Hey everyone, how did you June go?
Watching the world cup? What is happening! Germany, Portugal, Argentina and now Spain all out. All the heavy hitters out. I’m not sure who to support now!
It’s been a month of large splurges for us. We spent a decent whack of money to pay off the bill for the new skylights to get some more natural light in our home. In the long-term it will help our sanity, not having to turn lights on in the middle of the day, but at the moment it’s cutting deep losing all that cash.
Spending in June
It’s unusual for the mortgage not to be the largest expenses but that is what has happened this month.
- Groceries $624. Our grocery bill remains high.
- Skylights $6195. This has been a large expense this month, pushing house expenses up to 43%.
- Utilities $341. being winter our utility bill goes up as we start to use more gas for heating.
- Utilities $341. being winter our utility bill goes up as we start to use more gas for heating.
- Mortgage $4000. Our monthly mortgage payment has increased from $3600.
- Investments $2550. to keep on my goal I had to up my investment this month.
- Insurance $2064. Insurance payments had to be made this month. After renewing our insurance in May we increase the access to lower our premiums down from $2600.
So it’s been an expensive month, but we had enough cash to cover anything. Just like our mortgage and investments, we pay ourselves first when it comes to these annual expenses. Transferring $400 per week into an account. The next big expense to come out from this account is the rates on our home in August. By that time the account should have regenerated enough to cover it.
Portfolio in June
I have kept up with my automatic investing into my InvestNow account. Totally think everyone needs to use the pay yourself first investing method. I’m a great believer in it!
Here is how my portfolio looks for June.
As I mentioned last month it needs to be more diversified as a large chunk is in Peer to peer lending, which hasn’t been performing well recently. The returns on the current lending are great, it’s just been difficult to fund new lending. There is a large chunk of cash not being utilized.
My portfolio has made me a Passive Income of $123 p.w. That is defiantly not enough to cover our expenses just yet but it is a good start.
Goals for 2018
- Increase my investment to $12,000 p.a
One of my main goals for 2018 was to increase my portfolio by $12,000. This was over and above my investment into my Mortgage. It’s now over halfway through the year, which is scary in itself, and I have invested a total of $6017. That is 50.1% of my goal. So I’m on track! To achieve my goal I need to keep investing $1000 per month.
- Total portfolio >$50,000
By the time the year is through, I am aiming for my portfolio to be greater than $50k. It’s currently sitting at $40K, and with another $6K to be invested over the next half-year, I’m left with 4K to find. Some of this will hopefully come from returns, but the rest I will have to scrape from somewhere.
- Grow my Passive Income to $100 p.w.
So far, my passive income has been growing steadily, from 30 p.w in April, $64 p.w. in May, and now $123 p.w. in June. I have found that tracking it monthly adds a lot of volatility into the numbers. Currently, the average weekly return on my portfolio has been $72 p.w. looking at the average $100 p.w. should be achievable by the end of the year.
Goals for July
Groceries <$600– for the month of July we hope to get our grocery expenses below 600 per month. And we aim to keep them below the 600 mark. It’s going to be hard as we do like our food!
One easy method to do this is to utilize food that has been in the cupboard for a while to try to minimise expenses. There are many cans of beans and lentils that we can make a meal from. Also, making a vegetarian meal once a week will help as meat is quite expensive.
I use to do two separate reports, on spending and one on my investments. I’ve decided to do one instead from now on- I am trying to add more value to my readers, and these reports are mainly for me to keep track of my spending and investments.
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