Monthly reports

Another good month in terms of income, with a profit of £4,355 – this is a personal best for me for a single month’s earnings.

I followed my financial plan and moved 40% to my personal account, 45% to my savings account (which includes cash for income tax and National Insurance), 10% to my Vanguard stocks & shares ISA and 5% remained in my business.

Actually, these percentages totalled £4,000 – the remaining £355 I kept in my business account as I am planning to invest a little more in my business this month.

Recap from last month

I’m still on the lookout for a new instant access savings account with a decent rate but unfortunately there does not seem to be a lot on the market.

As I planned, I’ve been working on making my business even more profitable and December looks to be even higher than November!

Asset Table

At the end of November, my assets look like this:

ASSET	VALUE
Marcus Savings	£21,965
Vanguard ISA	£7,180
Club Lloyds Current Account	£1,734
Barclays Current Account	£1,383
RCI Bank Savings Account	£2,000
First Direct Current Account	£1,000
Club Lloyds Monthly Saver	£3,600
First Direct Regular Saver	£3,000
CrowdProperty	£3,128
TOTAL	£44,990

NET Worth

As always, a fair chunk of my assets is money that I owe to HMRC for my tax and National Insurance, so taking an overcautious figure of what that is likely to be, my NET worth is:

£23,990

Savings

The total of all my minimum-risk savings accounts (Marcus Savings, Club Lloyds Monthly Saver, First Direct Regular Saver and RCI Bank fixed-term savings) minus an over-cautious tax estimate is:

£9,565

Investments

With the announcement of a working vaccine for coronavirus in November, the stock market rocketed and I saw my stocks & shares portfolio increase by about 8% – of course, these profits will not be realised until I actually withdraw the money and could go up or down before that time.

My investments consist of my Vanguard Global All-Cap Index Fund (a stocks & shares ISA) and my CrowdProperty peer-peer lending account. I invested a further £400 in my Vanguard this month and these investments now have a combined value of:

£10,308

Thoughts & Plans

I am continuing my search for an instant access savings account with a decent interest rate, especially as Marcus announced a further cut in their interest rate to 0.5%. Unfortunately, most savings account providers are doing likewise and the ones that are slightly higher have a variable rate and will probably drop again themselves sometime.

I have been considering putting a little extra effort into maximising the interest earned on the little-over £20,000 cash savings I have by using other products such as regular savers, fixed-rate accounts (that limit withdrawals or require notice). I’ve avoided these in the past because I need my cash to be liquid so that I can pay my tax bills on time and access my money quickly in case of emergency. However, with proper planning, this may be a possibility. It is something I will be looking at in December if I have time.

In other news, I’m thinking of moving to a bigger house. I thought I would be able to afford something decent with the money I am earning but property is so expensive! I want to make a plan in the next couple of months to afford the move.

October was a pretty good month for income, pulling in over £4,000.

Out of this, I took £1,600 for myself to cover monthly living expenses and some Christmas shopping and the rest was allocated amongst my savings and investments.

Recap From Last Month

By taking time off from my job last month (the stress got to me), I’ve been able to spend a bit more time on my business interests, which has helped to push up earnings this month. I’m currently in two minds whether I want to go back to work – I’ve told my employer I will decide after Christmas, so I have plenty of time to think about it.

I did say last month that I wanted to look at changing my instant-access savings account to something with a better rate, however despite regular checks I have not been able to find a product that is significantly better than my Marcus account, which pays 0.7%. There are a few that are slightly higher and I very nearly grabbed a deal with Newcastle Building Society that offered a fixed rate but I missed it. The problem is, all savings products are cutting their rates at the moment and I don’t want to waste my time switching when the rate could drop a month or so later.

I adjusted my contributions between my savings and investments this month to re-balance them for an approximate 50/50 split. I now have about £9,500 in each of my savings and investment pots.

Asset Table

So, let’s take a look at my assets at the end of October:

ASSET	VALUE
Marcus Savings	£20,852
Vanguard ISA	£6,327
CrowdProperty	£3,120
Club Lloyds Monthly Saver	£3,200
First Direct Regular Saver	£2,700
RCI Bank Savings Account	£2,000
First Direct Current Account	£1,000
Barclays Current Account	£841
Club Lloyds Current Account	£1,478
TOTAL	£41,518

NET Worth

Being self-employed, a chunk of that money is owed in tax to HMRC in January 2021. The good news is that my accountant filed my taxes last week and the amount owed is a few grand less than I expected 🙂 My tax liability for the year 19/20 is about £8,000 and my estimated tax liability for this year so far is about £11,000 (although I always overestimate this just so I don’t get any nasty surprises!)

So, that leaves me with a NET worth of:

£22,518

Savings

I have retained my main instant access savings account with Marcus and contributed to my two regular savers with Lloyds and First Direct. I also have a 5 year fixed rate savings account with RCI. The sum of all these accounts minus my tax liability is:

£9,752

Investments

My investments continue to perform well.

I lost a little value on my Vanguard Global All-Cap Fund ISA but it recovered pretty quick.

I also configured my CrowdProperty IFISA to ‘autoinvest‘ – I hadn’t realised that some of the interest had started to be paid back in cash and was just sitting in the account!

The value of these two investments combined totals:

£9,447

Thoughts & Plans

With my stress levels beginning to go back to normal and an extended period of time off work, I continue to plan on making my business more profitable, which will provide more income to be invested for my future. Earnings for November are set to be a personal best!

I have to admit that I am happy and comfortable with my financial planning at the moment and all the financial products I am using contribute to my over-arching financial plan in their own way. Therefore, I won’t be actively seeking out new products however, I will be keeping an eye out for an instant access savings account that has a decent or fixed rate.