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Multi-millionaire Road Plan Review (5)

Blueprints:

This post details my financial progress as of the end of July 2013. All posts of a similar title to this one are written to demonstrate how all prior published articles interlink to form my plan to become a Multimillionaire. Think of these posts as a self-review of my progress and the blueprints to my Multi-Millionaire Road Plan. I encourage my readers to add comments on these posts. Feel free to compare to my previous report:



Multi-Millionaire Road End of July 2013 Report:

As always I'd like to offer a huge thank you to all my readers. Without your readership, comments, tweets and following I would not find the motivation to keep posting. I hope you will continue to find this site interesting. 

In particular, I would like to thank all those readers who have recommended any I their friends to start to follow this blog.

Website Progress

As you may have noticed, I am not hugely tech-savvy and in terms of a technologically impressive website it is definitely lacking. I have always felt that the pull of my site should be its content of which I am working constantly to improve. If any of you have any suggestions to improve the site then please feel free to email me at mrmoneybanks@multimillionaireroad.com. 

Recent statistics show that the site attracts on average between 100-150 readers per day. I am extremely happy with this level of readership but would always welcome more. If anyone invites a friend or family to read an article that i have written, or shares one of my posts I will personally get in touch to say thank you.


Get Rich Plan Update

Picture from freedigitalphotos
I am almost 11 months into working life and I am now still able to save roughly 20% of my monthly net (income after tax and pensions comes out of my pay package) income, which is just over £1,681 per month. This means that i save about £340. £135.75 goes into a Company pension scheme each month andis matched by my employer in full. 

The income set aside for savings is taken directly from my current account into a monthly saver earning a meagre 3.25%. Some of my coworkers (on the same wage) are surprised that I am able to save this much considering almost half my net income goes on rent. I put this down to my budgeting technique and method of automating my savings. I am approaching the 12 month mark on this monthly savings account and will soon transfer part of the sum into an ISA online stocks and shares account to buy more undervalued and dividend paying stocks (assuming there are any!). The remainder will go into my cash ISA account. The reason why I will be splitting my cash is as follows. Following my summer reading of The Intelligent Investor I have learnt that an optimal strategy is to portion your wealth 50% into Stocks and shares and 50% into cash and bonds. I am currently slightly heavier in investments and so will probably need to add additional funds to my cash account before adding to investment portfolio.

My current share portfolio is performing strongly. The FTSE100, for example currently sits at about 6500 points. When last I wrote it was at 5900. Although it is folly and fairly meaningless to make a prediction on the stockmarket I shall do so anyway: It will go up or down or stay the same, but regardless of the movement I will look to improve my research in the hunt for undervalued shares.

If you take a look back at an article back in March 2012, I gave my current financial breakdown. I now wish to update my current asset holdings:
  • £825 - Sits in cash as a deposit for the flat I currently rent. I have written this down by about £150 as it becomes apparent that I will not get it all back
  • £2245.42 - Current Account. This is obviously before any spending has occurred for the month of August.
  • £2522.55 - Monthly Savings Account
  • £571.77 - Everyday Savings Account
  • £7999.79 - Loyalty Reward ISA
  • £100 - UK Premium Bonds
  • £11,889.41 - Online Shares
  • £2,039.73 - Funding Circle Investment
  • Total Accessible Assets: £28,192.94 (April 2013: £25,967.95)
This represents a growth in Total Accessible Assets of £2,224.99 (8.7%)
  • £2,964.89 - Friend's Life Pension (contributions since October 2012)
Total Assets £31,157.83  (April 2013 £28,047.94 - an 11.1% growth)

I am very pleased with my progress over the three months. In March 2012 I began recording my tangible wealth. Back then it was £22,970. I have grown my net total accessible wealth by about 22.7% and my total wealth (including my pension) by 35.6% in 16 months. My original plan was to grow my wealth over the year by about £4000 from September 2013 until September 2014 which (if you prorate my progress) means that I have almost reached this goal in terms of total accessible assets and more than passed it if you invlude my pension. Arguably it should be acceptable to include the value of my pension as this will form part of my assets in later life.

Originally I wrote a post on a Get Rich Plan and am currently in the middle of implementation. Whilst I have a long way to go, I am currently laying the foundations of this plan. I will now go through each section, briefly:

  1. Frugality - I believe that life should be lived whilst preparing for the future. As such I don't buy into the arguments that you should count every penny. Instead you should get the fundamental decisions right. for example, to automate your savings and commit a certain amount to savings each month.
  2. Budgeting - all going according to plan. My method allows me to ascertain where I may be spending too much.
  3. Saving - I am able to save 20% and above of my monthly net income. I still haven't switched my bank account. However, I really should consider it at some point in an effort to get a better interest rate, especially now that there is a lot more money going through the account. Santander seems to be the obvious choice although I have heard bad feedback about their customer service. Thoughts?
  4. Debt - Although I have two credit cards, I have no debt. I pay them off in full each month. I have one credit card which gives 3% cashback (up to a maximum of £100 a year) and another that gives 0.5% cashback. Read my article to explain how to maximise the cashback on credit cards.
  5. Housing - I am about to move to a new rented accomodation. Rent was £690 per month and will now be £585, not including bills. However, transport will cost an extra £20 per month. Bills will be about £40 higher per month and the local gym is an extra £30. As a result I will virtually break even eith the move. Look out for a future article on setting up finances when moving. For more information on my ideas on Housing read my article: Renting Vs Buying.
  6. Investing - on the whole this area of my personal share portfolio is going well. I have written plenty on this topic recently and so will leave the topic of investing to those posts.
  7. Tax - My monthly savings account is nearly finished meaning that I will have about £3,000 to put into cash ISAs. I need to top up my tax free ISAs before next April. I am now starting to utilize my investment ISA with an ISA stocks and shares trading account.
  8. Job - My base salary is £27,150. In September I am hoping to get a bonus of £1,000 (gross) for passing my exams first time as well as the potential for a bonus and pay rise. Living as a young professional living in London has huge opportunities for networking but of course is highly expensive. I must remind myself that this is (hopefully) the lowest wage I will have for the rest of my life so things are looking good into the future.
  9. Time and Patience - Slowly but surely, year by year, the seeds which I am planting will grow into trees.
  10. Self-belief - check.
As you can see, on the whole things are looking good. There is much work to be done but at 23, I have time on my side.

I would encourage all of you to update your financial position. Feel free to use my post as a template. It helps you clarify what you have to do and where you are going.


What's going on in your personal financial review?

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2 comments

Karen Bryan said...

I opened a Santander 123 Current Account a few months ago. I got £55 cashback for opening through TopCashBack. It pays 3% on balances between £3,000 - £20,000; a much better rate than any instant access savings account. The downside is that rate is variable.

My review of the Santander 123 Current Account:
http://www.helpmetosave.com/2012/03/santander-123-cashback-current-accout/

I haven't had any issues with customer service but I do everything online.

Mr. Moneybanks said...

Hi Karen,
Thanks for your comment. Did you transfer all of your direct debits across as well? How did you find the transition in terms of balancing your finances? How long did it take?