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.