyed looks on their faces. Elation bubbled up from my stomach, I was almost dizzy with excitement.

BEEEEEP . . . BEEEEEP . . . BEEEEEP . . .

The whole ship rattled as the huge exterior door began to vent steam at the hinges and slowly partition. The cabin was instantaneously flooded with a brilliant sunlight as everyone gasped in unison. The first thing I glimpsed was green, a whole lot of green. There was nothing but trees as far as the eye could see, beautiful vistas of lakes and mountains in each direction. Firearto had an abundance of resource packed asteroids and moons in the neighbouring vicinity. All of the resources the inhabitants needed were shipped in from external entities, leaving Firearto’s landscape beautifully unravished.

A million ideas flooded into my head of what our new life could be like. I felt lucky - tremendously lucky to have such a beautiful planet to explore and be a part of. I also felt connected; connected to every single person living here, they were my fellow explorers. We came here together; to live a happier life. I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my days helping my companions grow our new life here, exploring the beautiful landscape together, and living a life of bliss in unison.

When back on Earth, all I wanted to do was to get away from society. Now all I wanted to do was be a part of it. Wiping the slate clean of all of the worldly wrongs and resentments left a single human emotion. The powerful yearning to belong.

Savings Report #17 - Going Back to School

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 07:30:47 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

The percentage change in my total invested assets this month went up by 11.47%.

Oh boy, I’m going to miss having such a big impact from my contributions when my pot grows a little larger!

As you guys can see, I dumped an extra £3500 into my ISA this month.

I’ve done this to ensure that I maximise the ISA threshold of 20k before April, and I’m doing it early because I want to hit the 100k invested goal before the end of 2019 (I’ve got the Prosecco ready to celebrate!)

This also coincidentally lined up with an unexpected pay rise from work. I usually get a car allowance which I took as cash each month (I have no need for a car). My employer has now stopped offering this perk and instead consolidated the car allowance into my base pay.

This had the unexpected benefit of increasing my employers’ pension contribution amount and the amount of bonus they pay me by quite a large sum as it gets calculated based on my base pay. So, my pension contributions seem to have gone up by £300 - almost at the pension annual limit!

This might change next month as when something changes with your pay it usually takes HMRC a while to figure out how much tax you should be paying, we’ll see.

I’ve got another £4500 lined up to go into my ISA on the 1st of December, so it’s looking like I will hit that 100k target next month!! I really hope stocks don’t take a tumble :)

I benefitted from a hefty £2000 interest earned from stock growth this month which is why that drool-worthy 6-figure invested sum is within my sights.

Alt-Investments

As soon as Tesla stock tumbled because of the announcement of the AWESOME Cybertruck, I took the opportunity to buy more of them!

Due to Property Partner’s fee increase, I really wanted to get rid of the platform from my portfolio and replace it with something else, so I bought around £770 worth of Tesla shares bringing my total to 8 shares (I got 3 shares for the price I paid for 5 back in August !).

Now all of my alt-investments are Tesla stock, so it should be easier to track the performance each month.

I’ve yet to officially sell the Property Partner portfolio even when I’m listing the property at a huge loss of 12%, I may have to lower the price even further if it doesn’t sell this month :(

Other News

I’ve decided that I’m going to enroll in an American graduate program to get a Masters of Computer Science. This is a huge commitment and it’s going to take up a considerable amount of my time over the next 2 - 3 years as I’ll be completing it whilst still working full time.

My interest in doing this all started when I met someone at a FI meet up who’d done this course and I was shocked at the low cost and the diploma awarded. It’s actually the cheapest Masters program that you can take from a premier USA college. Check it out here , and read some awesome opinions about it here .

I’ll be writing up an article soon about why I believe that this was the right choice for me. It’s not going to change any of my other plans, I’ll still be training and applying for a FAANG[note]FAANG = Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google.[/note] job next year and I still have my sights set on emigrating - this degree will hopefully help with these goals!

Life

I’ve been feeling increasingly melancholy about life recently. I seem to get like this every now and again; do I REALLY want to move to the USA? What will ACTUALLY make me (and my wife) happy? Maybe I should be doing something COMPLETELY different!? All of that jazz.

I think my partner and I need to have a really good planning session and simulate different routes that we both could take and where they may take us 5, 10, and 15 years down the line. Sometimes what we think we want now won’t actually be the best move when you consider what you want in the future.

Mrs SavingNinja is currently on the cusp of a potential career change so we need to really sit down and think whether it’s even worth it when thinking of our future goals, and if it is; what career she should be putting her energy and money into developing to align with that future.

We need to ask ourselves questions like; Do we still want to travel and/or have the ability to live anywhere whilst working?

That would be considerably easier if we could both work remotely. If we wanted to go down this route then maybe efforts should be focused on gaining skills to allow for a better possibility to work remotely?

It’s strange how I seem to get sad when I feel unsure of the direction we’re heading in. Planning for the future always makes me happier!

How has your month been? Do you think getting a graduate degree is worth it?

I'm Allergic to Spending Money!

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 06:30:05 +0000

“Are you not having a drink?” John asked me as we huddled into the crowded upstairs room of a fancy pub.

We were there for the November installment of the ‘side-hustle’ meet up, hosted by the venerable Financial Independence London group. The room was filled with over 100 bustling FIRE advocates, sipping on expensive £12 white wines and £6 pints of beer.

“I’ll stick with tap water and ice, thank you,” I said with a pang of envy.

John, my co-attendee of this side-hustle extravaganza was already on his second £6 pint. John, by the way, is a frugality expert, he prides himself on being frugal and is the founder of the very popular Frugal and Freegan London group, he’s the only person that I know that probably has the resourcefulness to live for free if needed. And yet, he had no qualms about buying the ludicrously expensive beer, whilst I, on the other hand, felt resistance at simply the mention of it.

What is wrong with me? I thought. I’m saving over 80% of my salary and I can’t even stomach the notion of buying a single expensive drink?

I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t realise that this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened.

I’ve lost count of the times that we’ve decided to get take-out, but upon me trying to locate the best deals from the limited available options, decide that I’ll cook something up as I don’t want to spend £20 on some ‘crappy Chinese food.’

I can’t count the times that I’ve finally said ‘YES, we can get a chippy, I fancy one too!’ Only to walk the 10 minutes to the local chip shop and return home empty-handed after seeing that the price of 1 piece of cod was £6.50! (When did fish and chips get so bloody expensive?)

There are other scenarios like this too: Deciding to eat out at a restaurant when we’re out for the day, ending up instead with a large bag of crisps. Not getting food halfway through a long drive due to the increased cost at motorway service food courts (even when we’re really hungry!) The list goes on and on.

I’m that awkward person, to my wife’s sadness, who will look at every single menu or food shop seeking the best value, only to end up with nothing. I’d rather have a rumbling stomach than be ripped-off.

Is there something wrong with me?

When experiencing this allergy to spending, it’s not just a preference that I prefer to choose. It’s actually a feeling deep down in my gut, I feel physically sick. It’s like (I imagine) how an addict would feel when trying to resist the urge which is telling them to take that next hit:- I REALLY don’t want to spend.

Someone telling me ‘Come on, treat yourself’ or ‘You’ve earned it’ won’t help. The psychological feeling is almost physical, the magnetic-like resistance is too strong.

With careful analysis of this feeling, it seems to be more closely related to value and specifically the fear of not getting ‘good value.’ I feel tremendous anxiety around the notion of being ripped-off.

I landed on this hypothesis as I don’t feel the same wretchedness when buying pints of beer for £2.30 at a local Weatherspoons, or when buying a crate of beer for less than £1 per can in the supermarket.

Recently, I’ve had to book flights to a family gathering, I leapt into the task thinking that £50 was good value for a flight to Europe. Then when seeing via Google Flights that the flights were only £17 in the previous month, I immediately felt a tremendous hatred and anxiety.

‘That’s horrible value, why should I pay more than double the price just because I have to fly one month later!’

It’s negatively affecting my life

This is actually a problem. Yeah, sure, it’s doing wonders for my savings rate, but I shouldn’t have to feel physically sick and wrought with anxiety when having to purchase a bad-value product or service, especially since doing so would figuratively be a drop in the pond to my savings plan.

If I bought 3 expensive £6 pints at each London FIRE meet-up, which I attend roughly once per month, that would equal £18 per month. -I’m trying furiously to not immediately associate that price to double what it would cost me for Spotify premium, which I don’t pay due to the bad value, I instead suffer through the adverts.

That would only cost me £216 per year, that’s 0.36% out of my projected investment amount which I contributed out of my salary this tax year, should I really be feeling these levels of anxiety?

Breaking frugal habits

I ended up drinking tap water through-out the night. After discussing the subject of frugality with John, he hit me with this resolute quote: ‘It’s difficult to break a lifetime of frugal habits.’

I know that these habits (and intrinsic fears) are going to have to be broken at some point, especially as my nest egg becomes fully established. I can’t live with the paralysing fear of needing value in everything that I buy, some spending just can’t be avoided; I no longer want to suffer when I make one of these purchases.

I also want to be able to spend on the little things that will hardly make a dent in my savings but will bring me a little joy.

I need to start forcefully increasing my spending to inject more small, joyful things. I should do this now before my frugality becomes too ingrained to ever break out of, there will definitely be more work that needs to be done!

I don’t want to become this guy

Have you ever felt a repulsion towards spending money? How did you break out of these habits?

How to Calculate your Savings Rate

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 06:30:26 +0000

I had a graduate email me the other day to thank me for getting him on the path to saving early (awesome email!)

He had one question though: How do you calculate your savings rate?

I then realised that I’ve never really explained in a post how you should calculate your savings rate and how I’ve set up the SNSS (Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet ) to calculate that figure.

So, here it is!

How should you calculate your savings rate?

There are two things that I care about most when it comes to calculating your savings rate - or anything else for that matter - and that is simplicity and mathematical function.

The calculation needs to work with any and all Math. It should be possible to plug any variables into the formula and for it to work out of the box, straight away.

It also needs to be simple. Anyone should be able to figure out their savings rate with minimal thought, whether they own a home, rent, have a pension, don’t have a pension - the calculation should be the same. No airy-fairy “My savings rate is N minus mortgage payments, plus equity, minus pre-tax pension payments divided by two.” It should be the same calculation no matter what assets you own or which company pension plan you are enrolled in.

Keeping it simple

The SNSS expects you to know what your average expenses are for the year. The budgeting strategy that I use, and I implore you to use as well, revolves around creating an annual budget at the beginning of the year and sticking to it as best as you can.

Doing this will allow you to allocate certain budgets to your ‘fun pots’ such as holiday and your ‘savings pots.’ It will also allow you to visualise the year before it begins and shift spending to allow more allocation to things like holidays or more to savings depending on what your current annual goal is. I’ve written a post about this method of budgeting here , and it’s vital you use this method if you want to make the most out of the Super Spreadsheet .

The benefit of budgeting for the whole year means that you don’t have to track your expenses every month, this allows you to keep your tracking simple and quick. You will, of course, lose a little bit of accuracy doing it this way, but that can be fixed.

I’ve combated the accuracy deficit by increasing my annual expenses to £12000 in the SNSS instead of the more accurate figure of £9356 , this ensures that I have a little wiggle room when it comes to the uncertain expenses that crop up throughout the year. It also means that if I’m off-point, I’ll be under rather than over-calculating.

Don’t worry about all of your money

The Super Spreadsheet only cares about the money that you have invested, your monthly contributions, and your expected expenses (which you should have already figured out and added to the top of the SNSS in the ‘annual expenses’ input box).

If there is money that you have earned but not invested yet (or spent), don’t worry about it. With respect to ‘keeping it simple’, we can forget about this earning. It also isn’t useful when calculating things like ‘Years to FI’ as that assumes that everything you have saved is going to be compounding (other than your house equity).

For myself, a big chunk of my net income I don’t invest or spend. But that isn’t taken into account when calculating my monthly savings rate. I use this extra money to hoard into my Marcus account as an emergency fund. I then empty any excess emergency fund money into an ISA at the end of each tax year. This will skew my savings rate calculation for that particular month (maybe even making it go above 100%) but the ‘average savings rate’ located at the top of the SNSS records the running average for the whole 12 months, so you can use that figure to get an accurate representation of your real savings rate at the end of the year.

You should include your house in your savings rate

You should definitely be included your house in your net worth; that means that you should be including your equity payments each month in your savings rate as well.

If you were to sell all of your assets today, THAT would be your net worth…keep it simple! It doesn’t matter if you never plan to sell your home, or if you’re mortgage-free, it’s an asset.

Including your house equity (or any other equity for that matter) in your savings rate allows us to factor it into each mathematical calculation. If your home is mortgaged and your equity payments form part of your expenses, your savings rate will more accurately represent your future FI date with your home equity included. Read more into this argument here .

What’s the Math formula?

The formula simply needs two bits of information: your total expenses, and your total income - which is retrieved in the SNSS by combining your monthly contributions and your monthly expenses.

With these two figures we can do this calculation:

((Total Income - Expenses) / Total Income) * 100

So if your total income for the month is £4000 and you invest £3000 you’ll do:

£4000 - £1000 = £3000
£3000 / £4000 = 0.75
0.75 * 100 = 75

And voila, your savings rate is 75%.

This same formula can, of course, be used for your yearly income and expenses, but I just calculate the average from 12 months of savings rates to get my true savings rate at the end of the year.

What should I build?

Go and check out the Super Spreadsheet to check it out for yourselves. If you don’t want to subscribe, contact me and I’ll send it to you. I’ll be making it available to everyone when the site renovation is finished anyways.

I’m also planning to add some more features to the spreadsheet at the end of the year. What would you like to see? Do you want a way of interactively simulating compounding with graphs presentations similar to the ones I showed in this post , or are there any additional fields that you would like me to add?

Let me know in the comments below!

Savings Report #16 - Time for a new Saving Ninja?

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 06:30:55 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

The losses continue coming from last month; I lost a total of £1657 from depreciating assets in my pension and ISA.

This actually lines up quite nicely as I’ve upped my ISA contributions for November so I’ll be getting stocks whilst they’re cheap!

However, it doesn’t bode well for hitting my 100k invested target by the end of 2019. Even with my increased ISA contributions for the next couple of months, I’ll need some serious stock growth to hit that target, and at this rate, it’s looking to drop further - but fingers crossed for growth.

My alt-investments actually grew this month! Not thanks to Property Partner , but thanks to TESLA. As I’m sure a lot of you read in the news, when Elon announced a very profitable quarter, TESLA stock rose by almost 20%! Half of my alt-investments are held in TESLA stock so I saw a nice 10% growth.

Other News

After my wedding and honeymoon, I’ve really just got the long slog down the road to FI ahead of me. The numbers are growing quickly, and there is a lot to look forward to in the coming years, I just want to get to where I’m going now.

I want to work on my own projects, I want to live on a Ranch in a different country, or at least be in a different country, I really don’t want to be stuck in my current work routine for the next 5 odd years.

A lot of people would argue that I should stop deferring and do some of the things that make me happy now, but it’s hard. A lot of my passion projects require tons of learning and dedication, like building a video game.

As I’m finding out with trying to deeply study for upcoming interviews, there’s only so much brain time you can commit to when you’re working full time. I’m struggling to even contribute a few hours a week to my studying; if I tried to make a video game as well (or instead of), I just wouldn’t enjoy it.

I keep saying to myself that I’ll just get to the next goal, then reevaluate. At least all of this saving will give me options in the future, whichever route I go down.

Blogging

Relating to my previous rant, I also have a lot I want to change about SavingNinja. It was actually one of my goals for 2019 to re-build the website but I just haven’t had enough time!

To remedy this I’ve had a chat with Mrs SavingNinja, and she’s got a few post ideas that would be a great addition to the blog. So I’ll be handing the reins over to her at some point to entertain you guys whilst I focus on restructuring the theme of SavingNinja. I’ll also be working on a dedicated email series to give a little something back to my subscribers.

Mrs SavingNinja’s passion is actually English Literature (it’s also her profession), I have her to thank for my love of reading and writing. She also reviews every single SavingNinja post! So you’ll be in good hands :)

Interview training

Wow, I was full of such invigoration whilst writing my last post about my studious journey. Unfortunately, I’m not learning as quickly as I thought I would be. I’ve not yet had a go at any complicated algorithms (although I have a whiteboard up in my living room) and I’ve not learned much about data structures.

I have learned a lot about Big O Notation as it’s the first section of the book I’m reading . I made flashcards and did some external investigation. I think I have a pretty good grasp of the concept, so I guess I’ve made some progress.

I really would like to drastically improve the rate at which I’m learning. I have only got until June-ish until I said I’d be applying to these big hitters, which isn’t all of the time in the world, it’s just so hard to get the motivation after I’ve spent the whole day programming.-must try harder.

The Boggy Marsh Part 2 - O(2^m+t)

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 06:30:38 +0000

In part 1 of The Boggy Marsh we discovered that there was a secret financial blueprint that would allow even lower-income individuals to get ahead; if only life was approached the correct way.

Today we’re going to delve into the specifics. How exactly will careful planning and execution help aid your journey through The Boggy Marsh, and how big will the impact be?

O(2^t+m).

What does this icky Math formula mean?

It’s the Mathematic equation for the growth of your money. The number one most important factor when aiming for financial independence.

It’s written in a language called Big O Notation ; an engineering invention that is normally used to determine the time cost of an algorithm depending on the input variables.

I’m currently studying the theory in preparation for a Google interview and when formulating the equation for FIRE I realised that time is just as important as money. In fact, it’s completely equal.

The time complexity of financial growth is 2 to the power of time + money.

The more time you have, and the more money you have, your pot growth will double after each iteration. It will grow exponentially.

If you prepare early enough, the amount of time that you will have on your side will allow your pot to venture up the exponential curve to the point of indifference, the money that you save at a later stage will hardly matter.

A trial run through The Marsh

Before your adventure begins, let’s simulate a few scenarios for tackling The Marsh. Remember, if you dive in headfirst you’ll get stuck .

For these illustrations the target income in retirement is 20k per year, the return on investment is 6%, and we can assume that at the beginning of year 1 the person is 22 years old.

The traditional method

The first chart maps the approach that most people take, I call this the ‘don’t worry about your pension’ model. These are the people that save barely anything into their pensions (circa £100 per month) until the age of 45, they then commence ‘panic mode’ and begin to save £20k per year.

If you followed this model, by the time you’re 45 years old you would have only saved a meager 58k from depositing £100 per month since you started your career at 22.

You’ll then engage ‘panic mode’ at 45 after realising that at this rate, you’ll never retire. At great discomfort to yourself and your family (as you’ve been big spenders for 23 years), you manage to deflate your life enough to save £20k per year.

You have to live ‘struggling’ like this for a whopping 13 years before eventually retiring at 58. Over these 13 years, you’ve had to part with 260k of your after-tax earnings.

If instead, you tried your hardest to save as much as you could upon graduating and managed to save 20k per year for 5 years, your life would have turned out a whole lot different.

You ‘sacrificed’ the first 5 years of your career and saved almost all of your earnings. You knew that the time complexity of compound interest was O(2^m+t) and that it was paramount to do everything you could to save as much as you could at this early stage of your life. Whether this meant living with your parents or in shared accommodation, you were all in!

Doing so allowed you to amass 116k by the age of 27. You could then kick back, relax, and save nothing but a scant £100 per month (have to get that employee pension match) for the rest of your life, you’re saving journey is now over.

That 116k, like yeast in bread dough, took on a life of its own after you had finished with it. That little cyan coloured bar indicates the amount of interest your money is earning every year, and after being cultivated, you allowed it to continue to grow on its own.

By the time you’re 51 years old your little nest egg that you saved all of those years ago has grown into 504k. You’re now ready to retire.

‘Sacrificing’ the first 5 years of your career allowed you to retire 7 years earlier and you only had to save 100k over 5 years instead of 260k over 13.

You used time to your advantage and treated your future self to a life of leisure.

Better yet, saving for those first 5 years wasn’t even hard! You had zero commitments back then; no children or house to care for; you simply deferred your life and focused on saving until your nest egg was ready to grow on its own.

The extreme method

Followers of TSN will know that my own savings are actually way higher than 20k per year . A lot of family and friends (and even people from the FIRE community) scrutinise my 80% savings rate; they say that I’m under 30, I should be traveling more; living a little, “Whilst I’m still young!”

If I plug my figures into the simulator, you can soon see why these are the most important years that I should be saving.

I’ve currently just passed the year 2 line and I’m 27 years old.

If I continued with my current savings rate for 3 more years, I could save absolutely nothing ever again and retire on 20k (tax-free) per year at the age of 41. By choosing to live frugally instead of ’live life whilst I’m young,’ for the first 5 years of my career, I will have earned myself an extremely early retirement for not much struggle.

I could even choose to work part-time and merely cover my expenses at the age of 30 and I’d still get to retire at 41.

Of course, I don’t plan to stop saving in 3 years time as I believe that spending less makes you happier . My pathway will most likely look more like this:

After my front-loaded first 5 years, I’ll probably look to severely reduce my workload but I’ll still try to save at least 20k per year.

The power of time

No matter what I choose, I’d have a plethora of options; those first 5 years would have been worth it. Nurturing that little cyan line and allowing it to grow on its own has given me this superpower.

Instead of buying a big house, a nice car, and having children straight away; I’ve waited patiently.

This is what everyone should be doing, but no one is. Everyone is forgetting that time is half of the equation! O(2^m+t)

If you have time on your side you should be trying your hardest to save as much as you can. The younger you are, the more urgent; as the money you save will be worth exponentially more.

What if you don’t earn enough?

Even though I believe that anyone can make the wage of a CEO , I know that some people aren’t capable of saving a lot due to financial commitments. This is the reason why it’s even more important to save earlier before you pick up these commitments.

There are no bounds to the length you should go to save when you are young. You could live with your parents or pick up extra jobs. These years will define the rest of your working life.

All of the simulations in this post work exactly the same way if you cannot save the amount shown straight away, you just have to push back your numbers by N amount of years.

Why people don’t talk about this

The subject of time isn’t discussed much in the FIRE community. This is likely because a lot of people on this pathway found our little group later in life. As the power of time is exponential, they can’t use it to its full advantage.

Not starting earlier is the number one regret from most FIRE devotees, it’s mine too. Regret usually manifests with self-affirmation, and as blogs are portals to a persons’ inner-mind, this attitude bleeds through into their writing.

But make no mistake, if you are young and reading this, you should save right now! It’s an emergency. Yes, you could defer your savings in the hope of earning more and saving more later, but time is equal to money.

Time is the one thing that you have right now, don’t sacrifice it in the hope of earning more later.

Here’s an extra little simulation to mull over:

I was working at 16 years old on minimum wage. If instead of going to University I continued living with my parents and invested all of my minimum-wage earnings until the age of 22…

I would have enough to retire at the age of 40.

Yep. For most people with early retirement as a goal, they would have reached their goal earlier if they didn’t go to University and if they never earned more than minimum wage. This stuff absolutely blows my mind.

TIME is just as important as earning more. In fact, it’s better than earning more, because it’s a commodity that is guaranteed.

If you’ve got time on your hands, don’t waste it.

The Boggy Marsh Part 1 - The Secret Financial Blueprint

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 06:30:42 +0000

I’ve always believed in the notion of going through life in the correct way. However ambiguous it may seem, when it comes to personal finance and FIRE in particular, there’s definitely a way in which it should be executed in order to maximise efficiency.

Don’t Swim Against the Current

Each adventure through life should, of course, start with amassing enough of a nest egg as early as possible, in order for it to compound for longer. Saving money should be of the utmost import to the graduate because as the years go by, saving will become harder. Not just because their expenses will increase with the burden of children and lifestyle inflation, but because they won’t be riding inside the tailwind of compound interest.

It’s easier to keep expenses lower from the very beginning than to reel them in at a later date. If you have to cut your expenses in half, it will feel like deprivation. If you never increased them in the first place, you’ll not feel that pang of loss. You’ll also get the added benefit of not needing to save as much in order to reach your goal**.**

The time complexity of your FIRE pot
O(2^m+t)

Starting early also allows your family to develop a sense of thrift whilst all parties work. Trying to reduce your spending by 50% as a single income / stay at home parent duo would be a lot harder to execute, as along with the added difficulty of trying to change ingrained habits, you’ll also be competing with the home-maker who potentially has less to gain and more to lose from a reduction in spending.

Instead, if you go through life in the right way, you will both be willing to spend less in order to save more. By the time you have children, you’d be in a much better position to reduce your workload or switch to a single income household as your stash would be happily compounding on its own.

The Boggy Marsh

A way to visualise this is to think of life as traveling through a boggy marsh.

You begin your journey on dry land and not carrying much baggage, running through the dry shrubs like a spring whippet.

You may pick up a companion on your adventure. Teaming up you’ll be able to reduce your load even further as each person scouts dryer pathways and helps carry the load.

As you venture further into the marsh, the mud will become thicker and the brush denser, you’ll begin to struggle.

You may introduce a third or fourth companion into your party who cannot aid you in traveling through the marsh, you will actually have to carry them yourselves and go through deeper territory. Your companion may also have to be carried because they will be consigned to care for your other party members, making you the sole adventurer pushing forward and clearing the pathways.

Pretty soon you’ll become overburdened with the weight of the world on your back, carrying 3 useless companions with you throughout the waist-deep mud.

You’ll never get out of The Boggy Marsh!

Your main advantage would have been to traverse faster at the very beginning of your adventure, to pick up less luggage and to run faster. Knowing that it will become much, much harder to escape the marsh later down the line.

You could have almost reached your destination whilst you were still light, nimble and eager adventurers, only taking on more burdens when you almost saw the exit.

You could have spent your time when you were faster and on dryer ground building wading mechanisms and safety vehicles, knowing that you would need them when the marsh got deeper.

Why would you rush into the densest, most hazardous pit of the marsh as quickly as you could without first scouting out the area and making provisions?

Putting on your X-Ray Goggles

As Wait But Why likes to say, you need a special pair of X-Ray goggles to see through the mist. The mist is covering the financial blueprint that would help zipline everyone through life with ease. Visualising scenarios like The Boggy Marsh help us to see through the mist.

Most people tackle the marsh head-first without provisions, they find themselves stuck in the deep mud, barely able to move until they reach traditional retirement age. A lot of FIRE followers have found a way to get out of the trap that they’re in and reach the exit quicker than most, but why not go into the marsh prepared? Avoid the pitfalls and sprint through before taking on more burdens?

The Need to Fail and Learn

The majority of people I’ve spoken to who follow the FIRE path first failed to find their way, this includes myself. I had to save negative £10k over a 2 year period before finding the FIRE movement and getting my finances in order.

Most people acknowledge that they need to fail to learn. A part of being human is testing new theories and learning from them, but this shouldn’t need to be the case with finance.

This one blueprint has the ability to alter most people’s lives in a monumental way. If we, as children, were taught how easy our life would become if we focused on saving as a priority. If we knew how far a tiny amount saved back then would stretch decades into the future, everybody would follow suit.

Surely this should be the most important subject in a student’s syllabus? The key to success. But no, it’s not even taught at all.

This needs to change!

Click here to read part 2 of The Boggy Marsh

The Future of Work

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 06:30:59 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #8.

Thanks to Sonia from Money For The Modern Girl for the awesome question.

I recently read a statistic that 85% of the jobs there will be in 2030 have not yet been created. What do you think these jobs are, and which ones will no longer exist? What does this mean for education? What will offices look like in 11 years? Will people continue to commute to a physical office or will remote work and digital nomadism take over? Finally, how do you think this will affect the overall global economic balance?

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #8

SavingNinja

Indeedably

Othalafehu

Money For The Modern Girl

Merely Curious

Ms ZiYou

Fretful Finance

Halt Catch Fire

PathtoLife2

My vision of the future is somewhat dramatic. A lot of people who I have wagged tongues with have scoffed at these predictions, although these were the same people who believed that electric cars wouldn’t become the dominate automobile for another century.

I think these thoughts have taken precedence in my mind from the fact that I’m heavily immersed within the software and technology industry.

I also read…a lot.

Or maybe it’s just that these theories excite me. Whatever the cause, I don’t just want these things to happen, I thoroughly believe that they will, and soon!

I believe that within the next 10 years…

We will become a multi-planetary species.

We will create some form of super-AI.

We will create a fully functioning quantum computer.

We will extend our life expectancy by unparalleled amounts.

If we’ve not solved these problems within the next 10 years, I think that we’ll at least be very close.

So, with these somewhat extreme thoughts in my head, what do I think will happen to people’s jobs? How will the economy change? What will be the future of work?

Adapting to the Future

The world will be going through a growth period of unprecedented change. With the creation of super-AI, technological advances will be occurring at a rate in which we will struggle to keep up.

The world will see an even bigger shift towards using AI for almost everything. AI will take the jobs of surgeons, teachers, builders, even hairdressers. Who needs to go to school when you can connect your brain to a super-computer and learn everything within seconds?

We can see this shift starting to happen already. Whilst the majority of the UK struggles with mass unemployment due to factory and shop workers being replaced with AI, the software industry is booming.

Even with hugely inflated salaries and signing bonuses on offer, every single company I’ve spoken to is struggling to fill developer positions. There simply aren’t enough developers to satisfy the massive investments being funneled into technology.

Mass Revolt

As the economy moves more in this direction the only people that will thrive will be the intellectuals who are adaptable and quick to learn. The blue-collar workers which were a vital part of our economy in the past will no longer be needed as the world turns more cybernetic.

Some people simply can’t adapt and struggle to learn new technologies. I know this as my parents are people just like this, they struggle to even use a smartphone. In the vast majority of cases, these people tend to be part of the older generation.

Admittedly, some older individuals seem to just have the knack for adapting (ever seen an 85-year-old woman with an iPhone?) But I’ve not met many youths who lack this special ability, growing up in a world of rapid change probably has something to do with the forming of this superpower.

The world will go through a period of fight or flight for the unadaptables, they’ll suffer unemployment and potentially extreme poverty as a result. The younger generation or the government will be forced to financially support their aging family. Uneducated and lower-income areas will be forced to protest and riot as they simply won’t have the means to support themselves with their now obsolete skills.

How will we Adapt?

As a society, we’ve been through changes like this before. How do you think the miners reacted when their life long skills became obsolete when they were replaced by machines?

These periods are fraught with extreme struggle as the world shifts its balance, but we as a collective always get through them eventually.

The sad fact of the matter is that the unadaptable will eventually die of old age. The education system would have changed enough to ensure that each child growing up in this new world is sufficiently equipped to be a part of it.

How will the Economy Change?

As we venture out into the cosmos and expand our habitats, undoubtedly the people of Earth as a whole will take on a more united, ‘single entity’ viewpoint. No more will we have petty segmentations like ‘China’ and ‘The United States’, we will become Earthlings!

Broadened horizons will need the formation of a singular government to represent earth and help progress occur with the planets’ best interests at heart. A single government would also make travel and relocating extremely easy, obliterating the caveman-like tradition of being confined to the tiny spit of land in which you were born. This will also pave the way for a singular currency to be used throughout Earth.

Having a world currency would obliterate a lot of the world’s problems, we wouldn’t have to worry about exchange rate fluctuation or inflation based destruction. Having a singular currency would make the world your country, you’d be able to easily live and work anywhere, there would be no boundaries.

Travel and Remote Work

We’re already seeing a huge trend in remote work in the big tech hubs of the United Kingdom. As software becomes more reliable and easily obtained companies are realising that employees can work just as well (if not better) at home than they can in the office.

Some forward-thinking companies have even done away with the office altogether, cutting their costs drastically.

The next 10 years will see the trend continue until almost all software jobs will be remote-focused. The introduction of advanced holographic and virtual lenses into the workplace will allow colleagues to completely simulate meetings and discussions whilst bolstering the tools available to them.

Companies will no longer be limited to the talent in the local vicinity, they’ll have the whole world at their disposal. Whole swathes of land will become available to be developed into living space and recreational areas, increasing the average house sizes and quality of life for everyone.

Travel to anywhere in the world will become extremely quick and easy with transportation advances allowing you to live in Hong Kong and get to a face to face meeting in London in just 34 minutes.

Increased travel speed and remote working capabilities will drastically reduce the need to live in the inner city. London property prices will crash to depths they’ve never before seen as the city goes from the to-be place to desolate. The government will have to focus heavily on refurbishing and transforming all of the empty commercial buildings into living hubs in order to make it more attractive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

It’s a Good Thing in the End

No matter the struggle that we will have to go through to change, when we do adapt - and we will - it will be worth it.

The world will be a much more equal and compassionate place. As the borders evaporate, there will be less segmentation and hatred amongst the population. We will be able to advance as a single civilization and reach beyond the heavens without our bitter anger and patriotism holding us back.

People will be excited again as we move towards an ever-expanding future. We will be rid of disease and unnecessary suffering. Old age will no longer be fleeting and it will be able to be enjoyed with generations of family.

It’s a world in which I’d definitely like to live in.

How about you?

Savings Report #15 - Getting a job at Google

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 10:45:42 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

After a staggering loss last month I’ve almost made it all back this month!

My net worth now sits at £112k and my ‘years to FI’ has shot down to 3 years and 3 months.

I can’t actually believe that at the beginning of this year , my total net worth was 65k, it’s now almost doubled just 9 months later [note]Alright maybe not quite doubled just yet![/note].

I’m blaming this on the awesome gains which happened this year in my stock portfolio.

The Accumulator wrote an excellent post this month stating that Vanguard’s US Equity Index fund has grown by a whopping 16.3% annualised over the last 10 years, I can’t imagine how fast these peoples investments must have grown. I only hope I can get some action as good as this when my nest egg sits above 100k!

Speaking of investments, they now sit at £81,747. I’m getting pretty close to that 100k figure ! I’m really hoping that I can reach it before the end of the year as I’m planning on dumping some extra money into my ISA as I’ve got 8k to fill before April.

It’s probably not going to happen, but I’ll hopefully be close. That should give my 100k a whole year of compounding in 2020 (or correctioning!)

I’ve added some new columns into the spreadsheet to show annual growth, I’m planning to add a whole lot more. I’ll document all of these in the ‘2019 reviewed’ article which I’ll post at the end of the year along with my time-series predictions for 2020.

Other News

The boiler fitting went well, although the day after we had it installed our electrics decided to stop working for two lights. We’ve now got an electrician coming out (for the first time) on Friday who’s ripping us off by charging £85 just to look at the problem.

I did attempt to fix the issue myself by replacing the light fittings but the problem seems to be something in the loft that I can’t identify. I just hope he can actually fix it for this insane fee.

Things like this make me wish I’d bought a newer house that has modern electrics and walls that don’t crumble when you drill into them. I’d have a pretty good chance of being able to fix most things that came up myself then, I hate paying for labor jobs.

Contracting

I ended up interviewing for a couple of positions, one fully remote and permanent and one a short contracting gig. I got a job offer on both but not for the price that I was asking for.

I decided to turn them both down and stick it out with my current position until the middle of next year and change my approach a little. This is mainly due to the IR35 changes coming into effect in April, a lot of the bigger corporations (like the one I work for now) seem to be forcing all of the contractors to switch to a permanent position or not renewing their contracts. Things like this will make the freelancing market a lot more competitive, at least until the dust has settled after April.

In short, it’s a terrible time for me to switch! I have a pretty decent salaried permanent job at the moment, so it makes sense for me to weather out the storm whilst still earning and saving a lot rather than taking a risk.

New Plan

I read a great article this week which stated how interviewing in the software industry is a skill in of itself which you need to master if you want to apply to the big boys of the software world, a skill that doesn’t necessarily relate to how good you are at your actual job.

This made me think ‘shit, I’m going to be applying to jobs in Silicon Valley eventually, I need to perfect this skill!’ Up until now, I’ve shied away from applying to the ‘big boys’ such as the Facebooks or Googles of London mainly due to a few things:

I didn’t think I had enough experience yet.
I didn’t think I was good enough.

But now I’m a bit more mature in the job world I see that point 2 is all about training. To pass these grueling 6 hour interview days you need to be good at interviewing which is a skill more akin to a lecturer than a real-life software developer.

I need to be able to spout data structures and patterns by heart like a living textbook. This is what’s needed when these companies have hundreds of thousands of applicants to choose from, and it’s what’s needed for Silicon Valley too.

So, basically, I need to go back to school. I’m staying at my position for at least another 6 months, I’ve ordered Cracking the Coding Interview and I’m going to make a learning schedule that is mixed between analysing this book, doing coding challenges, and contributing to open source.

I’m going to make a portfolio website and basically become the dogs bollocks when it comes to the skill of interviewing. I’m then going to apply for all of the most notoriously difficult positions in the software world which are available in London.

I’ll do this for two reasons:

If I get one of these jobs it will gleam on my CV and I’ll then be able to get a job virtually anywhere, even in Silicon Valley. I could even get a transfer to the USA from within the new company.
If I don’t get offered any jobs, I’ll still get experience with difficult interviews. This will be needed when I’m applying for positions abroad and it may be what I need to actually land one.

So, yeah, I like a challenge! I’ll probably do a few posts on how I’m going about digesting all of the technical knowledge as I’m planning to learn how to properly annotate a book and create mind maps.

I’m also going to set a vigorous schedule to help me achieve every varied learning activity that I want to within the week. I was thinking of trying out Habitica , has anyone used this before?

Anyway, enough blabbing, see you next month!

How to get a First Class Flight for Free

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 06:30:48 +0000

First-class flights on British Airways are pretty special. Not only do you get access to a luxury chair that can convert into a fully flat bed and is lined with the same Italian leather that they use in Maseratis, but you also get to sample some of the most exquisite wine and food in the world.

A first-class ticket grants you access to the renowned Concorde Lounge where you can fill up on unlimited bottles of £200 Champagne, get a massage, or even take a shower.

These luxuries, however, come at a staggering price. A general transatlantic flight on British Airways first-class can set you back up to £10,000 per person. So how did we manage to get ourselves two first-class tickets for free?

As regular readers of my blog know, I’m extremely frugal. I would never dream of buying a ludicrously priced first-class BA ticket with my own hard-earned cash.

What I did do though, is utilise Avios points.

Avios is a rewards system where spenders can use cards such as the British Airways American Express card to earn flight points whilst they spend. A first-class flight grabs you the best value when spending your Avios points, and it allows people who would never usually pay for this ticket to experience the luxury that’s on offer.

Different flight destinations cost different amounts of Avios points ranging from 100,000 to 300,000. So it could cost up to 600,000 Avios points to get two first-class tickets. Some people would scoff at that figure as with most cards you only get rewarded 1 Avios point for every £1 spent.

With my £10,000 per year annual budget, those 600,000 points would take a hell of a long time to accumulate. But, thankfully, there are loopholes to abuse!

Here’s what I did.

Step 1: Open an American Express Gold Card. This card is free for 1 year, then £140 per year afterward, but you’ll be cancelling before the year is out so you’ll never pay the fee. Make sure you get referred to the Gold Card, this way you’ll earn 12,000 points instead of 10,000. My referral link is here , click ‘view other cards’ for the gold one.

Step 2: Order a companion card so all of your household spendings can go through the Gold Card. You need to spend £3,000 in the first 3 months to get the ‘welcome bonus’. All of your spendings should be on this card. If you think you won’t make the spending in time, buy Amazon gift cards to push you over the line.

Step 3: After 3 months you’ll hit the welcome reward which will grant you 10,000 reward points (12,000 if referred), you should have also amassed an extra 3,000 points from the spending itself.

Total points: 15,000

Step 4: Refer your partner via the American Express Referal Program. Have them open up a Gold Card. You’ll earn 6,000 points for this.

Total points: 21,000

Step 5: Do the exact same thing for your partners’ card, shift all spending onto this one. After 3 months you should have hit the welcome bonus again.

Total points: 33,000

Step 6: Cancel the Gold Cards. Make sure you’ve converted your Membership Reward Points into Avios points before you cancel the cards to avoid losing them.

Step 7: Pick a new American Express Rewards Card which awards Avios points such as the British Airways card and repeat the process again from Step 1.

After you’ve not had a certain brand of card (the Membership Rewards cards and British Airways cards are different brands) for 6 months you’ll be eligible for the welcome bonuses again.

Doing this referral trick will allow you to be in a constant state of earning referral and welcome bonuses throughout the year.

There’s one more trick that you can do in order to double your points when you’re ready to buy your first-class ticket: getting a companion voucher.

How to get a Companion Voucher

Some of the cards reward you with a Companion Voucher when you reach a certain spending tier. This item allows you to take a companion on your reward flight for no extra Avios points, effectively doubling your points.

There are a couple of methods that you can use to get one of these handy vouchers. The first is with the standard British Airways American Express card.

With this card, you need to spend £20,000 in a single year to get the voucher. This is a tough spend for quite a lot of people, so I’d only go down this route if you know you’ll have to buy some big-ticket items throughout the year like a new boiler or other home improvement purchases.

The alternate method and the one that I used to get my Companion Voucher is to get a British Airways American Express Platinum Plus card.

This card costs £195 for the year, but it awards you with a whopping 25,000 Avios points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend, which more than covers the cost of the card.

With the Platinum Plus card, you only have to spend £10,000 in the year to get a Companion Voucher, this is a lot more achievable.

Something to also consider with the plus card is that the voucher lasts longer. With the standard card, it only lasts for 1 year before it expires, with the plus you have 2.

Conclusion

Using these methods we managed to save up enough Avios points to get two first-class flights to America in only 2 years. It added an awesome flare of luxury to our already exciting honeymoon, and we’re now saving up again!

Here’s what I learned along the way.

The companion voucher expires! I had no idea that this was the case when I purchased the £195 Platinum Plus card.

The two years that they give you to use the voucher also begins as soon as you hit your £10,000 spend, which in our case was a lot sooner than we thought.

You also need to return from your trip before the voucher expires, and as Avios flights have limited availability, you usually need to book 11 months in advance, this makes for a very small window of opportunity to book your flight once you receive your companion voucher.

