The first month of this year is over already! It only seems like yesterday that I was writing my goals for January 2014 and scanning my twitter to see everyone’s new year resolutions. January was the first month of living out of debt and boy it felt good; now I can look at financial opportunities and feel like I’m only a few more steps away from taking them on.
Time to Catch Up!
Now that I have a positive net worth (wahoo!), this month I have really been looking into the various avenues that are available to me and the big financial decisions that I should begin to plan for. This includes looking into the size of the down payment on a mortgage we should be saving for, my larger career goals and the various investment options that are available to me. This month has been about filling my mind with financial education in order to make tactical decisions in the future. We have lots of dreams such as remodeling a house and travelling Europe so I will need to think about building some scalable revenue streams aside from my paycheck.
Let’s take a look at how I have done in when looking at my goals for January:
January 2014 Goals Review
Open a higher interest savings account – Complete!
I did this at the beginning of the month; opening a cash ISA with Virgin Money that provides me with 1.75% interest paid monthly. When I have fully funded my emergency fund in here it should generate £30 per year.
Build over £200 in side-hustle income – Complete!
Very almost failed this one! On the 31st Jan I managed two secure some additional coaching time which brought me to a total of £204 in side-hustle income. So glad to have made this challenge and looking forward to exceeding this next month! Here’s how my side-hustles have been split:
£48 – Part-time Coaching
£70 – Overtime Pay
£30 – Online Income
£40 – Business Consultancy
£16 – Amazon Sales
This was a close attempt, but I feel I could have tried a little harder. I am hoping to near double my business consultancy income next month.
Read and Review Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Complete!
This was a great book and a fantastic start to my financial education. Rich Dad, Poor Dad teaches a great deal about the psychology of the rich. A wise lesson from this book is to protect your assets even if it means finding alternative methods of gaining cash as your assets are there to generate income and create your money machine – you don’t want to break your money machine! Read my review here.
Deposit £487.50 into my Cash ISA – Complete!
This was my first step in building a positive net worth! They say the basis for a financial foundation is an emergency fund; this is therefore my first goal and I plan on filling this fast! I’ve worked out that if I can deposit £487.50 into my ISA once a month for four months I should have an emergency fund to cover me for three months without work. First deposit done! Any money left in my current account at the end of each month will also be transferred into here.
Goals for February 2014
1. Deposit £487.50 into Cash ISA
Yet again time to fuel my emergency fund, I’m ensuring that this comes out even before my rent to ensure there’s nothing stopping me from completing this goal!
2. Read The Naked Trader by Robbie Burns
This is a real big (yet easy to digest) book about spread betting. I have always been interested in investing and Robbie’s book is very highly recommended given it’s simplistic breakdown of a complex topic and the fact that he has become a millionaire by spread betting over the past 8 years! Very much looking forward to reading this one and have already got 100 pages in!
3. Begin Paper Trading
This goal falls in nicely with my above reading. The way I see it, I will likely need to wait nine months before I have enough accessible capital to begin investing (I’m aiming to spread £3000 as my starting investment capital). The impatient man inside me isn’t happy with this wait but the huge benefit for the logical me is that I can gain months of experience monitoring the market before I invest. I will give myself an allocated amount of capital to ‘paper invest’ and see how this pans out over the course of a few months.
4. Build £210 in Side Hustle Income
This was quite a tough goal in Jan so I am raising the bar by just 5%. I am going to focus on making this income through freelance marketing and online income. Wish me luck!
How have your financial goals unraveled this month? Any new goals for February?
Nice work on achieving all of your January goals… got the year off to a great start!
Thanks Jon! Looking forward to next month’s challenges!
Your enthusiasm and step by step journey is so encouraging!! Started the year in trouble but Now got £700 in isa and developing different income areas – this blog helps hold me to account! Can’t wait to see how you do!
Thanks! We’re living super frugally at the moment to ensure we can save as much as possible each month! It’s great to be out of debt and locking some savings away for the future. Well done with the capital in your ISA!
Well hello there!!! A fellow UK blogger chasing financial freedom. Great to see there are a few more of us than I originally thought when I first started my blog.
Be patient with the trading, paper trading is definitely the way to go!
About the spread betting book… is that really a serious part of your strategy or are you just reading it for fun and to gain another perspective on the markets?
Thanks for stopping by! It’s great to see another UK pf blogger!
The focus for the spreadbetting book is mainly to learn a little more about the markets and the paper trading was to see how it would work in practice. I can imagine there is a great deal of time investment needed to trade by yourself but I’d like to understand a little more all the same 🙂
That’s good to hear it Joe.
As I mentioned in my other comment I am an inexperienced investor but I am coming from a position of 10 years hardcore experience in sports betting… which is as far as I am concerned not too far off spread bets on markets.
I made a bit of money on the side on it but finally came to the conclusion that it is far too stressful and too great a time suck to bother with about a year ago.
So now I am investing in the stock market in boring old low cost index funds instead and will hope to ride the wave of returns and dividends to the shores of financial independence island!
That’s interesting, yes I imagine it’s a fairly similar approach. I’ll keep you posted on my endeavours 🙂
Not a bad choice at all! I’ve heard many people have reached FI with the help of index funds!
Congrats on a great start to 2014! It is very inspiring to see you lay out and execute your goals in such detail.
Thanks Carlos, it’s been tricky keeping up with the goals this month but I’m on course to complete most of them 🙂 Posting them on here certainly makes me a little more accountable!
Impressive post liked it.Great start you got on this year. 🙂