Dad on FIRE

  Finance update Breakdown for October: Off the back of being up £28k in September, in October I added to this by being up £31k! Looking back, I think these two months collectively have been the strongest 2 months on record! ISA  up £5.5k Pension  up £5.9k GIA /easy access savings up £4.9k Crypto  had a great month, up £10.7k I withdrew £12k from my GIA account and used it to throw at my pension, hence the -£12k and +£15k on the chart. I will get the additional higher rate relief (£3k) when I do my tax return next year.  My rationale behind this was just in case higher rate tax relief was tinkered with in the budget. In the end it wasn't touched but I was always going to do this during the tax year anyway, I just brought it forward just in case. 2024/25 tax year: Overall in the tax year I'm now looking at almost +£90k, with all areas being in the green and Crypto has now broken even from it's high in early April! At the time of writing with Trump having just been announced

Bang on time this month for a change! Finance update Breakdown for September: After being £15k down in August, the portfolio ended up bouncing back with +£28k in September! ISA  up £8.8k Pension up £7.3k I contributed £3.2k to my  GIA /easy access savings, and this was also up £1.4k After my  Crypto holdings last month being down £12k, it bounced back £6.5k in September 2024/25 tax year: Overall in the tax year I'm looking at +£57k. Crypto is still down overall from April to now, however this was due to the ATH for Bitcoin being hit in April. I am continuing to purchase both Bitcoin and Ethereum on a weekly basis, and have done since January. A few additional charts in this update, here's a look at the historical monthly difference in Net Worth. The past could of years has been very consistent, and despite the sizable drop last month, the dotted blue line is sitting nicely between £10-20k a month increase. And this chart shows the Net Worth progress, currently at £1.08m which

  Again a bit late on this one, took a few days off work before the kids started back at school. Finance update Breakdown for August: Pretty shocking month for performance in August, everything was down. In total down £15k for the month ISA down £2.5k Similar story with my  Pension I contributed £3k to my  GIA /easy access savings, this was also down. £600 into  Crypto  and it dropped like a stone, down £12k for the month 2024/25 tax year: Overall in the tax year I'm looking at +£22k, which considering I've contributed over £30k to ISA/SIPP/GIA/Crypto is not great! Hopefully I've just been buying them whilst they've all been on sale, and it's a good job I don't need to liquidate any of them now :)  With the budget at the end of October I'm keeping one eye on what is being floated. I'd be very surprised if they didn't whack up CGT as well as chopping down Pension Tax Relief from marginal rate to a flat rate. The former doesn't really affect me as

A bit late with the update this month, apologies! This one is short & sweet Finance update I mentioned in my last monthly update that I've rather taken to the 'waterfall chart' as a way of showing contributions and gain/loss for both the monthly swing across assets but also to show the total for the year. These can be done simply in Excel. Breakdown for July: ISA is full so no new contributions, markets down led to a downturn of £2k Similar story with my Pension I contributed £2k to my GIA /easy access savings and bizarrely this ended up in positive territory at the end of the month £400 into Crypto and a whopping gain of £4k for the month House price rose £1.3k in June All in all, up just over £5k 2024/25 tax year: At the start of August there was a notable market downturn, sparked by Japan increasing interest rates by 0.25%, and having a disastrous effect on the "carry trade" (where you loan money out in a low interest environment and buy assets in another)

After a really couple of busy months holidaying in Denmark and Germany, it feels like this month has given us chance to catch our breath! That being said, since coming back from Germany we've had itchy fingers and already booked up the holiday for next year! As you can probably tell from the way we went about our holidays in Denmark and Germany , we are very active travellers, we like to be active on holidays rather than a typical "fly and flop". We tend to just get a bit bored!  We've only ever done one "fly and flop", to Menorca when our son was 18 months old and my wife was pregnant with our second and there were a few drawbacks. The biggest negative was the set meal times, with the main restaurant not opening until something like 7pm. My son is like clockwork and if he doesn't eat at 07:30/12:00/17:00 (as well as snacks pretty much every half an hour in between!) then he just gets grumpy. That being said, now our kids are older (and as long as there

Bavarian holiday 24/25 ISA allowance? Completed it Normally I start off with an update on finances but given the biggest thing of May has been our 10-day holiday, travelling our way around Bavaria, I thought I'd swap it around. Normal service might be resumed next month, but I feel that since passing the - completely arbitrary - £1m net worth number, then the numbers kinda take a bit of a backseat now. 'Saving intentionally' is now safely on autopilot and 'spending intentionally' now comes into the frame, whether that is buying more of our time (by dialling back work or taking unpaid time off) or through buying experiences such as holidays. Non-finance update Holidays Germany  - We've just come back from 9 days out in Germany on a DIY adventure holidays for us all. Massive shout out to my wife who I want to say did most of the planning, but in reality she did all of the planning!  I've been asked by a few people on social media for a rundown of what we did,