Savings Report #72 - Euro Millionaire

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other News

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

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

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

See you next month.