April 2024 update

• Tax return done, pension tax relief received and reinvested
• Market dip, net worth hit
• Holidays, from Denmark to Doncaster!
• Unpaid Parental Leave
• Allotment? A-llot-of-work-ment more like!
• Books and board games

Finance update:

My net worth took a bit of a hit this month, down £2.5k. This is the biggest drop since September 2022 so I've done well going this long without a little trip! 

The biggest reason for this has been a market dip in the middle of April. This happened shortly after I had chucked in £10k to my ISA. I also put in a further £4k once I had received my pension tax relief on my tax return, and the saving grace is that despite me filling in my tax return in the middle of April, it took HMRC a good 2 weeks for them to make the payment. By that time the market drop had bottomed, enabling me to add it at this point, and has increased a bit since. 

So on the above graphic, although my ISA pot has effectively gone up by £12.6k, I've actually put in £14k to it (£4k of which was 'free' money from HMRC!), so it's actually down. 

I've also taken a slight hit on my Bitcoin / Ethereum holdings, with the price dropping from £55k to £49k currently.

However this is a minor blip in the grand scheme of things...if I rewind and look at the period at the start of the year from Jan-Mar 2024, this is what the gain/loss chart looks like! Up £62k in a couple of months I still find difficult to comprehend! This as well as the long term chart above puts my mind at rest when dealing with short term market corrections.

With that lump sum into my ISA, I've started off the tax year with a bang. My financial targets for the year are in the below chart. Obviously April is a bit of an anomaly as I've saved up the £14k from last year's savings / tax refund, and it won't be the same every month!

Premium Bonds:
Another month of no prizes in April. As I planned a while ago, I've now depleted my Premium Bond holdings to a small amount, and put it all into my ISA. Similar with my easy access savings. My plan for 2024-25 is to fill ISA, then GIA, then if I have anything else to put some more into Premium Bonds.

Pension Tax Relief rebate:
As mentioned above I got about £4k back from my tax return for higher rate pension tax relief. I used this to plough into my S&S ISA.

Crypto: 

Having sold some Crypto at the end of last tax year up to the CGT allowance, I am now in a buy and hodl phase for at least the next 10 months, until I can sell to the CGT limit again next year. I've been buying £50 a week of both Bitcoin and Ethereum since the start of the year, this is set up on an automated recurring buy, so doesn't need me to push anything through.

Work:

Fairly standard month at work. I've passed my 3 month probation and am still enjoying the increased autonomy and flexibility they give to me.

Whilst reading my employee handbook I did discover a section about Unpaid Parental Leave, and have since made a number of posts on Twitter and Reddit where I've aimed to gauge uptake, pros/cons and also as a way to signpost to others of the existence of this workers right, as it is quickly becoming evident that not that many people know about it in the first place, and even a smaller amount actually take it!

https://www.gov.uk/parental-leave/entitlement

In summary, parents can take 4 weeks of unpaid leave a year, for each child. So, for me with 2 kids, I can take 2 months off, unpaid. Firstly, I'm shocked that someone as clued up on finances and work/life balance wasn't aware of this, secondly, I'm annoyed at my previous managers/bosses that they didn't signpost me to this (despite me asking questions such as "can I buy additional leave") and thirdly, I'm amazed that the FIRE community isn't talking about this as an option for people, like at all! I've searched FIREUK reddit and there are literally zero posts aside from mine. Similar on Facebook. 

'Unpaid Parental Leave', for me, seems like an ideal middle ground between giving up a full-time job and spending quality time with your kids. Taking 2 months a year off for me will enable me to take all summer and Easter holidays off with them, on top of my default annual leave.

I'm going to do a full blog post on this in time, but the time being I'm just trying to get my head around it all, the full pros/cons etc. Please get in touch if you hadn't heard of this and it will benefit you/alter your FIRE plans or indeed if you've taken UPL and are willing to tell me what you thought of it! 

Non-finance update

Holidays

Billund, Denmark - At the start of the month we flew out to Billund, Denmark, famous for being birthplace of Lego. We spent 2 nights and three full days there, staying in one of the Lego Hotels, a day on the Legoland park and a day at Lego House. 

I was extremely impressed by the experience at Lego House, so much stuff to see and things to interact with! I was also very impressed by the food at the Legoland hotel. It was billed as all you can eat & drink, and as a British person I immediately get images of a beige bonanza and Carling on tap, but the experience at the Knights Hotel was brilliant. Perfectly cooked steak, great fish, prawns, local specialities, and a range of local wines and craft beers! Go up as much as you like. Yes, it was fairly expensive, but hey this is Denmark and we definitely got our money's worth (our kids are great with different/new food).

Epworth, Doncaster - A few days after coming back from Denmark we headed off again for a few days. This time we left our passports at home as we were only going to the other side of Doncaster. My parents had rented a big AirBnb for our family to go to, with 12 of us in total. We live about 100 miles away from the rest of our family down in Staffordshire and although we see each other fairly regularly it was nice to spend a few days with them all, and explore the local area. 

One of my highlights was finding a big patch of wild garlic at one of the placed we visited, and then making some garlic dip to have with our fish and chips for tea! 

Skipsea, East Yorkshire - Another weekend away, this time in Skipsea on the East Coast at a Parkdean caravan park. Not much to report here, apart from the pool heater being broken so swimming was quite an experience!

Books

I've read a couple of books in April, carrying on my challenge to read 24 by the end of the year.

• Atomic Habits (James Clear) - I've been meaning to read this for absolutely ages. Really good book on the tricks of building good habits. Given I'm somewhat fairly disciplined with the money aspect of habits, I approached it from more of a healthy living perspective where I think I've got a lot of room for improvement.
• The Mandibles (Lionel Shriver) - Really enjoyed reading this. Near-future post apocalyptic economical thriller! Full review here

Now I've finished these two, I'm currently reading Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. One of my favourite books and films and I tend to revisit both every few years.

Board Games

A few months ago our local library started renting out board games. The list they have is extremely impressive (there's about 40-odd) and lots have around £40/50 price tag so a really good way of 'try before you buy'.

Games we've tried this month:

• Dino SOS (⭐⭐☆☆☆) - Co-operative prehistoric lava based survival game. Bit of a faff to setup, and the gameplay wasn't the best. The objective seems a bit too easy, so we're gonna try the harder version of the gameplay to see if its any better.

• Dungeon Mayhem (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) - card based simple D&D game. We really liked this! Very easy to understand and games can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes, so quick game to setup and play through. We took this away with us to Skipsea and the kids loved playing it and getting into character. I can actually see us getting this after we've returned it / gifting it to friends with kids.

Finally(!)

I've been on the waiting list for a council allotment for the past 3 years. Since then, I've taken up the offer of a smaller allotment via a separate scheme back in January 2023. I went to view the council allotment, and I'm not sure if I've been spoiled with my current allotment arrangement, but the absolute state of the council allotment was shocking. I get that it's a blank slate and you can make the allotment your own, but the sheer amount of work that these need is insane.

So, I could take the council up on their offer of spending £60-80+ for one of these below plots:

...Or I could just forget it, and stick to my current allotment, where I paid £30 a year, have access to a greenhouse, polytunnel, free communal fruit veg including rhubarb, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers etc, oh and free use of all of the tools, compost, water and even seeds!

I'll give you one guess what I'm gonna do....!

Quote

Short-lived but I'll be moving quotes over to my Twitter account and posting one of my favourites every Wednesday, see thread here.

Until next time!