Yearly Reviews on SavingNinja

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!

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.

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.

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?

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!

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?

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!

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!

Yearly Reviews on SavingNinja

2025 Reviewed - Finding Our New Normal

Introduction

2025 Financial Review

Total Net Worth

Interest vs Contributions

Lifetime Interest

Yearly Growth

Personal Life

Mundanity

Being a parent

Looking forward

Goals

Happy new year!

2024 Reviewed - Worst and Best Year Yet

Introduction

2024 Financial Review

Total Net Worth

Interest vs Contributions

Lifetime Interest

Yearly Growth

Personal Life

Back to Blighty

Job prospects, not all bad

Easy money in the UK

Goals

Goal Results for 2024

Goals for 2025

2023 Reviewed - The End of Our American Dream

Introduction

2023 Financial Review

Total Net Worth

Interest vs Contributions

Goals Results

Goals for 2024

2022 Reviewed - A Year of Learning

Introduction

2022 Financial Review

Total Net Worth

Interest vs Contributions

Goals Results

Goals for 2023

If we end up needing to buy something new, we’ll add it to a list and share it with you at the end of the year.

2021 Reviewed - Are Goals Bad?

2021 Financial Review

Goals Results

Pondering New Goals

Goals for 2022

2020 Reviewed - A Very Weird Year

The Lucid Dream Began

A Virus Ridden Trip

2020 Financial Review

Looking Ahead

Goals Achieved

Goals for 2021

2019 Reviewed - Things are Looking Up

Introduction

2019 Financial Review

Financial Growth

How Stocks Performed in 2019

I’m Still Increasing my Savings Rate

Monthly Contributions

Forecasting

Goals Achieved

Looking Forward

Next Steps for my Career

Improving my Happiness

Blogging

Blogging Statistics

Goals TL;DR

A lot Has Changed - 2018 Reviewed

How did my finances do?

How did the blogging go?

A place to call home

What about real life?

Goals TL;DR