You also might not yet have amassed the total Avios you need by the time you need to book your flight.

Due to this, I would advise you to only begin focusing on your Companion Voucher when you’ve got all of the points you need to book your first-class flight. This will save you a lot of stress!

Avios flights are quite limited. We had actually planned to travel around Japan for our honeymoon but we didn’t realise there were no first-class flights offered for this route. Due to our efforts with getting the card (and our companion voucher running out), we decided to go on our next best holiday instead which was an American road-trip!

Make sure you check where you can go with a first-class ticket beforehand to avoid disappointment.

You have to pay ‘tax’ for your flights. The small print which British Airways adds to their rewards scheme is that you still have to pay fuel tax for your flights even if booked through Avios. These generally cost around the same as an economy ticket (we paid £550 per person for our flights).

It’s a small price to pay when you’re getting a first-class ticket worth £10,000, but make sure you realise that you’ll need to stump up a bit of cash beforehand!

I’ve found Avios to be the best form of spending rewards out there. The gold card even gives you two free airport lounge visits per year (unlimited booze and food!).

Avios points can also be used for extremely low-cost inter-European flights, costing as little as 10,000 Avios with a £15 fuel charge, pretty awesome.

Have any of you taken advantage of this great rewards scheme? Let me know in the comments below. I’ll leave you with some pictures of our awesome first-class flight experience!

Posh first-class check-in

Got given some honeymoon freebies

Had a bit too much champers by this point!

My - wife - joined me for dinner, first time we’d eaten caviar (not a fan!)

Savings Report #14 - Biggest Loss Yet

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 06:15:35 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

After so many months of huge gains, there was bound to be a tumble at some point. I only hope it doesn’t continue and push me below 100k net worth, it would be embarrassing to have to celebrate it again!

This month saw my investments lose £2,546 of value, although as I’m still contributing a hefty chunk from my salary each month I’ve still gained £1,370 in total net worth.

It’s going to be a sad month when my net worth has decreased, which I’m sure will come sooner or later.

My ‘years to FI’ number now stands at 3.6 years. I’m expecting this to fluctuate up and down as the time comes closer, so I’m thinking that I’ll need to figure out some kind of better metric for figuring out how long I actually have left. Maybe looking at an average ‘years to FI’ decrease over a 12 month period?

Other News

My house welcomed me back from my expensive honeymoon by demanding I replace the boiler. This is the first time I’ve ever had to stump up the cost for something like this so I was shocked to find out that I’d have to pay a little over £2000!

We opted for a second-from-the-bottom Worcester Bosch 30i, apparently, the low-end 25i would have trouble providing enough heated water to run a bath, (just about the only task that we’d need our boiler to do).

This will be installed before the end of September, I’m hoping that there will be no ‘complications’ or increased cost as we barely even use the heating.

After the boiler, we’ve still got a few more things on our DIY list before we get another valuation (although I’ve heard a lot of peoples house prices are dropping?) These include: Replacing all of the carpets, painting the hallway walls, painting the doors and skirting boards, knocking down the front wall and turning it into a driveway, and potentially getting a new front door.

I’m currently going through the process of switching into contracting or getting another permanent job, so most of my other ventures, including TSN, have taken a bit of a back seat. I do have some articles which are nearly finished though, so hold tight!

Speaking of articles, I’ve almost finished writing the next Thought Experiment, so keep an eye out for this on the 15th of September.

See you next month, hopefully when we’ll be back in the green :)

Guest Post: Selling my Dream Car didn’t End my Dream

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 06:15:51 +0000

Simon contacted me whilst I was on my honeymoon with an artfully drawn Ninja shuriken and asked if he could guest post on Saving Ninja. So, of course, I had to say yes!

This marks the first-ever Saving Ninja guest post, so I’ve created a new subcategory called ‘Guest Post’, and if anyone else would like to contribute, hit me up over on the Contact page.

Simon runs his own personal finance blog over at Financial Expert which he created back in 2010. He’s based out of Yorkshire and quit his accountancy career once he became Financially Independent last May at the young ol’ age of 30!

Now he concentrates fully on Financial Expert which he began to rebuild a month after he retired into a learning resource which teaches you things like how to invest in property and how to buy shares , all with an awesome gamified approach (which I like a lot).

Now, over to Simon!

Last week I shook hands on a life-changing deal. I expect that it will improve my future quality of life immensely. I sold my dream car.

Wait… sold?

Yes, that’s right, I waved goodbye to my Jaguar F-Type, which I’d bought two and a half years earlier.

So, why did I sell it?

The reasons for initially buying the car no longer existed, so it no longer made sense to stick with the status quo. The car had to go!

When I bought it, I was in a stable, respectable job. I had no financial commitments (I rent an apartment with my partner).

However, recently I left work to take a mini-retirement over the summer months and do some travelling.

Nothing focuses your attention on outgoings more than a loss of income! While I was in employment, I could rationalise away the juxtaposition of being a keen saver and owning an expensive car. Because I could still save ‘something’ in spite of its high cost, it was a tolerable expense.

Now that the salary has dried up, the wealth-munching nature of the car is clear to see.

For the record, I still loved the car, and right up until my last drive, it still made me smile. But as Heraclitus (Greek philosopher) wisely said; “Nothing endures but change.”

Calculating the cost of a dream car

Now that the car has found another home, let’s crunch the numbers and figure out how much I spent on it.

I owned the car outright, therefore I incurred depreciation rather than lease payments or finance charges. I bought the car second hand in December 2016 for £44,700. Larger wheels and tyres added £1,600, which brought the total cost to £46,300.

I sold it privately for £27,250. This equates to £19,050 depreciation over the 32 months I owned the vehicle or £595 per month.

A range of other costs also need to be taken into account. Annual servicing, consumables, taxes, fuel and insurance all add up. Unsurprisingly, each of these categories is driven higher because of the F-Type sitting in the ‘sports car category’.

The damning total cost

Cost

Cost per month

Depreciation

£595

Annual Servicing

£35

Tyres & Brakes

£61

Road Tax

£27

Insurance

£74

Premium Fuel

£80

Total cost per month

£872

I computed these figures for the first time to produce this article. I’m staggered at the magnitude of the final sum:

£872 per month. £10,464 per year. £27,904 in total.

That sum could have been spent on:

14 holidays for me and my partner (a £2k holiday every 8 weeks)
558 three-course restaurant meals (three per week)
Part-time cleaner, florist, gardener and handyman.
A deposit for a small home
Half of the contents of a Primark store (surely?)
Investments

Of all of the alternatives, investments are the most likely use of the extra cash.

The opportunity cost

This calculation began a train of thought along the lines of what if? What if I had invested the money rather than spending it on brake dust and tyre smoke?

The FTSE 100 has barely moved in the 2.5 years I’ve owned the car, therefore so far, I have only missed out on £2k of dividend income which I would have received in that time.

The phrase ‘so far’ is really important, because the real opportunity I have missed out on is having the £28,000 tucked away in an investment account for the next few decades. Here’s what could have happened to those funds:

Therefore the true cost of enjoying my dream car now is missing out on £80,000 in my ‘retirement years’. Yikes, that’s a pricey couple of years behind the wheel.

Looking into my future

Moving on from what ‘could have been’. The more important number for me is – what do I gain from escaping the luxury car rat race?

If I decide to invest the £872 monthly savings from selling my car – the following graph shows that this would grow to an incredible £571,000.

Therefore on reflection, while my consumption has certainly held back my retirement savings, the returns from staying away from luxury cars in the future massively outweighs this. I’ve made a difficult but positive decision which will transform my quality of life in retirement.

Everything becomes normal

I learned a broader lesson from this episode:

Everything becomes normal.

A super sports car was a thrill to drive, but after years of ownership, it simply felt… normal! It is difficult to even tell whether my day-to-day happiness continued to receive a lift once the novelty had worn off.

You could apply the same principle to jewellery, housing, fashion and other status symbols. As humans, we tend to always overestimate the positive effect they have on our lives.

As many celebrities and business people have observed – being rich doesn’t equate to more happiness.

Recent research supports the idea that we all revert to a stable, personal level of happiness, even after traumatic events.

If you have found contentment, in life, with family, friends or your situation, then you may be overestimating how much any individual purchase (or sale) can change this.

I hope this gives you the confidence to jettison any large material possessions that feel like a weight around your neck. It turns out that killing the dream car doesn’t kill the dream.

Savings Report #13 - I'm now a Married Man!

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 06:30:04 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Hello, my dear readers! I’m back, although, I am completely out of whack.

I’m actually writing this at 4:57 am in the morning (on a Saturday) after literally not getting a wink of sleep. An 8 hour time difference will apparently do that to you!

I decided to stop trying to get some shut-eye and come and write this post instead. I recorded these figures whilst on my honeymoon on the 3rd of August, so it’s the real July report.

A post will be coming up about the wedding and honeymoon, so I won’t go into too much detail in this one.

Now, onto the figures!

Woah, Woah, Woah - party poppers, please - I’ve broken the 100k net worth barrier!!

By a bloody long shot at that, my net worth increased by almost 7k this month! What on earth?

Ah, £2138 was earned from stock growth.

That’s actually the second-highest monthly growth of 2019, and coming straight after the huge growth last month , it’s seen my portfolio go up from 90k to 104k in just 2 months, wowzers. Let’s hope the age-old saying, what goes up must come down, isn’t true, eh?

But, hold your horses, save the real party poppers for when I hit 100k invested (excluding my house equity), that’s when I can really start celebrating .

Don’t worry, I hear what you’re saying…

“Hey, SavingNinja, you normally only save about 3.9k per month and your interest has only gone up by £2k, where has that extra k come from?!”

AH, You got me. I only went and bought some Tesla stock!

Added for dramatic effect ;)

Yeah, I know - it’s not reallly how I should be investing. It’s not in the FIRE guidebook . I’m definitely being naughty, and when my passive investments are performing so well too.

But, if you’ve not realised by all the subtle hints in my blog posts so far, I’m a huge Elon fan-boy and I actually really believe in his vision.

And, although I know that there’s a much greater chance of losing it all picking single stocks, I wanted to hold at least a small stake in one of his companies, just so I can show my full Musk support! (I’ll only stake 1k, I promise).

I bought 5 stocks at £183.60 a piece, and they actually shot up by almost 10% within 3 days making my total Tesla stock value rise to £967 (don’t expect it to stay up though).

This bought my total saved in July figure to £4834, it also pushed up my average savings rate for 2019 to 80.38%.

Other Thoughts

The wedding went perfectly, better than I ever could have imagined. Which is strange, I thought at least something would go wrong. The whole day is a blur really, it all happened so fast. This is something that I and the Mrs have been planning for the last 4 years, so it’s actually kind of sad that it’s now all over.

I thought I was going to be wracked with nerves on my wedding day as I’m generally quite an anxious person, I was also obscenely nervous during the ceremony rehearsal 2 days prior to the big day.

I was nervous, on the wedding day morning, up until my bride walked through the church doors. After that, blur mode got engaged, it was just me, her, and the Priest. I don’t even remember the people sitting in the church after that point. My nerves vanished. All that remained was happiness.

The party afterward went just as well (even the speeches), we successfully executed our Rock dance routine which we’d been practicing for the last 3 months, the catering was some of the best I’d ever experienced (which is weird for a mass event), and all of our family and friends were happy with the day.

Honeymoon - Californian Road Trip

The honeymoon to California was a trip to remember. We visited so many different places and so many new experiences, it will definitely stay in our memory for a long time.

We’re both shattered though! We drove over 1400 miles, stayed in 8 different AirBnB’s and hiked over 150km.

As you guys know, this was one of the destinations that we wanted to scope out as a potential living destination . For this California did impress, but some of the mysticism around the dream has faded for me a little.

I was really impressed with San Fransisco. That city is like something plucked right out of a fantasy novel. Beautiful bridges, sea and mountains, clean and vibrant buildings and roads, it really was an awesome place. I could definitely see us working and living there for a prolonged period of time, which is great as a lot of H1B Visa sponsorships come out of San Fransisco for the tech industry.

A lot of the rest of California wasn’t my complete cup of tea. As you move south and in-land, 85% of the scenery is brown. It’s very dusty and hot, we went above 40 degrees Celcius at some points. As we quite like rain and cooler climates, we definitely wouldn’t be able to live indefinitely in that dry heat.

San Fransisco actually has a completely different climate, it’s normally 21 C or lower for most of the year and always has a bit of wind, it was perfect!

Yosemite national park was absolutely breathtaking. Never before have I seen such beauty! Check out these photos which I took on my Pixel 2.

They were taken at the top of Half Dome, the 12-hour hike which we DID manage to complete! It was bloody difficult though, definitely right up there with the three peaks challenge competing for the most-difficult-thing-ever-done award. The views were worth it though!

Mrs SavingNinja

Seattle to Canada road trip next on our ‘find-our-home’ mission, bring it on!

Matched Betting

Even though I missed the last week of July, and was planning a wedding, I still managed to make over £1k matched betting . This was almost all from arbing, I even lost £500+ on a single mistake (I didn’t lay the bet in time) on the 8th of July, so overall, pretty good profits.

I’ll be easing off the arbing for a while as I’ve got a lot to do now I’m a married man, notably, switch mortgages and begin freelancing. However, I can never normally stay away from the EW profits for long, so we’ll see.

Blogging

It’s going to take me a while to get back into the swing of things, so you guys will have to bear with me. These Savings Reports are easy to write but good quality posts take time and my heads all over the place at the mo :)

I have been contacted by a fellow blogger who wishes to do a guest post. As you guys know I’ve never had any guest posts before on TSN, but I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to fill a bit of a content void whilst I get back into the groove, so I’ve agreed. We’ll see how that pans out (if at all), I’ll make sure to let you guys know on Twitter if this is happening.

How was your month?

What is Happiness to you?

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 06:30:06 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #7.

Most people’s lives are filled with so much commotion. We’re constantly moving and thinking like an electron jumping from atom to atom. There are very few moments when we experience true clarity, when we have a chance to really think clearly. These moments may come when reaching a mountain peak in the early hours of the morning or when you’re sitting up late one night and silently staring at the stars. Lots of life-changing decisions can be made in these moments; when you have the time to think about true happiness.

So, for this Thought Experiment, I’d like you to create one of these moments for yourself. I’d like you to think, and I mean really think about what you want and need to make yourself and your family happy.

What do you need to achieve real, true happiness? What are you aspiring to? Paint that perfect picture, you will need it as a guide whilst you make your way through life.

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #7

SavingNinja

Indeedably

Caveman @ Ditch The Cave

Merely Curious

Left FI

Othalafehu

Fretful Finance

Pennies For Cents

I slide my sleek glass doors open wide and walk out onto my wooden veranda into the blissful, fresh mountain air. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath in through my nose. I can smell pine mixed with the roasted coffee that I’d just brewed, it smells good.

I can hear absolutely nothing, everything is tranquil. Opening my eyes, I see the beautiful site of trees and mountain peaks. Nothing but nature for miles around.

I feel…calm. Anxiety; nothing but a distant memory. The constant tension in my head; gone.

There’s simply nothing to worry about anymore. Everything that I’ll ever need is here in my mountain home. A space for reading, an area for music, cooking and relaxing, a workshop for building.

I even have a high-speed internet connection for when I need to plug back into the rest of the world. The joy though, is that I can pull that plug straight back out whenever I want, I can fully disconnect, have the room to…breath.

I have enough money to last me 1000 years, this is what allows me this luxurious life of solitude. A detached way of living where connecting is a choice, not a necessity.

This is a scenario that most people would lust after. A mountain home with scenic views, access to a library, and blissful peace and quiet - I know I have!

It’s the perfect place to unwind and relax. But only when I started thinking about this Thought Experiment did I realise that happiness for me is not about a specific place, it’s about the conditions.

I thought, ‘What do I want to be happy? Do I want a pool? Maybe a lake? Do I want to be in Switzerland or California?’

Only after begrudgingly picking a scenario and beginning to write about it did I realise that I could swap any physical landscape or condition out with an entirely different one, they just needed to have one thing in common: be a place of solitude where I can disconnect.

This trait can be emulated anywhere in the world. I will be content as long as enough private land is owned to satisfy my family’s desires and we have the ability to reconnect to the world only when we choose.

This discovery is shocking to me. I always believed that my dreams lay in travel and far away lands. My wanderlust consumed me , to the point that I refused to think that happiness could be achieved elsewhere.

Coming from the ideology that I need to travel to a specific location (notably the USA) to finding out that all I really need is the ability to disconnect and not engage in forced interaction, whilst having enough space (and money) to keep me comfortable and occupied is almost…refreshing.

The dream is more achievable as the whole world is now an avenue which I can venture down to find true happiness. All I needed were the core ingredients.

The Who, the What, and the Why

Why do I feel like this? Why do I crave solitude and quiet over all else?

I could blame it on my social anxiety, or the irritation I feel against certain individuals or scenarios in public. I could even blame it on the fact that I grew up in the city, never experiencing the space and adventure that a country life can give.

Am I fed up of the chaos?

These would be valid explanations, but it wouldn’t explain why my wife (weird to say that!) feels the same way as me, craving escape to a peaceful retreat. Most Devonshire folk of our age move towards the bigger cities in the hopes of having more of a social life.

This brings me to the idea that maybe we want this way of life because of each other? Since we met 8 years ago, we’ve barely spent more than a few days apart. We’ve simply always enjoyed our own company more than the traditional socialising that most 20-somethings partake in.

So, putting it mushily - although relevant as I am writing this from a log cabin during my honeymoon! - maybe we desire a life of solitude because we’ve found a soulmate in each other?

We’ve simply found a person who we’re happy to interact with forever, so we can cut out the negative interactions and run away to the mountains to live our lives stress free?

I know, of course, that life isn’t really that simple. Humans are emotional beings whose needs and wants change all of the time, but I think I’m right with my current theory. I certainly wouldn’t desire the same life that I’ve depicted in this post if I was alone.

To be Continued…

Alas, I have to stop! I’ve written the majority of this whilst road tripping through California on my honeymoon, I arrogantly thought I’d have loaaads of time to write this post whilst away, but I’ve just been having too much fun.

It’s now 8pm on the 13th of August in Sequoia National Park (4am on the 14th of August for you guys in England!) and I’ve ran out of time. BUT I really don’t want to cut this post short as I’ve got so much more that I want to write about, so I’ve shoved a ‘to be continued’ on the end as I will definitely be coming back to it.

I’ve also missed the latest monthly report, however, don’t threat as I did get a chance to tally up my total investments on the 1st of August, so you’ll have two updates to look forward to when I get back :)

See you guys soon!

The 10 Commandments of FIRE

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 06:30:30 +0000

Do you want to learn how to retire early? A lot of people who first hear about the FIRE (Financial Independence / Retire Early) movement are put off by thinking that they need to know a boatload of information about investing and personal finance in order to benefit from the concept.

These people sometimes ignore the movement, never to hear about it again without realising that they’d just stumbled upon a gold mine.

FIRE is actually an incredibly simple concept which anyone can follow, the information out there should represent this. So, I’ve compiled a list (in priority order) of the 10 basic steps that you need to follow to obtain financial independence.

1. Know thy spending

Create a budget and stick to it. Understanding your outgoings is a fundamental step on the pathway to financial independence.

2. Do not buy gluttonously

Don’t buy what is not needed, it will only bring unhappiness and increase your working life.

3. Increase thy savings rate

Your savings rate is the magic number which will dictate how long you have left to work. Increase your savings by budgeting and being frugal, this will help financial independence come sooner.

4. Fill thy emergency fund

Aim to save 3 months of expenses for an emergency fund. This money will give you the flexibility to not need to take out credit when things go awry.

5. Invest in low-cost index tracker funds

90% of people who try to beat the market lose. Invest in low-cost index tracker funds to guarantee a steady return over a long time period.

6. Choose free time over material possessions

Spend your money on the things that matter: time. Whether that’s on yourself or with your loved ones, material possessions will never bring you the same level of prolonged happiness.

7. Take pleasure from manual labour

Our bodies were built for manual labour, practice taking pleasure from it and see your money grow as well as your happiness.

8. Increase thy income

The more you earn, the more you will be able to save. Focus on increasing it as early as possible, back off only when your stash is sufficiently plump.

9. Seek joy from the things that truly matter

Look within yourself to understand what truly makes you happy, pursue what you find with passion and set yourself up for life after reaching financial independence.

10. Become a renaissance man

Move away from the singular pinpoint learning that you needed in the rat race, move towards learning many skills.

Now, go forth and prosper :)

Update: A Thought Experiment About Happiness

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 06:29:18 +0000

Hey guys,

This post is one of my new ‘update’ types, so it’s a bit different. I’ll be posting my thought experiment questions as an actual post from now on so I have them documented.

The next Thought Experiment (number 7 by the way, can you believe it?) will be released on the 15th of August. This is slap bang in the middle of my honeymoon to California, but I’ll still be writing my response and scheduling it for release at 7:30 am on that day.

I’ll try my hardest to add everyone who takes part to the list during the holiday, but I’ll probably be a bit slower as our times will be all messed up.

If you want to be on the response list at release, let me know what your link will be and send it to me (on Twitter or via my contact page ) before the 23rd of July and I’ll add you before I jet off.

So, without further ado, I present to you, Thought Experiment #7:

What do you need to achieve real, true happiness? What are you aspiring to? Paint that perfect picture, you will need it as a guide whilst you make your way through life.

I’m really excited about taking part in this one myself, I’ll be finding a quiet room, putting on some classical, and grabbing a drink so I can really focus on thinking about my happiness goal, I might even light a candle!

So many people on the pathway to financial independence focus too much on the process and not what they’ll do when they get there. Use this Thought Experiment as an opportunity to really take the time to think about what you want.

If you haven’t got a blog and would like to take part, write it out on Word and send me a copy, I’ll feature it on the blog.

I can’t wait to hear your replies!

Twelve Months Later - Savings Report #12

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 06:25:37 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Things are starting to get exciting, I’m so close to 100k net worth!

Still, I should calm down as I’m not really going to celebrate until I have 100k invested in stocks, but it’s still exciting!? :)

We saw a huge climb in stock values this month, earning £3,399 in interest, almost the same amount as what I contributed. It will be a pretty awesome day when stock growth earns more than what I’ve contributed for the month, I guess that will become a pretty normal occurrence when I reach a certain stash size.

I had a pretty awesome metric show up when evaluating my current company pension; since I started working here around 12 months ago, I’ve contributed a total of £31,641, it’s now worth £34,368. That’s a growth of almost 3k! Considering that it started off at £0 12 months ago and I’ve been drip feeding it the same figure each month, 3k growth is really good.

My ‘Years to FI’ number now stands at 3.7 years. If there isn’t a recession, I should be hitting my FI number of 12k per year (£300k) just before my 31st birthday. I’m hoping to accelerate this further with passive income generation and increased earning in 2020, it would be sweet to hit this target in my 20s!

My Property Partner buy-to-let ‘alt-investment’ saw a growth of 0.35%, this was from a rental dividend payment. Pretty cool, but it will take some stock value growth before I can start thinking about this investment paying off the initial £1k book cost.

Click on the image to invest in the same property!

I want to add some other ‘alt-investments’, I’m thinking £1k of TESLA stock? I know that they’re over-valued, but I really believe in Elon and his companies, so it would be a pretty awesome, fun investment for me.

This is my 12th savings report! Can you believe it?? Here’s a throwback to my first ever one:

From Savings Report #1

Since August 2018 we’ve seen my net worth grow by £50k (mostly from stock purchases), my monthly contributions increase by £856 (seeing my savings rate go from 75% to 80%), and my pension pot almost quadruple in size!

Hopefully, this rocket burn of a start will give me enough thrust to get me into orbit over the next few years.

Other Thoughts

I moved offices this month, I’ve now got a window seat on the 15th floor of a London Skyscraper, pretty snazzy. It’s a pity I’ll be leaving to go contracting after I get back from my honeymoon.

Work just feels like a countdown clock to the wedding/honeymoon now, I’m starting to feel a little excitement take the place of nerves, which is awesome, it should be the other way around, right?!

A lot of my excitement is for after the wedding too. When we’ve tied the knot, the new Mrs. Ninja and I will be able to start really planning our lives together. We’ve decided to go on more holidays than usual over the next 3 years and scout out potential living destinations. Hopefully, this won’t affect our savings rate too much.

They’ll be lots of opportunities to clear our minds whilst on our honeymoon as we’ve got a lot of hiking planned. We’ll be doing a lot of daydreaming and deciding where we might want to live whilst enjoying the beautiful Californian coast and national parks.

The Big Sur - California

Matched Betting

June was one of my lowest earning months matched betting; I only made £510. At one point I’d made over £1k but a massive losing day on the 26th wiped that out.

I’ve actually stopped EW betting for now as I’ve pretty much run out of accounts. I do have a new one planned, but I’ll be saving that for after the wedding.

At the end of the month, I started testing out a new arbing technique that I’ve not seen anyone do before. This technique could potentially be ‘quitting my day job’ good! But I’ll be testing it out for the rest of 2019 until I make any decisions. It could potentially co-inside with remote contracting, which would be pretty awesome.

Blogging

June saw another Thought Experiment with another massive turn out of 16 articles written, will this be the new norm now?

I also wrote my first pillar post which (of course) explained what Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) is to me. I’ll be updating this pillar post with relevant articles once my website redesign is done - by the way, I’ve already updated my categories :)

How was your month?

P.S. I’ve just realised that this will be my last savings report as a bachelor, I’ll be closing up shop for a while starting on the 23rd of July. Follow me on Twitter to hear my honeymoon updates, including my First Class flight experience!

How to get a Free Degree!

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 10:02:12 +0000

University has been the ticket into the white collar world since the inception of capitalism. Of course - there are other, normally more difficult, ways to gain entry into this world, but needing the ‘checkbox’ of a degree is still becoming ever more prevalent in the industry.

Student loans are too expensive, even with tuition fees rising by three times in 2012, you still need that little 3-word line on your CV that says; University degree - achieved.

I don’t plan on paying for my kids to go to university, why? Spending money on your children is the wrong way to distribute your wealth , for one. But there are other, more specific reasons why I’m against the notion.

A Bachelor’s Degree in Growing Up

I’m grateful for my university degree. Whilst living away from home, not only did I meet my beautiful wife to be (in the first week), I also earned a degree in ‘growing up’.

University halls are kind of like unconventional boot camps for teenagers. You live your first year in squalor, eating nothing but bacon sandwiches made in the most unhygienic kitchens, wandering aimlessly around the crack-den-esque hallways and listening to non-stop drum and bass by your resident DJ, whilst completely decimating your own sleep cycle.

But, somehow, you realise that you can’t live like this forever and in the process, you learn; how to wash your clothes, do your food shopping, socialise in a normal way, and interact with other people.

You eventually (kind of) learn how to be a functioning member of society.

Your Entry into the Club

I’m grateful that getting a degree gave me the ‘entrance stamp’ into my white-collar job as a software engineer. Without it, I wouldn’t have landed the job which I currently have, it’s so corporate that they simply reject anyone without a degree. It’s a requirement, not a nice-to-have.

I would have undoubtedly still been able to land a general software engineering job at some point, I just would have had to climb the corporate rungs a lot slower. I’ve known very few colleagues in my career who haven’t got at least an undergraduate degree, and I know they worked extra hard to get to where they were.

Pure Selfishness, or Liberalism?

Even though I am thankful for my degree, I don’t actually believe in them. I gained more relevant technical skills in just 2 weeks on my first engineering job than I did in a whole 3 years at university.

What I do believe is that degrees (most of them) are actually a disguised form of tax for the white collar worker. A way for capitalism’s gears to keep on turning. Revenue from Universities in the UK for the year of 2016/17 was a staggering 44.27bn. It’s no wonder that they want corporations to insist on you needing one.

The most beneficial skills I learned from my ‘degree’ were how to live independently. However, these same skills could have been gained from any number of other expeditions, ones that don’t require the burden of a lifetime debt.

Do you Really need a Degree?

You can still earn a very good salary at home with matched betting and other entrepreneurial pursuits . As technology advancements continue, the entrepreneurial mindset will undoubtedly increase. And if there is one thing that an entrepreneur doesn’t need, it’s a certificate stating where they studied. Entrepreneurs care about determination, being good at what they do, and getting results, not superfluous pats on the back.

But the world hasn’t changed for the better just yet, unfortunately, for certain careers, you still need to obtain that little (but expensive) piece of paper.

How to get a Degree for Free

There are ways to avoid burdening yourself or your children with huge amounts of debt, and FIRE might help you to do it!

Moving to Scotland can bag you a free degree. Scotland is the only place in the United Kingdom which gives its residents a free education. They also house some of the best universities in the country such as the University of Edinburgh.

All you’ll need to do is move there 3 years before your kids are set to go to university and then they will qualify for free tuition. You’ll also benefit from extremely low house prices in some really beautiful places.

Fancy this castle?

If you’re from elsewhere in the EU (not England, Northern Ireland or Wales), you don’t even need to live in Scotland for 3 years to qualify for free tuition, you can just go there to study!

For the people who are from England, Wales or Northern Island and aren’t able to move to Scotland for 3 years, don’t worry - there are still plenty of options for you.

UK Students can currently go to 11 different EU countries to get a free degree, take your pick from the list below:

Germany

Sweden

Norway

Finland

Denmark

Poland

Hungary

Austria

Greece

Croatia

Slovenia

You can even pop over to France and study for as little as £158 per year. That’s the cheapest student loan you’ll ever get!

Damn, I’m annoyed that I didn’t know about this back when I was searching for a university, me and my partner wracked up a huge 70k worth of debt between us. We could have had a massive kick start in saving for financial independence if we’d been a little smarter, and we would have got to experience a new culture too.

Conclusion

So, why am I not paying for my kids to go to University? Because they shouldn’t need a piece of paper to prove their worth, but if they did, they should be able to get it for free anyway!

What are your views on paying for your child’s education?

What is FIRE?

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 08:00:32 +0000

FIRE stands for Financial Independence / Retire Early, but it isn’t just a concept, it’s a way of living. A movement that shares its routes with anti-consumerism and minimalism. A community which thrives on helping one another and is enthralled with passionate and subversive entrepreneurs whose single goal is to maximise their happiness.

The movement is full of intellectuals that understand happiness isn’t achieved by consuming products.

They’ve discovered that to be happy, money is better spent on increasing time with loved ones instead of buying the ‘next best thing’ that advertisers throw their way.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Would you Deprive Yourself for Future Happiness?

The concept of FIRE is to reduce your spending and increase your earnings, to a point that will allow you to have enough money to live your life without needing to work (Financial Independence). You would then have the means to retire at a much younger age (Retire Early).

Compound interest would allow an individual who saves 75% of his income to become financially independent in a little over 5 years (more on the Maths later). But in order to save this much, you have to subjugate yourself to what a lot of people would call ‘deprivation.’

Investing most of your income calls for cutting out most of your big expenses. You better get acquainted with driving banged up old cars again, going on cheap camping holidays, and shopping in the supermarket own-brand isle.

The way compounding works is by investing as early as possible. It pays to save a lot now and not have to save anything later, rather than to save in a mediocre way throughout your life. Would you live like a student for 5 years in order to live a financially prosperous life for the rest of your days?

Most people would say yes. I always preach that you should be eating beans until you have 100k invested . If you’re still in your 20’s and you haven’t yet got kids, this is even more important. Right now it is easy for you to save most of your salary, you should be doubling down and investing as much as you can. Doing so would allow you a life of luxury when you do start a family.

Most people who find this movement later in life have one regret: They wish they’d started younger. If they did, a lot of these people would be retired already!

What if it Wasn’t Deprivation?

What most people don’t realise about the FIRE movement is that it’s underlying core message isn’t about saving or earning more (although they are the main tools), it’s about the quest for happiness.

It’s about breaking out of the norm and realising that happiness doesn’t revolve around leaving your kids and wife for over 40 hours a week.

Realising that everlasting joy isn’t the same as the instant (and short-lived) endorphin rush that you get from buying something new and shiny.

Realising that living your life this way will never make you content.

Peel back the onion even more and you’ll see that behind the FIRE movements message of don’t spend money on things that don’t matter lays a deeper meaning. One that tells the observer “spending money doesn’t make you happy.”

Buying things can bring unhappiness. There’s a reason that the Monks of Tibet hold little personal possessions on their road to enlightenment. And, there’s a reason that when you go on a camping holiday and you’re forced to live minimally, and interact with your fellow human beings in a natural way, you’re happier.

While technology has brought about a whole lot of good in the world, most of the population are consumed by it. We are fooled into thinking that we need the latest and greatest to be happy - capitalism’s greatest trick - when in actual fact, happiness lays in the opposite direction.

Think of the FIRE movement like this: You’re spending less to be happier now. Investing the rest to become financially independent is just the side-effect, which will, in turn, bring even more happiness.

The Math

The maths is simple, all you need to focus on is your savings rate. The higher your percentage, the lower your working life.

% represents total expenses covered by ROI

With a 75% savings rate, based off a conservative 6% ROI (Return on Investment) and a 4% safe withdrawal rate, you’re looking at having enough for your ROI to cover your expenses just before you hit the 7 years worked mark. Pretty impressive.

With a 50% savings rate your working life is stretched to a little before 17 years - which is still pretty bloody awesome.

If you’re able to save 50% of your income since the age of 22, you’ll be able to quit work at the age of 39.

The reason you’re able to save up this much after a relatively short amount of time is because of a thing called compound interest.

If you invest £10,000 and earn an interest of 6%, that means that you’ll have a pot size of £10,600 at the end of the year. The year after, you’ll not only earn another £600 from the initial £10,000, you’ll also earn £24 from the extra £400 interest you earned on the previous year.

This is what compound interest is - interest earning interest, then that interest earning more interest and so on. That £24 may not seem like much, but over the years it compounds and multiplies into sums that are unimaginable.

If you leave that £10k invested and don’t touch it for 10 years, it would have almost doubled to £18k, another 10 years and it would have more than tripled to £32k.

But if you want to understand the true power of compound interest all you need to do is see what happens to that £10k after 50 years:

Compound interest alone would have turned it into £184,201.

This is with modest interest, we’re not trying to beat the market here. Everything is being put into a low cost index fund, these have historically returned more than 6% interest for the past 50 years. They also require zero effort on your part. All you need to do is open an investment account and this insane, magical compounding effect can be yours.

Easy, right?

Saving is Always Good

The power of compound interest rewards those who invest as early as possible which is why I always say that you should be eating beans until you have 100k invested . This should be your #1 focus!

You can even apply these principles if you’re not planning on retiring early.

For example, check out this graph:

If you tried hard to save 75% of your income for the first 3 years of your career (trust me it will be easier now than when you have kids later), then you saved absolutely nothing at all ever again. Due to compounding, you’d have enough to retire after 21 years.

Think about that for a second, save 75% of your income from age 22 to 25. Save nothing ever again, you’ll then be able to retire at 43. Worth the ‘sacrifice?’ Definitely!

Another scenario is this:

Save 75% of your salary for 5 years, then save nothing ever again **and **increase your spending by 50% (you might want to increase your lifestyle), you’ll still be able to retire (with your new higher expenses) in only 18 years.

So, work your butt off from 22 to 27 and save 75% of your income. Then start a family and increase your spending by 50%, save nothing until you’re 40, then retire. Sounds pretty awesome, right?

That 100k you saved in your 20’s? Yep, it’s now worth £1million in your 60’s. Give your hard working 20-year-old self a pat on the back, you’ve set yourself and your family up for life.

Saving is always good.

Don’t leave your future self wallowing in self-pity for not taking advantage of compound interest as early as possible. The years will either work with you or against you.

Putting this Knowledge into Practice

To get started it’s really easy. Just open a Vanguard ISA or Halifax Share Dealing account and invest in a Vanguard Lifestrategy fund. These are the ultimate low cost, hands-off funds for people like us, just trying to get that 6%.

It’s better to start investing now and then decide on your approach later. Switching to a different fund later on is much better than investing nothing at all, remember - you don’t want to miss that compound interest gravy train!

Here is an awesome Monevator article that explains the different LifeStrategy funds you can choose from, use this as a guide for now as I haven’t yet written my own fund choice post.

This is a Saving Ninja pillar post - it will be periodically updated as new content is written on the subject.

The Weird One

Sat, 15 Jun 2019 06:25:27 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #6.

A different opinion is somewhat frowned upon in our clique based society, but some of the greatest minds of all time were outliers. They weren’t scared to go against the grain and stand up for what they believed in. So, for this Thought Experiment, I’d like you to reveal yourself: What opinion do you have that most of your peers do not share?

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #6

Saving Ninja

in-deed-a-bly

Caveman @ DitchTheCave

Mr A Way To Less

Miss A Way To Less

Merely curious

Marc @ FinanceYourFire

Dr FIRE

A Simple Life

Money For The Modern Girl

Fretful Finance

Left FI

Andy @ liberate.life (on Rebo)

James @ Rebo

theFIREstarter

Eyes On The Goal

This is a difficult Thought Experiment for me. The question was actually proposed by the wonderful Indeedably , so in essence, it’s kind of like the first Thought Experiment that I’ve taken part in.

At first, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to join in. I thought, “What opinions of mine are different than most of my peers?” I’ve always wanted to be the popular guy, (suffice to say I rarely am) I don’t generally strive for being the “weird one.”

But then it hit me, I am the weird one!

The only difference is I’m generally the weird one in private. I write about weird stuff, I do weird stuff with my money. It’s even weird to read books these days, let alone every day. I am a right strange one in the eyes of society!

A present from my colleagues

Being this strange means that it’s only normal for a few of these weirdities to slip out and disrupt my perfectly conforming demeanor. In-fact, I’ve been dubbed the ‘money saving tips guy’ in multiple places of work. My last company got me a Money Saving Expert pig as a leaving present for god sake.

In my current company a few people have seen me betting on my phone. This mixed with my reluctance to spend money has got them thinking that I’m a broke gambling addict. Not that I’m actually making £1000s per month EW betting . If only they knew the truth of how weird I actually am?

SO, let’s get all of this stuff out of the way. Yes I am weird in the corporate world. Anyone in the FIRE community is, most of the country don’t save anything! Being under 30 and saving 80% of my after-tax income makes me a notch higher in the strange scale. But I’m not going to focus my attention on that during this post. Most of my readers are on their own saving adventures so it wouldn’t provide much of an insight talking about it; you’re all weird!

How am I Different From You?

One view that I’ve always been inclined to is that spending less money makes you happier. And no, I’m not talking about the fact that spending less means you can save more so you’ll have more money later on to make you happier (sure this might work too, if you use the money to buy time.) I’m talking about the concept that spending less will actually make you happier, the process of doing it.

I believe that most things you can buy will only grant you happiness in the forms of instant gratification, not a true everlasting joy. I’m not just talking about the big luxury items like iPads and cars either; I’m talking about pretty much anything.

Buying a bread maker or food mixer? I think you’ll be happier making the bread and mixing by hand. I believe that there’s a certain dark shadow that most contraptions cast over us and that there’s only so much we can include in our lives. It takes us further away from the beings that we are, making us less grounded.

That’s why I’m aiming to buy a homestead and to live off the land, I really think that’s where I’ll find real fulfillment and joy. Maybe I need this escape because I’ve moved so far away from nature in my career (Software Engineer working in London, bit against the grain of what I’m saying, right?)

Buying that bread maker also brings the negative connotation with spending money. You’ve parted with your hard work and time for that contraption, you’ve given it your life essence. When it breaks you’ll feel sad, bringing more unhappiness from the item that you bought.

It’s almost better to just not buy anything, at least that’s what I try to do. Of course, sometimes we need to part with money in order to buy something that we need (at least we think that we need!) Or something that will provide value in our busy accumulating stage of life. And of course sometimes, advertisements will get to us and we’ll succumb to that instant joy (and feel shitty afterwards no doubt,) but less is always the goal we’re striving for…

I’ve written more about how spending less relates to happiness in this post , check it out if you want some real life examples (although it was one of the first blog posts I’d ever written so go easy on me if you see any mistakes!)

Unpopular Opinion

Another view that me and my partner share (which is very unpopular) is that it’s better to split all of our expenses 50/50 no matter how our incomes differ. This keeps us completely independent from one another when money is concerned.

Although this technique can be infeasible for some couples, it’s worked very well for us. It unshackles us from a lot of arguments regarding money. I can’t imagine trying to tell my partner that I’m staking thousands of pounds worth in horse race bets whilst EW betting if we shared our finances. I’d also feel a lot worse if a side-hustle I attempted failed.

Keeping this department separate gives us free movement when deciding what to do with our own money. It also motivates us to try harder to earn more if we want to increase our lifestyle.

You can find out more on why we keep our finances separate in this post .

Conclusion

That’s all I can think of that’s worth discussing. Of course, there are a lot of financial topics to discuss which makes me different from 75% (or more) of the population, but that would turn into a book if I delved into that!

What has this Thought Experiment taught me?

That it’s OK to be weird.

In-fact, it’s better to be weird; normal is boring.

I'm now a Property Investor?! - Savings Report #11

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 06:30:21 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Oooo, look at that nice big 90!

Investments took a bit of a nose dive this month and lost £1,579 in value, although that was expected with the huge £2,816 gain from last month .

BUT, we still saw my net worth grow by £3,337.

This increase came from one extra special new investment to my portfolio: a buy to let property!

Spurred on by Nick and his latest property purchase . I thought it was about time I added something into that forever blank ‘Other Investments’ section.

For my BTL purchase, I used a very cool new platform called Property Partner . They let you invest as little as £100 into a huge variety of properties that they manage and I’ve heard nothing but good things from the friends who use them.

So, I decided to stick £1k in first to test out the platform. Say hello to property #1:

The property consists of 9 flats in the up and coming area of Cheshire (near where I grew up) and I now own 2000 shares in it, woo woo!

Click here to view the listing.

