Another monthly update, albeit a bit late, after a busy month filled with holidays and work.
So, what’s been going on in April.
We had a lovely relaxing family holiday in Spain, full of eating and drinking mainly. We like to relax on holiday and do very little to be honest, but we did fit in a day trip to Barcelona which Mrs. Fu wrote about in her last post. Having six kids is exhausting, and when at home we don’t get a minute on a day to day basis, so doing nothing on holiday is bliss for us.
Other than our holiday, April is a busy time due to the Tax year-end. This involves doing the year-end tasks for the company, including PAYE reporting and VAT accounts. HMRC self-assessments are also due for me and Mrs. Fu, but unlike GFF here, I generally end up doing these during the Christmas break.
One bit of good luck in April was winning Weenie’s toilet twinning competition. This caused some amusement in our house. We have just received the certificate and I will post a picture when I have put it on the wall in our toilet. Thanks Weenie.
On the financial side of things domestically, I had to renew the car insurance for our 3 household vehicles. They were on one policy last year but annoyingly the renewal quote had increased the premium quite a bit. Cue the joy of repeatedly inputting details into various comparison and insurance websites. This takes a surprising amount of time up as I did comparisons for insuring them separately, and insuring them under a multi-car policy. This is complicated by the fact of having a young driver as well. MSE has quite a good guide for young driver insurance and in general , according to MSE, the optimum time to get car insurance renewal quotes is 21 days before the insurance expires.
The upshot was I ended up getting the insurance from my existing insurer but as a new customer! It worked out the cheapest to get 2 cars on one policy and the young driver on a separate policy. This saved us £468 overall on our renewal costs.
One word of warning though, there appears to be quite a lot of insurance scams going around at the moment, with insurance companies you have never heard of before being the cheapest on comparison websites. These companies can be either total scam artists or very dodgy insurance operators at best. One company, Carrot Insurance, came out top by hundreds of pounds cheaper when I did my comparisons for young driver insurance. I very nearly took a policy with them until I decided to do a bit more research on the company and was shocked by the terrible reviews that this company had got. According to some of these reviews they were just blatant rip off merchants. So be careful if using comparison sites. The cheapest isn’t always the best.
Anyway that’s enough rambling, now to the figures.
MONTHLY UPDATE AND GOALS
Net Worth April 19 – £434,843 (Mar 19 £434,282) +0% +£561
Assets – £686,643 (£686,842) +0% -£199
Cash/bank £1000 +0%
Main Home Q1 £402,773 (Q1 £402,773) +0%
Rental Properties Q1 £163,919 (Q1 £163,919) +0%
Pension SIPP £118,951 (£119,150) +0% -£199
Liabilities – £251,800 (£252,560) -0.3% -£760
Main Home Mortgage £90,950 (£91,300)
Loans, Debts and credit cards £160,850 (£161,260)
Overall Net Worth has increased this month by £561.
Inching forward this month, even though assets have decreased by £199 due to a lower SIPP value, liabilities have decreased by a bit more.
Main home and rental property values are unchanged at Q1 2019 figures and will be updated when Q2 figures are published, calculated using the Nationwide House price index calculator.
SIPP Dividends paid April £145 – 2019 ytd £414, Av. £138/m (2018 £1306, Av. £108/m).
Other Monthly/weekly goals
Matched Betting +£230 this month (+£1019 last month)
Total to date since starting 18m ago £6882 Av. £382/m (£6652 to last month Av. 391/m) means we made £230 profit this month, broken down as follows.
Casino/slot offers to date £1789 (£1687) = £102 profit this month
Each way sniping to date £83 (£45) = £38 profit this month
Normal match betting offers £90 profit this month
Massive £800 drop in MB profits this month compared to last month, especially in normal match betting offers. There seems to be fewer daily offers out there at the moment, and coupled with our holiday meant we didn’t do a lot of MBing.
Target for this month is to learn how to EW snipe on my phone.
Diet and Fitness – Holidays have trashed my figures. Back up to 76kg and 21% fat. I am resuming my training and diet and to aim for 70kg and/or 15% fat, or less by the June update.
eBay/selling – Mrs Fu having a clear out of old clothes so hopefully more to report in next update.
Thanks for reading.
Any comments/questions always welcome
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Both my house and car insurances are up for renewal soon so cheers for the heads up re dodgy insurance companies. Always worth noting it’s not always best to go for the cheapest.
Hear hear! It never would have occurred to me that there are unscrupulous merchants operating through comparison sites – I tend to assume the companies are all legit and checked!
Sounds like a great month, and a well deserved holiday for you and Mrs FU.
Those car insurance combinations sure sound complex, if only the comparison sites could cope with that level of complexity. And since you’ve insured the car for the eldest, guess you have 5 more young drivers to look forward to insuring in the future!