The expected dividend yield is a pretty good 4.21% but all of these dividends will be automatically reinvested back into the property (at a discount) and I’ll be hoping for a decent capital gains pay off. As it’s risen 26.5% in the last 5 years, and some properties in the UK have risen by over 50%, it’s an investment risk that I’m willing to take.

I know what you’re going to tell me: The property market can’t go up forever! I understand your concerns, BUT, I’m only investing £1k for now, and I’m thinking that even if there was a small property crash, the dividend income alone may even outperform the stock market. You’ve got to have a little fun, right?

I actually paid a premium of 7.8% to purchase this property due to the current popularity, who wouldn’t want it - it’s pretty flipping cool - which is why my ‘Other Investments’ section only stands at £911 after £1000 invested. Let’s see how long it takes for me to break even!

If you want to purchase a share in the same property and become my fellow investor, check it out here and let me know in the comments below!

Be sure to understand the risks of P2P lending before you buy anything.

Other Thoughts

May has been a month full of walking and wedding planning. The wedding is under 2 months away now and I’m getting pretty damn nervous.

Thankfully the planning seems to all be falling into place, although it’s still probably going to be a mad rush in the weeks leading up to it (no matter how organised I think I am!)

That reminds me, there is probably going to be a period of no posts for about a month in August due to the wedding and honeymoon. I was hoping to get some written and scheduled to bide you guys over, but I seem to be running out of time. We’ll see, still some time left yet :)

Matched Betting

Even though I said last month that I was going to ’taper-down’ the EW betting . I actually… kinda didn’t.

I made an additional £3,041 this month from matched betting (mostly EW). I guess I’m addicted to the tax-free money!

Saying that, most of the month was pretty rubbish. The bulk of my profit came from an insane profit winning day on the 3rd of May.

I said I was going to quit, but the profit is too good! Over 2k made today! https://t.co/KMoW1FGTLL pic.twitter.com/8c8YFTjCyl

— SavingNinja (@SavingNinja) 3 May 2019

I will be lowering my stakes to £20 EW (from £40 EW) for the time being and trying out a new risk-free method called ‘arbing’ this month. Let’s see how it goes!

How was your month?

Thinking About the Future

Thu, 23 May 2019 06:30:24 +0000

Every now and again you realise that things need to update, as time continues on its constant asymptote into the future, things begin to get old. As you learn and grow, your goals may begin to change as your pathway begins to reveal itself.

SavingNinja is almost a year old now, I think it’s about time for a refresh. Technology advances all the time and people’s needs change right along with it. It’s probably a good idea to think about a serious website update at least once per year.

So, this is my ‘backlog’ post. I’ll be detailing all of the changes that I want to make and what my vision is for the future of SavingNinja.

Pillar Posts

One thing that SavingNinja is sorely missing are pillar posts. These are posts that depict your main philosophies and strategy. I currently have zero posts explaining what Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) actually is. I just assumed my audience would already know.

Pillar posts are important for your brand as it helps people understand who you are and what beliefs you hold. They should be your root posts (hence the name) for each section of your brand, with all of your other posts leading off from them.

These posts are also important for people who make it to SavingNinja who have no idea what FIRE means. For example, a lot of my Google search traffic is coming from posts that are unrelated to finance. These people should be able to quickly and easily find a pillar post and learn about the FIRE movement with very little effort. If they can’t, I’ve failed at promoting the movement (which is one of this websites main goals).

Structure

My categories and top menu are currently a mess, this was expected as before starting the site, I had no idea what type of posts I would be writing. Now, a year on, it’s a lot easier to categorise my content.

I want to fit all of the content on SavingNinja into these 5 main categories:

These categories will also be book-ended with ‘pillar posts’ as described above.

As well as these main categories, I’ll also have a couple of others:

Updates - For posts such as this one and any other announcements.

Reviews - For book, software, or product reviews.

These categories should clearly (and simply) define all of the SavingNinja content. It will give readers a chance to compartmentalise the site into what they want to read about, with the pillar posts guiding them.

Theme Update

Although I really like the current SavingNinja theme (and I did pay for it), it doesn’t have as many features as I would like, it’s actually quite an old and clunky theme. I’ll be looking for a more feature rich theme which suites the SavingNinja brand, and now that I know I’m sticking with blogging, I don’t mind paying a bit more for a good one.

Along with the theme update I’ll be looking at creating a better quality logo and header artwork, I may even get them professionally done as I know a few really awesome professional designers.

More Experimentation!

I love starting new side-hustles and experimenting. One of the reasons that SavingNinja was born was to document these experiments. I still have so much that I want to try! Kindle publishing, affiliate websites, Udemy courses, to name a few. It’s just finding the time to slot these in. Maybe my first experiment should be how to manage my time better? :)

How to Clear Your Mind

Thu, 16 May 2019 10:00:24 +0000

This is entry #1 into the new ‘How to Find Happiness ’ post series. Do you have anything to contribute to this series? If so, please contact me .

Those of you who follow the blog will know that in a few short months, me and the (soon to be) Mrs SavingNinja will be attempting the 12 hour Half Dome hike in Yosemite Valley. There was a moment of realisation last week when we thought, ‘Shit, we’ve never been on a hike that long before, not even close! We’d better do some training.’

So, we researched online and found a long, circular hike in our area, packed up our water pouches, beef jerky, and snacks, and we set off with a spring in our step (it didn’t last long).

The hike we went on took us 6 hours, it traversed the beautiful Surrey Hills, and it covered 22 kilometers from start to finish. Even though it was difficult, we both thoroughly enjoyed the walk. It taught us that we definitely have to do more training before we’re ready for the hike up the monster which is Half Dome, but it also taught us something else, something perhaps profound: Long hikes completely clear your mind.

We both felt elated, happy, and content directly after the hike, but I started to really notice a change whilst on the train the next day. I sat on my morning commute and noticed that my mind was almost completely clear. I still had the recursive worries and ‘planning’ thoughts flying through my head, but they were much quieter, like a whisper, and easier to push away too. I felt like the normally buzzing part of my brain was occupying 10% of my head instead of 90%, this gave my mind space to be present and feel happy.

I sat there in bliss after realising that I was content and calm, I didn’t even want to turn on my Kindle and read as I was enjoying the serenity too much. Instead, I continued to listen to the Peaceful Piano playlist on Spotify and relax, for over half of my journey.

It’s now 3 days later and I’m still experiencing this bliss.

What the hell is happening? Is the secret to being content and living in the moment really just to go on a long walk?

What’s Going On?

Whilst being in this blissful state, I’ve tried to analyse how and why this is happening, this is what I came up with:

1) All of my thoughts had a chance to get out into the open. I was walking for 6 whole hours, with my closest friend. There were periods where we didn’t talk, and long stretches where we did. Everything that we wanted to talk about, got talked about.

The walk was like a repository for me to pour all of my mounting thoughts into, worries and dreams both. It left us feeling as if we’d discussed everything that we had to discuss, which was much needed with the wedding just around the corner.

2) Reconnecting with nature. There’s something about being in the beauty of nature that makes you feel grounded and thankful. Something along the lines of, “How lucky am I to live in a place where all of this beauty is right on my doorstep? And no matter how much I save, or work, I’ll always have access to this.”

It brings you back down to earth and makes you realise that to be happy, all you really need are your loved ones and nice walks.

3) Switching off from technology. Although we still had our phones out to take pictures, we were, for the most part, completely phone free. For 6 hours! I don’t remember the last time in the waking day that we haven’t gone on our phones for that long.

In this day and age, people are glued to their phones, it’s like an addiction. With all of the good that they bring, it’s nice to reconnect to real life and switch off from time to time.

4) Fatigue. Walking for 6 hours is pretty damn tiring. Maybe an empty head is just the result of being extremely tired? This would be a pretty crappy explanation to a nice feeling, so I hope not!

It is strange that this feeling of contentedness only seemed to occur when going on an extended walk. I wonder where the boundary is? Would we feel this way after hiking for only 3 hours? Or less?

There’s also the possibility that we were just having a plain old nice day, which left us feeling happy. We’ll soon find out when we go on our next extended walk.

Have you ever felt a feeling like this after completing a strenuous activity? Let me know in the comments below.

Don’t Borrow Worry From Tomorrow

Thu, 09 May 2019 09:36:51 +0000

“Why are you surprised that traveling does you no good, when you travel in your own company? The thing that weighs on your mind is the same as what drove you from home.”

I felt the sting of this quote when I read it. My constant craving for wanderlust has been a fixture in my mind for as long as I can remember; It’s been the answer to all of my problems, I think to myself; The way I will find real and everlasting happiness…

But this quote defiles that thought…

It shifts my perspective and points the blame at me. I can travel to anywhere that I want, but I’ll still feel the same; the problem lies within my own mind.

Don’t Borrow Worry From Tomorrow…

I used to know this.

Below are my favourite quotes from Robin Hobb’s famous fantasy
anthology:

Do not agonize about yesterday. Do not borrow tomorrow’s trouble. Let your heart hunt. Rest in the now.

Robin Hobb**, Fool’s Assassin **

When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy. The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgment.

Robin Hobb**, Ship of Magic **

After reading them, they became the motto for my life. As an expert worrier, I tended to spend more than 75% of my time worrying and being unhappy about future possibilities. When implementing the method of not borrowing worry from tomorrow, I effectively alleviated three-quarters of my life from the shackles of worry-anxiety.

Of course, sometimes I need to remind myself of these quotes, our minds seem to drift in and out of awareness as we monotonously progress through life, so, occasionally, worry sneaks up on you. But most of the time, I stick with it!

Getting Out of the Neutral Zone

It’s great to not worry as much, but I don’t just want that, I also want to be happy. That feeling that you get as a kid the day before you go on a family holiday which you’ve been looking forward to for months, the awe and excitement that you feel; I want to feel that most of the time. We live in a beautiful world; it should be our default states.

Eliminating worry (for the most part) is good for pushing the pendulum from the despairs of anxiety and making room for Mr. Happiness to come and grasp you, but you won’t fall into this happiness on your own, you need to make it for yourself.

You need to get out of the neutral zone.

There’s an excellent Ted Talk called The Surprising Science of Happiness which describes each person having different levels of base happiness. For example, if you scaled happiness from 1 to 10, your baseline might be 7, mine could be 3.

My maximum happiness could be your baseline. This is why some people are generally happier than others, or more depressed.

With this being the case, it must be a lot harder for lower happiness level individuals to feel content. I’ve discovered in recent years that I’m definitely in the lower bracket, it takes a lot more for me to feel a shred of emotion or excitement, much more than it does for my partner. The worst thing is, I don’t think that I was always like this.

I suffered a major stint of job-related stress at my last position, it also coincided with moving into my first home and starting to work in London (along with a 3 hour round trip commute). It mentally and physically drained me. I lost my happiness, even when I knew that nothing was wrong.

I believe this event is what drained my peak happiness barometer. But I’m also faithful that I can reset it, I just need to find out how, and I’m hoping that you guys can join me.

How to Find Happiness

With this blog post, I’m proposing a new post series titled ‘How to Find Happiness.’ Within this series, I hope that we can find internal happiness through exploration and experimentation. Below I’ve compiled a list of the books that I plan to read. They range from philosophy and communication to mindfulness and meditation.

The new series will explore each book in detail, try to implement their teachings and document the results, and I invite all of my readers and fellow bloggers to take part.

Pick a book, or add one to the list, analyse it, and try to practice what they preach within your own life. Report your findings via any medium and let me know your results. These findings will form the soon to be section of this website dedicated solely to happiness and self-fulfillment. It will document everyone’s analysis and results and become a positive repository for helping people on the FIRE path (and in general) to find internal wellbeing.

A lot of people chasing financial independence forget to live in the now, but I believe, if we all work together, we can find out how to change for the better. To live life in the now, whilst also saving for our future. We can become healthier, mentally and physically, and live happier, more fulfilled lives.

Think of it as a book club between bloggers for a positive goal. It doesn’t even have to stop there, if you know of a positive YouTube video, lecture or TV show to watch, we can add it to the list of exploratory topics. If you haven’t got your own blog, write a story anyway and I’ll feature it as a guest post, what we build will be able to help the masses.

The Happiness Book Club

So, without further ado; here’s the list of books that I’ve personally compiled which I’m going to focus on, to begin with. I invite you all to also pick a book, read it and provide feedback on your results.

Man’s Search for Meaning - Frankl (165 pages)

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful. Man’s Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.

Stumbling on Happiness - Gilbert (263 pages)

Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? • Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight? • Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want? • Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it? In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Csikszentmihalyi (303 pages)

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous investigations of “optimal experience” have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experienceteaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Gladwell (296 pages)

Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you’ll understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself - Singer (200 pages)

Whether this is your first exploration of inner space,_ or you’ve devoted your life to the inward journey, this book will transform your relationship with yourself and the world around you. You’ll discover what you can do to put an end to the habitual thoughts and emotions that limit your consciousness. By tapping into traditions of meditation and mindfulness, author and spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and let go of painful thoughts and memories that keep us from achieving happiness and self-realization._

Incerto 4 Book Bundle: Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes - Taleb (1520 pages)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series is an investigation of luck, uncertainty, probability, opacity, human error, risk, disorder, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand, in nonoverlapping and standalone books. All four volumes—Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and the special expanded edition of The Bed of Procrustes, updated with more than 50 percent new material—are now together in one ebook bundle.

All About Love: New Visions - Hooks (240 pages)

All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.

Making Space: Creating a Home Meditation Practice - Hanh (92 pages)

Find peace and calm amid the busyness of your life with this new book by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Designed to be both inspiration and guidebook for those new to mindfulness practice, Making Space offers easy-to-follow instructions for setting up a breathing room, listening to a bell, sitting, breathing, and walking meditations, and cooking and eating a meal in mindfulness. Whether you live alone or with a family, this beautifully illustrated book can help you create a sense of retreat and sanctuary at home.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost - Solnit (209 pages)

Whether she is contemplating the history of walking as a cultural and political experience over the past two hundred years (Wanderlust), or using the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge as a lens to discuss the transformations of space and time in late nineteenth-century America (River of Shadows), Rebecca Solnit has emerged as an inventive and original writer whose mind is daring in the connections it makes. A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit’s own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.

Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life - Dolan (256 pages)

As a Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, Dolan conducts original research into the measurement of happiness and its causes and consequences, including the effects of our behaviour. Here he creates a new outlook on the pursuit of happiness - it’s not just how you feel, it’s how you act. Happiness by Design shows that being happier requires us to actively re-design our immediate environment. Enough has been written on how to think happy. Happiness by Design is about how to behave happy and how to incorporate the most recent research findings into our everyday lives.

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life - Kobat-Zinn (304 pages)

In this book, the author maps out a simple path for cultivating mindfulness in one’s own life. It speaks both to those coming to meditation for the first time and to longtime practitioners, anyone who cares deeply about reclaiming the richness of his or her moments.

Happier - Ben-Shahar (192 pages)

Can You Learn to Be Happy? YES . . . according to the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar’s insightful and inspiring lectures on that ever-elusive state: HAPPINESS.

The Art of Fully Living - Gur (264 pages)

In this stirring book, author, blogger and lifestyle entrepreneur, Tal Gur offers his own transformational journey as an inspiring example and practical guide to implementing the art of fully living to its fullest potential. You’ll learn how to actualize your potential by forging all aspects of your life through the process built into your life goals.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Manson (224 pages)

For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. “F**k positivity,” Mark Manson says. “Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it.” In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.

Crazy Gains - Savings Report #10

Thu, 02 May 2019 06:30:06 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

What on earth happened this month!?

My investments made a staggering £2,816, the most it’s grown in a single month yet.

Surely some of my formulas are out of whack? That’s 5.47% interest gained in only 1 month; jeez!

Anyway, I’m not complaining. My total net worth grew by £6,732! Pretty darn awesome.

For some reason, my pension contribution this month went up to £2,657, up from £2,579 last month. I have no idea why this has happened as I haven’t changed anything. Maybe it’s still re-jigging from my pay rise last month ?

We’ll see what it is next month, it will probably go back down.

My years to FI now stands at… Drum roll please…

3 years and 11 months!

Wooo, finally under the 4-year figure. Seeing that 3 makes it seem so soon, exciting stuff! I know it will probably flip-flop up and down, especially as the pot grows (and with this month’s insane 5.81% growth), so I’m not celebrating just yet.

Other Thoughts

April has been a pretty busy month. My Dad came to help me lay new flooring in the hallway over the Easter bank holiday. We successfully did it, but it took almost 3 full days and was pretty hectic. I may have to re-think my house building project (or at least try some smaller building projects first!)

It probably would have been more enjoyable if there was more time to complete the project leisurely, but as it stands I have no place to store any big tools so my Dad had to bring a bunch down (from across the country).

Turned out alright in the end though!

Sub-floor to level out the wonky floor boards.

Need to replace the carpet next.

Blogging

I wrote my first fiction piece of writing responding to Marc’s microfiction series , which was pretty fun. Again, one of my after-FI projects was to write a fantasy novel, so April saw a lot of “testing the waters” for these types of projects. It’s always good to try smaller scale projects out before committing to a full-blown one!

We saw the 5th installment of the Thought Experiment series which had over 16 articles written, our biggest turn out yet! I’m really happy that so many people like and participate in these posts, it’s almost sad that I switched from monthly to bi-monthly, but, I have to remember the reasons for doing so; there are still plenty of other topics that I want to write about.

The Thought Experiment posts are hard-work, not only do I have to write up the question and answer, but I have to keep track of everyone’s responses and read them all, which I enjoy doing, but is of course time-consuming. Once per month will be way too much I think, but we’ll see for now.

Wedding

Wedding prep is still ramping up, a lot of things have been completed now and I see the finish line in sight. There is now under 3 months to go until the big day.

We also got our half-dome permits so we’ll be going on a 12-hour hike at the end of our honeymoon which will be awesome!

We get to climb up this thing!

Matched Betting

April saw my EW betting profits stay strong, making £3,419 (tax-free). This was from a very strong beginning of the month, a massive mid-month dip and then a strong finish.

I will be beginning to taper EW betting down over the coming months as a lot of my highest earning accounts have been gubbed. I still have a couple of account sources up my sleeve but I’ll be waiting until after the wedding to begin these. So, for now, I’ll be reducing EW betting efforts to around 20 minutes per weekday and I’ll be aiming for £500-£1000 per month profits.

This would still be a nice income with very little effort and should be doable on stake restricted accounts.

Rebo Portfolio Tracking

One of my favourite bloggers Andy @ Liberate.life has just released his super-secret new project to the world, portfolio tracking software called Rebo .

The software lets you compile all of your investment accounts into a single view and analyse all of your assets, great for if you have multiple accounts with different providers, they even have an option to add multiple people into a single view (for the family accountant ;) )

It also tracks all of your investments automatically, so you don’t have to manually update your fund values each time the market changes.

I’ve been a beta tester for a while now and I’ve been enjoying using it. The best thing is, it’s free! Go and give it a try and let me know what you think.

See ya next month!

How did your month go? Let me know in the comments below.

Microfiction #1 - Fire

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 20:14:27 +0000

Below is an entry into Marc@FinanceYourFire’s Microfiction Series . He states a word and participants are asked to write a short story (less than 350 words) on the subject. Head over to the article to see his own and any other entries.

I’m seeing this as a great way to practice fiction writing. Who knows, maybe one of these short stories could turn into a book as, when retired, one of my projects is to write an epic fantasy !

It is hard to conceive the destruction one such as he can wreak. A sweet boy, to the casual observer, but hidden from their view lays his insurmountable ability to hate. Not just any old hatred; hatred with a burning passion. The type that is normally reserved for individuals who have suffered from a catastrophic wrong. Some would call one such individual a demon sent from the depths below; a beast to be strung to a stake and burnt. But burnt he cannot be, for the hatred is concealed deep within himself, manifesting only inside his own mind…

‘How dare he speak to me like that! What a swine! A cretin! A dirty little Grumpkin. I’ll show him what it costs to defy me!’ He feels his anger putrefying within his gut and collects it like candy from a jar, he funnels his toxicity into his one singular goal, yearning for it like a mother yearns for her dead child. Beads of sweat form on his brow as he forces his image into existence, bringing it forth from deep within his loins. He sees it, smells it, talks to it, and caresses its smoldering heart. He begins to taste its charred fragrance upon his tongue; this is a friend who he has called upon before.

He eagerly slams his journal shut and bolts through his dormitory door. As he makes his way through the twilight streets he starts to hear shrill voices cry out, “Fire!” Scarlet twinkles begin to catch his eye in the distance as he observes the billowing flames pouring out of his Professors quarters. Shyly, he smirks to himself; ‘My nights just about to get a whole lot better.’

How to Increase Your Savings Rate

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 17:00:57 +0000

A lot of people are quite shocked when they hear how much I save in comparison to what I spend. A lot of this is attributed to a big salary, but my expenses are still lower than most people that I know.

Saving so much is partly due to my upbringing, partly due to my relationship status and partly due to my competitive nature, but a lot of my savings can be attributed to certain habits that I have instilled in myself over the years. These are habits that anyone can reinforce in themselves to increase their savings rate.

How can you increase your savings rate? Check out my easy savings tips below.

Create a budget at the beginning of the year and stick to it

If you don’t have a budget you have no way of keeping your spending in check. You can’t accurately decide how much you can spend on the things that you really want to buy. It’s also much harder to tell if you’re over spending.

Creating a concise budget allows you to clearly see how much money you can dedicate to investments and how your hobbies will change your retirement date. You can then easily decide what to cut out, or even what to dedicate more money to.

I enjoy traveling, so I’ve purposely budgeted for more money to be spent on holidays over on the Saving Ninja Budget Planner. To help maintain my 80% savings rate, I’ve cut back on my other spending areas like eating out and buying luxury items.

With a budget, if my life circumstances change, I can easily jig the figures around. I can purposely take away from other optional spending categories and ensure that my savings rate will always stay at its rightful place, this way I know that my retirement date won’t be affected.

Give yourself a ‘Spending Pot’

Every month, give yourself a certain amount of money that you can spend on whatever you like. This can be spent guilt free and you can use it to save up for bigger purchases. Doing this allows you to set a monthly figure that you’re happy with spending instead of just buying what you want whenever something takes your fancy and potentially decimating your early retirement dreams.

I give myself £100 per month to spend on what I like. If I want to buy something worth £300, I’ll have to go without purchasing any new clothes or games for a few months to save up for it. Even though I could easily afford to spend £300 each month, doing this keeps my purchases in check. I know exactly how much I can invest and I can spend my money confidently (and guilt free!) knowing that it won’t affect my savings rate.

Create a ‘holding list’ for purchases

Your ‘holding list’ can be on paper or stored on a word editor. If you really want to buy something, instead of just getting it, put it on a holding list for 2 weeks. This way you can tell if you really want it or if it’s a passing fad. Most of the time your desire for the item will go away.

In the modern world, there are advertisements everywhere to get you to spend, spend, spend. Even the most avid saver can sometimes succumb to advertising’s strong influence.

Sometimes you’ll feel like you want something so much and that you won’t be happy unless you have it. You’ll then regret your purchase after you become bored of it in a couple of weeks. Creating a holding list can fix this problem.

Buy second hand, and sell again after you’re done

If you absolutely must buy those ‘luxury’ items, make sure you buy them second hand.

This is an especially good tip for games. I wanted a Nintendo Switch since it’s release date but I was adamant that I shouldn’t buy one as I already had lots of other consoles and games I hadn’t yet finished. After over a year of lusting after one, I eventually gave in. I bought the Switch second hand and also bought some games second hand. Switch games rarely fall in value, this allowed me to sell them for the same price (or sometimes a higher price) after I had completed them and then buy another one!

Buying second hand and selling again is a great way to combat your instant gratification monkey. Who says you can’t spend money when saving a lot? Just make sure you sell again when you’re done :]

Buy for longevity instead of cheapness

This seems counter-intuitive to the aspiring saver. Lots of people wrongly assume that they need to buy cheap to save more money, but the real trick is to buy for longevity. A £120 good quality coat that will last you 15 years is much better than one for £40 that will last you 1.

This is not to be confused with buying brands. Make sure that your extra money is going on quality and not a brand name. Do your research before hand and make sure you know what you’re buying.

Unsubscribe from retailers that constantly send you ‘sales’ promotions

A lot of websites and shops are in constant sales mode. They do this to psychologically trick you into spending more. Don’t fall victim to it, unsubscribe from their mailing list! You’ll be much better off only buying what you need.

When shopping on Amazon there is a good Chrome extension that you can add called Keepa , this app shows you the price history of each item you’re viewing. It also tells you what the average price is. Using this, you can easily tell if the seller has hiked the prices up on purpose just before a ‘sale’. This extension is a must around events like black friday!

Declutter your home

A lot of people end up buying multiples of the same item as they don’t realise they already own it. Keeping your house tidy and throwing away what you no longer need is a great way to better keep track of what you already own. It will also help throttle the need to buy more stuff when you realise how much you’re throwing away.

There is also evidence that suggests that living more minimally and clutter free allows you to think more clearly, be more productive and most importantly, live a happier life. An excellent book written about this topic is Marie Kondo’s ‘The Magic of Tidying,’ give this a read if you need some more inspiration!

Have you got any tips for increasing your savings rate? Let me know in the comments below.

What to do When You Retire?

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 06:30:06 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #5.

Life is good. You finally did it! You pulled the plug on your day job after reaching financial independence. You never have to work for money ever again. But, you’re bored. You need something to do… You need a project! You grab a piece of paper and a pen and start thinking. Now that you’re financially free, what projects do you want to complete? However ambitious, however small, you now have the time to pursue anything that you like, what will you accomplish?

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #5

in-deed-a-bly

CaveMan @ DitchTheCave

A Way to Less

Cashflow Cop

Merely curious

Sam @ A Simple Life

Gentlemans Family Finances

Marc @ Finance Your Fire

Dr FIRE

The FIRE Shrink

Young FI Guy

Fretful Finance

theFIREstarter

What Life Could Be

Money For The Modern Girl

Reaching financial independence is a dream for you and me but have you ever stopped to ask yourself why? A lot of people would quickly jump to the conclusion that it’s because they hate their job but when you dig into the root of it, you’d realise that it’s actually time that they desire most.

You always look back towards your former years with longing, missing the freedom and happiness that having more free time grants you. When you’re in school, you don’t realise how much free time you actually have, time that you can dedicate to whatever your heart desires. The leakage of your time gets progressively worse as you work your way through college, university, your career, and eventually; kids.

People long for that time back. They look back with misery at all of the free time that they wasted as a youth when they’ve undoubtedly collected so many dreams during their adult years but simply don’t have time to pursue any of them until they’re at the ripe old age of 68.

It’s sad to think that the majority of the world will never get to realise their dreams. They’ll never even get to begin their projects or deduce their ideal life. Since leaving adolescence people always tell you to kick your dreams to the kirb… “Get a real job that pays the bills,” they say. Our society is built off of these broken dreams, the broken dreams of a civilisation. Who would truly choose to work for 5 days a week, sat in front of a computer screen, if money wasn’t part of the equation?

That’s what makes our FIRE movement so special. We say F U to the norms of society. We will not wait around until we are grey and old to realise our dreams. We will realise them as soon as we can, we won’t fall prey to the materialistic propaganda.

So, what will I do once I am free, once my “real life” begins?

The Thrill of the Game

When growing up I always wanted to be a game developer. This type of job seemed so out of reach when I was in school, I felt that it was almost like saying that I wanted to be an astronaut or rocket scientist. I went to college to study Computer Science, knowing that I wanted to do something which involved computers. Then, to my delight, I found the perfect university course to pursue my passion: Computer Game Development.

Unfortunately, money took control after I left university and instead of going after the much more difficult (and lower paid) job titles such as game developer, I went into mobile application development. But I still knew that I wanted the thrill of making a game. Nothing quite beats the feeling that you get when you’ve made a game from a bunch of algorithms and then watch someone play it. I told myself that I would make games in my spare time whilst working in a higher paid job… But of course I haven’t, due to one thing…

Time - Or lack thereof.

Making a game is hard work, it would be incredibly difficult and stressful to do so whilst working a 9 till 5. But nothing would be more exciting than not working and dedicating a whole year or more to designing and developing a fully fledged indie game. Having a title on the Steam store (or maybe Project Stadia in the future?) would be a dream come true.

Writing

One of my favorite hobbies is reading and since starting this blog, I’ve started to quite like writing too! One of my retirement projects will definitely be to write a novel. Not just any novel, I want to write an epic fantasy.

Much like my desire to create a game, I’d love to sit down and design a huge character set and plot line and methodically write each chapter and sequence (see the Snowflake Method ). It’s said that writing a fantasy novel is pretty darn difficult, but I’d have time on my side, and with that, I think I’d be OK!

Mobile Applications

Throughout my long career as a mobile application developer I’ve released dozens of apps for Android and iOS but I’ve not yet had the time to create any apps for myself. I’ve started a bunch of them but seem to never finish! When retired I’d have to keep my skills up to date and I’d like to do so by creating my own applications.

These apps would probably start off with useful software that would help with my own life, I’ve already got a half built app that helps me keep track of my spending! I really should finish it soon…

Building

This would be a more long term project and I think the most important one. I’ve always wanted to buy a big plot of land and build structures myself. I’d start off with a simple wood shed and eventually build my own sawmill, barn, and stables. Eventually I’d love to also be able to build my forever family home. Although it may run the risk of turning into a shanty shack!

Ultimately this project will be the Ranch project where I’d try and build a fully renewable living facility which includes its own power generator, waste disposal, water filtration and crops. I may be way too overambitious with this one, real life isn’t much like Minecraft! But with time on your hands, you can learn anything.

These are my main passion projects that I’ll pursue when I retire. I’d never realised before that all of my dream projects revolve around creating things. Each one involves building something and being able to share that creation with others. When I’m ever feeling low on my journey toward financial independence, I’ll refer back to this post as a reminder of why I’m doing all of this:

To take back my time and chase my dreams.

What will you do when you are retired?

A Big Decision to Make

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 06:30:15 +0000

Every once in awhile you find yourself at a crossroads. Each road leading to an entirely new destination, each with their own crossroads leading to places that you never could have imagined.

When you find yourself at one of these pinnacle moments in your life you know that the decisions that you make will be paramount and you know this with absolute clarity. This week I found myself at one of these crossroads. I’ve seen it coming over the horizon for quite a while now but I didn’t think that I’d end up here so soon. There’s a lot of pondering to be done.

I’ve said many times on this blog that my dream is to relocate to a far away land, preferably the USA. In fact, it’s been my dream to move there since my childhood, it’s been almost an infatuation. I know that I’ve got the “American dream fever”, but when analysed, a lot of my wants and needs also point to the USA:

If you want to earn the biggest software engineering salaries, you need to be in the USA (particularly Silicon Valley)

I enjoy working hard and progressing, I also have an entrepreneurial spirit. Silicon Valley is where I belong and being there brings endless possibilities (even more than London!)

It’s the best country to be a citizen of, with regards to variety

I plan to retire early, I have plenty of passions but these might change at a moments notice. If I were a US citizen, I’d have 50 states that I could move to. No matter if I wanted snowy mountains, desert planes, lush greenery, rocky shores or perfect beaches - there’s a state that I could move to which would accommodate these dreams.

I also love the idea of ranching, building, and farming. Doing that in the UK would be a lot harder and more expensive than it would be in the USA.

There’s more land and bigger houses

The general consensus is that there is much more land and bigger houses in the USA (not particularly in California or New York City). For comparison - I’d be able to buy a ranch in northern Massachusetts for $75,000. If I tried to buy the same in Devon I’d be looking at over £1 million.

Moving away is a mean feat until you have clocked up a lot of experience and become desirable. In order to get a green card, the hiring company has to pay thousands of dollars and prove that they can’t hire a US citizen to do the same job. Due to this fact, I’d put the notion out of my head whilst I progressed through my career. Now, with over 5 years under my belt and with my marriage just around the corner (I can bring her with me), the time has come to really ask myself; is this what I still want to do?

Option #1 - Apply for visa sponsoring jobs now

This option has become more readily available to me due to new work connections. I could be applying to as many jobs as possible right now to maximise the possibility of moving to the USA.

Moving sooner rather than later seems like it’s what my heart desires. I have the experience, I’ll be able to bring my wife with me, why wait? Like previously mentioned in this blog, I feel like my life is waiting to start, why shouldn’t I start it ASAP? Moving now would mean that I’d become a citizen sooner, so I could move to a higher paying job more quickly once I’ve obtained a green card.

But it would also put a severe dent into my FIRE plans…

My savings rate would suffer, at least initially. My soon to be wife would not be eligible to work without her own VISA, she’d effectively be house-bound until I get my green card, which could take over 3 years. We’d also be living in an extremely high cost of living area. I wouldn’t really have the option to do what I’m doing now and have a long commute because I’d have to be working really long hours to ensure that I successfully get citizenship. These facts may mean that my savings rate would dip to near zero, a long way from the 80% that I’m achieving today.

Option #2 - Start contracting in London and relocate in a few years

The reason I initially started working in London was because I knew that I wanted to start freelancing. I’ve now got the experience (and the London experience) to begin this journey, it would be frustrating to move away before I even got to try it out.

Contracting would increase my pay by a factor of 2 and with my savings rate already sitting at 80%, it would make my savings rate go stratestophic. Contracting for a few years may even allow me to become fully financially independent before moving to the USA. My stash would then be able to grow whilst I obtained my green card and earning less over there during this process then wouldn’t matter as much.

Doing this would also allow my partner to continue working and moving up her career ladder, which brings us to another question - what to do about kids?

We’ve teetered along the lines of whether we want children for quite a while now. Both of us feel like we don’t want kids right now. We’re not settled into a location where we know we want to stay, it’s certainly not a viable place for children. We also still have so much that we want to accomplish, so many places that we’re yet to visit. And I know that children won’t halt these aspirations, but it will definitely hinder them. We are definitely in agreement that we do eventually want children, we don’t want to grow old without them. We know that one day, we’ll want a family.

The only trouble is the time bomb which is a woman’s womb. We know that we can’t wait too long without increasing the likelihood of pregnancy difficulties. Especially if we want more than 1 child. Because of this, we’re aiming to wait until the age of 31 at the latest, which gives us just under 4 years to sort our shit out and prepare.

This timeframe leads us down two pathways:

Option #2.a - Have children in the UK and relocate when they are young (in around 10 years)

This seems to make the most sense financially, but it would put a huge spanner in our initial dream (which is to relocate). We’d be able to continue earning and saving as much as we can, we’d both get maternity pay and we’d have the support of relatives if needed.

The one issue that I see with this option (other than staying in England) is that we’d have to move house. We chose our current place with cheapness in mind, we live in a really shit area (I’m pretty sure we have drug dealers at either side of us) and the house is not suitable for children. The place allows us to save a very high amount of our salaries, but we’d definitely have to move if we had kids.

The problem is, there aren’t many other options for places to move that would allow me to work in London, we’d either have to increase our housing costs massively or relocate to outside of the London area reducing my pay by a fair bit and perhaps forcing me to take up another permanent position.

I could potentially look for a fully remote contract before moving away from London, this could segway beautifully into relocating to the USA if the remote contract is with an American company. It would decrease my salary of course, but maybe that won’t matter after I’ve got a significant amount invested?

Option #2.b - Relocate in a few years and have children in the USA

This seems like it should be a great option. My wife won’t be able to work for at least a few years when we move away, so why not have kids then? The main issue seems to again, come down to costs.

I’m told that even with company health care, your excess costs for childbirth in the US can still be around $20k. WIth these prices it would be ludicrous to move out of a country where we could have kids for free, then proceed to instantly have children.

The other problem is that when we first relocate I’m going to have to be working crazy hours in one of the most demanding work cultures in the world. I wanted to take more time off and be more relaxed when we had children, not work more! I would hardly get to see my wife and newborn and being in a foreign country with no friends or family, it wouldn’t be ideal.

Going Around in Circles

What a conundrum. I want to move away to start our ”real life” as soon as possible. Doing so straight away would be financial suicide. Moving away after a few years would be ideal but we’d need to start thinking about children around this time. And having kids would make for a horrible few years working in a foreign country with a newborn.

Staying in England to have kids seems like the most sensible option but that would mean we’d have to foot the costs (and stress) of moving homes when we know that we’re not going to be living there for very long.

It seems like there are no correct options. At least, for now, moving straight away definitely seems like a bad choice. Doing so would be thinking solely with my heart and not with my head. So I should hold off on those interviews.

The most logical choice seems to be to have children in England. But that means we’d have to wait such a long time. We’d be much older then, everything wouldn’t be as new and exciting. We may even run the risk of ending up not moving at all. Children in general are also very unpredictable. We could end up not being able to have them or have some other kind of problems. Should we hold off our dreams on the wisps of uncertainty? Or let the uncertainty happen once we have moved?

There are other options to consider. We could move to Canada for example, we’d both be able to work there. It would also be a lot easier to get jobs and sponsorship there. We could move to any number of countries, but I guess we’ll have to defer this thinking for now. I did promise to not think about all of this until after the wedding!

At least this post has taught me one thing - to not move straight away. To hold fire! I’ll focus on the wedding and then starting my first contract. Building up my cash will only make things easier down the line.

What do you think I should do?

A Weird Month - Savings Report #9

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 06:30:54 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Oooo, things are starting to get pretty exciting!

I’ve crossed the £50k invested barrier! Mini goal achieved!? It actually now sits at £51,492 which is awesome. It’s getting ever so closer to that six number figure.

My ‘Years to FI’ number has gone down normally by only 1 month and now sits at 4.1 years, it will reach below 4 years soon!

Interest is still climbing healthily, earning £531 in total this month which is over 1% change. I don’t expect this to continue each month and with the Brexit uncertainties, this will be all over the place over the next year.

My pension contributions have also gone up slightly by £79 to £2,579, this is due to an automatic pay rise at work at the end of the year. It went up automatically as it’s set to a percentage of my salary. I’ll be reviewing my contributions again in a couple of months and I’ll probably up my ISA and pension contributions.

Gotta keep on sloggin’! Only 3 more Savings Reports until I’ve done a whole 12, has it been that long all ready!?

Other Thoughts

This month has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows. It started off with a very profitable Cheltenham festival (see profits below) but was followed by lots of lows with having my betting account banned (again) and going through stints of boredom!

I feel like I’m now just waiting for my wedding. It’s only a few months away so it’s too soon to not think about but it’s a long enough time to be seeming like it’s dragging on! I’m also pretty nervous about the actual process. I’m quite a socially anxious person so the prospect of standing up in front of a load of people and “performing” doesn’t sit well with me. My partner on the other hand is very outgoing and is purely excited. Is it normal for me to be filled more with more nerves than excitement?

I’ve also done some serious thinking about my future this month, it’s all been written down in a post which will be coming out next week but the conclusion of it was that I’m definitely going to be beginning contracting after I get back from my honeymoon. I know that it’s probably not the best time to begin due to IR35 and Brexit but I may as well try - I can always go back into a permanent position if everything else fails!

Contracting should allow me to hit my pension and ISA yearly limits so my savings amount should go up to around 60k form 40k. I ran some compound interest calculations and it seems that if I started contributing this amount at the end of the year, I should hit £1 million at the age of 37. Of course I would probably quit or go part time before then, but it’s pretty exciting nonetheless!

The latest Thought Experiment is also coming out on the 15th of this month. I’ve switched to a bi-monthly schedule for these, so they’ll be an announcement for the upcoming thought experiment one month on the 15th and on the next 15th will be the release of that Thought Experiment. So after the release of one, you’ll have 1 month until another is announced, then 1 month to prepare your posts. There was some confusion about this after the change as Gentleman Family Finances rushed to get his post out on the same day that I sent out the Tweet ( admirable!)

All Aboard the Money Train…!

This month was the month of the Cheltenham horse racing festival and I had a really successful month. Here is my daily profit/loss from my matched betting spreadsheet .

I made over £5400 in under 2 weeks! All tax-free. It’s times like this when I think why the hell am I going to work every day and earning much less? Remember that you could have also won this £5400 like the other thousands of people making tax-free income with matched betting.

Head over to the Full Matched Betting Guide if you want to find out how. Or How to Earn £30 in 10 Minutes if you’re still not sold on the idea.

I’m going to continue with EW betting but I’ll also be upping my casino offers as I still have to write out the casino section of the guide , so stay tuned for that.

How was your month?

How to be Successful

Thu, 21 Mar 2019 06:30:59 +0000

Being successful is subjective. What success is, varies from one group of people to another, but in each of these groups, common traits can be identified amongst the people they deem to have risen above mediocrity. These traits can be used in any scenario and can be applied to any person.

Below I’ve compiled a list of what I believe the best traits to inhabit are in order to achieve a higher level of success, and how I’ve used these traits to progress my own career and well-being.

Being Goal-oriented

If your vision is to achieve more than you’re currently achieving, you need to set goals in order to make any progress. Without them, your life will stagnate and you won’t be able move onwards and upwards. You’ll have no yardstick to measure your progress against and you’ll figuratively be ‘pissing in the wind,’ no one wants to do that.

Setting goals works for most things in life and you’ll be much more likely to achieve something the instant you make it into a goal. These can include:

Fitness - If you’ve ever been to the gym without a solid fitness goal for a prolonged period of time, you’ll know that most of the time you make barely any progress. That’s because you need to be constantly pushing your body outside of its comfort zone in order to grow stronger. If you don’t set goals, your bodies natural reaction will be to exercise within it’s comfort zone and you won’t see any progress.

As soon as you tell yourself to lift that extra 1 kilogram per session or run that extra mile each week, something magical will happen; within a couple of months you’ll be so much stronger and fitter. You will be amazed at what you can achieve with only small increments.

Finances - Without setting goals for your finances, you’ll find it very hard to stay motivated on the pathway to financial independence. Achieving any amount of wealth is an ambitious pursuit and you’ll be sure to give up if you don’t give yourself a little respite by acknowledging that you’ve met smaller goals along the way.

I’ve set a £100k goal for 2019 in my end of year review , I’m excited and eager to achieve it. Without it, my long term goal of achieving financial independence would feel so far away that I’d instead feel demotivated.

Financial goals can also be set to promote other positive actions in your life, for example: donating a certain amount to charity, growing your children’s education funds, and getting out of debt.

Side hustles - Creating a successful side hustle is a difficult task. The definition of side hustle is an income which is generated from a pursuit that takes place on the side of your main income earning job. This means that most people don’t have much time to dedicate to side hustles.

These hours normally take place during the early morning, late evening, or at the weekend. We need goals to motivate us to spend our free time working, goals that are achievable but also goals that are moonshots*. We need them to help us envision what we want to achieve and to positively reinforce our vigor, making us work harder and longer.

Learning - It’s always nice to have goals whilst learning something new. When you’re working towards achieving a goal, your learning speed can accelerate. A great example for this is when you’re learning how to program in a certain language, setting a goal of making an application is a sure fire way to keep you motivated. As you’ll have a clear goal in sight, your days won’t be full of monotonous videos or other learning resources, instead, you’ll be working toward an end goal.

Always challenging yourself

In order to improve at all things in life, you need to challenge yourself. You should always be testing your limits with whatever you do. If you stay in your comfort zone, you’ll never learn and grow but if you leave it, the sky is your limit.

Challenging yourself keeps your mind and body sharp, the more hardship we endure, the stronger we’ll become. Try going for that position that is double your current salary, ask that girl who you think is way out of your league on a date, write that novel, start that blog.

Even going outside in the winter without your coat on or getting in a freezing cold shower will be good for you. You need to push your limits to make them expand further, you’re capable of so much more!

Planning

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” is a quote that has rung true for centuries. Without a plan, you have no direction. You only have so much time on this world to achieve your dreams, your time should be treated like the precious resource that it is. You should be ensuring that you maximise your happiness in the time that you have and to do this you need to plan!

I plan my yearly budget in advanced so that I know that I can still meet my savings goals. Doing so informs me of how much I need to put aside each month, it also lets me know how much I can designate to holidays or luxury items.

Whenever I go on holiday, I make a plan to ensure that I get to do all of the things that I want to do. No one wants to spend their time and money booking the trip of a lifetime and end up missing out on a special event due to not making a reservation.

Analysing

Everyone, throughout their lives, make good decisions and bad ones. If you analyse these decisions, it’s a sure-fire way to bolster your good decisions and trim down the bad. People say that if you don’t fail, you’re not learning and you’ll only learn from your past mistakes if you analyse them.

I analyse my savings each month in my savings spreadsheet. This keeps me informed of my progress throughout my savings journey and means I can adjust accordingly by looking at the data.

You can also analyse many other things such as: Why you had an argument with your partner, why you failed a job interview, and why you didn’t get that promotion. Analysing unlocks the true potential of mistakes; learning.

Creating Positive Habits

Humans are lazy by nature, if you don’t force yourself to create positive habits, you’ll find it much harder to achieve your larger goals. Take this blog for example, blogging is hard work. You need to write on average 1 article per week for months, sometimes years, before you even earn a single penny. Some bloggers then go on to earn 6 figures.

These are some of my own positive habits:

Working on my blog each lunch time - Most people spend their lunch breaks going to buy food or talking with friends. I spend each lunch time working on my blog. Doing so allows me to spend 1 solid hour per day working on my own personal project which I enjoy. I can then either spend time with my partner when I get home, or work on other side-hustles.

Reading factual books whilst on the train - I commute into work each morning. I don’t spend this time playing on phone games or scrolling through my social media feeds. I spend this time reading books that I will learn from. I also spend this time drafting blog posts! Again, this gives me more free time at home.

Listening to podcasts whilst in the shower - When you don’t drive into work, it’s much harder to find the time to consume podcasts, but there are so many excellent sources of information in them, I needed to make time by creating a positive habit. I make sure that each time I have a shower or bath, I listen to a podcast. This is an excellent way to be doing something extra productive when you usually would just be cleaning yourself.

Applying to 1 new job each year - Even if I’m happy in my current position I still apply to at least 1 new job per year. This keeps my wits sharp and means that I won’t start becoming too comfortable. Most of the time, I apply for positions that are a much higher pay than my current package (as I’m just applying for interview practice anyway). Sometimes, like what’s happened to me for my last 3 positions, you’ll get the job!

Doing something new each month - Life is better lived when you’re trying new things, they create new synapse bridges in your brain and your experiences seem like they last longer. Have you ever had a feeling that your year has just flown by? That as you get older, time moves quicker? That’s because you’re not experiencing many new things.

These new things can be in the form of anything: Cook or bake something new, eat something you’ve never eaten before, visit a new place, or try a sport you’ve never done before. New experiences equate to a happier and longer (seeming) life which leads to a greater sense of joy and fulfillment.

Perseverance

This is the most important trait of all. In order to achieve anything that is truly great in your life, you need perseverance. The harder you have worked for something, the more sweet it will taste when you finally succeed.

Have you ever played a video game that seemed like it should be good but you were left feeling dissatisfied and unhappy at the games conclusion? Most of the time this feeling relates to games that were completed quickly with little to no challenges along the way.

Games that truly challenged you, games that had you cursing in anger at the amount of times you failed or holding back rage when all that you worked towards was crushed. These are the ones that fill you with a sense of pride and joy when you’ve completed them. Life is a direct correlation of this. Work hard, persevere through the boring parts, the difficult parts, and you’ll be able to achieve everything and anything.

A Close up Look at Death

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 07:30:21 +0000

I entered the mortuary with my heart in my throat and my father at my side. Nerves wracked through my gut, I had no idea how I would react when I first saw my uncle. Would I freeze? Would I not be able to go into the room?

I shakily opened the door and began to walk inside, as I rounded the corner I began to glimpse him. Like an animatronic in a horror show, I barely recognised him. Laying so still with his features so gaunt. I could see the glue on his lips that they used to keep his mouth from opening. Tears began to fill my eyes.

I sat next to the coffin with my Dad on the opposite side. I watched as he stroked his little brothers head and cried. I watched for a long time, this was much worse than any sad movie I’d seen on TV. ‘You can kiss him on his head if you like, it will make you feel better.’ My Dad said as he lent over the coffin to kiss his little brothers head. I stood up to do the same but an invisible wall stopped me from moving any closer to his face. ‘I don’t think I can,’ I said with a withering voice. I settled for patting his hands that were resting in his lap. They felt very cold, no one warned me of how cold they would feel. I withdrew quickly.

I stayed sat on my chair as the rest of my fathers very catholic family arrived. My Nona and my uncles three sisters all sat and proceeded to kiss his head, stroke his hands, speak to him and weep.

I sat staring at my uncles body, boxed in due to my Italian speaking being limited, barely being able to even offer my words of sympathy and regret.

This is horrible, I thought. But I also thought that this is necessary.

You Need to See This

My uncle died very suddenly at the age of 59. He was always fit and strong but a hidden virus attacked his heart whilst he was at the gym. He suddenly collapsed and without oxygen getting to his brain for over 40 minutes, he died shortly after being airlifted to hospital.

He left behind two young children and a grieving wife. He was a legend in the small Italian village where my family is from. This was duely shown by the hundreds of people that gathered to walk with his coffin through the streets, as is the tradition in Catholic Italy.

What proceeded throughout that day was very much, so far, the worst day of my life. Nothing quite beats standing around an open grave and watching a loved one being lowered into it whilst his 90 year old wailing mother cries out “No, my son, my son!” Begging them not to lower him any further, as you cling onto your Dad whilst he cries like you’ve never seen him cry before.

Yet throughout all of this ordeal all I could feel was ashamed. Ashamed that I’d not come to any of my relatives funerals before, this was my first one. Being in England, it’s very easy to say that you can’t make an event such as this, to have my Dad go back alone. “I have work!” You say, or “I can’t get a flight!” But I realised on this day that I was being weak. Weak and selfish. No one likes going to funerals, but you still have to go. You have to out of respect for the person that died and to support your family. There’s also one other reason why you need to go.

To become acute to the actualisation of mortality.

This event changed me, and I think for the better. After witnessing loved ones surrounding a dead body, this unmoving sack of organs that invokes repulsiveness and putridisity, this thing that you normally aquaint to nightmares and horror movies. After seeing them not only surrounding this thing but kissing it, stroking it, and mourning over it. You realise that this dead thing has the features of someone you love, and it’s not a recreation…It’s actually them. This is what we all turn into, every single one of us.

Everyone knows this, but we don’t really know it, we suppress it. People beleive that they’re immortal subcontiously, why else would we fight with the ones we love? Why else would we defer spending time with each other? We wouldn’t do a lot of these things if we knew. If we knew the truth that someday, sooner than you think, we’ll be that unmoving sack that everyone will be mourning over, unable to reach up and tell them that you love them and always have.

So, I implore you all to listen. Go to the ones you love, your children, your parents, your partner, and tell them that you love them. Cut arguments short, try to speak civilly with the love and respect that we all deserve. Make the effort to do nice things with each other and to make happy memories, as one day very soon, we’ll all be gone.

Bring on the Summer - Savings Report #8

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 06:30:04 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Another positive month which sees my investments interest grow by £843! This brings my investments back above water and over the book cost, which is great.

Hopefully we’ll start to see some compounding this year if things continue to go up.

My ‘Years to FI’ number is now down to 4.2 years, sliding ever so close to the under 4 number (maybe next month?)

I’m almost at the 50k investment balance which is awesome! Remember when my total net worth crossed the 50k threshold all the way back in July’s savings report ? It’s now sitting at 75k, a growth of 25k in just 8 months. SO CLOSE to that 100k mark!

Other Thoughts

It’s been another dreary month which is to be expected at this time of the year. I’m still having a pretty crap time at work, it’s the first time in my career that I feel that I can’t leave due to my month long holiday for my honeymoon and a big bonus pay out. Maybe that’s a good thing? That I can’t jump ship as soon as things start to get a bit political and crappy.

I’ll definitely be looking for a new position straight after my honeymoon. If I wait much longer I’ll be trapped again with the lure of another bonus so better to move straight away.

All that I’m focusing on now is my wedding! It’s now only 146 days away and I know that it’s going to come around quickly. There is still so much to plan, there has been barely any progress made to the scrum board which I posted in last months Savings Report , we really need to get our head down!

Cheltenham is next week which I suspect is going to be the most profitable matched betting time of the year and I’ve been saving up my best bookies to use on that week. This is the reason I rushed to bring out the EW Betting Guide , so you guys can utilise it before Cheltenham! I’ll hopefully have some good stats to share with you in April’s Savings Report.

How was your month?

EW Betting Full Guide

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 07:30:46 +0000

Each Way horse race betting is by far the best way you can make a ridiculous amount of money from matched betting, it also takes the least amount of time. So if you’re the type of person that thinks normal matched betting is too time-consuming due to all of the laying and Excel tracking, or if you only have a small amount of time during the day on your mobile phone, EW betting is for you. From only committing to an hour or so each day, you can be looking at profits in the thousands of pounds per month, and remember that this is all still tax-free!

With Cheltenham festival just around the corner, there’s no better time to start EW betting. It’s the most profitable time of the year for matched bettors where most (myself included) will expect to be pulling in thousands of tax free pounds during this period. Don’t miss out!

Head over to the Full Matched Betting Guide if you’d like to read all of the matched betting guides (including this one) in a single post.

Introduction to Variance Betting

Variance betting is a little different to “traditional” matched betting. What we’ve covered so far in this guide is laying each bet in order to “lock-in” a guaranteed profit. For these types of bets you only need enough money to cover your exchange liability, with variance betting this isn’t the case.

Let me explain.

A good way of illustrating variance betting is using slot games. All gambling sites have to publish the exact figure that each slot pays out, this figure is called the RTP (Return To Player). One slot machines RTP may be 95%, that means that for every £100 it takes, it must pay out £95. That extra £5 (5%) goes to the house, that’s what they call the house edge. Have you ever heard the phrase “The house always wins”? That’s because of this tiny 5%. That’s how gambling companies make their money, everything has a house edge like this. The only time that they don’t have a house edge is when a matched bettor is playing (which is why they try and ban us!)

Matched bettors only gamble when the odds are in their favour. For example, if the gambling site offers a bonus, such as, wager £10 to get £10 for free. That 95% RTP is no longer accurate. Instead, you’ll be looking at a more favorable return of around 110% resulting in a positive EV (Expected Value) for you and not the house.

The only problem with these games is that it’s not guaranteed that you’ll earn £10 (110% of your wager) playing on the 95% RTP slot. This is because slot machines pay out on different degrees of variance. For example, you may lose £50 and then win £60. Or you may win £60 straight away. This problem is exactly the same for the house when the odds are in their favour, but they know that eventually the house always wins (if they have their edge)…So you need to keep on playing.

To combat this problem when variance betting I recommend to only “risk” 1% of your variance betting total bank (the amount of money you’ve put aside for it). So to take this gambling site up on their £10 for £10 offer you’d need a “bank” of £2000. This way you will always be able to “play out the variance” and you’ll always end up in profit. Remember the house (or in this case you) always wins, eventually, as long as the odds are in your favour.

Each Way Horse Race Betting Explained

EW Betting is kind of like playing a positive RTP slot machine. On some of the biggest races the bookie actually loses money every time on the EW market and they even know this. They lose money because the odds calculated for each horse is based only off the win potential, not the place market (whether they come 1st, 2nd or 3rd) and with Each Way betting, you’re betting on the win and the place.

To demonstrate the positive expected value, take a look at the screenshots below.

If we look at all of the odds for this race and calculate the total probability, we can figure out how much the bookie is going to make on each race.

All of the odds are listed in the first column and the second column is the corresponding implied probability.

Adding up the total implied probability results in the total of 111.25%. This means that for this particular race, Bet365 is going to make a profit of 11.25% of whatever is staked (e.g. £11.25 if £100 is staked).

However, this is for the win only market, what we now need to figure out is the implied probability of the place market. To calculate this we must take the win odds, minus 1, divide by the EW payout (in this case 1/4), then add 1.

(Odds - 1) / (EW Payout) + 1

Using this formula we come to the total implied probability of 262.99% for the place market.

Because the bookie is paying out for 3 places the percentage that they need to break even is 300% and as we can see in the figures, they’ve not hit this. They’re actually losing 37.01% of everything that is staked in the place market. That’s £37.01 for each £100 staked!

This is where the value is for EW betting and how matched bettors can make a guaranteed profit! The bookies can’t help but lose money as they need to offer the same diminished odds for the win market as they do for the place market (otherwise it wouldn’t be an each way bet). Most other countries don’t actually offer EW betting anymore because of this very reason and it’s surely going to eventually be removed from the UK as well, so make the most of it whilst you still can!

Sniping

There is also another method that you can use in order to reap an even greater reward, they call this “EW Sniping.”

Bookies are neferiously slow when it comes to updating their odds, the exchange however, is extremely fast. This is because their are thousands of people manipulating the odds by setting their own lay prices on each horse every few minutes. The bookies (who set their odds themselves) would never be able to keep up.

This means that if a person is quick enough, when a horse’s odds drop from 50/1 (£500 for a £10 win bet) to 4 /1 (£40 for a £10 win bet) on the exchange, they’d be able to quickly go to a bookie and place a bet on that same horse for 50/1 (before the bookie updates it).

This provides tremendous value, I once had an EW bet win on a horse which paid out £812 for a £10 EW bet. The odds for this horse when it left its post was only 7/1…I should have only got around £80. I bagged an additional £737 from using this sniping method.

This is where OddsMonkey again comes to our rescue. EW Sniping would have been extremely hard to do before OddsMonkey came along. You’d need advanced (and expensive) analysing tools for each bookie and the exchanges, you’d then have to manually monitor each race. OddsMonkey has built a tool exactly for our purpose. They can track all of the bookies and exchanges and let you know of any positive EV (Expected Value) horses that you can bet on, they call this the Eachway matcher.

EW Betting Step by Step Walk Through

So now you’ve got the background of EW betting and why it is profitable, let’s walk you through how you can actually do it. For this demonstration, I’ll be using the Eachway matcher on OddsMonkey (I don’t recommend doing this without it).

The first thing you’ll need to think about is your total “bank” size. This will be the amount that you can confidently set aside for EW betting. It will also directly dictate how much you will earn as the greater your bank, the greater your stake size.

Once you know your initial bank size, you can use this figure to calculate your stake size. Your each way stake should be no more than 1% of your total bank. So, for a £500 bank, your total stake size should be £5 (£2.50 each way). For a £2000 bank, £20 (£10 each way). This 1% figure should be recalculated each week or month (depending on how much you’re betting).

Now that you’ve got your money ready, we need to go and set up the Eachway matcher filters on OddsMonkey . This is the tool that will find the horses for you to bet on so it’s important that we set up the filters correctly.

Head over to the OddsMonkey website and click on the Eachway matcher via Tools -> Matchers -> Eachway matcher.

Then click on the Filter option and set these exact options:

Sports: Horse Racing

Markets: Horse Racing - Winner

Bookmakers: (Whoever you’re currently betting with, see Which bookies to use section)

Exchanges: Smarkets, Betfair

Each Way Rating: 100 to 200

Normal Arb Rating: 80 to 200

SNR Rating: 0 to 200

Back Odds: 6 to 200

You’ll also have to go to the Oddsmatcher (Tools -> Oddsmatcher), click on the ‘Commission’ button and change Smarkets and Betfair commission to 0%.

Doing this means that you don’t have to worry about the different exchange commission amounts when looking at horse ratings in the Eachway matcher and it will save you a lot of time when deciding on if you should bet on a horse (when you’re trying to be quick!)

Awesome. Now you’re ready to start making some Each Way money! Click on the arrow next to the refresh button and set the matcher to auto refresh every 1 minute. Eventually you’ll get some horses come up, like this:

When one pops up, you’ll go to the Bookmaker and place your EW bet (however much your bank can support) on the corresponding horse. Make sure you check the ‘E/W’ box!

Be careful and make sure that the odds are the same on the bookie and the matcher, sometimes the odds can fluctuate a lot when a race is nearly starting, so you have to be quick (that’s why it’s called sniping!)

When you place a bet on a horse, note down the time and horse name somewhere (I use Notepad when I’m betting on my PC and Google Keep when I’m on my mobile phone).

4.45 Uno Valoroso

The reason that you write this down is because you don’t want to be betting on the same horse twice and you don’t want to bet on the same race more than 3 times.

At the end of the day (or early in the morning), go to each of the bookies that you placed bets on and update your matched betting spreadsheet with your new total balance. You can then note down your total profit in the ‘Profit Snapshot’ section and find out how much you lost/won on that particular day.

Remember that you can also lose money each day, just make sure that you trust the expected value and keep on going (and never risk more than 1% of your total bank), it’s very rare that you’ll end the month with a loss.

Tips and Tricks

A lot of good snipes show up at around 11am, you can make a decent monthly profit just keeping an eye on the matcher for 15-30 minutes at 11am each day.
There are more horses available towards the end of the week.
Make sure that you EW bet with your browser in Incognito Mode. This makes it harder for the bookies to catch you and keeps your bookie tab separated if betting on your mobile phone.
Bet365 and Ladbrokes are extremely generous bookies, utilize these first when big events are on (like Cheltenham).

Advanced Each Way Betting

After you’ve got the hang of each way betting, there are some more advanced methods that can bag you even more profit. These are methods such as betting on doubles, triples or even 4 fold horses on different races.

Doing this means that your bet count can increase into the hundreds per day but it will also increase your variance (and your profits) drastically. Accumulative bets can net you insane amounts of profit like it did for TheFIREStarter when he made over £11000 (tax-free) in a single day .

But, I recommend only moving onto these methods when your bank has grown and when you’ve got the basics nailed down. Because of this, I’ll be writing the advanced each way betting section at a later date.

If you are yet to try out matched betting, sign up via my affiliate link here , or go to the Full Guide to find out how to get started.

Cheltenham is only a couple of weeks away, this event alone could net you thousands of pounds (tax-free) so don’t delay any longer, try it today!

Macro-Enabled Matched Betting Spreadsheet

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:33:12 +0000

A quick mini-post to let you guys know that the matched betting spreadsheet has been refurbished in preparation for the Each Way betting guide that will be coming out on Thursday. (Sorry for the subscribers that got an accidental email last week saying that the EW guide was out already!)

The last release was very much a rough and ready spreadsheet that I used myself, now it’s had a Saving Ninja overhaul.

The first notable new feature is the ability to add multiple accounts into the sheet. Most of the people earning a lot of money with matched betting are multi-accounting (a Saving Ninja guide on this coming soon) so it seemed ludicrous to not support this option.

You’ll find support for up to 4 different accounts in the ‘Accounts’ tab and at the bottom of each ‘Account’ section, you’ll see figures for what the difference is in that accounts bank (Bank Diff) and your total profit/loss.

On the right you’ll see the same total money section, this will tally up everything in all of your accounts so that you can have a nice overview of your total profit and other figures.

The new addition to this section is the ‘Save Snapshot’ button. This will automatically create a profit snapshot and paste it in the next available row.

This is especially useful when you’re Each Way betting as you’ll need to tally up your total profit/loss each day.

The betting section has had a complete overhaul as there were multiple people that told me it was previously too complicated.

You’ll now find a simple ‘row per bet’ data entry style with all of the columns that you might need, such as notes and settled date. Clicking on the column titles will inform you of what you can enter into that column.

Another new addition to the spreadsheet is the acca calendar. This is really great to use if you’re completing a lot of different accumulator insurance style bets.

The bookies generally only give you 1 free bet per day and they count that day when the bet is settled. Using this calendar you can make sure that you never have two accumulator bets finishing on the same day (so you never lose a free bet!)

You can download the new spreadsheet here . Make sure that you download it as an .xlms (macro enabled workbook) so that all of the functions work correctly.

Let me know if you have any other macros or additions that you’d like to see in the matched betting spreadsheet in the comments below.

How Should You Distribute Your Wealth?

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 06:30:21 +0000

“The more dollars adult children receive, the fewer dollars they accumulate, while those who are given fewer dollars accumulate more.” - The Millionaire Next Door

Whilst reading through The Millionaire Next Door , this quote is what stood out the most.

People have been toting the phrase “the generational wealth gap” for decades. They say that wealth begets wealth and that the poor cannot compete. Why then does this book that was written over 30 years ago say that the opposite is true? And why does it resonate so much with me?

Throughout my adult life, I’ve always been quick to commit myself to thrift. It didn’t take me long to realise that this was due to being raised in a low income family. Because of this, I went into the world of work knowing that happiness can be obtained without a big price tag. When my income grew substantially, I quickly discovered that increased spending didn’t necessarily correlate to an increase in happiness. In fact, I discovered that spending less can sometimes make you happier.

But what would have happened if I grew up in a high consumption household? Would I be stuck in an endless hyper-consumer loop for the rest of my days? I would have never known happiness without consumption, how would I know that there is an alternate, much better way to bring myself joy? This difference in my life may well have slowed down my current Financial Independence trajectory, or even halted it completely.

The book goes into more details below.

“Consider for a moment that you are a typical affluent parent. You noted that your oldest son or daughter even at an early age was extremely independent, achievement-orientated, and well disciplined. Your instinct is to nurture these traits by not trying to control his or her decisions. Instead, you spend more time helping your less resourceful child make decisions, or you actually make decisions for him. With what result? You strengthen the strong child and weaken the weak.”

This book analyses hundreds of millionaires and the main mantra throughout is that the vast majority of these people were the first in their generation to accumulate this amount of wealth. They made their millions by being frugal, determined, and in a lot of cases, through necessity. These millionaires had a much better gift from their parents than money, they were taught thrift, discipline, and most importantly: how to fend for themselves. Everything that they wanted to achieve, they needed to obtain it on their own.

“Discipline and initiative can’t be purchased like automobiles or clothing off a rack.”

A lot of affluent parents tend to give large donations to their children to try and help them start a successful business or pay off their yearly expenses. What they don’t realise is that they are actually hindering them. Success and wealth is manifested within individuals that need to work hard in order to achieve something, generous donations cause these traits to dwindle and die.

A large contributor to the success of a business is the risk of failing. If you need something to succeed, you are bound to work a lot harder in order to ensure that it definitely does.

Risk is what has fueled some of the most successful companies of our time. Who do you think is more likely to fail? The entrepreneur who had £50k gifted to them by their parents, or the business owner that had to remortgaged their family home for this sum?

“Suppose you have a ten-year-old child who goes in for a physical checkup. The examining physician tells you that your son or daughter is underweight and underdeveloped. How would you respond to this evaluation? You would find ways to improve your child’s physical health. You would likely encourage your child to exercise, take vitamins, life weights, and perhaps play sports. Most parents would attack such a problem proactively. Wouldn’t you find it odd if the parent took the opposite course? How would you respond if the parent encouraged his child to eat less and exercise less?”

I have seen these mistakes manifested within my own life. My partner is the middle child of three children. Her parents, still happily together, were raised along the poverty line. This lifestyle prompted her father to work hard to create a better life for himself and his family. He never shied away from staying up late and, with determination, he came to own a multi-million pound business later in his life.

My partner has always been the more independent child of the three, working three jobs in her teenage years, she never accepted money from her parents. She left home at 18 to get a degree and never moved back. But what has happened to her brothers?

Her eldest brother, of three years, let’s call him Luke:

Luke was somewhat on the same trajectory as her sister. In his younger years, always working whilst he was a teen, showing traits of discipline and determination. He, however, struggled in high school. Not achieving good grades, his father, who had started prospering in the business world, wanted his son to be successful. So he thought he would make use of his status as CEO and hire his wayward son as an upper Manager of his business. “This will help give him a start with his career.” He thought.

What did happen? Now, 12 years on, the Dad, being his boss as well as his father, felt he owed it to his son to give him bonuses, continue to pay for his meals and holidays, and a lot of other expenses. This created a bubble of wealth around Luke, he had it good, why would he ever want to leave?

Luke stayed at home rent free until he was 28. He then moved out into rented accomodation with a friend. He still works for his father. He’s been ‘fired’ and bought back 2 times due to always being late to work or not coming in. He’s turned into a prodigious consumer, always moving on from hobby to hobby, spending all of his money on new things and holidays. He is the type of person who preaches that he’ll never own a mortgage. ‘Mort’ means death in French he says, you’ll never pay it off until you die.

His father is now worried about Luke, he’s starting the process of selling his company and retiring, but he’s having second thoughts because he doesn’t want his son to lose his job. If he did get fired for good, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to cope on his own.

What Luke doesn’t realise is that when his father ‘gifted’ him with that upper management position all of those years ago, he took away his independence, his motivation, and his own life. We’ll now never know what Luke could have become on his own. His father is already discussing giving more of an inheritance to Luke as he “helped him with his business”, but really it’s because he’s worried about him. What he doesn’t realise is that he’s continuing to strengthen the strong children and weaken the weak.

Things aren’t going so well for my partners younger brother either. Being the youngest by 7 years, he was born into a life of true wealth. Let’s call him Timmy…

Timmy is what you might call a spoilt child. Growing up, his parents doted on his every whim, instantly buying him whatever he asked for. Failing at school due to not wanting to spend his time at home studying, his parents decided to move him into a £5000 per term private school for his last 2 years. “Surely he will achieve better grades here?” They thought.

They were unfortunately wrong, money doesn’t buy good grades. He failed secondary school and had to spend an additional 2 years re-taking his core GCSEs. After passing with C’s he eventually decided that he would take an NVQ in ‘outdoor activities’, like his brother he enjoyed many different expensive hobbies, so why not take a course doing what he liked doing?

Throughout this time his father was trying to convince both him and his brother to start an outdoor activities business. He said he would fund it and buy the land, he desperately wanted them to be independent and happy. But Timmy and Luke didn’t have the motivation to commit to such a task, it would require so much effort!

In recent days Timmy decided that he wanted to go into videography after his father spent over £2000 on a drone and a ludicrously expensive camera. He’s not had any clients yet but his father has also recently spent over £5000 on an Intel Xeon computer for his son and his video editing, he asked for the most expensive PC in the shop, only the best for him!

What do you think is going to happen to Timmy? In all likeliness, his new venture will fail. As soon as he gets bored of this hobby, he’ll move onto the next one. His father has sucked out any bit of determination that ever manifested in Timmy by providing an environment that doesn’t require him to ever have any. He wrongly assumes that money is the answer, when in fact it is discipline and independence that Timmy needs. I fear, like his brother, it is now too late for Timmy to find his own path.

So, what has this book taught us?

For me, it affirmed what I have been thinking about for a long time; that you should be very careful when giving money to your children, as if it is done incorrectly, it will damage them.

I plan to send my kids to public school and I intend to never give them anything, they will have to earn what they get. Instead, I will use the saved wealth to spend more time with them, to give them quality experiences and to teach them how to become independent, disciplined, and strong human beings.

If You Lost Everything

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 07:15:07 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #4.

You wake up one rainy morning and after checking on your accounts you find out that you’ve been ‘wiped-out’ by a cybercriminal. You’ve lost all of the money and assets that you’ve ever owned and you can’t get them back. What will you do?

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #4

CaveMan @ DitchTheCave

QuietlySaving

in-deed-a-bly

Marc @ FinanceYourFire

Merely curious

FIRE v London

Gentleman’s Family Finances

Young FI Guy

What Life Could Be

Fretful Finance

Dr FIRE

What would I do if I lost absolutely everything? My house, my pension, my ISA, my belongings, everything. I would effectively be landing on a Snakes & Ladder’s snake and going all of the way back to the start.

You would think that this wouldn’t be too detrimental to me as I’m still close to the beginning of my career. I could effectively get to the same amount of savings (including house equity) in a little over two years, but I think I would still suffer an adverse effect.

Having everything taken away from me would set me back in a monetary sense but I think that the psychological effects would be more detrimental. Working towards something for a prolonged period of time and then having it ripped out from underneath you would be damaging to most people. I would be full of anxiety thinking that history would repeat itself. Why should I work such hard and long hours building my wealth when I may just lose it all again?

Let’s role play

The door slams shut behind me and I find myself standing next to my partner outside of our home. The wintery day is stark and chilly, I pull my partner closer to keep her warm. ‘It will be OK, we’ll figure it out, we always do.’ I say with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. In my own head the anxiety monster was starting to take over. “How could this happen to us?” We lost everything to a hacker, I’m a programmer for god sake! I should have been able to safeguard against this…

Decision #1

The first decision that I would have to make will be what to do at that very moment. We’re now newly homeless, have no money or assets and have nowhere to go. We do, however, still have our jobs.

One of the things that we could do is move in with one of our parents. We wouldn’t be able to stay anywhere that costs money and it would be difficult to get a bank loan before the cold night closed in. We’d have to somehow contact our parents and ask them to kindly reel us in.

Another option would be to ask for a loan from our parents or potentially our friends. If we could make it to our next paycheque, we should be pretty safe from there on out.

No matter what option we take, the first action should be to find a way to obtain shelter, food and safety, and ideally a way to continue to go to work. We don’t want to be looking for new jobs when this is the time that we need them the most.

Decision #2

Decision number two would need to be made when we had regained our equilibrium, when we can sustain ourselves on our own again and have a semi-permanent abode to live in.

The question we would then have to ask is this:

What do we want to do with our lives?

Do we want to continue on the same path as we were on previously? Will the pain be too great if we continue as we were, knowing that we were over 2 years behind schedule? Knowing that the catastrophe might even happen again? These are the questions that will take us a lot of mulling.

I could continue to chase money and work in whatever role was willing to pay the most, regardless of my own happiness. This would be the fastest route to nirvana, to true financial independence. After all, I chose this option in my “previous” life, why should I stray now?

The other option would be to go part time and work in the least stressful position that I could find that is the closest to home. My living expenses are below minimum wage and I’m fortunate enough to have an in-demand skill set. I would effectively be able to work 2 days per week and still get along just fine. This could give me the ability to chase side-income generating projects for most of my week and hopefully one day have enough passive income to cover my expenses.

Shit. Is this just another way of obtaining FI? I’m currently perpetually chasing money at the expense of my time. If I was to chase time instead, would that pay dividends in passive income earned? I’ve always been entrepreneurial. Hell, even with being out of the house for over 13 hours per day I’ve still managed to create and run 3 different side ventures. What would I be capable of if I had 3 whole days during the working week to pursue them? Maybe I’d be “FI” already?

Should I just hand in my resignation tomorrow? I probably should but it’s just so hard to throw away something that I know is good. Maybe I should do what Andy@TFS has done and go part time? Even just to test the waters, to see what I’m capable of.

No… I think that I need to continue to press the throttle down as far as it will go. Continue to work in the highest paying position that I can get and continue to run as many businesses as I can… Continue to burn myself out.

I don’t yet have children, I may as well burn out now and slow down when I need to. I only hope that the burn phase doesn’t leave any lasting scars. As long as I make sure to invest as much as possible, it won’t all be for nought.

Wow, I’ve veered completely off topic here. I’m meant to be thinking about what I would do if I lost everything, not what I should do in my own life, but I guess that’s what Thought Experiments are all about? -To make you think!

That little off-road ramble proved something to me though. It proved that no matter what happens, I’ll continue to grab at anything and everything that will pay me money. I’m definitely addicted to work. I’d like to think that if I lost everything I’d reconsider my life choices and choose to live a less stressful life, but I really don’t think that I would. I’d plunge back into my “previous” life at full force and probably work even harder to try and recoup my losses.

I can tell this is going to be a major issue with me when I get closer to my “fatFI” number: I’m not going to be able to quit work. I have no ‘off’ button. Maybe I’m perpetually doomed to chase money until I drop dead?

I sure hope not…

What would you do if you lost everything? Let me know in the comments below!

How to Make £30 in 10 Minutes

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 07:30:08 +0000

Even though I tout about how amazing matched betting is to everyone that I meet, I still find that some people simply won’t give it a try. Mostly their reasoning is that they don’t have enough time to ‘learn’ how to do it or that they’re still skeptical of the loads of tax-free income that some people say they are making each month… “It must be illegal.” people say, or “I don’t wanna do anything dodgy.” But they’re wrong… It’s not illegal and it’s not dodgy!

This post is for you, the person who keeps deferring things, the person who is skeptical of trying something new. All I’m asking for is 10 - 20 minutes of your time and your full trust for you to follow these instructions. If you do this I’m guaranteeing that you’ll make £30 in this tiny amount of time.

Seriously, that’s it. It’s not a joke or a scam. It’s not even for the ‘possibility’ of getting £30.

You WILL get £30, no matter what, all by yourself, no other people involved.

You sold?

Great! Now, put your thoughts aside and put your faith in me until you finish this post.

First things first, the prerequisites… In order to do this, you must be a UK resident (sorry USA folks), you must be 18 years of age or older, and you must have £30 - £50 that you’re not in immediate need of. You won’t lose this. Hey! Stop thinking, just trust me.

Ok, let’s begin with earning you your first £30!

Step 1)

Go to OddsMonkey.com and register for an account.

Step 2)

Go to Betfred via this link and register for an account. Deposit £10.

Step 3)

Go to Smarkets via this link (<- get £50 in risk free bets going through this link) and register for an account. Deposit £20 - £40 (you may not need to use all of this but go ahead and deposit it anyway, you can withdraw afterward).

Step 4)

Go to the Oddsmatcher tool on OddsMonkey via this link . Pick one of the matches in the list of results (by clicking on the ‘i’ button), the higher to the top the better. Change your ‘BETFRED STAKE’ amount to £10. Verify that ‘YOUR LIABILITY WILL BE’ in the red box does not exceed £20 - £40 (whatever you deposited into Smarkets ).

Note: The ‘Exchange’ section needs to be with Smarkets

Step 5)

Click on the link in the OddsMatcher window that says ‘GO TO BETFRED’ or find the match yourself on the Betfred website (sometimes you’ll need to do this as the link won’t populate your bet properly). Enter £10 into the bet amount window and place the bet.

Step 6)

Click on the link in the OddsMatcher window that says ‘GO TO SMARKETS’ or find the bet yourself on the Smarkets website.

Click on the LAY portion of this bet on Smarkets, this means that you’re betting against the bet results. It’s to the right and coloured in blue. Double check the ‘lay’ odds on the OddsMatcher match up with the one shown on Smarkets if you’re unsure.

Enter the amount shown on the OddsMatcher next to ‘LAY’ into your Smarkets bet window and place the bet.

You’re now ready to chill out until your bet is settled. Check on Smarkets or Betfred, or the OddsMatcher for when your match is meant to be started and make a note or set a reminder for when you’re ready to cash in your free money.

Step 7)

Your bet should now be settled and you’ll have a £30 free bet waiting for you in your Betfred account. Repeat steps 4 to 6 but this time when you’re in the OddsChecker bet window select ‘FREE BET (SNR)’ and enter the values shown.

After your free bet settles, you’ll now have between £25 and £30 in profit when withdrawing your Smarkets and Betfred balances after this small amount of work! Remember this income is tax-free, to take home £30 from your day job you’d need to earn over £60 if you’re in the higher rate tax bracket. That makes matched betting worth over £250 per hour!

You can now walk away with your £30 and not pay a penny. Or, you could sign up to OddsMonkey and work your way through the rest of the New Account Sign Up Offers and earn yourself another £1000 tax-free, it’s up to you.

If you do decide to stick around, check out The Full Matched Betting Guide for some tips on how to continue to earn money after you’ve depleted your new account offers. I made £5000 tax-free profit in just 1 month last September from spending 10 hours (tops!) matched betting per week. I would need to earn an additional £150k per year income to make the same monthly amount from my day job. Matched betting is truly the best way for savers in the UK to make money, don’t miss out!

If you have any questions regarding this process, ask in the comments below!

Do you like these ‘trust me and don’t think’ types of posts?

Would you like to see more with other money-making ventures? Let me know.

What goes down must come up? - Savings Report #7

Sat, 02 Feb 2019 07:00:36 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Woohoo, nice and positive green numbers again.

This month saw most (but not all) of the festive corrections losses come flying back with a £2437 interest gain.

That along with another deposit of £3500 saw my investments grow by 14.15%, pretty nice!

My ‘Years to FI’ number has now gone down to 4.4 years! It’s going to look pretty awesome when that number drops below 4.

The £100k figure is getting closer and closer, I can’t wait until I start seeing real gains from the stock market as the current valuation is still below the book cost.

Fun fact: $100k is currently £76k, so I’m pretty close to celebrating my first $100k! Maybe next month if the markets continue moving upwards?

I’m still mulling over whether I should shove a few extra grand into my ISA before April. I’ll have to give my finances a good review and see how much I think I’ll be spending on my honeymoon and wedding.

Other thoughts

I’m starting to get really annoyed at work. It always seems to be the case that I run into people that do an awful job and are paid more than me, I then move onward and upwards after re-evaluating my worth. In this case it seems to be contractors.

I really want to start contracting as this will allow me to fill my ISA and pension limits each year and expense things like my £3700 commute. I should have just bitten the bullet and gone into it before starting my current position. But, I’ve got to wait until next year now. The reason I’ve got to wait is that I’ve got a little over a month off in July for my wedding and honeymoon. June is also the time where we all get a 15% bonus. It would be ludicrous to leave now (if I could find any job that was willing to hire me then let me bugger off for a month that is). I’ll have to wait until after the honeymoon.

I better start brushing up on my interview skills again, I think working at a big corporation has made me a bit soft! Would you guys like to hear about any of my programming escapades or will it be a bit too off topic?

The question for Thought Experiment number 4 is up over on the landing page ! I’m quite excited about this one, if you wanna join in then make sure that your posts are written before the 15th. Feel free to let me know what your link is going to be and I’ll add you to the list before the post goes live.

Wedding prep is going well! We’ve now got a scrum board (courtesy of Mrs SavingNinja) in the living room so we can be extra nerdy when completing our wedding tasks.

What do you guys think?

Matched betting is back on in full swing now. I’ve started doing no-lay accas each morning on two different accounts and currently have 26 accumulators waiting to be settled! I’m also doing quite a lot of EW betting but with lower stakes and not on my best accounts (waiting until Cheltenham for that). Should have some matched betting updates for you next month.

I still need to write that EW betting guide! There’s just been so much on lately but I’ll have to make the effort soon.

How did your month go?

Minimalism Part 2 - Clothes, clothes, everywhere!

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 06:30:21 +0000

A couple of months ago I proposed in Minimalism Part 1 that I was going to attempt to bring new life to my home by discarding and organising everything that I own.

Me and the Mrs have now read the Marie Kondo book;
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying . So we feel that we’re ready to tackle the first category… Clothes!

Back in November I split my Minimalism journey into 8 categories to better manage the heft of it all. After reading Marie Kondo’s book I’ve learned a few new things, one of them is to do clothing all at once, mainly so that you can pile all of the clothing you own into a big heap and admire it (or think what the hell happened?)

This enlightenment means I’ll be combining 3 of the 8 categories into 1: Light clothing, warm clothing, and shoes, making one mega category of all the wearable items in the house.

Before getting into the actual discarding part of each of the categories, we need to do some analysis and research. Doing this allows us to understand what our perfect situation would be, so we know what to prioritise buying in the future. We can then create an MVP [note]MVP is an anachronism for Minimal Viable Product[/note], so we can get to a good solution without having to spend any money. Then we can analyse how we got to the problem in the first place, so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again!

What’s the goal?

My dream is to be able to easily see all of my items of clothing in one place so I can easily see how many are in the wash. I’d like everything to fit me and be something that I’d wear outside of the house (not including my PJs!)

I want all of my clothes to be of very good quality. This means; not shrinking in the wash, being comfortable, and durable.

I’d also like fewer clothes so that I can confidently replace something with a more expensive (but higher value) item when it gets worn out. Fewer clothes would also allow me to clearly see everything that I already own, ensuring that I don’t buy the same thing again not knowing that it’s hiding away somewhere.

Some research

We do the washing once per week, this means that the minimum amount of every day clothes like T-Shirts and under garments that we’ll need is 7. A little more than the minimum would also probably be smart just in case something happened (you never know!). So, between 7 and 14 days worth of clothes would probably be the perfect number.

Fleece is awesome

The perfect type of apparel would be items that you can wear all year round. To achieve this I think that layers are the way to go. Using layers you can add another as many as you like the colder it gets and vice versa for when it gets warmer.

I have found that clothes made out of fleece are very good for layering up and insulation. I have a couple of fleeces from Mountain Warehouse (below) which I got years ago for the Three Peaks Challenge, I’m in love with them! They’re comfortable, very warm, and still look brand new. I don’t think I’d mind just having these as a second layer, they’re definitely better than some of the ‘fashionable’ jumpers that I’ve bought.

Snowdon Mens Micro Fleece

Really, you could survive on one of these fleeces, but two is probably a ‘safer’ number. You’d also want one that’s a bit thicker such as this , you’d wear this one if it’s colder, or both the fleeces if it’s super cold. The great thing about these is their unisex, so if you and your partner wear the same sizes (or one of you doesn’t mind having a bigger fleece), you can easily interchange them to save storage space.

Plain old Tee’s

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with T-Shirts through-out my life. I normally go for the plain ones so it’s not that hard to find new ones. I used to do a lot of shopping in Primark, but even though the T-Shirts there are cheap, I’m forever worried about putting them in the wash as they usually shrink. They’re also not really warm or comfortable, it’s more like a painted second skin.

Up until recently, I thought that this was just normal behaviour for T-Shirts, I then got a Costco card. Costco quickly became my all-time favorite shop, they sell premium products for really good prices. Best of all, they have the Kirkland Signature label which is the best label I’ve ever come across. Everything that I buy from Costco that is marked with ‘Kirkland Signature’ has been a very good quality item for a good price. We quickly switched to many Kirkland Signature products but one gem I found was Kirkland Signature T-Shirts .

These shirts are absolutely incredible. You can tell that they’re a quality item as soon as you pick one up and feel the thickness of the material. They’re comfortable, stylish, and most importantly - they never shrink in the wash! I have owned 3 of them for quite a while now and they still look like they’re brand new. I even got one for my Dad a year ago and it quickly became his favourite T-Shirt. I had no idea good quality material like this existed!

If I could re-start my wardrobe, I’d buy just these shirts for my ‘base-layer’ along with some exercise/sweat-wicking ones.

Trekking trousers?

I have a crap ton of trousers. I have multiple jeans, some that have huge holes in that I’m keeping for ‘If you need old clothes’ (ha!), thermal trousers from when I went to Lapland in -42 degrees weather (6 years ago), smart trousers, cords, shorts, about 12 PJ bottoms. It’s ridiculous.

From my research, it seems like if you want some trousers that are going to last you a long time, your best bet is to look in the hiking section. If you buy some good quality hiking trousers, they’re going to be breathable, comfortable and very durable! You just need to find a pair that looks nice so that you can wear them at work and in normal social situations.

Something like these may be an option:

Fjällräven Vidda Pro Trousers

Although they’re a whopping £128.20. If it means I won’t have to buy any other trousers for the next 10 years, sign me up!

If you get plain, dark trekking trousers, they also give the impression that they’re smart as they’re not jeans. You could probably get into most fancy restaurants with these bad boys on!

It will probably take me a while to get out of wearing jeans, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for some good quality trekking trousers that can rule them all. Maybe I’ll buy some before I go to Yosemite in August.

Coats

I have a ton of coats that I’ve accumulated over the years. But there’s one coat that has stood out, this one:

Protest Clavin 18 Snow Jacket

I got this originally for Snowboarding but I soon found out that it’s the best coat for anything! It’s stylish, breathable and keeps me warm. I’ve never quite experienced a coat that keeps me the same temperature whether I’m up a mountain in -30 degrees or in England on a mild day. This thing is also extremely waterproof with double seamed zips. I actually wear it for cycling into work in the colder months, it’s that breathable!

I know without any doubt that I could just own this one coat. It’s still going to be pretty hard to get rid of all of my other coats, but I must persevere!

Merino wool?

The best socks that I’ve ever purchased were these socks made out of merino wool.

Karrimor Merino Walking Socks

I purchased them a while ago, again for the Three Peaks Challenge. Before I set off on my challenge, I got worried that I didn’t have good enough socks as these ‘only’ cost £5.99, so I bought one pair of very expensive (I think about £20) branded hiking socks.

On the first mountain I used the very expensive socks, they rubbed and I had blisters forming almost instantly. After switching to the merino wool £5.99 pair, I never got another blister. I’ve used them multiple times on huge hikes since and they’ve still been the best socks I’ve ever owned. They don’t smell very easily, they’re long lasting, and you never get blisters! There must be something special about Merino’s.

Research Conclusion

So, what’s the summary of all of this research before we get stuck into the discarding?

The dream

10 - 14 Kirkland Signature Costco T-Shirts
1 dress shirt
2 lightweight fleeces
1 heavy fleece
2 high-quality trekking trousers
2 high-quality shorts
1 jeans
1 suit
10 - 14 pairs of underwear
10 pairs of high-quality generic socks
2 pairs of trainer socks
2 pairs of Merino Wool hiking socks
1 pair of high-quality hiking boots that can pass as nice boots for general use
1 pair of trainers
1 pair of smart shoes
1 high-quality, multi-purpose Snowboarding coat
1 set of waterproof shell pants and coat for hiking
1 high-quality hiking backpack that can be used as luggage when traveling
1 fold up day-pack

Have I missed anything? I don’t think so. I’ll soon find out :]

The good thing about this list is that a lot of it, I already own. I’ve got a good pair of hiking boots, the backpacks, suit, fleeces, and I think 4 Costco T-Shirts. It wouldn’t be that expensive to complete this list. Still, it’s going to be very hard to discard things that are still of use due to my frugal nature.

The MVP

I guess the MVP for this category would be keeping my 4 Costco T-Shirts and 6 - 10 of my best alternative T-Shirts. I can then only buy Costco T-Shirts going forward and eventually replace all of my shitty ones.

I could hold off on the trekking trousers and live with a couple of pairs of jeans for a while, although, I will be going hiking on my honeymoon this summer, so I may as well buy some decent trekking trousers for that!

Lets get stuck in!

I wrote everything above this paragraph a while ago, before I started actually trying to discard everything. I’m now writing this after spending the whole weekend throwing every piece of clothing me and the Mrs owned into a big pile in the middle of the living room and getting rid of everything that didn’t ‘spark joy’ as Marie would put it.

Oh boy, we didn’t think we had a problem until we actually did this. Just look at this pile!

We were swimming in clothes and shoes, some of which we had completely forgotten about. As the pile got bigger and bigger we were slowly starting to think, “What the fuck have we done?!”

If you ever do this yourself, there’s a point where you start to realise that you can’t actually stop once you’ve started, you can’t just think “Nope, I’ve changed my mind” and shove everything upstairs again, there really is no going back!

It took us about 6 hours to sort through this mess, discard the ‘definitely needs to go’ items and sort the remaining stuff into sub-categories.

The sheer volume of what you own when you pile everything into one place made us more ruthless when it came to actually discarding, so it was surprisingly easy to get rid of a lot of stuff which we had hung onto for years.

We ended the first day physically exhausted, partly due to the hefting of clothes up and down stairs, but also partly due to the two bottles of booze that we’d successfully drank. MarieKondo says that tidying is a special event, so we needed to celebrate…Right?

Day 2 - Whittling down and organising

After coming downstairs on the Sunday the real work had to begin. We still had a shit ton of clothes, now all piled up into sub-categories, sitting in the middle of our living room. So we drank some coffee and got going.

There were times where it was hard to get rid of an item, most of the time this wasn’t sentimental items or precious gifts. The items that were still perfectly OK to use (in some cases with the tag still attached) were the hardest to get rid of. These were items that we bought for a holiday or bought thinking we’d like and wear them but never did for whatever reasons.

I think a lot of it also comes down to the guilt of buying something when you know you shouldn’t have, you naturally don’t want to admit that you’ve done that, so you think - “I’ll use it, let’s keep it!” But you’re just hiding from the truth, which is - you shouldn’t have bought it in the first place.

We did get over that hurdle eventually though and I’m quite proud of both me and my partner, we really were brutal when it came to keeping only what we need and love.

We eventually saw that the items that we didn’t like much were only taking the shine away from those that we did. There were some items that we found that we were over the moon about finding, we’d completely forgotten about them because they were buried under a fabric mountain somewhere.

The KonMarie method did make things a little easier when we were saying goodbye to the clothes that we’d had for more than a decade, or clothes that we remembered from special events. Clothes hold so much more sentimental value than people think, but changing your way of thinking to “It’s served it’s purpose, had a good life and made us happy.” makes it a lot easier to discard items such as these. Which is probably why we got rid of so much!

So, how much did we actually discard??

You’ll never guess… Drum roll please…!

20 FULL BIN BAGS!

Yes, I feel absolutely disgraceful when saying it, but we discarded 20 full, heavy-duty bin bags of clothes, shoes, and bags. How bloody ridiculous? We had no idea we actually had a problem until seeing how much shit we had actually accumulated. But oh boy did it feel good to see those bin bags go! It felt kinda like lifting a giant weight off our shoulders.

With all of the bin bags out of the house and ready to be collected by a charity the next morning (the neighbours must have thought there was a death in the family), we set off back inside with a spring in our step ready for the fun part: organising!

Every item needs a home

We started off our organising by adopting Marie Kondos ‘standing up’ technique to our underwear and socks drawers. We were flabbergasted when we had finished as we realized that we had gone down from 6 drawers and 1 basket to just 4 drawers! We were seeing space gains already!

Sticking things upright makes it easy to see everything that you own. It means that you can easily see how many items you have left before you need to do a wash and it also ensures that nothing gets buried and forgotten about.

I’ve used these drawers for a bit now and I can honestly say that I prefer them like this. I can quickly see how many trainer socks, walking socks or regular socks I have left at a glance and I can pull a pair out with ease.

The drawers also close a lot easier! Sure it takes a bit longer to put everything away but it’s totally worth it.

We then moved onto our walk-in-wardrobe. Even though we live in a modest house, the old owners converted the loft into an extra bedroom and instead of building a second bathroom they decided to make it into a walk-in-wardrobe.

We didn’t utilise this space to it’s fullest potential previously, it was more of a dumping ground for our clothes. We couldn’t find anything, nothing was easy to get, it was an absolute mess.

Just look at it!

That shoe rack that we put underneath the shelves was a nightmare to use. Every time we tried to get something off it, shoes would tumble down everywhere like an avalanche. Getting shoes from the back of it was just unthinkable.

Now, the walk-in-wardrobe has been transformed into a joyous place to store our belongings -what it was truly meant to be used for! Feast your eyes on this sexiness!

This wardrobe now contains all of our clothes (other than our underwear). Previously we had clothes stored in the loft, the second bedroom in a huge set of drawers and in the living room in another set of drawers. Now everything is here, and it’s a thing of beauty.

We’ve placed our favorite t-shirts in plain view so that we always smile when we walk in (An Orangutan for the missus and a Portal top for me!). There’s also nothing laying about on the floor blocking access to shelves (Whoop!).

The eagle eyed amongst you will also notice that we’ve also added two new shelves to allow our baskets to sit above one another without layering them. A quick trip to B&Q and some time with the saw was all that we needed!

We had this awesome bespoke shoe storage that we, for some stupid reason, never utilised previously. Each of these slots stores 3 pairs of shoes one after another! There’s also a perfect gap for bigger boots on the top. No more horrendous shoe rack.

My favorite new addition to our wardrobe has got to be this built under laundry basket! This thing was usually wonkily strewn in the back of the wardrobe where it was in plain sight and constantly got in the way. Now it’s hidden and we can easily put clothes into it.

Each of our sections now has everything neatly standing up-right, making it incredibly easy to see everything that we own and pick out anything that we want. We’ve now got much less but have never before worn so much variety (because we can actually see everything that we have!)

Was it worth it?

So, all in all, we’re absolutely delighted! Yes it was hard work and we were bloody knackered through-out the whole weekend but we got there in the end.

We now have this amazing storage space which holds most things in the house.

Beaut!

We know where everything is and can easily store things away. When you’ve done something so thoroughly like this, keeping it tidy is really easy. You even find time to fold everything because you want to keep everything just the way it is! Once you KonMari, you don’t wanna go back!

The ‘dream’ state of my clothes hasn’t been achieved yet, but I will be keeping that list in mind whenever I buy something new (I need to stock up on Costco T-Shirts!) For now, I’m really happy with the way things have turned out and will be a lot more liberal when discarding in the future.

I can’t wait to start the next category; papers. This first category removed the need for two huge sets of drawers in two different rooms in the house, so when we get through the other categories there will be lots more space to play with. We’re already talking about what we want to store and where.

I’d thoroughly recommend this strategy of decluttering to anyone, it really is worth it.

See ya for the next one!

How to Work in the City on a Budget

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 07:30:22 +0000

Since I started commuting and working in London almost two years ago, I’ve met a lot of people that say they can’t save money due to big cities being too expensive.

London is one of the most expensive places in the world, but I’ve learned over this period that spending is still a choice. In-fact, I think bigger cities have cheaper options than some of the more rural places, you just need to know what to look for.

All the coffee you can drink

Every city worker needs their coffee fix. Do your wallet a favor and grab a free myWaitrose card here. This let’s you get a free premium ground coffee (Latte, Cappatino or Americano) once per day with any Waitrose store purchase. Grab a 10p Banana or 4p new potato and you’re good to go!

I once had a competition with my work colleagues to find the cheapest item in Waitrose to get a free coffee. I managed to find a very small new potato which cost me 2p. Cheapest coffee ever! I had no shame weighing the potato and selecting my free coffee. I even bought it via my American Express!

They’ve recently changed this service to require your own cup, so make sure you don’t forget to bring your reusable.

Extra Hack: You can sign up to myWaitrose with many different email addresses. They’ll send you a ‘temporary card’ in a PDF file instantly (this lasts forever). Take a picture of this to use in-store. You’ve now got as many 4p coffees as you can drink every day.

Buy a thermos

Another option is to make your coffee at home - All you need is a good thermos . The Waitrose method may actually be cheaper than this, but sometimes you just need that special type of roast.

Thermoses are also good for storing soup or tea and taking on long wintery walks. It’s one of a frugal seekers best weapons!

Avoid eating out

The number 1 spending problem for many city workers is eating out. London has so many options that are sometimes hard to resist. But nothing beats what you can cook at home, you can cook anything you like and to your own taste, and it’s much better for your savings. Some great go-to meals that I always make are Minestroni, pasta salads and chicken noodle soup. Cook them in batch at the weekend to save time.

My old colleague once told me he bought food out for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day in London and spent over £30 on most days, sometimes even as much as £50! That’s a hefty chunk of your potential future fund that you’re throwing down the toilet.

Buy in a supermarket

If you absolutely must buy something to eat, buy food from a supermarket. You can get a loaf of bread for as cheap as 50p in Waitrose. Grab a jar of peanut butter and a bunch of bananas and you have a high-protein snack for the rest of the week (all for under £3.50!) Bring cutlery from home to aide with your preperation. Some other good options are bagels and cream cheese, nachos and hummus or all types of sandwich fillings.

Use apps like Redi

Using mobile applications like this one, you can get discounted meals at top eateries for under a hugely reduced price. I once got a Burrito from Wrap It Up for 99p. Companies use applications like this to try and entice you into their resteraunt with the hope that you’ll make a return trip and pay the full price.

If you absolutely must have your eat out ‘fix’ then be smart about it and use applications like this. It will also take you to some new and exciting places each lunchtime.

NOTE: Redi has now had a name change to ‘Camdem Eats’. Click here to go to their landing page .

Commute in to work

Many Londoners that I meet exclaim that they’ll never get on the property ladder due to London house prices being far too expensive. I always say to them; “Why don’t you buy outside of the city and commute in?”

There are plenty of very cheap areas which are communtable distances to London which are ideal for first time buyers. Basingstoke, Aldershot, Reading and Farnborough are some. You can even find studio apartments for under £100k. You’ve got no excuse to not get on the property ladder.

Don’t miss out on property price increases, real estate are some peoples best asset classes. You can use your 30-45 minute commute to work on your side-hustles, read books or listen to podcasts. I’m writing this right now whilst I’m on my commute! It’s the perfect time to get stuff done.

The benefit of moving further out to cheaper areas is that you’ll always get a seat on the train. If you commute in from towns that are, say 25 minutes away, you’ll almost definitely be standing up for that whole time, unable to do anything productive. You’ll also pay a massive premium on house prices for that extra 10 minutes ‘saved’.

Get a fold up bike

The best thing that I did when I started working in London was getting a fold up bike. I now get from the train station to my office in 10 minutes. If I opted to get on the underground instead, it would take me 30 minutes, I’d have to deal wtih constant delays and I’d also have to pay upward of £1700 per year! No thanks. I’d rather get the free exercise and see the London views instead of have smelly armpits in my face.

Buy a season ticket

Buying your train ticket yearly reduces the cost by a huge amount. For even more savings buy through a credit card like American Express and try to find an offer such as 3% savings when buying through Trainline.

Lot’s of companies offer season ticket loans so that you can benefit from the discounted yearly price, this can be a good option if you don’t have the sufficient funds to buy the ticket right then. I would however recommend against this. Buying through a rewards credit card can gain you some pretty awesome rewards and for most of them, you’d be hitting the welcome bonus instantly. This year I’ve booked two 1st-class flights to America for the price of an economy ticket through Avios!

Use OLIO to be extra thrifty

There are places like Pret all over London that give out free food at the end of the day. Use this application to find out when and where. You’ll also be doing your bit for the environment by helping to decrease food waste.

The benefits of being in a big city like London is the supply of free food is never ending. You will be constantly inundated with free samples in train stations that will happily give you more than 1 if you ask. Places like Itsu and Wasabi reduce their prices massively half an hour before closing time. You can pick up Sushi sets for a 75% reduction in price!

Go to free conferences

This is a great way to network and also get a free lunch. Use websites like X to see what’s on and when. This is especially good for developers. Sky normally hosts free tech meet-ups through-out the year where attendees get free pizza and beer! All in the hope of attracting new hires through their ‘fun culture’.

These tips help make London a cheaper place. I actually spend less money working here than I did working in the south-east where I had no free food or cheap coffees and only expensive pubs with an aggressive ‘You must eat out every Friday’ vibe. Working in London has actually put me off ever eating out whilst at home. I don’t fancy paying £6 for a battered cod or £10 for a shitty Chinese anymore when I know I can get much better quality food in London for under £5. Cities are cheaper… when you know where to look.

Have you got any tips for city working? Let me know in the comments below.

RESET Book Review

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 07:30:50 +0000

A couple of months ago I was contacted by David Sawyer to review his book; RESET . Being an avid reader and never having read a UK centric Financial Independence book before, I happily obliged.

One of my goals for 2019 is to read more Financial Independence orientated books, so RESET was a great first one to pick up!

My all time favorite FI book is ‘Early Retirement Extreme ’ by Jacob Fisker. This is the book that lead me down my current financial path, the book that swayed me to buy a smaller, inexpensive home and to get rid of my expensive car. It took me away from a stressful life and instead lead me toward happiness and financial freedom.

Another favorite of mine is ‘How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World ’ by Harry Browne which changed the way how I think about business and helped inspire me to start my current businesses and even this blog.

Can RESET compete? Let’s find out.

In the first section of the book, David paints an excellent picture for why we should care about Financial Independence. He’s really quite excellent at presenting the facts in an enjoyable and thought-provoking way, setting each problem up with an introduction, story and conclusion, leading the reader to a natural resolution. I love the way the book content is presented like this, it makes what is a difficult subject easy to understand.

This section also includes lots of insights into David’s life and how he himself began this journey. It reads almost autobiographical, keeping things fresh and exciting.

Financial Independence / How to write a blog?

After the book sets you up for wanting to pursue Financial Independence and find true purpose, I was a little derailed by the next section. Here David talks about how to ‘digitise your life’ so you will effectively not get left behind and lose your job.

As a 27 year old programmer who has lived and breathed ‘digital’ throughout my whole life, I couldn’t help but get glazed over a bit whilst reading this bit. Now, it’s clear by the synopsis of RESET that it’s aimed at mid-life professionals which are over the age of 35, but I still think that most 35-40 year olds I know would gloss over when reading about how everything is now online. Maybe my worldview is a bit skewed as most people I know are Software Engineers?

David also goes into a lot of detail about setting up a blog, he emphasises that everyone should own one to promote their personal brand. He even goes as far as explaining how to set up a subscriber list and newsletter for your blog which felt a little out of place. This wasn’t quite what I was expecting to find in an early retirement book. I couldn’t help but think that all of this bit belonged in a different book all together. Maybe aimed at older professionals who work in a field that is rapidly turning digital (like PR, such as David).

It’s clear that he included this section due to the autobiographical nature of the book and it was part of his personal experience, so I can’t fault him for including it.

Decluttering your life

RESET contains a whole section about minimalism and decluttering and takes a lot of inspiration from Marie Kondo’s book; The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying . I really enjoyed reading about how David and his family discarded masses of items and felt much better and clear headed afterwards. Minimalism shares a lot with the Financial Independent movement and David explains quite nicely how it all fits together. He talks about simplifying not only your items, but your finances too.

His family altered the Marie Kondo method a little to suit their needs. It was good to get a different take on the approach before I start my own minimalism journey. For anyone thinking of trying to declutter themselves, Davids quite thorough section on the subject was definitely easier to digest than Marie Kondo’s book. There’s no talking about speaking to your clothes here!

Investing

David thoroughly explains a bunch of different investment techniques, including compiling a Fidelity portfolio that you can rebalance yourself each year and a ‘set and forget’ portfolio with Vanguard Lifestrategy. He ticks all of the boxes with this one and advises only low fee passive index funds. He also creates quite a compelling argument for setting your safe withdrawal rate to 3.5% which was a really interesting read.

Conclusion

RESET is a very big book. In the end, you’ll have read through almost 300 pages. David’s writing skills are superb and each chapter is easily consumed with thought-provoking and sometimes funny examples and stories from his past.

It’s quite obvious from the content that David poured his soul into this book, and that he is very well read in the subject of Financial Independence. He touches so many different subjects from so many different authors and bloggers, I’ve never before seen a single resource quite like it.

This however means that if you’re already an aspiring FI seeker and have read many of the pre-existing FIRE content, expect RESET to simply reaffirm your knowledge. It’s fun to read about David’s experience and journey, but the meat of the book is more of a collection of knowledge from other sources than a unique take.

You won’t find the detailed graphs and implicit depiction of the Renaissance Man ideal that you’ll find in Jacob Fiskers book . You won’t get the detailed breakdown of the full Marie Kondo method like you would if you read her book yourself. But what you will get is a lot of information relating to both of these movements, and a lot more. It’s almost like a world buffet instead of a specialist restaurant, which is awesome, and a great first book to read to get a taste of everything.

I will say that I got quite annoyed with the way the book focuses on the ‘mid-life professional’. David is an excellent writer, he uses powerful writing to talk directly to the reader, it’s almost like he’s in the room with you. Because of this, when he’s passionately assuming that I must have children, work in a stressful middle management job and know nothing about the digital world, it’s a bit derailing. A lot of his readers may feel the same way if they don’t match his criteria.

RESET has quite thoroughly compiled all that is FIRE and translated it into a language that the UK can understand. It was nice to gain the insight of what the best investment approach for the UK FI pursuer was, and definitely from a writer as thorough at research as David is. I think from this point forward, I’ll start applying the 3.5% rule!

I commend David for being the first to jump onto the FIRE subject on this side of the pond. Awesome job!

Buy the book below, there is currently a 40% discount on Amazon, get it whilst you can!

A lot Has Changed - 2018 Reviewed

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 07:30:54 +0000

A lot has changed in 2018. In exactly 3 days on the 11th of January, this blog will turn 6 months old. Has it really only been that amount of time? It seems like I’ve been talking to you forever.

Even though I’ve not been posting for a whole year yet, the start of a new one is the perfect time for contemplation and planning. This way, at the end of 2019, we can look back at the progress that has been made and see if our goals and expectations have been met.

Even if you’re not a blogger, reviewing your year and planning the next one is a great way to keep you on the best path through life and ensure that you’re still heading in the right direction. We need all of the motivation we can get on the pathway to financial independence.

Before we get started, there have been some updates to the Savings Spreadsheet to mark the end of the year. There is now a ‘Savings - 2019’ section. So you can track your monthly savings in this sheet now.

You’ll need to update your ‘starting figures’ in the 2019 sheet with December 2018’s figures before you track your first month or some of the formulas won’t work.

You may also notice that there is now an ‘Analytics’ section. Here you’ll see 4 new time series graphs which analyse your 2018 data. It will plot out your year totals and predict your future savings for the next 6 months. This is a handy way to see where you might be in the new year if you continue with your current trajectory.

I’ll be using these graphs to help me illustrate where 2019 might lead, so you can check them out below :]

If you’d like to run these predictions with your own data just head over to the Ninja[note]The Ninja page link is sent to you when you subscribe to SavingNinja. Read the disclaimer at the bottom of Savings Spreadsheet .[/note] page to download spreadsheet v1.14+, you’ll have to click “Data -> Refresh all” at the top of Excel to update the charts once you’re finished with your 2018 data.

How did my finances do?

Since I started tracking my savings, all the way back in August , my total net worth has grown from £47,948 to £65,626, gaining 36.87% in value with an increase of £17,678.

Even though my investments have actually lost £3,474 in the last 6 months, I’m still proud to be £17,678 better off since I started this blog.

My net worth, excluding my home has actually gone up by a whopping 74.73% in the last 6 months. I really only started investing a lot 6 months ago.

My investments have grown from £21,578 to £37,704 almost doubling. The data forecast predicts that I should be at around £70k in July if things keep going in the same direction.

It looks like I may fall slightly shy of hitting £100k excl house net worth in 2019 unless the stock market picks up again. £100k invested is my yard-stick for when you can stop being poor , not how much I earn, so I’m really hoping that I can hit this milestone soon.

It does look like I should be able to smash the £100k barrier for total net worth including the asset which is my home in 2019, which is awesome!

Again this will depend on how the stock market behaves, and if it does misbehave, whether that will be at the end of the year or the start!

My biggest pot change has been my pension pot. It grew by 95.17% going from £12,078 to £23,573!

I’m still nowhere near having to worry about my lifetime allowance yet. The forecast shows that I may have around £65k sitting in my pension at the end of 2019. I’ll start thinking about the LTA then :)

My ISA pot still grew by a nice £4,564. It would have been more if it wasn’t for the festive correction , but it’s still 48.74% growth nontheless.

I am hopeful for filling my ISA pot by more than £12,000 each year going forward. It really depends on how well my emergency fund and side-hustles go. I don’t earn enough in my day job to max my pension and my ISA yet, but maybe that will change in 2020.

I’m going to get my home officially valued at some point in 2019. We’ve put a new kitchen and bathroom in since we bought the place. After fitting new carpets, upstairs flooring and painting, we’ll be fully ‘complete’ with turning the place from a shit-tip into a serviceable home. So I’m hoping that the house value will go up by a few bob. That’s if Brexit doesn’t desemate the housing market! Fun fun :]

How did the blogging go?

In the last 6 months since this blogs inception, I’ve posted 6 Savings Reports , I created the Thought Experiment blog series, and I created a highly functional Savings Spreadsheet and Budget Spreadsheet which I adore using!

All in all, I posted 28 articles. I’ve got a lot better at writing and met so many new people through the comments section and social media. 2018 was the year that I learned that I really do like blogging. I enjoy writing and using words to help me focus and think. I have no doubt that Saving Ninja will keep me on the FIRE path and help me find true happiness. I’m in this for the long haul.

I’ve also learned that blogging is hard. It’s been my number 1 side-hustle for time consumption and my worst side-hustle for income generation. But nothing has paid me dividends in knowledge gained quite like blogging has.

Going forward I may have to create some smaller posts to complement the bigger ones. The post schedule of 1 per week has worked quite nicely for me and most of the time I have them ready for Thursday! But, the stress comes when I haven’t written anything as other things have cropped up and Thursday comes along far too quickly.

I really want to stick to a weekly posting schedule for my readers, but I don’t want to feel bummed out when I’ve left it too late and need to have a late night to get a big post finished.

To help combat this I need a ‘reserve’. Posts that I can keep on the back-burner and release if I’m working on a particularly big guide or my work schedule is rammed.

My reserve will be full of smaller posts such as ‘5 tips for keeping your house clean’ or ‘5 tips to own at interviewing’ and all of that shit. These aren’t the detailed blog posts that I want to be giving you guys each week, but sometimes there’s just not enough time for one. Hopefully, this will change when I draw closer to financial independence, but for now, you’ll have to enjoy some ‘quick bites of info’ posts every now and again :]

A place to call home

I’ve got a bunch of draft posts and guides that I’m working on for 2019. Some that I’m unsure whether I should post as they may not be liked by everyone. I have to decide where I want my place in the blogging community to be; whether I want to try and not offend anyone or just do me.

With regards to site upgrades, my plan is to add some more intuitive widgets and improve and clean up the top menu (it’s waay too overcrowded).

I’d also like to add Google ads to the site. Not too many, don’t worry. I won’t have any invasive pop-ups that you’ll have to dismiss. Just a couple here and there. Saving Ninja runs on quite a beefy server that is pretty expensive, that’s why it’s so fast! It would be nice to fund that. It would also be nice to get some experience setting up and running Google ads.

You’ll also be seeing a lot more graphically sexy pins pop up throughout the site. TuppennysFIREplace was awesome enough to give me some 1on1 training on how to rock on Pinterest so I thought I’d give it a go. It also hits that same graphical itch that Merch by Amazon does, so it should be fun!

Like this one!

What about real life?

Another major part of this blog is seeking happiness. How are things doing for me on that front?

Happiness always seems fleeting for me, I’m forever lusting to be somewhere else, never feeling settled. That’s why I’ve changed jobs and location 4 times over the past 5 years!

I am very happy with the things that I have achieved last year. I enjoy my life and I have a loving partner. I’m very excited to be getting married this year. But, even with all of these things. I long to be somewhere else.

I feel like I’m waiting until I find my life. I’m waiting to head off into the big wide world and find that perfect place that I can call home, the place where I’ll know in my heart that I want to stay forever. This feeling makes me unhappy sometimes. Why are we waiting?

I think before I’m ever truly happy I’ll have to flee the nest which is England and live somewhere far away. Maybe then I can come back without this longing.

But for now, me and Mrs SN have got a wedding to plan! And even better, we’ve got a 3 week road trip to plan for our honeymoon as well. This will also be in one of the places we may like to emmigrate to; California.

The wedding and honeymoon is also the reason why I’ve decided to not try a switch to freelancing in 2019. A big guaranteed bonus will be paid out by my employer in the summer which I’d like to get before I leave, it also didn’t seem very smart to switch to freelancing then take over a month off :] I’ll have to focus on one thing at a time.

After the wedding, it will be straight to figuring out where the hell we wanna move. We’ll be spending 2020 visiting Canada to see if that could be a potential destination. I’m sure this will turn into a series of blog posts; “Where’s the perfect place to live?”

On that note, I’ve also got my Minimalism adventure to get started. Me and my partner are veeerryy nearly finished with Marie Kondo’s book; The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying . We’ll be getting right on to that first category, clothes, as soon as we’ve finished.

Goals TL;DR

Reach £100k total net worth
Finish renovating the house and get a valuation
Marie Kondo the house and simplify
Get married!

Nice and simple :] Now let’s get going!

Festive Correction, Thanks Santa - Savings Report #6

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 06:30:06 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Wow, another huge loss this month.

A staggering negative £2,530 gone from my portfolio. This loss is even bigger than October’s loss of £1,685, wowee.

I feel sorry for the people with £1m invested right now -They would definitely be down by over 6 figures.

Although saying that, they are probably still up due to the high yielding preceding years.

People starting out on their saving journeys (who have less than £100k invested) should feel pretty lucky when corrections happen. Better now than later!

“To refer to a personal taste of mine, I’m going to buy hamburgers the rest of my life. When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up in price, we weep. For most people, it’s the same with everything in life they will be buying — except stocks. When stocks go down and you can get more for your money, people don’t like them anymore.” - Warren Buffett

VVLSRU [note]VVLSRU is an acronym for Vanguard Investment UK LT Lifestrategy 100 Percent Equity[/note] is currently trading at 19,535p which is as low as it was last April. A whole 1300p cheaper than what I bought VVLSRU for in November.

I’ll need this fund to go back up to 20,778p to reach my current average cost per share and break even with the book cost.

The loss this month has made my retirement date stay the same at 4 years and 8 months. I should hopefully be able to counter this when I invest more in 2019 after getting my bonus.

Other Thoughts

I had a pretty good Christmas. I managed to go on two 5k runs over the festive period, the last beating my 5k record getting a run time of 26 minutes and 45 seconds and the track had an elevation gain of 187 feet!

Along with this achievement, I also feel thoroughly stuffed and sufficiently unhealthy. After weighing myself when getting back home I seem to have put on nearly 4kg of weight. All that festive cheese and chocolate (and being at my parents who seem to serve 4X my portion sizes) really didn’t help.

Back to my normal routine now!

Matched Betting

Over the holidays I did manage to set up a completely fresh matched betting account, so I’ll be getting back onto this side-hustle in full swing after this weekend.

I may start off with lower bets to ensure that the account doesn’t get gubbed straight away, but hope to ramp up to £20 EW betting again soon (better to be safe than sorry).

Blogging

I did hope to write my 2018 review/2019 goals post whilst away but I found it incredibly difficult to get started due to not being in my normal environment.

I’ll be writing this over the following week and hope to release it soon! I’ve also got to add some snazzy charts, similar to the ones that I made for the budgeting spreadsheet to the savings spreadsheet as we’ve come to our first end of the year, so there’s data to be analysed! I’ll talk about those changes in the 2018 round-up post.

I’m going to post-pone the Thought Experiment series until next month due to the festive break. It may actually be better to do these every 2 months instead of every 1 month as there’s a whole ton of articles I’ve got planned for 2019 that I need to finish!

How was your Christmas?

Are you coping well with the current stock market correction?

FIRE Orientated Budgeting Spreadsheet

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 16:32:57 +0000

Back in August, I released the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet , that’s the spreadsheet that I use each month in my savings reports . There’s also another spreadsheet that I use at least once a year to set myself a budget. I use this spreadsheet to figure out how much I can afford to invest each month.

I’ve been working on the Saving Ninja Budget Spreadsheet for quite a while, I didn’t want to release it until it was finished.

I use this spreadsheet to distinguish how much I’d like to spend on luxury items, holidays etc each year in order to still obtain a savings rate that I am happy with. This is why I’ve included savings percentage calculations within the spreadsheet.

For the couples out there, I’ve also added two sheets so you can fill in your budget for two people. The ‘Budget’ sheet will then add them both up for you.

So without further ado, the Saving Ninja Budget Spreadsheet.

The first thing you’ll notice on the ‘Person1’ or ‘Person2’ (feel free to change the top titles to your own names, but don’t change the sheet names or it will mess up the formulas!) sheet is the greyed out top section. This is all automatically generated and will show your total income, expenses and net money (income - expenses). The last section is your projected end balance at the end of that month, so you can check if you’re on track month by month.

The spreadsheet will use these figures to calculate your average monthly spend and your year-end figures.

Your year-end figures will be used to calculate your savings rate at the end of the rows.

The greyed out area will get these figures from two sections below. The first section is for your income. You simply fill in your net take home pay per month in the wages section and any other income below that.

Note: Only add what you’re actually getting deposited into your bank each month. Do not put your pension deposits in here, there’s a separate section for pensions that we’ll get to later.

Fill in each month’s predicted income, remember this is your yearly (predicted) budget, not your actual income

The second, larger, section is for your expenses. This can be quite tricky to fill in if you haven’t done this before. But, fill it into the best of your knowledge to start off with, then you can update it throughout the year as your bills come in.

The luxury pot section is for anything that you deem to be not necessary, a ‘fun budget’ if you will. I use this for buying new clothes, going out, etc

Most expenses should be covered, if not there is an ‘others’ row in each section. If you choose to add your own rows, be aware that this will probably mess up the formulas and analytics, so be sure to only do this if you’re a competent Excel user.

Each expense category’s total for the year will be displayed at the end of the row. It will also calculate your monthly averages. These cells will be what’s used in the top calculations.

It’s quite interesting to look at how much you spend in a year for each expense. You might be pretty shocked at some of the results!

My partner was surprised to find out her yearly vehicle cost was £1460!

We also spend £2,400 combined on food, and we thought we were good at cheap shopping! I’m cringing to think what the majority of UK households spend on food and eating out.

After filling in your income and expenses, it’s now time for the fun bit! Scroll along a little to the right and you’ll see this box.

The ‘Extra Yearly Savings’ box is for things like your pension or any other expected investments. I was getting annoyed at my savings rate being displayed as too low due to depositing so much into my pension via salary sacrifice. So, this box is for things like your sacrificed pension savings.

So, if your net pay is £1000 per month, you’d put that in the income section. But, if your contributing £500 into your pension each month before you get paid, and if your employer is also adding in £500 per month, that’s an extra yearly savings of £12,000. Pop that right into this box and it will directly increase your savings rate percentage to a more accurate figure. Hurrah!

This box is also nice to have a play around with. For example, if you might get a £10,000 yearly bonus - pop that into this box and see what your savings rate could be.

If you’re filling in this budget for two people, just switch sheets at the bottom of the page. The ‘Budget’ sheet will add up the figures of both people and show a combined result. Awesome!

Next up is the the recreation of the ‘Calculate years to FI’ macro.

This bit won’t work via Google Sheets, you’ll have to download the xlms (macro enabled) worksheet.

This works in a similar way to the years to FI button on the savings spreadsheet with the difference of it being able to input a custom withdrawal rate. I’ll probably also add this to the savings spreadsheet on the next release.

The code will loop around each month simulating savings and investment growth based on your expenses and income. It will also take into account the ‘Extra Yearly Savings’ option. After you’ve reached your safe withdrawal rate adjusted stash, it will spit out how many years and months it took.

Analytics

You know, I was actually planning on finishing this article 2 days ago. But I spent _two days _working on this next section. That’s not just two evenings either, I’m currently off work as I had some holidays I needed to use up. I spent about 15 hours on this bloody bit!

Buut, it means we’ve now got some pretty charts to analyse our data, yipee!

The VB code was soo much easier to write than this!

Worth it eh?

This first section will show you your top 5 expenses along with a pie chart of your expense categories.

This next bit of snazzy chart goodness will show you your most expensive months along with all of your total month spend split into a pie chart.

By this point, I was starting to run out of ideas for what I could make into a chart. But, not wanting my newly found skill to go to waste, I made these net savings charts! (let me know in the comments if you can think of more data to chartify)

Note: The tables won’t refresh automatically. You’ll have to close and re-open the spreadsheet for them to refresh.

Luxury Pot

This brings us to the last section (which is in the ‘Budget’ sheet only), the Luxury Pot tracking. Now, this is just experimental so expect this to change.

After setting up my budget each year, there were some big ticket items that I wanted to buy but always felt guilty about buying. This section is my answer to saving up for these items so I don’t feel bad!

The idea is that you’ll set yourself a monthly ’luxury’ figure that you’re OK with spending. Say, £200 per month.

You’ll then edit the ‘pot left’ amount at the end of each month to see how much of your luxury pot you spent. Your total pot left will then stack each month and be represented in the bottom row.

Now, if you want to buy anything that you really shouldn’t be buying, like a Dyson cordless for example (they’re waay too expensive, but I want one!). You’ll just have to not spend anything for a couple of months until you can ‘afford it’ and have enough in your luxury pot.

Doing this is basically a way of grounding your rich ass and setting spending limits. It’s hard to do that without being a cheap ass and never buying anything you deem as ’too expensive’.

Now whenever someone says ‘wow, you spent £499 on a [Garmin Fenix 5](http://Garmin Fenix 5 GPS, Slate Grey with Black Band), you must be loaded.’ You can say, ’no, I saved up for this for 3 months thank you very much.’

The editable copy of this spreadsheet (along with lots of other content) is available on the Secret Ninja Page which all Saving Ninja subscribers have access to. Subscribers will also get an email update whenever new features have been added. If you’re not yet a subscriber; subscribe below. It’s free, and you can always unsubscribe if you don’t want to keep in touch.

If You Could Reset Your Life

Sat, 15 Dec 2018 07:30:13 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #3.

At the beginning of each month, a thought experiment question will be tweeted under the hashtag #ThoughtExperiment and everyone is invited to participate with their own posts, these will then go live together on the 15th of every month (you can still join in after this date).

The year is 2030, you’ve just spent your life savings on purchasing a ticket to ‘reset’ your life. You’ve gone back in time to your first day of school. You have the chance to live your life again. You have all of your current memories. What would you do differently?

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #3

OthalaFehu

in-deed-a-bly

Caveman

FinanceYourFire

Bankok2Blighty

TotalBalance

WhatLifeCouldBe

Fretful Finance

If I could go back in time and start again, knowing what I know now, what would I do differently?

This type of question seems to crop up multiple times amongst friends and co-workers, “If you could go back to University, what would you study?” Or, “If you could do any job you wanted to, what would it be?”

That’s basically what this proposition would allow, the ability to pursue any career that you want to. We, of course, have the same opportunity when we’re going through life the first time, but we never grasp it fully. We don’t have much knowledge of life and we’ve not had many experiences, we make the wrong choices.

How would I make sure that I make better choices this time around? Who’s to say I won’t be disappointed with the outcome? I might even end up preferring my original life. That’s a worrying thought. I’ll have to be careful when thinking about this.

The little things

It’s easier to start with the little things. What small bits would I change if I could go back and do it all over again?

1) I’d be nicer to my parents

I was an absolute nightmare growing up. At my parents peril, I didn’t care about much, other than the current thrill I was seeking.

Whilst away at University, one day after having an argument with my partner I realised that I had been terrible to my Dad about 5 years prior and came to the realisation that I’d never said sorry. I rang him up bleary-eyed and said I was sorry for all of the horrible things that I’d done. He naturally thought something was wrong as I have a great relationship with them now. I simply informed him that I felt wracked with guilt as I realised I’d never apologised.

Naturally, my parents aren’t perfect. But knowing what I know now, I know that not everyone is. We can only control the way we behave and I definitely could have behaved much better.

So, if I could go back, I’d be nicer to my parents. As I would know that I’d regret it immensely if I wasn’t and I’d known that they won’t be around forever.

2) I would read more

I currently read for at least 2 hours every single day. I love reading, it’s my favorite hobby. My perfect retirement dream is having enough time to read a lot more books. But I wasn’t always like that. My lifetime ‘books read’ count actually stood at under 10 until around the age of 22, which is embarrassing to admit.

Knowing what I know now, I realise that my life could have been filled with a lot more joy and learning if I’d read throughout my childhood and teenage years. Now, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, hense pursuing FI/RE :]

I would focus more on learning Italian

My parents both speak Italian and all of my family on my father’s side don’t speak a word of English. I moved over to England when I was 3 years old.

Although I can understand and speak a little Italian, I am by no means fluent. I’m getting worse the older I get. It’s always been on my to-do list to actually make a concerted effort to learn. It’s just so difficult when you’re an adult to find the time to do so. Especially when I’ve got so many other income generating pursuits.

I realise now that the best time for me to do this would have been when I was growing up and still living at home. I lived with two people who spoke fluently; my mum and my dad, it would have been way easier to learn. It also would have been a lot easier to dedicate time to it back then.

By the time I left home I could have been fluent, I’d be able to go through life with my very Italian name and say “Yes, I do speak Italian” when other Italians I meet assume that I do.

I’d be able to communicate with half of my family, including my late Nono[note]Nono is Grandad in Italian.[/note]. I’d also have a pretty awesome life skill to add to my resume.

I would learn how to play the Piano

Like reading, I found my joy for the Piano later in life. I just don’t have enough time to properly learn and get graded. If I could start again, I’d make sure I dedicated some time to learning this instrument as I know that perfectly playing a piece of music brings me a unique kind of joy.

The bigger picture

I’ve covered the little things, what about the bigger picture? Would I still choose programming as a career path? Would I still have gone to University? How different may my life become?

I always jokingly say to friends that if I could be anything, I’d be a Shepherd. I’d have my lot of land and country house and all I’d care about would be my sheep and my spritely Collie dog.

I think the reality of being a farmer would definitely not live up to the dream… I may be stuck in that profession with hefty leases and not much chance of obtaining financial independence.

The fast-track to an early retirement

My passion for making money has been realised over the years from my tendencies in video games and real life. I quite like spreadsheets too. I think I’d be pretty good at managing other people’s money.

I’ve also always liked Math, maybe I’d enjoy being a Investment Banker? There are a lot of horror stories of 80 hour work weeks and a lot of stress. But, with my knowledge of FI/RE, our beautiful community - would this matter? I could stash away as much money as I could into investment accounts and retire as quickly as possible. I may even be able to top my current savings rate of 80%?

Now that I think about it, that option just seems silly. If I had the opportunity to start over, I’d pick a pretty hard, high-stress job, just so that I could quit as soon as I could? Hmm.

What do I enjoy most?

I’m trying really hard to think about this. It’s worse than the question, “What do you want for Christmas?” I don’t know! Argh.

I quite like the idea of building things, but I don’t like the thought of committing to hard physical labour for potentially decades. I like the idea of being a farmer, but again, I don’t want a tough, long working life.

What I know I enjoy is programming video games. There’s a certain thrill that you get when you program a piece of code and it works. With video games, this thrill is two-fold. You’re actually seeing shapes and animations and gravity form on a screen from the piece of code that you’ve written. When I first programmed a smooth moving first-person camera in C++ 8 years ago, it felt SO awesome. I can imagine it’s the same feeling a carpenter gets after they’ve finished building a structure that they’re proud of.

But, in my current life I’ve already tried to pursue a video game development career. I have a degree in it. I ended up choosing the money and going down a more traditional programming route where the jobs are plentiful and the pay higher.

I traded in passion and joy for money in the hope that I’d eventually go back to Indie game development when I ‘have more time.’ I didn’t know back then that I’d need to be retired before I got that time.

The final commit

Before doing this thought experiment I really thought that if I could do it all again, I’d get into a finance career. I thought I’d train to be an Accountant or Investment Banker. I like financial topics, I know more about personal finance than most people that are double my age and I like making money. Simple choice, right? Not really.

Nothing’s ever that simple. When sitting back and thinking about it properly, I’ve realised that I’m pretty happy with my current career choice. As a programmer, specifically a mobile developer, I still get that thrill and artistic-like option to design, architect and build something which you can visually see and be proud of. There are no barriers to higher salaries related to your age or years of service, you just have to be good at coding. I can work remotely whenever I like and most days are pretty chilled out.

I guess that makes me pretty lucky? It’s a blessing really to analyse your life and discover that you wouldn’t choose a different career path. I’d probably even stick with the same companies that I’ve worked for. They each gave me just what I needed at the time in order to move on and progress.

I would definitely still reset my life though. I’d do it for the little things. The little things make all the difference in the end.

How to Find Cheap High Internet Speed Broadband

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 07:00:18 +0000

If left to fester for longer than the contract period, Broadband and TV package costs add up quickly. Bills can more than double with countless rises throughout the year. This is even more prevalent with Broadband deals.

Did you know that if you actively manage your Broadband and switch when your contract has ended, a Fiber connection is actually cheaper than the standard, slower connection? This is because they’re hoping you won’t switch when your contract is up!

We can beat them at their own game with a little bit of time and scheduling.

Broadband and TV packages, like many other areas in the UK are dominated by big corporations with a lot of money and not much regulation. They use sleazy car sales techniques to rope the gullible into contracts which double or triple in cost when the ‘introductory rate’ has finished and they use scare tactics to make you sign up and stay. The contracts are incredibly hard to cancel and usually have a plethora of connection issues with support call centres reading from scripts.

To put it bluntly; they’re absolutely rubbish. Take a look at TrustPilot for the biggest Broadband providers and you’ll see that most have a 1 star rating. These companies put profits first because they can get away with it. It’s an industry that they own, making it incredibly hard for any disruptors to penetrate it, so they can do what they like.

So, we’re stuck with them. What can we do to pay them as little as possible?

Switch, switch, switch

As with most services that you own, the motto here is to make sure you always switch. Almost all services (unless you find a gem like Bulb <- Use theFIREstarter ’s affiliate link to get £50 off) have an ‘introductory rate’ that ends after your initial contract. This is even the same with most mortgages.

It shouldn’t be like this, companies should be discounting the price for loyal customers who’ve been with them for the longest. But, they’ve found a way that’s earning them more money by tricking the unbeknownst and they’d rather take that route than provide customer satisfaction. In the 21st century, we truly live in a cut-throat digital world.

SO, you must switch when your contract is up. Either switch or negotiate a new deal, unless you want to be stuck paying a hella lot more for your service.

Let’s compare internet plans on offer so we can check them out.

Sky Broadband

£25 per month for 18 months
Then rises to £38.99 per month
35.6% increase in price

Virgin Media

£27 per month for 12 months
Then rises to £42 per month
35.7% increase in price

BT Broadband

£29.99 per month for 18 months
£80 reward card given for new customers (bringing monthly cost down to £25.50 for 18 months)
Then rises to £37.99 per month
32.9% increase in price (taking into account £80 reward card)

Plusnet

£23.50 per month for 18 months
Then rises to £32.98
28.75% increase in price

I couldn’t find any broadband provider that doesn’t hike the prices up for existing customers. What has the world come to?

On average you’ll be paying more than 30% extra if you stay with the same provider, forcing you to switch every 12-18 months.

Luckily, it only takes up a little bit of your time once a year to decrease your bill massively every month.

Cashback sites

These are a must with any contract signings, especially Broadband deals! This is my Quidco cashback history for the last two years of broadband purchases.

Cashback sites even make fiber deals cheaper than standard deals. If you make sure you switch every time your contract ends, you’ll end up with much cheaper internet (faster too!).

From browsing through my top two favorite cashback sites, Quidco and TopCashback , searching ‘broadband’ returns a lot of results. The best offer I found was on Quidco with this BT broadband deal of £125 cashback as well as the BT £140 reward card.

With this exact BT broadband deal, the cost is £39.99 per month, with the £125 Quidco cashback and £140 BT rewards card, the true monthly cost now comes down to £25 per month!

If, when you get to the end of your 18 month contract, you decide to stay on this deal. Your cost would go up to £58.99 per month, more than doubling your monthly cost. Making it even more ludicrous if you decide not to switch.

These cashback offers generally take a few months to come in after you’ve signed up, but I’ve never not been paid. It’s good to get into the habit of checking TopCashback and Quidco before you enter into any new contracts or buy any big ticket items as usually they’ll be some money you can save. These sites work similarly to affiliate hacking[efn_note]Link to guide coming soon[/efn_note] as they’re giving most of the affiliate commission that they earn back to you.

They’re really simple to use and completely free! All you have to do is search what you’re looking for, click on the deal that you want and then click on ‘get cashback’ or ‘go to deal’ and it will automatically redirect you to the product website.

If you’ve not signed up to any cashback sites yet, I’d recommend doing so here (get a £10 cashback bonus through this link!) and here , then you’ll be ready to quickly scan what’s on offer before making a purchase or signing a contract!

Negotiate

Before you actually switch your service, you should first try and negotiate a better deal with your current provider. This is a normal procedure and the cancelling department for your provider will be ready to offer you all of their latest deals to get you to sign up to another 12 or 18 months! Sometimes you may even get a better deal than what’s advertised online.

Before you ring up, you’ll first want to check online to find the best deals that your current provider and others have on offer, including the cashback you can get. Write all of this down and use this as ammo when you’re negotiating.

Next, ring up your current provider and state that you want to cancel. You’ll be fast-tracked through to a smooth talking salesman who will try and get you to stay.

Here are the numbers you need to ring for some of the bigger providers:

Sky Broadband - 0333 759 2632

Virgin Media - 0345 454 1111

BT Broadband - 0800 783 1401

Plusnet - 0800 013 2632

TalkTalk - 0345 172 0088

Again, make sure you find the best deals available and check Quidco /TopCashback .

Take all of the reward cards and cashback, add it together and then divide that with the contract length, then take that off the advertised monthly figure to get your true monthly cost.

Monthly Cost - ((Cashback + Reward Cash) / Contract Length) = True Monthly Cost

Round up

So, to round it all up, here are the ultimate steps to follow to find the cheapest broadband deals (or any other service).

Go to a comparison website like MoneySupermarket or CompareTheMarket (my favorite), search for the cheapest Broadband deals.
Load up Quidco and TopCashback and also search for Broadband cashback offers.
Use the cashback offers and comparison sites to calculate the true monthly cost using the formula above.
Ring up your current provider and say that you want to cancel.
Negotiate the lowest deal you can with the cancellations department. Never accept the first offer (think like you’re bartering at a market).
Decide whether you’ll accept the negotiated price and sign up to a new contract or go with one of the other offers you’ve found.
1. Remember to consider costs such as ‘set-up fee’ or ‘delivery charge’ if your new provider has these as it will effect your true monthly cost.
2. Remember that you can’t switch to your existing provider as a new customer (you can if you’ve not been with them for 12-18 months), but they should offer you at least that deal for you to stay anyway.
Pick an offer and sign up!
Set a reminder or start a Google sheet to remind you when you’ll need to start looking again (in 12 or 18 months time).

NOTE: Broadband providers are really sneaky and make it pretty difficult to set up with a new company on the exact date that your contract ends with your previous company. You can’t actually cancel your broadband and then activate with a new provider without paying hefty ‘disconnection’ and ‘reconnection’ charges.

Most providers also can’t give you an exact date for when you’ll be switched over. This means that it will be less hassle for you to wait until your contract end date then begin the switch to your new provider. This unfortunately also means that you’ll pay the inflated, end of contract price for 2 - 4 weeks, but trust me, it’s worth the cost.

A similar set of rules can be followed for things like car insurance, home insurance, utilities. Any service that has some kind of contract really.

What might the future hold?

Even though we can beat the mega corps at their own games and get the price that we deserve, it’s still pretty frustrating that we have to do this. It’s not always been like this, but these days, most companies seem to be relying on cut-throat sales tactics and free trial conning rather than customer satisfaction.

We are starting to see some changes with utility companies where smaller disruptors can actually get into the market and offer a customer-first experience. Internet service providers haven’t quite got there yet.

But there is hope! Thanks to this guy.

Yep, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is hoping to fix our internet problem by launching 12,000 mini-internet satellites into orbit by the end of 2020. His plan? To provide low-cost broadband connectivity to the whole planet.

Until then, you’ll have to keep on navigating the financial swamp and keep on switching!

Savings Report #5 - November

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 06:00:01 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

The markets seem to be recovering a little with my investments earning £432.42 this month. I’m still worse off since I started investing though, so there’s still a way to go with recovery.

My ISA pot now sits at £14k. I was really hoping to try and fill it to reach the £20k ISA limit before it resets in April but I may keep my matched betting profits to help boost my stake size so it’s not looking good on that front. I will hopefully still be able to throw an extra few thousand in though, we’ll see. My investments are now bigger than my house equity which is nice. That’s the way it should be for the savvy saver and I hope it will continue this way. I’m going to have to start a fresh savings tab for 2019 in the spreadsheet. This will mean I’ll have to build in some new functionality to look at the last month of the previous year. I’ll be able to start adding some snazzy charts to illustrate how the year went too, woo!

Other Thoughts

Matched betting has been pretty dyer this month. I got gubbed on Bet365 which was at the time my only account. So I stopped for quite a bit, I only recently started adding some alternative accounts. I’m still about £5200 up since starting, but I don’t imagine this will move much until after Christmas when I’ve secured a new B365 account. Feelings are a bit up and down at the moment. That means I haven’t got many thoughts to write down here! I’m starting to get itchy feet again at work now that I’ve been at this position for almost a year. Blogging is starting to get a bit harder with regards to thinking of what to write about next. I’m going to stick with it though :] I’ve read about the 3-month blogging itch, maybe mine is starting around now? There’s Christmas to look forward to! It’s my parents turn to have us this year, time to get thoroughly stuffed with lots of nice food and merry with lots of alcohol! Next time I write an ‘other thoughts’ section I’ll hopefully be wearing a Santa hat with a glass of wine close at hand! I hope you all have a good Christmas.

Minimalism Part 1 - My Never Ending Journey Toward Decluttering My Life

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 06:00:21 +0000

Do you ever get that general feeling of unease and not know where it’s coming from? You begin to feel agitated, or for a more fun word from my Italian heritage; you become agitato.

When you’re agitato you’re not very fun to be around. General symptoms include anger, impatience, and annoyance. Being agitato means that you’d rather curl up into a ball and wallow in self-pity than do anything productive.

I get this feeling quite often. I eventually pinned it down to a cluttered home. I will generally become agitato when I’m forced to spend much longer than necessary finding an item due to a messy home. Sometimes, if it’s super messy, I delve into this state when I’m not even finding anything.

No matter how many ‘big tidy ups’ me and Mrs SavingNinja try and do, it normally doesn’t last that long. I’d like to try and minimize the agitato state as much as possible and remain in a blissful, tidy state for longer. This is where minimalism comes in.

Minimalism is the ideology of living with fewer items. This covers any and all items: clothes, electronics, cosmetics. The idea is that having more shit makes you unhappy.

Like me; you could become unhappy due to clutter. Having much more (mostly useless) items means that it’s harder to keep your home tidy. It’s also much harder to find your ‘good socks’ or realise that you have no pants left if you’ve got to wade through a load of broken or un-liked items of clothing to figure this out…

You can also become unhappy due to the fact that you’re actually-figuratively surrounding yourself in shit. Why would you want your home to be filled with stuff that you don’t really like and/or need? With stuff that won’t last you a long time and will probably break after a few uses?

Minimalism means having fewer things but it also leads to buying high-quality things that bring you joy, are multi-functional and are easy to repair. Why would you want to buy that £20 Primark coat that will break after 3 months? You could buy a £200 quality coat that will last you 15 years, it will also be much comfier/waterproof/breathable.

Having fewer things makes it much easier to keep your home decluttered. I know this first hand. The harder something is to put away, the easier it will be for your brain to tell you “Nope, I’ll leave this item here in the ‘temporary’ corner and put it away later.” Or “I’ll use this item again later/tomorrow/next week, I’ll leave it out.” You want to make something as easy to put away as possible! Your items ‘home’ should be a better solution to you than your ‘temporary shelf’ or corner of the floor. Quick and easy.

This works on the flip side too. If it’s this easy to put away, it will be just as easy to retrieve. No more rooting through piles of stuff until you find the item that you really want. Zero stress.

Ever had one of those ram packed kitchen cupboards full of Tupperware, where it’s like playing a game of Jenga trying to put something away? You fear that every time it opens, it will all come cascading out? If that cupboard was half full, it would be a lot easier to manage. A lot of these items will sit unused most of the time.

Another benefit of minimising is only keeping items that you really love. You all have that T-Shirt/dress that you think is really awesome. Imagine if all of your pieces of clothing were that awesome? It would be much better to have 10 really high quality, thick T-Shirts that don’t shrink in the wash or tear easily than loads of low-quality shirts, some that you probably haven’t worn for years.

Most people actually only wear a handful of their total clothing, meaning the rest of their clothes are just taking up space.

Better yet, you can buy clothes that are multi-functional and can be used in both hot and cold weather. Layers are the key! This goes the same way with all other items. Buy less of, but higher quality items that are multi-functional. The more functions an item has, the more worthy it is of taking a space in your home.

I’m not saying to go all Rambo and get rid of everything other than a spoon and a mess tin. I’m just preaching the benefits of reduction and quality. You can have as many things as you’d like. Just make sure you love all of them, they won’t break easily and of course; make sure that you actually have space to easily store and retrieve them.

Minimalising won’t just bring happiness and clarity into your life, it will also save you money. It’s much easier to needlessly consume when you don’t love (and know about) everything you own. This may even result in buying the same thing twice!

Do I practice what I preach?

Nope. My house is so cluttered right now, I’m agitato 50% of the time! Yeah, yeah, I know - I just spewed to you all of that stuff about how minimalism is awesome, what the hell?

I really really want to get to that blissfully minimized state where I can easily pull out any item of clothing and have it be one that I can wear today. At least half of my clothes seem to just sit there ‘just-in-case’. But, it’s really bloody hard. We’ve had so many big clean ups and reapings that I’ve lost count. Useless clutter seems to continuously build-up, it’s a never-ending uphill struggle.

This time, though, it will be different… I hope.

I’m going to methodically break down each part of my home into categories. For each category, I’ll ponder these three things:

What would be the perfect state of this category, what’s the goal?
What is the MVP (tech term for Minimal Viable Product[note]A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and to provide feedback for future development[/note]) of this category? Ideally, where can I get to without having to buy anything?
What is the current state of this category. How did it get like this, and how can it be prevented from happening again in the future?

I’m going to break each category into a blog post with hopefully some successful results!

Currently, these are the categories that I’m going to tackle:

Light clothing - T-Shirts, smart shirts, exercise clothes, trousers
Warm clothing - Jumpers, coats
Shoes - SO many shoes
Cat toys - How many toys does an indoor cat really need?
Cosmetics and cleaning products
Electronics and paperwork - I like ethernet cables, OK?!
Cooking/eating utensils and food
The loft - I don’t even know what’s up there!

There’s quite a bit to get through. I’ll have to try and rope Mrs SavingNinja into some of this as we’re not going to be able to go through a full transformation unless we’re both on-board.

A lot of this reaping is going to be necessary if we ever emigrate to a different country. I’d rather have a fresh start than pay a small fortune to send a crate full of all my things across the sea. So hopefully doing all of this will pay dividends in general well-being and reduced future stress.

There’s also a lot to be said for being a minimalist in many other ways:

Your finances. Having fewer but higher quality outgoings makes your life simpler and allows you to easily keep track of your expenses.

Your relationships. Focus on building and maintaining high-quality relationships with like-minded individuals, all you need are a few really close friends for a happy life. Focus on the ones that matter.

Your hobbies. Don’t have 100 different hobbies, focus on one or two. You’ll grow and learn more and the better you get, the more fun you’ll have. You’ll also be able to dedicate more money and time into the hobbies you’re most passionate about.

No matter what you apply minimalism to, it all comes down to the same principles…

Less is more.

Choose quality over quantity.

Surround yourself in items that bring you happiness.

The end result will be a decluttered life. You’ll have much more clarity over what’s important and a lot less complexity revolving around what you should own. Each item you own will be of a much higher quality and you can be confident it will serve its purpose well and for a long time. You’ll no longer have to worry about the price tag of an item, your focus will be more on the value and need.

Minimalism ties in beautifully with the financial independence movement as it focuses a lot on what makes you truly happy. It has routes in anti-consumerism and if executed correctly, will save you a lot of money. I really believe minimalism is one of the keys for prolonged happiness. But we’ll see!

I’ll be picking up and reading this book that I’ve seen recommended quite a bit before I start the first category. If you’ve read it, please let me know if it helped you.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A simple, effective way to banish clutter forever

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

What do you think of minimalism?
Have you tried to declutter your life before? Were you successful?

What is Merch By Amazon?

Thu, 22 Nov 2018 07:30:03 +0000

What if I told you that there is a business model that can generate five figures per year passively and has no need for any upfront cash investment?

And what if I told you that this same business model requires zero marketing to be successful, customers will just be there in their millions, buying products that you haven’t spent much time on?

Sold? Say hello to the first side-hustle that I started that was successful enough to incorporate. The only side-hustle that has still generated a sufficient sum over the past 12 months without me having to lift a finger - Merch By Amazon.

Merch By Amazon is a POD (print on demand) branch of Amazon. Amazon started this operation in 2015 when they invested in printers across the USA and it’s currently still in a beta phase with invite-only participation. There are a few other companies that run in a similar vein such as RedBubble and TeeSpring but none have the behemoth of a customer base that Amazon has.

The way POD services like this work is by offering users the ability to upload a finished merchandise design, they then create a product from that design like seen on the SavingNinja store page . The POD service then deals with everything; the shipping, returns, hosting, rating; all of the stuff that you don’t want to be dealing with. If someone buys that product, the POD will take the manufacturing costs and a small margin, and you’ll get the rest. You’ll get this payment in the form of royalties by the POD. You’re basically employed by them.

POD services are part of the growing list of companies that you can start with absolutely zero cash investment (Stock images, Kindle publishing). You don’t have to find investors, buy stock or a commercial property. It’s completely free to try out, you can literally only make money. Removing the risk also removes the barrier to entry into business for a lot of people. It allows entrepreneurs to ’try before they buy’ without investing £1000s of their personal savings.

What Makes Amazon Special?

In 2016 Amazon had 310 million active customers. They have 100 million prime subscribers; that’s what makes Amazon special. With Amazon, you’ll be selling your merchandise in the worlds biggest store. You’ll have millions of eyes on your products every single day.

Due to Amazons gargantuan customer base, you don’t have to be a world class designer to sell. In-fact, most of Merch By Amazon’s earnings are via text designs like this and this . A good business model promotes quantity over quality, and it works!

How Easy is it to Think of Designs?

In many ways Merch By Amazon is more about research than design. You want to think of a design idea that not many people have already done, you don’t want to be on page 20 of Amazon’s search results. A lot of the work is also about your product keywords. You need to ensure that customers can find what you’ve made.

As always, like with Matched Betting , this is incredibly easy due to software. With Merch Informer it will basically tell you the exact designs that will perform poorly (due to saturation) or whether there is money to be made. Even though there is a small monthly cost, I definitely recommend this the software as it will pay dividends in time and money down the line.

How Long Does it Take to Make Designs?

When you’ve got a design idea that you’re sure will sell, the next step is to actually make the design. Due to the novelty nature of the designs this is a lot easier than it first may seem. This is due to the designs consisting of mainly font and a simple silhouette image. The less artwork you have on the design, the less risk there is for someone not to like it. A lot of merch customers will mainly be looking for a certain quote or phrase; not a fancy design.

Amazon offers templates for Photoshop, Sketch, Illustrator and GIMP. You can use these templates to easily mock up your designs and see what they’ll look like.

Another approach if you’re not very artsy is to use an application like WordSwag or Fontee to do the designing for you, remember, the research and phrasing is more important than the design.

When you’ve made a bit of profit, a lot of people decide to delegate the design work to people on freelancing sites like Upwork for $5 - $10 per design. Only one product needs to sell to make up for this cost, you can expand your business very quickly using this method.

Conclusion

I’ll be writing a full guide to Merch By Amazon in the future. But if you think that you’d like to give this side-hustle a go, make sure you head over to the Merch By Amazon website and request an invitation. It can take some people over 12 months to be accepted.[note]They’ve aparantly started accepting people a lot quicker recently.[/note]

If you’ve already been accepted; here are some useful resources to get you started:

Merch Informer - Research is key to be successful - They offer a free trial through this link! AmazonMerch Reddit - There is a wealth of knowledge available on Reddit Michael Essek Blog - Very successful Merch seller

If You Had 10 Years Left to Live

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 07:30:55 +0000

Welcome to Thought Experiment #2! The last one, ‘If you won £1m ’ went so well that these will now be a monthly installment. At the beginning of each month, the question will be tweeted under the hashtag #ThoughtExperiment and the posts will go live on the 15th of every month.

I recommend to all who want to participate to have your posts written before the 15th and then post them on or after this date, I’ll then add you to the list!

To participate in a Thought Experiment, read the below question and put your thoughts directly into a blog post. No major editing allowed, these posts should read like an internal monologue.

What would you do if you knew with absolute certainty that you would die in exactly 10 years time. It doesn’t matter how you know this or what you will die of; in 3652 days you will drop dead.

As always tweet @SavingNinja if you have participated and I’ll add your post to the list below!

Thought Experiment #2

in-deed-a-bly

Ms ZiYou

EarlyRetirement

Caveman

Othalafehu

SteelKitten

Young FI Guy

Dr FIRE

Inspiring Life Design

theFIREstarter

Impending Doom

I place down the letter and squeeze out a shallow breath. A stinging lump forms quickly in my throat, tears begin to fill my eyes. I’ve just been told that I have 10 years left to live. As I lean back on my chair, a million thoughts fly through my head.

Shock. My strongest emotion is shock. All of these years I opted for a cheaper house, cheaper and less frequent holidays and I never bought gifts for my loved ones. That’s just meaningless consumerism anyway! It doesn’t mean anything. Right?

I feel lied to! The perfect life that I wanted to build for my family will never come to be. We’ll never experience living on a beautiful remote mountainside in a log cabin that we built. Never enjoy drinking hot chocolate on a snowy day with the log fire blazing and our children smiling.

I feel an overwhelming sense of loss. An imploding urge to tell my loved ones that I love them. I should have told them that more. All I can picture is tears. The tears of my partners shuddering sobs as I tell her the news of my impending doom. Our lives were intertwined immensely, we don’t live near any relatives and have few friends. We’re different people now. People that rely on each other to function, how will we go on apart?

I can see the angry tears of my parents. Having a single child wasn’t a choice for them. My mother’s health disallowed me from having any siblings. How is the child they cherished and protected so dearly being taken away from them?

What should I do? I could run away. Leave, without writing a note, and suffer through my last 10 years in solitude. Surely my family would be happier thinking that I had left them rather than left this world? No. There are too many unknowns. They must know. The only option is to maximise my family’s happiness. This needs to happen in the little time that I have left. I need to find fulfillment within my soul and be content with passing away. I need to convince my family to be content too.

I lift myself off my cheap second-hand sofa and doggedly make my way across my tiny flat in search of a pen and paper. All can be fixed with a good plan.

How to Maximise Happiness?

I’m lucky that I and my partner need the same things to be happy. We’re at our happiness peak when we’re exploring new and exciting places with each other. When we don’t have to worry about work and have time to relax and enjoy ourselves. Traveling has always been a dream for us, to see and experience everything this life has to offer, to be free to roam wherever the wind takes us. We would be truly happy on one big never ending adventure.

Have you ever wondered why when you get older, your days seem to fly by faster and faster? This is caused by falling into the monotonous slug of the daily grind. When you’re younger, you experience new things almost every day. When you experiencing new things, a simple week can feel like forever! We need to pack as many new experiences into this last decade as possible. If we successfully accomplish this, the next 10 years will seem like they lasted a lifetime. This will maximise our happiness!

But, what about my parents? They won’t want to not see me for my final years… And I can’t take them with me. They’ll be heartbroken. I really don’t think that there will be be much that can change that. I’d want to minimise the length of suffering that their old hearts will have to deal with. They shouldn’t have to go into their 70s heart-sick due to my illness. I won’t tell them. I’ll focus on me and my partner reaching a place of happiness and acceptance. At the end of my journey, I can let them know a year or so before my expiry date and spend as much time with them as possible.

How Can We Go Traveling For 10 Years?

We don’t have enough money for this. If only I’d got this news a handful of years later; we would have had enough! This is what the saving movement is all about; preparing for scenarios like this. But it’s too soon, I haven’t saved for a long enough time.

If we sold our house, our net worth would sit at 60k. We’d need at least 20k per year for traveling — we’d run out of money in roughly 3 years time. That won’t do. I’ve also got to think about what I’m leaving my partner with; 37 years old with no money and a 10-year gap in her career? There must be another way.

I could carry on working for 5 more years

Pros:

We would be able to sustain ourselves for 5 years
There would be money left over after I’m gone

Cons:

Half of my time left would be wasted working
Would be demotivating to carry on working very hard and long hours

This could be an option, but throwing away half my life continuing to work these long hours would be very dissatisfying and difficult with the knowledge of my life-span foreshadowing everything.

I could start contracting and work only 6 months of the year

Pros:

We would have enough money to travel for 6 months every year
There would be money left over after I’m gone

Cons:

Half of my time would be wasted working, longing for the next 6 months to come
Long stints of adventure and soul searching would never be able to happen as I would constantly have to be thinking about returning to work

I would easily be able to try this option as I am in the right location and have the necessary experience under my belt to start contracting. The only trouble is it means I would still have to work half of my remaining days.

I could try and find part-time, fully-remote work

Pros:

This would allow us to travel indefinitely
Any surplus income can be invested and left behind after I’m gone

Cons:

It may be nerve-wracking knowing that I’m still dependent on finding work
Depending on time-schedules and internet access, it may limit where we can travel

This would be a very good option, if I can pull it off. A schedule of 1 week working remotely and 3 weeks free time would be preferential. Depending on how good the contracts are, we could even stop completely after 5 or so years.

The only problem I see here is if it’s possible to obtain this, if it is; how long will it take to set up? And how reliable will the contracts be?

I place the pen down gently on the table and gaze up at the wall, reiterating the plan in my head. I will hand in my resignation and I’ll start freelancing immediately whilst continuously searching for a fully remote position. I’m bound to find one eventually. I’m determined enough! Why didn’t I do this sooner?

My eyes are misty, I must have been crying. “Why don’t I feel better?” I think, as my stomach roils with sickness. My heart begins to beat faster, it feels like it’s about to be ripped out of my chest…I don’t want to die! I don’t want to emotionally stab a dagger into my loved ones hearts. Why does this have to happen to me?

Regret. I’m filled with so much regret: For not loving harder, not grasping life with enough passion and for not being the best that I can be. I’ve lost so much. I won’t be able to look into my partner’s excited eyes as we catch the first glimpse of the yearly Christmas market. We won’t be able to drink spiced mulled wine or cinnamon infused tea whilst walking in the woods as the autumn leaves fall around us… We were meant to grow old together. Now I’m leaving her alone—‘Baby? ‘What’s wrong?’ I startle as I feel my partners hand grasp my shoulder. I struggle to swallow due to the ever-expanding lump in my throat, I look into her eyes as tears begin to betray me once again, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

How Anyone Can Get a Student Discount

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 07:30:24 +0000

NOTE

This is one of the best hustles that I know. I’ve convinced a lot of people at each office I’ve worked at to become a student and get a TOTUM card. The amount of offers you can get are insane, the best being 10% off Apple, 10% off the CO-OP and half-priced Amazon Prime. If you are lucky enough to grab a card for 3 years when one of the loop-holes open, go for it! They’re worth every penny. As you’ll see from the strike-throughs, this post was actually written a while ago. The loop-hole then closed so this never got posted. Yesterday, it opened up again with a different method. I’ve now got my 3-year card coming in the post! So if you want to benefit from all of these savings, hurry! It might not last long. WARNING: It didn’t last long. Learndirect is now not recognised. Go to the comments to see if a new loop-hole has opened up.

Being a student is great, not just for all of the free time that you get, but for the amazing student discounts too! Apple currently offers students a 10% discount on MacBooks, a 20% discount on Apple Care and they’ll also throw in a pair of £249 Beats headphones for free.[note]The Beats headphone promotion only runs between July and October.[/note]

Being a student isn’t an exclusive club for the young; anyone can be a student. It doesn’t matter if you’re retired, working, or claiming benefits. NUS doesn’t discriminate. Bearing that in mind, the 21st century saw the doorway to education open up like never before, due to one thing; the internet. The internet bought into fruition the ability to learn online with millions of online courses available to anyone who has the inclination to learn. 1 in 4 students now opt for an online course rather than attending a brick and mortar school. This also brings the unique opportunity to become a student with next to no effort at all. Strapped for cash? Go to this post to make £30 in 10 minutes! The way it works is you find an online course which is either free or very cheap, you sign up to it, you’ll then be eligible to buy an NUS Extra TOTUM card which is the card that will unlock all of those great student discounts. Let’s walk through the process from start to finish.

Finding a course

You can now sign up to a free course on Learndirect which makes you eligible for a TOTUM card! Go to Learndirect and click ‘Free employability course’ at the bottom of the page. After entering your details, confirm the email that they send to you and you’re done! You’ll need to find an online course through a provider that NUS has a partnership with. I recommend using New Skills Academy courses. These guys offer some great deals through Groupon for very cheap courses to unlock your student discount benefits. Just type ‘New Skills Academy’ into their search bar and sort by lowest price first. The lowest I could find on Groupon (via this link ) is currently £12. Remember, you don’t actually have to do the course, you’re just buying it for the student discounts!

Applying for the NUS TOTUM card

After you’ve enrolled onto the course, you’re then ready to apply for a TOTUM card. The card costs £12 for 1 year, £22 for 2 years or £32 for 3 years. I’d recommend getting it for 3 years so you don’t have to go through this process again for a while. The cost is worth it even if you only get the Amazon discount. Follow the steps below.

Launch the NUS/TOTUM website by clicking on this link
Enter your email address and then confirm it
Type in the course provider as your place of study (learndirect if you went with them)
Enter the start and end date, if you are choosing a 3 year NUS card, enter your end date to be 3 years from now
Choose “Professional/Vocational” for the course level
Enter the length of time you want your NUS card to last (I would recommend 3 years)
Upload a photo of yourself, this will be displayed on the card
Enter your personal details. If it asks for a student number or password, you should be able to find this in the account which you’ve set up for your online course

Savings Report #4 - October

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 06:30:28 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Wow. What a month! The stock market took a massive dive and I actually lost £1,685.05 from my investment accounts. Both my pension and ISA pots dropped by over 5%. This is the first big correction I’ve been in since I started investing!

Looking at my Halifax Share Dealing account, Vanguard LT 100% EQUITY is currently trading at 20,516.86p. This is actually the price that this was when I first started depositing into my ISA 12 months ago, so we’ve taken a huge dip and gone back about a year. This is still really small fry stuff for me compared to some other people I know that lost over 30k, but it still is a bit of a bummer. I actually ended up with an additional 2k net worth even with the losses so my total is now sitting at £60,206.84; I really shouldn’t be complaining :] My years to FI figure is now sitting at 4 years and 11 months. The increase in pension contributions really has helped to reduce this number massively. I still expect it to jump down further over the next year as I contribute more. I’m starting to see the benefit of recording all of this now as when looking at my first three savings reports it tells me that my investment pots have increased by almost £10k! Awesome! It’s really exciting to be able to look back and see what I was doing on that month and think “It really wasn’t that long ago!” It really makes me look forward to the future; I can’t wait to look back after a year or two of monthly reporting and see how much I’ve saved.

Other Thoughts

The potential inforcing of IR35 in the private sector has really put a haze over my future as a software engineer. I was considering a switch into contracting in 2019 and it was always something that I knew I’d eventually do. Now a lot of my colleague contractors are saying that if it came into effect, it probably won’t really be worth contracting anymore. Crap. It’s made me think about potential alternatives for next leveling my career. Another option would be to try and move into one of the ‘God’ companies such as Google or Facebook. This actually coincides quite well with finding out this month that Trump revoked the right for H1B visa holders spouses to work. If I still want to go ahead with my relocation escapades to the USA then getting transferred there by an international company via an L-1 VISA may be better than trying to get an H1B. I just have to get through 8 staged interview hell. I may do a blog series on training for this!

Kitchen Update

My kitchen has started! Woooo…Finally! I’ve literally been living out of dozens of boxes for months as I opted to remove the old kitchen myself and I was very eager with the task. The fitter actually started on Monday and the kitchen is already starting to take form. He says he’ll be done on Tuesday or Wednesday next week! Hurray!

More Free Money!

Matched betting is still going incredibly well. Since my last savings report where I quoted £3,816.88 profit, my total profit is now sitting at £5928.99. This was also all only EW betting at £10! I’ve now upped to £15 EW and will stick with that until I get to 8k profit.

As you can see from the snapshots, it was a bumpy ride. On the 5th I lost £518 in one day! But I soon was back on track by the middle of the month. I’ve decided I’m probably going to wait until after Christmas to write the EW betting guide. As I’ve only been doing it for about a month now, I’d like to get a bit more data and ride the variance wave for a little longer before I start it.

HSBC £200 Switching Offer

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 06:30:48 +0000

This is a bank account switching offer. Read The Full Guide to Bank Account Switching for more information on how to make the most of offers like these.

This generous offer from HSBC has been around for a while now, but since I’ve referred to it in a few different articles I thought I’d make an official post documenting the details.

Before taking on this offer, be warned; it’s a tricky one due to the high pay in requirement and HSBC will do everything in their power to not pay you and stall. They’re the worst bank I’ve ever dealt with, so be prepared to ring them up if when need be.

Notes

Must pay in £1,750 per month (doesn’t have to be all at once)
At least two direct debits or standing orders have to be switched over from your closing bank
Not held a HSBC current account since 1st of January 2015
First £150 is paid within 30 days of account opening
£50 will be paid after 12 months if you’ve been paying the £1,750 per month and had the direct debits running the whole time

Fast-track

Ensure that two two direct debits via Little Debits have been set up on the current account that you will be switching from. Make sure these have ran for at least 1 month.

Go to the offer page and sign up for a new HSBC account, make sure that you opt in to the switching service when prompted. Once opened set up standing orders to transfer £1,750 in and out of the bank account (or transfer smaller amounts to make up the full £1,750 through-out the month).

Check back after 30 days and make sure you have received your £150. Either switch to another account now or wait an additional 11 months to receive the remaining £50.

The Full Guide to Bank Account Switching

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 07:30:34 +0000

Just like Matched Betting , switching bank accounts takes advantage of the free money that most high-street banks are now offering to switch to them.

Once you’ve done some setting up, it can take as little as 10 minutes to complete an offer. With offers bagging you things like a pair of Free Bose Headphones or £125 cash the time value commitment is through the roof! It means bank account switching can clock in at over £600 per hour. If you’re not earning more than £600 per hour you should be taking full advantage!

Recently I shared a couple of these offers on Saving Ninja and I had two people ask me the questions “Do I need to close my main account?” And “Do I need to pay my salary into it?” These are the misconceptions that stop people from taking advantage of the banks generous payouts. So, below I’ve compiled a guide to bank account switching that I hope will stomp out some of these misconceptions and get you set-up to start earning ASAP!

Contents Page

1. Introduction 2. Setting Up 3. Reading the Small Print i. HSBC £200 Switch ii. Natwest £125 Offer 4. Satisfying The Requirements i. Minimum Monthly Pay-in ii. Direct Debits (Before or During) iii. Logging in to Internet Banking iv. Other 5. Looking Out For Offers

Introduction

Bank account switching gained popularity in 2013 when the ‘Current Account Switch Guarantee’ was started and virtually all banks signed up to adhere to these rules.

It makes the process of switching bank accounts extremely simple as the bank has to take care of everything for you, including moving all of your direct debits and closing your old account. Here’s an awesome video of a butterfly explaining what you have to do. Spoiler; basically nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b _DyqMhfY_o

With the new-found simplicity of switching bank accounts, smaller brands started offering people incentives for switching to try and win custom over from ‘The Big 4’. The service requires an active bank account to use so they assumed that it would be safe from ‘misuse’.

Incentives to switch are so normal now that even the big 4 have started offering money for switching to them. There are so many offers available that you could even do this continuously and reap the rewards.

Setting Up

The most important step in completing these offers with minimum disruption is having a dummy or ‘switching’ bank account. If you plan on doing this a lot I would actually recommend having two.

Having a dummy bank account means that you won’t have to go through all of the hassles of changing your payment methods with online shopping websites. You also won’t have to inform your HR department that they need to pay your salary into a different bank account. This will mean that you can switch over with the switching service alone and not have to worry about anything other than meeting the offer requirements.

There are plenty of bank accounts to choose from, I would recommend looking for one that doesn’t generally offer incentivised switching in their brand, such as Lloyds. This is to avoid the disappointment of not being eligible for a switching offer for your dummy account due to already owning one. *new customers only.

NOTE: New account switching offers are not actually limited to one per household; it’s limited per individual. On most of the best offers both me and Mrs SavingNinja utilise them for a double whammy payday! We both now have a pair of Free Bose Headphones !

Reading the Small Print

All bank account switching offers are somewhat similar but vary slightly. You need to read the small print when signing up so you don’t miss out on your reward.

Let’s delve into some popular offers so we can see what we need to look out for.

HSBC £200 Switch

This is a very generous offer indeed. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it as I didn’t pay close attention to the offer requirements.

Here are the terms and conditions. After reading through them, the points to consider are this:

You can’t have had an account with HSBC since 1st of January 2015
You need to switch over at least 2 direct debits or standing orders that start within 30 days of the account opening
You need to keep this account open until the reward has been paid
£150 will be paid after 30 days and the remaining £50 will be paid after 12 months

The points that I missed in these terms were that two direct debits needed to be running on the previous account before the switch takes place. I mistakenly read that two direct debits must be set up within 30 days of the account opening not transferred over. Only after opening my two direct debits and waiting for a month did I find out that I wasn’t eligible for the £150.

If I’d read more closely, I would have made sure that I set up two direct debits via Little Debits a month before I initiated the switch to HSBC. This way I would be sure that they would be included in the switch guarantee and I would be eligible.

Natwest £125 Offer

This is a great example of a very easy switching offer . All you have to do is transfer £1500 into the account via online or mobile banking then transfer it back out again. This can be transferred in smaller bits or as one whole deposit, then you’re done - Easy!

Satisfying the Requirements

Satisfying the requirements is the only thing you need to keep an eye on when completing these offers. If the requirements aren’t met, you won’t be eligible to claim your free reward. You will also lock yourself out of claiming an offer from the same bank again for potentially years! A good way to make sure that you’re meeting all of the requirements is to look out for a write up in the offers section and pay attention to the notes box.

Minimum Monthly Pay-in

A few offers stipulate that you must pay in a regular monthly amount in order for the account to stay active. They phrase it in such a way that fools most of the public into believing this has to be their salary. This isn’t actually the case with any of the offers.

The bank doesn’t know if your money is coming in from your salary or just from another bank account. All of the offers (that I’ve seen to date) can be satisfied by setting up a standing order from one of your other bank accounts.

For example, let’s say this was one of your requirements:

You must pay at least £500 per month into the account.

All you would have to do for this is the following:

Set up a standing order of £500 going from your main bank account to the target bank account. Set this up to either come out the day after you get paid or the 1st of the month.
Set up a standing order of £500 going from your target bank account to your main bank account 3 days after the transfer in date.

That’s it! You now satisfy this requirement. You no longer have to do anything to manage the target bank account, even if you have to keep it for 6 months.

NOTE: You need to make sure that you have the £500 in your main bank account and can live without it for a few days to do this. You don’t want to be going overdrawn! If you do have a month where you don’t have any savings, you’ll have to cancel the standing order and transfer it in manually when you can. You can even transfer it in smaller bits e.g. £100 going in and out again on different dates 5 times.

Direct Debits (Before or During)

Some banks try and catch out the switchers by requiring 2 direct debits to be set up on the target bank account either before or after the switch. This is extremely easy to accomplish due to an awesome site called Little Debits .

Little Debits allows you to easily set up as many direct debits as you want for £1 each (you can’t find DDs any cheaper than this). They colour code each debit so you know which ones you’ve already got and better yet; they contribute the debits to charity; so, you can tick that off your good samaritan list!

The debits will, of course, charge you at £1 each, but this is a small price to pay for the massive bank account switching rewards. And you usually only have to have them for 1 to 2 months.

Logging in to Internet Banking

You’ll usually fill this requirement on day one, but just in-case you had no other requirements to fill; you must log into the bank website at least once! It’s very easy to do but don’t let them catch you out.

Other

There may always be other weird requirements that you have to meet so make sure that you read the terms closely. For example, some may say you must log into the mobile application or keep the account open for a year. You also need to make sure that you keep track of what they owe you, ring up if you have to. They’ll do anything to try and not pay out.

Looking Out for Offers

Offers can be found with a simple Google search. Or you can follow me on Twitter @SavingNinja and I’ll keep you in the loop for the best bank account switch offers to look out for.

I also have a post series that looks at these offers, analyses all of the small print and writes it out in plain English so that you can spend as little time as possible to get your free cash, so make sure you subscribe to get access to these articles as soon as they’re written send directly to your inbox.

If a new offer has been announced that I haven’t analysed yet, please do leave me a comment or Tweet me and let me know.

Why You Should Split Your Expenses 50/50

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 06:30:38 +0000

Consolidating your expenses has long been a tradition in British culture. It stems back to the days where a father had to barter with other families to trade off his daughter as a bride in place of cattle or arable land. The daughter would then become the property of her new husband. Their finances then become one, “What’s mine is yours.” It was the wife’s duty to raise children; it was unimaginable for them to earn money, so the joining of the household finances had to happen. Of course - in the modern world, things happen a little differently. Women are now in high paying careers all over the world, their wages have almost leveled out , or in some cases surpassed males in the workplace. Couples are on an equal playing field, so why should this age-old tradition of consolidating your finances continue when each person is as able as the other? Here are the 3 main reasons why you should be splitting your finances equally and why doing so should be the go-to de-facto for FIRE pursuers.

1) Encouraging You to Earn More

For every extra £10,000 the £100k earner makes they’ll lose £6,200 to tax. If they’re a ‘percentager’, they’ll also have to pay up an additional £1,200 per year on their mortgage (with the above illustration). That’s £7,400 out of the £10,000 that they’ll lose instantly - this is without even adding all of the other expenses! Almost all of their £10k gain is wiped out, it will also wipe out any motivation they ever had to earn more money. The same thing will happen for the lesser earner. They’ll be demotivated to earn more due to the fact that they’ll also see their expenses increase. “When the efforts and rewards are shared, it becomes apparent that the individual’s own efforts will have a less significant effect upon his eventual reward than if he were acting alone.” “Of course, he expects to get half the value added by the other person, too; but he doesn’t control the other person’s effort. He controls only his own effort. So what he controls will produce only a half reward.”

Harry Brown - How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

One of the traits that the FIRE community and myself preach is to always strive to generate side income. To do this you need a hard-working mentality, but you also need to be willing to try lots of new things. Higher-rate tax already puts a dampener on the UK hustlers spirit, you don’t want to make it worse by using a percentage based expense system.

2) Fighting Lifestyle Inflation

For everyone that’s thinking “But I don’t want to spend more than my partner.” Or “I earn more so I should pay for more.” You don’t have to do that; listen up! I earn three times what my partner earns in a year. We split everything equally and if she needs money, I’ll give her an interest-free loan - just like she’d do for me. We’ve been together for 7 years, own a home and we’re getting married next year (Yippee!!) - We’ll carry on splitting our expenses this way once we’re married. BUT!… I don’t plan on retiring without her. If I hit my FI number before her, I plan on continuing to invest until we both have enough to retire, I’ll also be filling her ISA when mine is full. As soon as we have children or get married our pots will be seen as one legally anyway. Most importantly; I don’t spend more than her - we spend equal amounts (we’re a team!) Splitting your expenses equally allows you to instantly beat lifestyle inflation. If we split them in a percentage based fashion, I would instantly be spending much more, and Mrs SavingNinja would have a lot more cash in her pocket. We’d need to battle lifestyle inflation just like all of the other high earners. Instead, I invest all of the difference (and then some) and we spend equal amounts, if we can’t afford something, we don’t buy it! I’m not going to go off and buy fancy clothes and a nice car and leave her behind, we’re in this together! But, by splitting our expenses equally; we’re on a much better path to FI.

3) Keeping Things Simple

Like FIREvLondon talked about in this excellent blog post; Complexity Costs . Keeping life simple is one of the greatest hacks to happiness and wealth presevation, and its much easier to split everything equally than to mess around figuring out percentages based off earnings.

Of course, all of these points are subjective to how you live your life. It’s easy for us as we live on less than minimum wage , so we can split our expenses equally and not miss the extra thats going into Vanguard. It may be a bit trickier if you need to increase your household expenses due to children or other unforeseen costs, and the lesser earner may be unable to earn more (although I believe anyone can earn the salary of a CEO ). But, I think for the majority of people, they’re doing themselves a disservice by splitting their expenses in a percentage based manner. Do you think you could lower your expenses enough to be on an even playing ground at 50/50? If so, try it out; just for a couple of months. Expense equally and save the difference - You’ll be surprised by how much your savings rate goes up.

Opinions?

Do you split or intend to split your expenses equally?
Do you think it’s unfair if the higher earner doesn’t pay more towards rent/mortgage costs?

What Would You Do If You Got Given £1 Million?

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 07:30:31 +0000

This article signifies the start of a new post category which I’m going to name, ‘Thought Experiments’! The way this type of post will work is by starting off with a question, like “What would you do if you got given £1 million?”, and the blogger will have to write whatever they first think of. No pre-planning or major editing allowed and blabbering is definitely encouraged! It should read like an internal monologue. Right at the top of the post, I’ll post a link to all of the other bloggers that have participated in the thought experiment (I encourage other bloggers to do likewise!) You’ll then be able to see a vast array of different opinions to the same question. I’ll also be taking question requests in the comments below! So, without further ado…Thought experiment number 1! What would you do if right at this very instant you got given 1 million great British pounds? This could be from a lottery win, an IPO, a scratch card, you name it. No tax needs to be paid, it’s just been plopped directly into your run of the mill bank account.

Thought Experiment #1

Ms ZiYou

theFIREstarter

Quietly Saving

in-deed-a-bly

EarlyRetirement

SteelKitten

DrFIRE

Inspiring Life Design

GoodPersonalFinance

Retire In Progress

The Poor Swiss

Tweet @SavingNinja if you’ve participated and I’ll add you to the list!

One million pounds is a lot of money. It’s actually 4x the amount that I currently need to be financially independent. It would allow me to ‘safely’ withdraw double my current annual expenses (2%), but…I don’t know if I’d actually retire if I was given £1m today. I think the difference between me and lots of other FI seeking individuals is that I’m not burnt out; I actually quite like my job. I’ve definitely got a few good years left in me at least! The temptation with the £1 million would be to just invest it all and let it compound for another 5-10 years. If I carried on at my current savings rate I’d have a hefty £2.4m net worth in about 10 years time and that’s only with a modest amount of interest! I’ve now got images of Scarface in his golden bathtub flying through my head. The possibilities are endless! I could actually be rich-rich?

The temptation to do this would be massive. I guess this is the same feeling people who are close to FI get; the one-more-year syndrome. It’s crazy though as I would be able to retire right that day and ‘safely’ withdraw over £30k per year. That’s more than enough for me, surely? Ah, but is it enough for me and my partner to stop working?

It probably is, but it wouldn’t leave too much room for our future endeavors. Would working for just a few more years and letting that massive pot compound some more not be the easiest option? Especially when we’re both in our career peaks and earning decent salaries. I’m now seeing a few possibilities:

1) The nothing’s changed route

This would mean investing the whole lot. I’d probably have to get an accountant to ensure that tax is properly paid and then I’d carry on working full time and saving as much as I could. I’d aim for at least another few more years of saving and hopefully end up with a pot of over £1.5m. At this point the pot should hopefully be big enough to compound above £2m or even £3m after I stop working as I’m a big believer in the notion that Spending Less Makes You Happier , so my spending probably wouldn’t increase that much. It would probably mean that money is truly no object and that when I reach my ‘traditional’ retirement age I really could live like Scarface and invest in that golden bathtub! I may consider increasing my holiday spending if I took this route. I’d love to go on a big snowboarding holiday each winter and an adventurous holiday during the summer, I currently just pick one or the other. That sounds good!.. But, isn’t this breaking all the FI/RE rules? I would have more than enough to retire early, why would I continue working? Would I really not change jobs, or work part-time? I can tell this is going to be something I’m going to have to think about a lot. I’m a self-professed workaholic, I’m actually not happy unless I am doing something productive. I may deem it necessary to take a ‘gap-year’ and go traveling to try and soul-search for a greater purpose. Surely I’ll find my true purpose somewhere in the world?

2) Retire early and win the game

That’s it! I’ve won the game of life, I should just quit right now and retire…Right? I’d have more than enough to cover my current expenses and then some. I could leave Mrs Ninja working and spend all day playing video games and blogging…Sounds fun! But do I really want to be doing that for the next 50 years? Probably not. I would most definitely end up doing something, as Mr Money Mustache puts it - You’ll end up doing what you love, and most things end up generating money, potentially more money as you love what you’re doing! But…Would I get depressed? I’d be stuck in my current house and country, as my partner would still be working. I wouldn’t be able to leave her behind and go traveling or work abroad. I’m not exactly in the most enticing residential area for fun-loving early retirees to participate in activities. If I was by the mountains in Canada, this would be a different matter entirely! I’d probably rather work an additional few years and then move away to a fun place with my OH than turn into a couch potato with an excellent KDR on Overwatch!

3) Go part-time

This could be a great option. I’d be able to ‘test the waters’ of retirement by becoming semi-retired. I could work a few days a week or take off half the year. My new found free time could give me a great opportunity to try different hobbies and business ideas and see if I wanted to quit work entirely. Even if I chose to retire fully, it would probably be a good idea to do this for at least a little while first. The problem is; I’d have to work longer before moving to my dream retirement life. If I carried on working full time, that life could potentially only be a few years away. Working part-time is also pretty shitty as it brings a lot of the same stresses of a full-time job; interacting with a**holes, having to commit to someone else’s schedule, and being forced to work on those days where you really rather wouldn’t. It also doesn’t have a lot of the same benefits of being fully retired; being able to bugger off and go traveling for a year or two, being able to say yes to anything that crops up (business or fun), or being in control of your own schedule.

So many choices!

What would I choose? I’m leaning more toward option 1 - To carry on working. I’m not in a position where I feel I have to go part-time; I’m not burnt out and I don’t have kids that I need to ferry around. I really want to live life on my own terms. I want to build things, travel and move to the mountains. Working part-time wouldn’t allow that and it seems like a waste to retire completely when I feel I could go for a little bit longer and have so many more possibilities available to me. I would probably invest it all and use my remaining working years to gain citizenship for Canada or the USA. The 5 or so years it would take me to get citizenship would be a sufficient amount of time to create a big enough pot that I truly wouldn’t have to worry about money for my whole family again. I’d then also be in a country where I can retire to the mountains and fill out my winter seasons with my passion; snowboarding. I’d be able to bring my future kids up snowboarding and potentially have enough land to be able to build things. Wouldn’t it be awesome to build your own barn or a log cabin! In theory, the £1m would just speed up the time it would take to get to this dream. Even though my FI date is set for 5 years from now, I wouldn’t actually retire at this point. I’d probably relocate and buffer it out. I also don’t plan on retiring without my OH. Things may change. No one knows what the future may hold, although thought experiments like this are great to see where your mind takes you and they really help you think about what you truly want from your life.

These thought experiments work best when as many people get involved as possible, so I invite you to create your own answer to this question. When you do, send me a Tweet @SavingNinja and I’ll add your article to the list up top. It’s always interesting to see other peoples views!

Opinions?

Do you like the idea of ‘Thought Experiments’, do you think this should be a monthly feature?
What other ‘Thought Experiment’ questions would you like to see bloggers answer?

Grab £125 Free Cash

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 06:30:16 +0000

This is a bank account switching offer. Read The Full Guide to Bank Account Switching for more information on how to make the most of offers like these.

Natwest have just opened up an extremely generous switching offer; £125 lump sum cash. This offer is even open to existing Natwest customers[note]You’re not eligible for this offer if you’ve had cash back for switching to Natwest since October 2017.[/note].

Just like the Nationwide Bose Headphones offer , this too just requires one deposit. The money can then even be transferred back out of the account. It also doesn’t require you to set up or transfer over any direct debits, making it an extremely easy switching offer to complete.

Notes

Pay in at least £1500 before January (doesn’t have to be all at once)
Log in to mobile or internet banking before January
You must keep the account open until the £125 bonus gets paid to you on the 13th of April 2019.

Fast-track

Go to the offer page and sign up for a new Nationwide account, ensure you opt in to the switching service when prompted. Once opened transfer £1500 via online or mobile banking into the account then transfer it back out again. Keep the account open until you get your free £125 on the 13th of April.

Savings Report #3 - September

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 06:30:27 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

September brings another month where the stocks have performed badly! They’ve actually decreased by double the amount that they did in August at around -0.70%. This is still small stuff really as my pots are so small. At this stage I’m almost welcoming the decrease as it means I get to buy em’ while they’re low! And I’d rather they lose value now than when my pots are big! If I had £1m invested, a negative 0.7% change would actually mean losing £7000 in one month…Yikes!

My pension contribution change has finally gone through and I’m now contributing £2500 per month into it. This has pushed my total monthly contributions up by another £700, which has in turn, upped my savings rate to 78.99%! The [Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet](how-to-track-your-savings rel=) uses your average savings rate from the year to calculate your expected time to FI, this has now gone up to 76.57%. Thanks to this change, my years to FI has shot down from 5.6 years to 5.1 years! This should also come down considerably each month as my average savings rate catches up with my new monthly savings. My total net worth now sits at £58,133.14, bringing me one step closer to that first milestone of £100k ! If my stocks didn’t earn anything and I carried on contributing £3500 per month, I should reach that milestone within 12 months. Hopefully, my stocks will perform a little though, and I expect to be contributing at least an extra £8k to use up my ISA allowance, so I’m going to make a prediction that I’ll reach that 100k figure in around 6 to 8 months (April-June 2019). Let’s try to beat it!

Other Thoughts

I’ve decided to forgo the employee share scheme which I discussed last month . I was so close to picking it up, but then I realised that I really didn’t want to stay there for longer than a couple of years. I’ve always wanted to move abroad to Canada or the USA to work and eventually retire. Thankfully due to my university degree in a ‘skilled subject’ and having over 5 years of professional experience, getting VISA sponsorship shouldn’t be too difficult, it would just take time. However, it would be a lot easier if I applied before I turned 30 years old. Some VISAs are even restricted to under 30-year-olds. I’ve always said that if I end up not moving away, I’ll instead pursue contracting in London so that I can earn a high salary whilst still living in England and invest more. Both of these things would mean moving on from my current position in just over a years time. If I joined the share scheme, it wouldn’t actually properly begin until January, I’d then have to contribute for a further 3 years until they vest, pushing me way past my current time schedule. I got a letter through the post that stated I needed to file a corporation tax return before Christmas for my company, this got me thinking…Shit, is there anything I should expense? From speaking with the contractors at work, apparently, I should be thinking and expensing any electronics and stationary to ‘make the most of it’ and save on the 20% corporation tax. I’m all for paying taxes, but upon finding out that HMRC charge £20 just for me to ‘confirm’ that my company details are the same each year and for the tens of thousands that they steal take for the notorious stamp duty tax, my work from home technology company could surely do with a few new gadgets? I was already going to expense some kind of writing laptop. Initially, I was thinking a MacBook so that I could develop iOS applications on it as well, but now I’m leaning more towards a Chromebook as I think that what I said about iOS applications is just my brain trying to get me to buy shiny expensive things… I’ve started a list for my potential other ’expenses’. It goes something like this:

Smart watch: Apparently my ‘health’ can be expensed by my company. I’ve never owned a smartwatch, but I do cycle to work and it would be nice to have the distance accurately measure. I was thinking of something like the Fossil Q Explorist .
Ethernet wall plug adapters: Those internet things that you plug into a socket and they let you connect like you’re using an ethernet cable. Those things are bloody expensive! I might wait until black friday comes around.
Computer monitor: I’ve had my eyes on one of these 180Hz 1ms response time monitors for quite a while. I need to improve my Overwatch game!
PC case: My current one is a bit knackered.
Mobile phone: I’ve only had my phone for 1 year but *cough* my girlfriend needs a new phone *cough*. So I could probably do with a new one.

All in all, I’ve got about 3k of profits this year that I can expense. I could always take out a 1k ’tax-free’ dividend to save on the 41% income tax, but, this would still mean paying 20% corporation tax, so I’d rather expense things that my ‘company’ needs instead.

Free Money!

My matched betting side-hustle has gone through the roof this month. Here’s a picture of my profit snapshots for the last week.

This is all from EW horse betting. I started on the 13th of September, that’s 4k profit in 2 weeks! On top of that, I only actually started with £5 each way bets. I went up to £20 each way on the 27th. If I had started on £20 each way from the beginning, I’d be sitting on about £7k profits right now. I’m pretty confident that with EW betting, I’ll easily be able to net 5k per month (and that’s being conservative!).

Doing some quick-fire maths over at The Salary Calculator , I’d roughly need to earn an additional £140k taxable income per year to get the same 5k extra per month that matched betting is getting me. Even with no income, you’d need to earn 105k per year alone to make 5k per month after tax. If it keeps going this well, it may shave years off my FI date. Let’s hope it’s this profitable for a while longer! I’m kind of obsessed with EW betting at the moment. I’m even planning on getting Mrs Ninja in on it too (if only she had a new, faster phone to bet on ;] ) I’m planning on adding an EW betting section over on the matched betting guide at some point this month. If you haven’t started matched betting yet; you should! You need to do the new account offers before you get started on EW betting, so head over to the guide ! The new kitchen is not long off now, only 28 days until the fitting starts! I saved £700 from removing the old kitchen myself and £200 from changing the electrical sockets and light fitting. I ended up agreeing to pay the plasterer to do the painting, so lost £250 there, but I’m hoping he’ll do a better job than I would have done! We’ve basically been living in a kitchen that is unusable for over a year now, so can’t wait to get this one finished. It will hopefully add some value to the house too - we’ll see!

Join The Discussion

What else can I expense?
How are your side hustles doing?
How did your savings do this month?

Should You Include Your House in Your Net Worth?

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 21:52:46 +0000

There’s a war that has been raging on in the FIRE community since the beginning. Every corner you turn, every FIRE forum you stumble upon, you’ll see people arguing for and against including your home in your FI calculations.

I’ve always been in the for camp, but I’ve never fully explored the notion. So, for my benefit as well as yours, let’s deep dive into this question - Should you include your house in your net worth?

There are some people who swear by investing in property, not just for their main homes, but as additional investments too. Financial Samurai is one of them, he wrote this article which explains why he believes that property investment is more desirable than stock investments .

Property investment in the UK has made some individuals very wealthy although, I believe that the time for this has long passed. Due to the recent legislation changes in second property stamp duty and increased personal income taxation on mortgage interest, a lot of landlords which I have spoken to have said that their costs are now greater than their income and that they’re counting on the house price going up significantly to make the investment worthwhile.

The increase in house prices means that a lot of the younger generation of FIRE pursuers may never even own their own home. Looking at the statistics for people who rent vs. people who own, the prices in the UK don’t seem to differ that much between ‘throwing money away on rent’ vs. ‘throwing money away on mortgage interest’. This seems to be due to the fact that a lot of people tend to borrow the maximum that their bank is willing to lend them. Meaning, people with a mortgage end up with the same, if not higher, monthly costs than renters. And that doesn’t even include costs such as home maintenance, home improvements and moving.

All of this makes the UK a very different playing field to the USA, where it seems a lot more people tend to not include their property in their net worth. So let’s consider this and explore the pathway of two individuals; one who is renting their way to financial independence and one who bought their own home. I’ll use blown up numbers so it’s easy to calculate and follow.

Path A - Renting

Timmy is your average 25-year-old and due to living on his own and in a very expensive part of the country, he’s decided that buying a home is not for him. He has a good job and is able to save 50% of his 40k per year income, but being able to move when and where he likes is very important to him, so renting is ideal.

Timmy’s Fact Sheet

Income of 40k per year after tax
Expenses of 20k per year, 10k of which is on rent
Years to FI 16.6 years at 41.6 years old

So, Timmy is left with a pot of £530k after 16.6 years of saving. He has housing costs in his expenses, but that’s OK as his pot size is big enough to pay his 10k rent and additional 10k expenses; he’s covered!

Path B - Mortgage

Alex is the same age as Timmy but he’s fortunate enough to live in a cheaper part of the country and he loves where he lives, so he’s decided to buckle down and get a mortgage on a beautiful home. He has an outstanding mortgage of £300k, at a 2% interest rate, this is costing Alex £1272 per month, £493 of which is interest alone.

Alex’s Fact Sheet

Income of 40k per year after tax
Expenses of £25,264 per year, £15,264 of which is on mortgage repayments
£9348 per year is going into house equity
Years to FI 24 years at 49 years old
25-year mortgage

Even though Alex’s monthly expenses are greater than Timmy’s, there’s one big difference; Alex is also paying monthly into his mortgage equity. This means that even though Alex has the same income and almost similar expenses as Timmy, it’s taking him a lot longer to achieve financial independence, with his years to FI number being almost a decade greater than Timmy’s.

These figures don’t take into account the fact that Alex’s mortgage interest will get less and less over the 25 year period that he owns his home. It also doesn’t take into account that the house prices could go down (or up), and it also glosses over house maintenance costs. But forgetting about these things for the sake of simplicity (they may actually cancel each other out), it can be seen that Alex is getting a considerably worse deal than Timmy. This surely can’t be right?

Should You Never Buy a Home?

Hold your horses, don’t go selling up just yet! There’s one thing that Alex is doing which is skewing the numbers…He’s not including his house equity in his FI calculations.

As Alex has ignored the fact that he’s got a big pile of cash in home equity, he falsely believes that he’s not going to reach financial independent until he’s 49 years old. What will happen with Alex is, he’ll work until he’s 49, and think “Hurrah! I can now cover my £25,264 per year expenses! I’m financially independent!”. Then one year later when he’s 50, he would have paid off his 25-year mortgage. His expenses will now shoot down by £15,264 per year. People may think that’s great; he’s got a surplus! But that’s not the case. Alex actually wasted 7 years of his life working when he no longer needed to. It’s like hitting your FI number, then doing it all again “Just to be safe.”

People could actually be working decades extra in jobs they hate, missing watching their children grow up and not living the life they choose, only to realise that when they actually retire, they’ll have a surplus of cash that they don’t need.

What Could Alex Have Done?

If Alex had realised that his house equity is basically just an alternative bank account, at 17 years when he had a pot of around 400k, he could have released his built up house equity (£200k) and invested it to make him financially independent. If he wanted to still eventually pay off his mortgage but not work for as long as 24 years, he could have acknowledged the fact that if he carries on with his initial mortgage term, he’d overshoot his FI pot total by a big amount and adjusted accordingly. He could have released say, 50% of his equity, invested the difference and been one step closer to FI. Another option for Alex could have been to increase his term back to 25 years and lowered his monthly payments to bring his expenses down.

There are a lot of things which Alex could have done, but there’s only one main point to consider in your planning process -

If you can sell your home, invest your equity, rent a property, and your money covers your expenses. You’re financially independent.

Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. If you don’t follow this rule, you’ll be at a huge disadvantage to the non-home-owners (as you can see from the calculations!) You may choose to own a home and still pay it off and invest even after you’ve reached your combined FI number, but if you do, remember this - At that stage, you’re already FI, you’re just paying more to increase your safety net.

Nothing frustrates me more when I hear people say, “My FI number is 500k and a paid off house.” What they should be saying is, “My FI number is 1 million.” If they choose to distribute 500k into a paid off house to lower their expenses or rent a house with 1 million invested, that’s up to them! However, their FI number is most definitely not 500k.

FI numbers shouldn’t be subjective - the first comment poses the question, “But how much is your house worth?”. You can’t possibly plug that into a FI calculation. One person’s house may be worth 500k, another 200k. Your predicted FI date should go off a single pot figure. It should cover all of your expenses, including the cost of your house, this way you can get an accurate portrayal of your actual FI date and not be lumped with double what you actually need after working your socks off for double the required time.

Join The Discussion Below

Do you think your house equity should be included in your net worth?
What’s do you think your final house pot / investment pot split will be?
Would you rather FI on time or continue paying off your house equity?

Why I Don't Pay My TV Licence

Sun, 23 Sep 2018 18:50:13 +0000

In 2017-2018 the BBC made £3.8324 billion from charging people for a ‘TV licence’. Think about that for a second… The BBC is making more money from their ‘TV licence’ than some of the biggest companies in the world. There’s mainly one reason for this; most of the UK believe they need to have one. They think it’s a tax, and the BBC are doing everything in their power to convince you of this.

A ‘TV licence’ costs £150.50 per year and 94% of the UK pay for it. It was first introduced in 1946 to cover the costs of funding television broadcasting services. For over 70 years we’ve been paying it, long after the initial requirement for it passed. Most people think it’s a tax, a lot of other people think that if you own a TV or a PC you need a licence for it. I thought this too; I paid it for over 3 years whilst at university when all I had was my personal computer and Netflix.

The real fact, however, is this; contrary to what the name suggests, you don’t need a TV licence to own a television. You only need it to watch live television or the BBC iPlayer. You don’t need one to watch any of the other 599 channels in the UK via streaming or on-demand services. You can even watch Sky channels on Now TV as this is an on-demand service.

After years of needlessly paying £150 per year for a ‘TV licence’, one afternoon I realized that I barely ever watched live TV. My main television consumption was coming in the forms of services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. I much preferred to watch shows when and how I please rather than seeing what’s on the telly. In fact, the only time I was watching live TV was occasionally in the mornings before I went to work; I’d shove on Good Morning Britain for 10 minutes, it was the easy thing to do. But, was that 10 minutes in the morning worth £13 per month to me? Did I think it was worth almost 10x the amount that I pay for Netflix ? Did I value it more than a Spotify premium account, which at £10 per month I’ve deemed as too expensive? No, I absolutely did not.

Amazon prime costs £7.99 per month, it’s half that price if you’re a student. That membership gives you unlimited 1-day delivery (or Amazon credit), a lot of shows on Amazon Prime - with some pretty awesome exclusive titles, the ability to borrow a book each month and access to over two million songs ad-free via Prime Music. Why on earth would anyone pay more than double that just to watch live TV? On top of that, you’ll be funding a company which uses scare tactics with warnings of £1000 fines if you don’t buy their service and sends aggressive enforcers to your house to see if you’re ‘illegally watching TV’. No, I didn’t need a ‘TV licence’ - and I’m going to convince you that you don’t need one too.

Other Services to Use

Netflix is probably the best service in the world right now for shows and films. Becoming big first in the USA, Netflix slowly but surely adopted a larger UK audience over the last decade. There are now over 9.5 million UK citizens who subscribe to the service. Netflix has over 700 original series and films which are only available on their service. This original content is some of the best which I’ve ever seen and contains the likes of Stranger Things, Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards and The Crown. Netflix also doesn’t just show one type of genre; you can find cooking shows, travel shows, documentaries and a whole plethora of children’s TV shows. If you’re missing your favorite BBC TV shows; Netflix has you covered. Most things which were on the BBC end up on Netflix. They’ve got 7 seasons of The Great British Bake Off, all of the ‘Planet Earth’ and ‘Life’ series and other great BBC shows like Doctor Foster and Black Mirror. All at a much more discounted price than the £13 per month ‘TV Licence’. Netflix is truly a master TV service, you could easily live with just this.

Most modern TVs now come with a Netflix button. It’s just like live TV, but better!

Amazon Prime as previously mentioned comes with a whole load of benefits in addition to a whole TV service. A lot of people would have Prime just for the next day delivery perk but may not have been using Prime TV. Although Amazon isn’t as refined as Netflix with their TV applications, they pack some excellent exclusive content. It is home to one of my favorite TV shows; Vikings, and also has a number of other great exclusives like Black Sails and The Man In The High Castle. All for under half the price of a TV licence, or a quarter of the price if you can grab a student deal!

Now TV is Sky’s on-demand service. It’s actually cheaper than a full Sky package and you can subscribe/unsubscribe whenever you like without entering into a contract. The TV pass is only £7.99 per month and gives you on-demand access to all of the popular Sky channels. You can even get a Sky Cinema pass for access to all of the film channels (although a little more expensive). I usually buy a month of Sky TV when shows like Game Of Thrones and The Walking Dead are airing as they are the only series which I’d use those channels for.

Free on-demand services are also available for all popular TV channels. These include shows like Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Yes you heard that right…You don’t need to pay £13 per month to watch anything on channels 3, 4 and 5. You can use ITV Player , All 4 and My5 . In-fact, it’s better to consume television on these services as you can choose when and where you’d like to watch them, instead of being a slave to the TV guide.

How to Consume These Services with Minimal Effort

A lot of people who watch live TV say that they do so as it’s easier than watching on-demand services. All of the devices below are things which you can buy to make consuming things like the above services with ease from your television set. These will provide a much better service than your ‘TV licence’ and will save you tons of money in the long term. A lot of them may not even be necessary as most modern TVs are now smart TVs which have all of the on-demand applications available with the click of your remote.

Google Chromecast is, in my opinion, the best and most versatile of all streaming devices. You simply plug it into the back of your TV via a HDMI port and go through a quick set up on your Apple or Android device and you’re done! You can then stream all of the aforementioned services from your phone via a ‘cast’ button which casts it straight to your TV. With this nifty device, you can even mirror your phone on your television, play any video on your PC via Google Cast or even cast your whole desktop. All for only £30!

Amazon Fire TV Stick (with Alexa Voice Remote) can be used as a smart TV remote. For only £39.99 you can get a buttery smooth smart TV experience with any television set. This also includes all streaming applications, not just Amazon Prime. It’s the perfect replacement to those addicted to live TV, all for a much lower cost!

Roku Streaming Stick is a little more expensive than the other options but provides more applications and a highly polished user interface. This newer streaming stick also comes with higher specifications supporting 4k streaming and boasts a stronger wireless receiver. Comes with an modern remote control which boasts a Netflix button!

Apple TV is the most premium of the streaming devices available on our line up. This device will give you ultra-fast streaming capabilities and provide you with advanced options such as Siri and iPhone integration. You’ll also be able to do things like play games and listen to music via your Apple TV. The price comes in at an eye-watering £179 which is why I would generally recommend one of the other devices, but, this is still miles better than paying almost the same price every year for the ‘TV Licence’!

You’ve Sold Me! What Do I Do?

So, you’ve decided that enough is enough and you’re going to stop paying ridiculous sums to the BBC for a shit service. What do you do now? First things first - you cancel your ‘TV Licence’ direct debit. If you inform the BBC that you’re leaving but don’t cancel the direct debit, the cheeky buggers will keep on charging you. They can’t possibly fathom that you won’t be watching live TV and they’ll assume you either accidentally canceled it, or are ‘breaking the law’..

Next thing you’ll want to do is go to the TV licencing website , fill in your details and enter into the question box the text below.

I no longer need my TV licence. I have decided to stop watching live TV and the BBC iPlayer, I am turning to alternative streaming providers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. My address is:

[ENTER YOUR ADDRESS]

I have canceled my direct debit, please reimburse me any payments owed.

Next step is to pull out your TV Ariel, wrap it up and place it in a corner. You can now enjoy your free £150.50 and stress-free life with the ability to watch anything whenever you want.

I’ve now not held a ‘TV licence’ for almost 5 years and I’ve saved almost £1000. I have never actually been visited by one of the angry TV licensing people, but I have been sent threatening letters by them plenty of times. The BBC actually sub-contracts TV licensing enforcement to a company called Capita. These guys earn an expected £1.10bn to £1.55bn per year going around to poor old grannies houses and threatening them with £1000 fines and calling them criminals if they don’t buy a TV licence. They do this as they earn a commission for every person they get to re-sign up! Don’t let them scare you, they’re thugs, hungry for commission.

Join the enlightened 6% of the UK which haven’t got a TV licence today and pull the plug to a better - on-demand life. Comment below and let me know if you pay £13 per month for a TV licence and if you plan on continuing to do so. I’ll leave you with a list of the BBC salaries which you’re paying for ;]

Gary Lineker - £1.75m
Chris Evans - £1.66m
Graham Norton - £899,999
Steve Wright - £550,000
Nick Grimshaw - £400,000
Scott Mills - £280,000

The Full Guide To Matched Betting

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 22:03:00 +0000

When I find out people who live in the UK have never heard of matched betting, I cry a little inside. A way for people to make £1000s of tax-free income with minimal effort which is basically exclusive to the UK? It sounds almost ludicrous, but it’s really not! Everyone normally moans that people in the USA earn more money, but I know people who are making over 5k per month from spending 20 hours a week matched betting on the side of a full-time job. Couple this with the fact that it’s tax-free, that’s basically a 10k per month income. We Brits seriously shouldn’t be complaining!

A lot of people who haven’t heard of it think that it’s some form of gambling and that it’s a bit dodgy and risky; IT ISN’T! Matched betting is risk-free!

If all of this is sounding a bit too good to be true to you, I implore you - just give it a try. There’s virtually no risk in doing so, very little time investment (you don’t even need to understand it to make your first £50!) and the software is so good at doing things for you, my Grandma could even do it. So, if you fancy making potentially an extra 120k per year income on the side, read on!

Also a disclaimer, this post will include affiliate links to the matched betting software (OddsMonkey ), but don’t let that put you off. I’m not pretending just to make a quick buck. This is the real deal guys, I make over £1000 (equivalent of £2000 pre-tax income) per month from this software and have been doing so for almost 2 years. This is the number one tool in the UK FIRE pursuers arsenal which we’ve got against the US. Matched betting enables minimum wage shop workers to earn as much as CEOs. It unlocks FIRE for anyone and accelerates it. Don’t miss out!

Note: If you want the quick guide, head over to How to Make £30 in 10 Minutes .

Matched betting is a betting technique used to profit from the free bets and incentives offered by bookmakers. The process involves the individual placing a bet and then laying the same bet in an exchange. This will result in a small loss of the initial bet but should have unlocked a considerable bonus from the bookmaker.

Example (Place an £100 bet to get a free £100 bet)

Place £100 bet on any sport
Lay £100 bet in the exchange for the same outcome
Lose £1.20 when the bet settles (commission for the exchange)
Repeat process with your free £100 bet
Withdraw your £97.60 profit

The lay bet usually differs depending on the odds and involves mathematics to calculate, that and finding the best bookmakers and exchanges and odds is what made matched betting quite tedious in the past. But in the last few years software has immersed which basically does everything for you; from finding the best odds to doing all of the lay math. It even allows you to lay directly through the software so you don’t have to go to the exchange!

The software which is recommended is OddsMonkey . They offer a free trial so you can see if matched betting is for you without investing a penny. They even hold your hand through-out the whole process with videos and written guides. Matched betting is actually not recommended without software as you then become more prone to human error.

The amount of money which can be made per month will actually depend on the amount of capital you have. If you have only £200 you should not expect more than £400 per month of profit initially. With £1000-£2000 you can be expecting a profit of £1000+ a month but this will come with the increased time commitment. With a pot of £5000+, there are even some matched bettors making £5000-£7000 per month with ‘casino offers’ using software like Profit Maximiser . But this is not recommended until you have completed at least the sign-up offers on OddsMonkey . There will be a separate section for casino offers in the future.

One of the best things about matched betting in the UK is that all of your profits are tax-free under the gambling tax legislation. So as you can imagine there are some people doing this as a full-time job as the profit can be staggering compared to taxed income.

In this guide, we’ll be walking you through the process of matched betting from the absolute beginning to earning your first £100. We’ll be discussing the tools to use, the way to document, what to watch out for and how to continue to make monthly tax free income after you have completed your sign-up offers.

Contents Page

1. Before You Start
2. Prerequisites - Not Getting Caught
i. Blocking IE Snare - Windows
ii. Blocking IE Snare - Mac
3. Setting Up Your Accounts
i. Preparing Your Spreadsheet
ii. Bets Tab
iii. Accounts Tab
4. New Account Offers
i. Introduction
ii. Getting There
iii. Tips
5. What Comes After New Account Offers - COMING SOON
6. Introduction to Variance Betting
7. Eachway Horse Race Betting
i. Sniping
ii. EW Betting Step by Step Walk Through
iii. Tips and Tricks
iV. Advanced Each Way Betting
8. Casino Offers - COMING SOON

Before You Start

To start matched betting you’ll need at least £100, this will cover you to do one bet at a time. The profits you make from these bets will soon multiply your pot of money so that you can start completing two or three bets at once and will enable you to earn faster. I recommend to only complete one bet/offer at a time until you are confident with the process, but after that, don’t be afraid to add more capital to allow you to earn quicker. If you really want no bounds, then you could complete all of the sign-up offers within one month with a capital of roughly £2000; this will net you a hefty £1000 tax-free income in your first month!

All matched betting requires software, the software will filter through thousands of sports bets and find the odds which match the best for you to lose as little as possible from your matched bet. It will do all of the maths for you telling you what to lay and what to bet (which is crucial as odds change quickly) and it will even list all of the best offers for you to complete with individual guides in writing and in a video. Matched betting can be completed individually but you will be open to human error and it will be so slow that it would almost not be worth it. We’re in this to make a profit, so this guide is going to assume that you’ve bought (what I think is the best software) OddsMonkey . Sign up through this affiliate link and you can even get a free trial and I guarantee you’ll earn your first month’s membership cost within one day of matched betting. So, go sign up now and then come back to this guide. You can cancel straight away if you think it’s not for you, what’s to lose?

Prerequisites - Not Getting Caught

Matched betting is fully legal, but as you can imagine, the bookmakers don’t want you to do it. They’re giving you promotions in the hope that you’ll spend more money with them. If they find out that you’re a match better, they’ll stop your account from getting promotions, this is what’s referred to in the matched betting community as ‘Gubbing’. It effectively means you’ve taken a pay cut as you can no longer get any tax free money from that bookie anymore. If this happens for one of the bigger bookies, you can potentially be down £100s per month.

A lot of Bookmakers use a web tool called IE snare. They market it as ‘reputation management’ in order to counter ‘fraud and abuse’. It tracks information about your computer and browsing habits. This tool would be able to detect a match better in a heartbeat due to them going to different betting sites and exchanges, and even matched betting sites. The first thing that I recommend doing before you even go onto any bookmakers website is to block IE snare!

How To Block IE Snare

Blocking IE snare via your firewall will stop it from being able to connect to the internet and send reports back to the bookies. To block it, we’ll need to edit your host file.

This is for a WINDOWS computer. Have a Mac? Click here .

1. Run Notepad as an administrator

2. In the ‘File name’ input field paste C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc and click ‘Open’

3. Ensure that ‘All Files’ is selected

3. Right click on the ‘hosts’ file and click on ‘Properties’

4. Ensure that ‘Read-only’ is un-checked

5. Click ‘Apple’ then ‘OK’ to save your changes

6. Open the hosts file
It should look something like this (if you haven’t edited it before):

7. Copy and paste the following text to the end of the hosts text file

127.0.0.1 iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 mpsnare.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 www.mpsnare.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 ci-mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 ci-mpsnare.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.ci-mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 www.ci-mpsnare.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 admin.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.admin.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 www.admin.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 iovation.com 127.0.0.1 iovation.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 www.iovation.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 admin.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 dra.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 impsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 mx.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 snare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 iovation.com 127.0.0.1 accountlock-demo.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 admin.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 bam-pilot.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 batch.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ci-accountlock.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ci-admin.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ci-mpsnare.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ci-snare.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 dv-fw-a-nat.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ioit.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 mx.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 p.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 rm-admin-demo.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 soap.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 test.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 testgw.iovation.com

Your file should now look something like this:

8. Save the file (File -> Save), close Notepad and restart your computer

You’re done! You should now be safe from IE snare reporting your sharp punting ways to the bookmakers. Let’s start making a profit!

Click here to skip blocking IE snare on a Mac

How To Block IE Snare - On A Mac

1. Launch your Terminal and enter the following text: sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

Enter your password if prompted. This should open your hosts file.

2. Navigate to the bottom of the hosts file and then copy and paste the text below to the bottom of the file127.0.0.1 iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 mpsnare.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 www.mpsnare.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 ci-mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 ci-mpsnare.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.ci-mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 www.ci-mpsnare.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 admin.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.admin.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 www.admin.iesnare.co.uk 127.0.0.1 iovation.com 127.0.0.1 iovation.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 www.iovation.co.uk 127.0.0.1 www.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 admin.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 dra.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 impsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 mpsnare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 mx.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 snare.iesnare.com 127.0.0.1 iovation.com 127.0.0.1 accountlock-demo.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 admin.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 bam-pilot.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 batch.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ci-accountlock.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ci-admin.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ci-mpsnare.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ci-snare.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 dv-fw-a-nat.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 ioit.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 mx.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 p.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 rm-admin-demo.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 soap.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 test.iovation.com 127.0.0.1 testgw.iovation.com

3. Type Control + O and then ENTER to save your changes

4. Type Control + X to exit.

Setting Up Your Accounts

Before you get stuck in, you’ll need to create the accounts below (in this order). You’ll need all of these accounts to help you stay organized and lay your bets.

1. Gmail

You’re going to be signing up to hundreds of bookmakers, you will not want to do this on your personal email address. The email of choice for speed and the handy ‘promotions’ tab is Google Mail. Make sure you do not name your new email address something like ‘mymatchedbetting@gmail.com ’ as this is something the bookies will spot and they won’t hesitate to ban you.

2. LastPass

You’re going to want to create a new LastPass account, ensuring you sign up with your new matched betting email address. You will be signing up to hundreds of bookies with different usernames, so, you’ll need something handy to keep track of all of your credentials, and you won’t want it mixed with your own personal password keeper.

3. Smarkets

Smarkets (<- register through this link to get £50 risk free!) is the number 1 matched betting exchange. It also has the lowest commission. You’ll be using this exchange where possible to maximize your profit.

4. Betfair and Matchbook

Betfair and Matchbook charge a higher commission than Smarkets. But sometimes you’ll need to use these exchanges as they’ll offer odds which more closely match the bet which you’ve placed. It’s good to create an account for each exchange so that if you need to make a quick lay bet, you won’t be stalled by not having access to a certain exchange.

Preparing Your Spreadsheet

NOTE: A new, more advanced matched betting spreadsheet has been made since this guide was written (this old one is no longer available).
Go to the Macro Enabled Matched Betting Spreadsheet post to download it.

I currently have 60 bookies in my matched betting spreadsheet. You’ll have bits of your money throughout a lot of these bookies. You’ll need to know how much less you have in your bank account, what bookies are still transferring money out to you and of course - how much profit you’ve made. For all of this, you definitely need a spreadsheet.

You can download my matched betting spreadsheet here . Grab it, and we’ll go through it below.

Bets Tab

This is where you’ll be recording all of your matched bets and free bets. For a lot of your bets, you’ll need to ‘qualify’ for the free bet by placing a normal bet, when that bet settles, you’ll then be able to go back and use the free bet.

The bet section is the perfect place to write what you have to do next for that specific free bet. For example - if the bet hasn’t yet been settled, I may add in the date and time that it’s going to be settled next to the bet description. You should also write the free bet in bold underneath along with any restrictions that it has so that you know to go back to that bookie and claim it.

Accounts Tab

This tab is pretty important as it will tell you where all of your money is. All you need to do is fill in the bookie/exchange name on the left and make sure you update the “Amount Paid Into” section each time you make a deposit. The “Amount In Account” section can be filled in weekly or monthly, this will be the fun time where you can see how much profit you’ve made for the week. “Amount Transfering Out From” and “Amount Paid Out” should be filled in whenever you request a withdrawal and when they do pay out. Some bookies may stall paying out to you, so you’ll definitely need to be referring back to this to see if you need to chase any of them up.

This section appears to the right of the Accounts tab. It will update automatically and tell you how much money you have in your accounts and exchanges. It will also help you to see what the difference in your bank is as you may want to know how much money you started with and withdraw that after your profits grow.

There are also two other tabs which you don’t have to worry about as a beginner. This is the ‘Schedule’ tab and ‘Casino’ tab. You will only use these tabs after you’ve completed all of your [link]signing up offers. There will be an addition to this guide at some point down the line explaining how to take advantage of a weekly schedule and casinos at a later date.

New Account Offers

Now you’ve put in all of the ground-work, you’re finally ready to start making a profit! Now, as I stated at the top of the guide - you need software to matched bet…But it’s worth it. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme or a course that I’m trying to get you to sign up to. This is guaranteed money! It’s also cheap and monthly, you can sign up to just the first month, make your money back in 5 minutes (not even joking) and then cancel your membership and not pay another penny; there will be no monster 12-month contracts here. Even if you don’t think matched betting will really be your cup of tea, I’d still implore you to sign up just for the first month, make £100 and try it out. At least then you’ll know what it’s all about and will be able to adequately decide if it’s for you. You can even sign up for a free trial, make some money and cancel! There really is nothing to lose, but so much to gain!

Get The Free Trial Of OddsMonkey Here

So - go and sign up to OddsMonkey via the link above, either pay the £17.99 for the first month (you can cancel, it’s not a contract), or sign up to the free trial if you’re still unsure, then come back here and I’ll walk you through the software and how to get started.

Introduction

A new account offer is when a bookmaker gives you free money for signing up to their bookie. This is guaranteed profit for matched bettors and will be some of your most profitable offers. Completing all of the new account offers on OddsMonkey alone, will net you over £1000 tax free cash. In order to receive the new account offer, you must not have had an account with the bookmaker before. These offers are also limited to 1 per household, so, ensure that no-one else in your house has recently claimed the offer.

MatchedBetting has many facets and trying to understand all of them can be quite complicated at the start. It’s recommended to complete all of the new accounts offers when started out. This is for two reasons:

They’re the easiest and most profitable offers to do, so they’re good for learning the ropes.
You’ll need the accounts open anyway to do other Matched Betting activities, so after the new account offers, you’ll have them all created and ready.

Getting There

After logging into OddsMonkey , navigate to the ‘OFFERS’ menu item, then click on ‘New Account Offers - Bookmakers’. You do not want to do the new account offers for casinos and bingo until you have finished all of the bookmakers new account offers and are sufficiently ready to learn another dicipline.

You’ll then be presented with a categorized list of new account offers. Make your way down the list from top to bottom. OddsMonkey will walk you through the process of matched betting and hold your hand through your first bets.

Tips

Click on ‘Mark as complete’ next to the ‘View Guide’ button when you’re done. This will help you know which ones you still need to complete. Don’t worry, you can still mark them as incomplete again in the ‘Completed Guides’ tab.
Remember to fill in your spreadsheet after each and every matched bet, it’s important to keep track of your free bets.
Save filters on the Oddsmatcher as you search for certain bookies, this will speed the process up the next time you use that bookie.
Make sure you hook up your exchange accounts to the Oddsmatcher, this will allow OddsMonkey to lay the bet for you. Just click ‘Lay the bet’ when in the calculator instead of going to the exchange and it will walk you through the linking.

What Comes After New Account Offers

Coming soon

Introduction to Variance Betting

Let me explain.

Eachway Horse Race Betting

To demonstrate the positive expected value, take a look at the screenshots below.

If we look at all of the odds for this race and calculate the total probability, we can figure out how much the bookie is going to make on each race.

All of the odds are listed in the first column and the second column is the corresponding implied probability.

(Odds - 1) / (EW Payout) + 1

Using this formula we come to the total implied probability of 262.99% for the place market.

Sniping

There is also another method that you can use in order to reap an even greater reward, they call this “EW Sniping.”

EW Betting Step by Step Walk Through

Head over to the OddsMonkey website and click on the Eachway matcher via Tools -> Matchers -> Eachway matcher.

Then click on the Filter option and set these exact options:

Sports: Horse Racing
Markets: Horse Racing - Winner
Bookmakers: (Whoever you’re currently betting with, see Which bookies to use section)
Exchanges: Smarkets, Betfair
Each Way Rating: 100 to 200
Normal Arb Rating: 80 to 200
SNR Rating: 0 to 200
Back Odds: 6 to 200

You’ll also have to go to the Oddsmatcher (Tools -> Oddsmatcher), click on the ‘Commission’ button and change Smarkets and Betfair commission to 0%.

When one pops up, you’ll go to the Bookmaker and place your EW bet (however much your bank can support) on the corresponding horse. Make sure you check the ‘E/W’ box!

When you place a bet on a horse, note down the time and horse name somewhere (I use Notepad when I’m betting on my PC and Google Keep when I’m on my mobile phone).

4.45 Uno Valoroso

The reason that you write this down is because you don’t want to be betting on the same horse twice and you don’t want to bet on the same race more than 3 times.

Tips and Tricks

A lot of good snipes show up at around 11am, you can make a decent monthly profit just keeping an eye on the matcher for 15-30 minutes at 11am each day.
There are more horses available towards the end of the week.
Make sure that you EW bet with your browser in Incognito Mode. This makes it harder for the bookies to catch you and keeps your bookie tab separated if betting on your mobile phone.
Bet365 and Ladbrokes are extremely generous bookies, utilize these first when big events are on (like Cheltenham).

Advanced Each Way Betting

Doing this means that your bet count can increase into the hundreds per day but it will also increase your variance (and your profits) drastically. accumulative bets can net you insane amounts of profit like it did for TheFIREStarter when he made over £11000 (tax-free) in a single day .

Casino Offers

Coming soon

Sorry for the boring post if you’re already using OddsMonkey to make a second income. I just had to do a post about it as I believe that it’s the UK FIRE pursuers number one tool and that everybody should be utilizing it.

If you’re still thinking about whether you should give it a try - that maybe you don’t have the time, or it sounds like gambling. Please, just give the trial a go, it’s free! After you’ve passed the initial learning stage (and netted about £1000 tax-free profits), there are a plethora of other matched betting techniques which you can utilize, some of which barely takes any time at all. I am actually only matched betting between 30 minutes and 1 hour per work day and I’m banking over £1000 per month. I’d have to get a pay rise of £30,000 per year to earn the same amount of after-tax money per month extra which matched betting is getting me. All for a meager few hours a week. It is truly life changing.

I’d like to offer any of my Ninja followers to comment below if they have any questions or get stuck with anything! All questions are OK, I’ll get back to all of you as fast as I can. I’ll even help you through your first steps if you’re struggling.

Matched betting is making me rich, I want my Ninja’s to be rich too! We are a clan after all ;]

How to Bridge to Your Pension

Fri, 14 Sep 2018 22:22:35 +0000

Why Pensions Are Awesome

First things first - Pensions in the UK are absolutely bloody awesome. There’s no other country which I know of that offers tax savings as good as this. If you’re in the higher rate tax bracket, contributing to your pension via salary sacrifice would instantly save you 42% of what you deposit from 40% income tax and 2% National Insurance savings. If you throw a student loan into the mix, you can add another 9% savings onto this, saving a total of 51%! Remember, this is a guaranteed return. If this was an investment fund and it stated - “Deposit £10,000 and it will instantly turn into £15,100!” people would literally be running over their Grandma’s trying to invest, so why aren’t more people doing this? The awesomeness doesn’t even stop there. Pensions function in the same way as ISAs with their gains being completely tax-free. All that extra money you earnt from your 51% gain? It can now joyfully compound and the tax man won’t come after you for a penny. Oh, and the limit is £40,000 per year!! That’s more than double the $18,500 which Americans can contribute into their 401(k)s (their pension equivalent). Even if you weren’t a higher rate taxpayer, you would still save 41% in total as you’ll save an additional 10% with your National Insurance savings. Also, remember compound interest ? You’re getting this extra money as soon as you invest, not when you retire. That extra 51% will be merrily compounding all of the way until your retirement. This could quite literally mean the pension depositor has amassed millions more than the devout ISA only’er. This generosity is bound to be stopped at some point. There are already talks of the Government scrapping the higher rate savings in favor of a 20% flat rate across the board. You should all be making the most of this whilst you still can!

But I Can’t Access Anything Until I’m 55?

Yes, that’s right - you can’t actually draw anything out of it. In fact, it’s completely out of bounds until you reach the ripe old age of 55. But, unless you’re planning on dying before then, you should probably still be depositing - you’ll be that age someday. You don’t want to be snatching 51% of insta-savings and years of that compounding from your future self. But you want to retire way before 55. So, what should you do? Well, you build a bridge.

A pension bridge is what you can use to safely carry you over the (hopefully) long gap which will be your early retirement until you can reach traditional retirement age and gain access to your hefty pension pot. Your bridge - like a pension, can be any type of pot. It could be an after-tax investment portfolio, an ISA, or even just a bank account, the only difference is it can’t be locked away, you need to be able to draw down from it straight away.

Bridge pots can be a lot smaller than your pension pot. This is because it’s only got to get you to your pension pot, it doesn’t matter if it depletes whilst getting you there; your bridge can be falling down as you run over it! Your pension will be compounding, untouched, through-out all of your early retirement years, so it will make up for all of the extra you’ll be drawing from your bridge pot anyways.

Let’s Get Down To Business

What better way to explain this concept than with a real-life example. People - like the commenter, don’t see how I can have enough to retire with as I’m plunging so much into my pension. So, let’s use my exact figures as of this post and assume these things:

My current ISA pot is sitting at £11,759.75.
I continue to deposit £1000 per month into my ISA.
I do this for 6 more years (rounded up my FI date from 5.7 years).
My expenses in retirement are 10k per year.

Now let’s take these figures and fast forward 6 years into the future where a joyful SavingNinja is rejoicing and flipping his employers the finger as he hits his FI number. Using the newly added compound interest calculator in the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet , I should have £103,681.75 sitting in my ISA account. I’ll be 33 years old and I’ll need this pot to last me for 22 years until I can unlock my pension fortune. Ouch. Adding my ISA pot of £103,681.75 into the also newly added Drawdown Calculator (seriously go check out the spreadsheet), it tells me that I’ll run out of money in 16 years and 2 months…Shit. That leaves me 5 years and 10 months off accessing my pension pot. What’s 49-year-old SavingNinja going to do? Eat beans and search down the back of his sofa? Maybe take up the pole? Well actually - there’s one more thing that we’ve forgotten to think about. House equity. Yes…House equity. People should most definitely be including house equity in their pot . If you have equity inside of your house which you could easily remortgage to release and still pay the same expenses, this is an asset! My 10k expenses are including my mortgage payments. In 6 years time, I could easily remortgage, take that equity, and pay the exact same mortgage fees, keeping my expenses at 10k per year. If I paid my mortgage off, my expenses would then lower by the same amount as the income I would have earned from releasing the equity. A house is basically just an alternative bank account. So - adding my existing house equity of £26,887.50 into the pot and 6 years worth of £258.75 payments. My ‘house bank account’ equates to £45,517.50. I can (and should) happily add this onto my bridge pot. This brings it to £149,188.88[note]They may actually be way more equity than this if the house value goes up, which hopefully after 6 years it would have done. But you also can’t ignore the fact that it also could have gone down (think 2008).[/note], a pretty decent amount. Let’s go and put this back into the drawdown calculator. 37 years![note]If you can’t get your equity into a tax-efficient wrapper, this figure may be a bit lower as the drawdown and compound interest calculator will assume that you’re saving in tax-exempt accounts and will therefore not deduct tax.[/note] This money should last me until I’m 70! I should definitely be able to leisurely cross the bridge and happily bask in the pension valley with lots of years to spare, and the awesome thing is - all of the time which I’ve spent crossing the bridge, I’ve not been touching my pension pot. This has been compounding away happily without anyone touching it. In fact, your remaining balance wouldn’t even have changed if you did have access to your whole pot; you’ll have exactly the same left. It doesn’t matter that you took 4% annually from only your ISA instead of 4% annually of your ISA and pension combined. You’ve still got the same final sum. The only thing that matters is that you made it to your pension without running out of money.

So, What Should I Do?

It’s simple, download the Saving Ninja Spreadsheet and play with the compounding and drawdown calculator. Choose a figure which you’d like to invest in an account which you can access whenever you want (like an ISA), compound it for the number of months it will take until you reach your desired total pot, then pop that figure into the drawdown calculator. If the calculator is showing too few years, decrease your pension contributions and increase your ISA contributions. But don’t forget to add your house equity to the drawdown pot!

Some Final Points

Remember, this is the FI/RE community. We plan to retire whilst we’re still youthful. For most of us, retiring won’t actually mean stopping work, it may just mean changing tact. I don’t know many 33-year-olds who want to go on a never-ending cruise for 50 years. They’ll be yearning to do something - and a lot of ‘doing’ results in earning. You should expect your bridge to be filled with at least some earning. This will mitigate your risk even more. If you’ve managed to amass some passive income streams before you retire - which I thoroughly recommend - this will also lower your reliance on a pension bridge even more. If there’s one thing which I want you to take away from this post the most, it’s this - Save into your bloody pension. Don’t ignore it, the instant returns are insane. It doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 30, you’ll be that age someday. If not, you’ll have a thankful spouse or another nominee which will inherit your pension and be glad that you took that 51% instant gain! Most countries even have a pension treaty, so if you moved to the USA the IRS wouldn’t come after your money. This is not the case for ISAs, they’d be on it like hounds, it’s tax-free status means nothing over there.

If you liked this article - please make sure you share it on your social networks. TSN is still a pretty new website, in order to grow into a sufficient Ninja Clan, we need to get the word out!

What’s your ISA/Pension split? Do you include house equity in your FI number? Join the conversation below.

Savings Report #2 - August

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 21:08:50 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

Month two already! This month has gone really quick as I was on holiday for half of it. It’s always nice when you go away and come back to it almost being pay day again!

My net worth has increased by a decent 5.77% this month, with an even more decent 10.89% rise if you exclude the house equity. These changes are so big due to the still relatively small amounts which I have invested, I should imagine they’ll get smaller and smaller as time goes on. There was actually a decrease in my stock values since Julys Savings Report. I’ll let FIREvLondon do the explaining for this one as he’s the expert :] They’ve only fallen by a very small fraction, and we FI pursuers are in this for the long hall so, not to worry! Again, I contributed £1000 into my ISA and £1800 into my pension. My pension contribution change to £2500 per month has yet to go through. It takes bloody forever for HR to do things in a big corporation! I’m hoping that by the next Savings Report, it will have increased. My expected FI date is now 5.7 years. I’m hoping to see this jump down when my pension contribution increase has gone through.

Other Thoughts

I’d quite like to have this section as a kind of diary entry as I’ll be doing this reporting malarkey each month so it seems like the perfect place to jot down my thoughts and rambles. If I didn’t do this, it might get quite monotonous droning on with “I deposited another 1k, woo.” each month! I’ll be keeping this informal, so, sorry if it comes out all backwards, the words will be coming straight out of my head :] With regards to money, I’ve been offered the option to participate in my employers share-match scheme this month. It sounds pretty good; I can basically deposit up to £500 per month into the scheme for the next 3 years. I’ll then get the option to either buy company shares at the value which they were this August (at a 20% discount!) or, withdraw all of my money. This could potentially earn a lot of money as even if the share price has doubled or tripled, I’ll still be able to buy them at the price that they were on this exact month. That with the additional 20% discount makes it an awesome offer. On top of that, if the share price drops, I can always just withdraw the cash instead. It makes the deal a win or draw situation. The only thing which is making me think twice is that I don’t know if I’ll be there for another 3 years. If I leave before the maturity date, I’ll just get my money back. Which will be frustrating as I could have been filling my ISA or pension instead and reaping the rewards of those accounts. I’ve got to make my decision within the next 2 weeks! I’ll let you know what I choose in my next Savings Report :] On top of that I’ve got another couple of big expenses coming up. First is our new kitchen! This is going to be installed in October. We’ve still got a lot of shopping to do with this one. This will be our first new kitchen and it’s so bloody difficult to decide on things like what tiles and paint to use, especially when you’re thinking about cost too! Don’t even get me started on finding builders that won’t rip you off! Second is our wedding. I’ll be getting married to Mrs Saving Ninja in 11 months time. Luckily our family is helping with funding but there are still contributions and costs to be made by us, I’ve yet to settle all of this up! TheFIREStarter mentioned me in his blog last week. This was a pretty exciting thing to wake up to whilst being on holiday! A lot of my new subscribers have come over from him (Hey!). This was my first mention, and for a new blogger it can be quite demotivating to write at the beginning when you think that nobody is reading, so I can’t thank him enough for this. Now I’m fuelled up and raring to go! I’ve got a lot more content planned including side hustle guides and more offer seeking good’ness. I’ll also be ordering a blog writing/development MacBook from Apples new line-up which will hopefully be announced on the 12th (which will awesomely be funded by one of my side-hustles-turn-business tax free!). So I’ll be able to get hunkered down during commute time and lunch and write a lot more articles for you guys!

Spending Less Makes You Happier

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:00:29 +0000

I grew up happy. I went on lots of holidays… ate at restaurants on special occasions. My parents spent much more money on me than they ever did on themselves. They bought me up happy… but they’ve never earnt much. They’re both very hard working and have worked all of their lives, but they’ve never earnt more than minimum wage. A lot of people would say that this put me at a disadvantage in life, but that’s not true. In fact, I believe that my parent’s earnings put me at a greater advantage than most. I know how to live with less, and I know that spending less leads to a happier, more fulfilled life. Let’s explore this notion together.

Thoughtfulness

The best gifts are always the thoughtful ones. It’s very easy to buy your loved one the latest gadgets or pay for them to go to a Spa. But nothing will beat the gifts which cost no money at all. Nothing will be more cherished than a gift which you’ve put time into.

Spending less invokes thoughtfulness. It forces you to think more not buy more. It cultivates the best experiences and makes you focus truly on what matters.

4 months prior to my 3-year anniversary, I started learning how to edit videos; solely for the purpose of making a montage of me and my partners last 3 years together to our favorite song. Each week I spent hours in front of my computer painstakingly learning everything I could to get the pictures, music and videos all playing perfectly together. I spent hours going through all of our old media to find our best photos and videos. All in secret!

Nothing beat the smile and tears of my partner on our 3-year anniversary morning when I revealed what I’d made for her.

Creativity

Spending less requires you to get creative. It requires you to analyze the best bits of what you enjoy and think about how you can improve this and make it better.

I realized that each time I bought a birthday or Christmas card I was using sites like Moonpig to send real-life pictures to relatives and friends. These were always the favorite cards which they received; they were personal and thoughtful. I realized however that I was spending hundreds of pounds per year on using these services. So, I sat down with my partner and thought; What do we really want?

The best part of any card is the personal note you write, even better if it has a personal photo too. The worst part of a card is not wanting to throw them away but them being bulky and non-uniform, making them hard to store.

We invested in some photo paper, we now only make post-cards for each other and relatives with a personal photo on one side and a personal note on the other. They stack, allowing us to store hundreds of our Valentines and anniversary cards in one storage place. They’re easy to put in a picture frame, they only include personal notes (nothing pre-made) and they save us hundreds of pounds each year.

Creativity invokes happiness; it’s actually proven to improve your mood. It increases and renews brain function and it also relieves stress. But most importantly; it allows you to make things better. It allows you as a human to analyze a problem and improve upon the normal constructs which society has told you to follow.

Adventure

The best adventures in life are free. Part of the beauty of an adventure is not knowing where you’ll end up. Spending less means that you won’t take the guided tour; you’ll find your own path, and there’s nothing more exciting!

On a Snowboarding trip a couple of years ago me and my partner were staying in accommodation with breakfast included. A lot of our friends kept stopping at the ludicrously expensive mountainside restaurants for lunch; they received bland food and poor service.

We instead made Croissant sandwiches from the provided breakfast and ate them on the top of the mountain. We got more time to board and had the best view in the world, better than any restaurant could have given us, all for no extra cost! These lunches were some of the most memorable times of our trip.

Spending less makes you take the road less traveled. You aren’t living out someone else’s experiences; you’re creating your own; ones which are tailored to you and your preferences. It forces you to be adventurous and fills the thirst which every person has to explore the unknown.

Learning

Learning new things equate directly to spending less, but it can also directly affect your happiness, and it pays dividends. Not only does the process of learning reduce stress and induce euphoria, it is proven to increase life expectancy.

Being a modern-day Polymath can also create stronger social ties to your community as you have more skills to lend a helping hand to your neighbors and interacting more with other human beings in your community is renown for increased happiness levels. It’s what we crave from our ancestral hunter-gatherer days.

When I was young and foolish I bought an expensive sports car. I was very proud to own such a stylish car, but I learned later on that this was instant gratification and wouldn’t add to my long-term happiness. In fact, it increased my stress levels. Being an expensive car which needed a ‘specialist’ to fix and service, I was too worried to touch anything myself. I ended up spending thousands every few months for seemingly small fixes.

After a year, I sold the sports car and instead spent £400 on a 1999 Skoda Fabia with over 150,000 miles on the clock. I also bought my self a good selection of multi-tools. In the year that I owned it, I learned how to fix a number of small issues, each bringing me a sense of fulfillment and happiness. I ended up doing my own MOT check and it passed with no issues before I sold it for £600.

I can honestly say that I was much happier with the Skoda Fabia than I ever was with my sports car, the forever lasting dread of thinking how much my next bill was going to cost was not worth the small bursts of excitement which I got from owning it. It saved me thousands, if not tens of thousands per year with repair costs, fuel consumption and depreciation. It also bought me joy from learning new skills.

I now just own a bike :)

There’s nothing that can increase your sense of self-worth as much as learning something new. It’s also proven that humans are more prone to enjoy things which they’ve built for themselves, over something which they’ve bought or paid for someone else to build. On top of that, if you build something yourself, you’re setting yourself up perfectly to be able to fix it if something goes wrong, increasing your self-worth, your saved money and in-turn, your happiness, all in one go!

On top of all of these things, there’s something which happens when you spend less… You save more! And we all know that Being Rich Has Nothing to Do with Your Salary . It’s about how much you have saved and having savings means you can have peace of mind in case the worst happens. It means you can have more time to spend on things which really do invoke happiness; like spending time with your kids or working on personal projects.

We all know that savings can help reduce stress, give you space to grow and in turn increase your happiness. But remember; you don’t have to suffer to save. Spending less can make you happier. Next time you take a trip or plan a date try not to spend any money. I can guarantee that you will enjoy it more. It will be different, exciting and adventurous and you’ll be looking back at those days with fondness.

For further reading into the Renaissance Man ideal, read Early Retirement Extreme. This book truly did change my life for the better.

Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence

Being Rich Has Nothing To Do With Your Salary

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 19:00:43 +0000

People think that earning a high salary means that they can afford to buy more things. They behave like rich people; going on multiple holidays, buying fancy cars, taking out huge mortgages. The truth is; if you have nothing invested… You’re poor. You should be eating beans and saving like hell as you’re losing tens of thousands every year and setting yourself up for an unhappy life.

To put this into perspective, let’s imagine we have two guys:

Timmy

Timmy started his career earning £17,000 per year. He worked hard and he’s now 20 years old and is earning £30,000 per year. Timmy didn’t succumb to lifestyle inflation and decided that he’ll keep living off £17,000 per year and invest the difference. He can now invest £13,000 per year into a safe, globally tracked, passive index fund.

and…

Jeff

Jeff had a similar starting path to Timmy. The difference is, he never invested anything. Instead, he bought expensive cars and a big house. He even found financing so he could get these things when he was in his 20s! Jeff is now 35 years old and is earning £100,000 per year. After tax, he is taking home £5,500 per month, but unfortunately, the mortgage on his fancy pants house is costing him £2,200 per month. It’s also costing him £1,500 per month for his two young children to go to Nursery. On top of this, he has a lot of other expenses which he’s amassed over the years to show his prestige as a rich and successful career man. He can hardly afford to save an emergency fund, let alone invest! He may even have to take out more credit.

Let’s look at how they both turned out.

From investing £13,000 per year, and from a nice salary bump at 23 to £36,000. Timmy managed to amass £86,500 into his globally tracked, passive index tracker fund by 25 years old. He can now relax in his knowledge that he has money working for him.

Looking at the last 5 years of the Vanguard LifeStrategy 100% Equity Fund – Accumulation below. Timmy would have made £71,500 just from having that money invested between his 25th and 30th birthday, but Timmy didn’t stop depositing.

Screen shot from vanguard.co.uk

](https://vanguard.co.uk/adviser/adv/detail/mf/overview?portId=9232&assetCode=BALANCED##performance )

When Timmy turned 25, he decided to reduce his yearly investments back down to £13,000 per year, and instead keep the extra £6000 per year from his pay rise. By the time he was 30, his investment pot was worth £247,500. Even though his salary increased each year, he kept his investments at that initial £13,000. At 35, his pot was then worth £541,500.

Timmy is now earning £100,000 per year. His investments are earning anywhere between £32,500 and £65,000 per year on their own; that’s more than Jeff’s take-home pay. Timmy no longer has to invest anything from his own salary anymore, his money is doing the work for him. He can afford to get that big fancy pants house and expensive car. He has money invested; working for him… He truly is rich. Timmy has options. He can choose to carry on working, become wealthy and create generational wealth for his kids and grandkids. Or he can even choose to not work anymore; he doesn’t need to.

Jeff, on the other hand, is pretty much screwed. He carried on financing to support his lavish lifestyle (and his past mistakes). By age 40 he had to down-size his house and he finally came to the realisation that, even though he’s earning 6 figures, he’s dirt poor.

He spent his whole life keeping up with the Joneses and mocking people who were frugal. He’s invested next to nothing. He’s going to have to make some radical changes if he wants to have any retirement at all before age 85. By not knowing he was poor back at 25, he’s made himself even more worse off now. He’s piled on his lifestyle inflation to the point where he can’t even invest anymore.

I like to go by the rule; if you’ve not got £100k invested; you’re poor. You should be doing everything in your power to make sure you’re investing as much as you can because each year, you’re missing out on gains, and worse; you’re missing out on the magical effect of compound interest. Like we saw with Timmy; the earlier the better. Your money has time to grow, and you have fewer commitments like kids and a mortgage when you’re younger. There is no better time to live off minimum wage than when you’re young! You shouldn’t be going and financing sports cars, you really would be shooting your future self in the foot.

The best thing is; if you have a nest egg of £100k or more before age 30, you don’t even have to invest anymore. You can happily spend all of your salary knowing that before you reach retirement age, you’ll have between £500,000 and £1,000,000 waiting for you from your initial 5 years of saving.

Screen shot from theculatorsite.com

Here at Saving Ninja, we’re looking at ways of accelerating this. We’re looking at any and all ways of making a profit and to save, so you have more money to invest!

Remember, don’t be like Jeff; be like Timmy!

Free Bose Headphones Worth £170!

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 08:03:20 +0000

This is a bank account switching offer. Read The Full Guide to Bank Account Switching for more information on how to make the most of offers like these.

Could this be the best bank account switching bonus is history? First Direct are offering a free pair of Bose Wireless Headphones if you switch your current account to them. Here’s the link .

I’ve always been an advocate of bank account switching, but this seems like the best one yet. I don’t know why they haven’t advertised it more; each person I’ve told about it seems to have not heard about it. I now have a bunch of people at work all waiting for their Bose headphones to arrive!

This is also one of the extremely easy switches! It only requires you to move £1000 into the account once; not monthly! No direct debits need to be transferred either. The £1000 can then be moved back out of the account into your main account, you can even do this in 10, £100 transfers, one at a time.

The cherry on the top is… Wait for it… First Direct will give you £100 if you leave after 6 months!

So, grab yourself a pair of £170 headphones, leave the account for 6 months (you don’t even need any direct debits), then grab an extra £100 for switching to another current account! Terms .

The trick with getting all of the bank account switching rewards is to ensure that you have at least one spare bank account which you don’t use as a main account. You then don’t have to go through the hassle of switching all of your real life payments every time. You should have multiple bank accounts to make the best of your emergency pot savings anyways, so the extra switching bonus is just a little extra profit.

Some bank account welcome offers, such as the HSBC £200 one requires two direct debits to be switched over. For bank accounts like this, I just set up two Little Debits of £1 each the month before the switch. This can then be canceled once you get your bonus (it’s worth the trade).

Some bonuses also require money to be deposited into the account each month. For this I simply set up a standing order to deposit the required amount in and then out again from my main account at the beginning of each month, this really works, and is hassle free!

Savings Report - July - First One!

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 18:59:23 +0000

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year . This is to create a buffer; I’m aiming for at least 12k to reach financial independence.

My first savings report! I’m hoping to do these once a month. These savings reports were actually the whole reason for me creating Saving Ninja; I wanted to document my progress and have something to motivate me to save. I’d also love to look back at my journey down the line and have something to remind me of how it went!

My investments (which are currently all in 100% equity world index funds) have done pretty well this past month. They grew by £576 combined! This is quite exciting for me as my pots haven’t been very big for long, so now that they’re both over 10k I’m thinking that 2019 is going to be a lot more exciting with regards to interest gains. This is the first month in which my savings has gone over £50,000! That’s quite an awesome goal reached. Although I’d love to get to that figure excluding my house equity (which are almost at the £25,000 checkpoint!). I’m going to get the house re-evaluated at the beginning of next year as I’m currently in the process of installing a new kitchen so hopefully this will boost my I contributed £1000 into my ISA and thanks to my employers 13% match, £1800 into my pension. I’ve actually raised my pension contributions, so next month, we should see a £2500 pension contribution going in. That would bring me to £30,000 pension contributions per year, so very close to that £40,000 limit! I’m hoping that with my end of year bonus I’ll be able to hit it. I will be sticking with £1000 per month in my ISA for now. I really would like to make hay whilst the sun shines with the generous tax relief the government is giving and I’m nowhere near the lifetime allowance yet. I may look to offload some more money into my ISA at the end of the tax year if my emergency pot has grown too large. My savings rate is sitting nicely at 75%. This figure should actually be a little higher due to my expenses actually being under 10k rather than the 12k which I’ve input into the excel sheet. I’m also not putting all of my income into investments as I’ve been trying to re-fill my emergency savings a little due to the recent kitchen renovation. With the pension contribution change next month we should see this go up to around 78%. The higher the savings rate is the harder it is to get the percentage up! I think I’m addicted! :-] My expected FI date is sitting at 5.8 years after inputting this months savings. I’d really like to see this coming down to under 5 years within the next few months. I’ll be posting about my investment approach soon so stay tuned for that. If you want access to this spreadsheet, go and read this post . I’ll be keeping the excel sheet updated each month if you want to follow along and interact with it. The spreadsheet features a ‘years to FI’ button, I’ve got a lot more features and graphs that I want to implement into the it, I’ll keep you guys posted!

How to Live Off 10k Per Year

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 14:56:11 +0000

Me and my partner have always been low spenders. I came from a family where my parents both earned minimum wage for all of their lives so I’ve learned to be happy with less. I’m fed up with being met with disbelief or responses insinuating that more or less I must have a rubbish life when I tell people at work how low my expenses are. Here’s a little break down of them (I split everything equally with my partner).

Food: £100 per month (MAX! per person). A lot of what we like to eat is generally cheap (Pho, Pasta dishes, Risotto, Curry) and we cook everything from scratch, we buy no ready-made sauces etc). This also includes nice rice, vegetable and chicken lunches. We also buy wine, beer and at least once per week nice steaks/lamb shanks. I’m genuinely quite shocked how people can manage to spend much more than this.

Mortgage: £638 split between me and my partner. We live in the South East of England, we just decided to live in a smaller 2 bedroom maisonette rather than a house (there are only 2 of us), it cost us £195k. *note - only £120 of this is actually disappearing with interest, the rest is going into house equity (effectively an alternative savings account!).

Council Tax: £980 per year (£480 each). Benefits of a lowish cost area again.

Gas/Electric/other bills: £50 per month each (MAX!). This is mainly our gas and electric, we pay no TV license as we just watch Netflix (which costs us £1.50 each, each month - as we share with family). We always find the best deals with Fiber internet each year using Quidco , so this doesn’t come to more than £5-£8 per person each month. And we both don’t have any phone contracts, this year we both took up a Three deal of £8 per month sim only but with the Amazon gift voucher they offered we ended up spending negative £5 per month each for 2GB Internet, unlimited texts and 200 minutes each month (yes we got paid to use this!).

I also bike to work, I don’t own a car, my partner leases a new Ford Fiesta which is costing her £120 per month. We will be getting rid of this when her contract ends as we both live close to work. Now this covers all of my essentials, good food, mortgage, bills (Fiber internet and good TV). This comes to £6056 per year. We also dedicate £150 per month each on spending money (and we save up this if we want to buy something big e.g. fit a new kitchen).

That brings the total to £7856. We also have a budget of £1500 each per year for holidays, this is MORE than enough. We went to New York last Christmas (flights were only £250 each, thank to Jack’s Flight Club ). We plan to go to Japan for a month next year and Canada next Christmas.

When you realize that spending lots of money on holidays won’t make them better (we found it to be more fun budgeting!) you can travel anywhere you want! Airbnb is your friend, and you have more fun :-] Remember; Spending Less Makes You Happier! .

So total spend for a very good life, lots of travel and good food for us comes to a total of £9356. We both save way over 75% of our income. Why do people look at me like I’m crazy or malnourished?

Please if anyone else spends under minimum wage and is happy, let me know I’m not alone! It really annoys me when people simply say “You can’t live on minimum wage!”. My parents have done this for all of their lives and they’re extremely happy, they’ve paid off their house, and they go on holidays every year. If anyone has any questions about my spending, ask away!

Charles Stanley Direct Raise Fee to 0.35% - What Platform to Use Now?

Sat, 11 Aug 2018 07:39:11 +0000

Charles Stanley has been the cheapest percentage based platform that offers a SIPP to invest from for a long while. How will their recent price hike change things?

Who is the best investment platform? Investment platforms are really complicated. They each have different rules and prices depending on different pot amounts and transactions. You won’t find a ‘here’s the price’ type statement on any platform. Basically, all of the platforms have different fee structures between an ISA and a SIPP; it’s messy! I created the tables below to try and figure out for myself what the best platform to use is. I focused on gathering all of the charge information and then figuring out the costs at each stage of your investment pot growth.

ISA Platform Fees

Different Pot Sizes

For ISA’s, Charles Stanley still takes the leading spot for a multi-fund percentage based platform, costing you only £17.50 per year to invest a fund pot of £5000. If you are looking to invest in Vanguard funds only, this is even cheaper at £7.50 for a £5000 pot! However, the price (as always) starts to look very glum for percentage based platforms when you have a larger pot. Charles Stanley will charge you a jaw-dropping £2125 per year when you have £1 million invested! Comparing this to the £36.50 that Halifax Share Dealing will charge you (if you invest 12 times per year), it’s hard to believe anyone is invested with these platforms when their pot is so large. At least Vanguard has the decency to cap the charge off at £375.

SIPP Platform Fees

Different Pot Sizes

For SIPP portfolios Charles Stanley falls even more behind percentage based platform Aviva with a difference of £97.50 per year if you have £5000 invested, that’s 2% difference! This will affect investment performance in a big way! You will be losing even more money if you keep your pot in a percentage based platform when you have £500k - £1 million invested, but the pot size you need to have before you should look into switching to trade based is much bigger than with ISA’s.

You can get access to the editable version of this spreadsheet and much more on the ninja page which all subscribers have access to. If you’ve not yet subscribed, enter your email below. You can always unsubscribe again if you don’t want to keep in touch!

What platform you should use comes down entirely to how much you have invested and how much you intend to invest. The cheapest platform is clearly Charles Stanley or Vanguard Investor for ISA products and Aviva for SIPP products. But this changes drastically when your pot size increases. Halifax Share Dealing is the clear overall winner for price, both with SIPP and ISA products. I decided to go with Halifax Share Dealing from the beginning (based on these excel sheets!), as I knew that I was planning on investing a lot. I didn’t want to change platforms and incur transfer fees after only one or two years. Charles Stanley’s price hike doesn’t change the ideal platform choice. It does however make them an even worse deal than they currently are. So if you’re using them for your SIPP, or you have a larger pot, transfer quickly before your pot loses too much value!

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