Can’t you tell its Christmas

Now the 14th December and the Christmas rush to ‘buy,buy,buy’ is well underway.

I have bought most of the gifts for my family and friends and only have a few bits n bobs to buy to complete my shopping. I hate Christmas, it is so commercial and working in the industry only helps to turn me off from the consumer hype. The business is working on Christmas from June so by the time Christmas actually turns up – you are sick of it – or at least I am.

It helps to concentrate my mind and keep to frugal living and let me recap on the year. I have been looking back on the past few years and how my Net Worth has grown, it looks like its averaging about 20% per year which I don’t think is bad, although I have no idea what I could get as a target. I should really start looking at my expenses again and see where I frivolously spend cash which I could invest more wisely. I am sure my worth could grow considerably more if I put my mind to it – but would that be at the expense of living ‘in the present’.

My shares NISA this year is looking healthy, although I have noticed that since I have moved to buying trackers, they have poorly performed and it is only down to my managed income funds that I am actually seeing a profit. Yes, they are managed funds and not a good idea according to the theories but they do at least provide a profit – even if its after the management charges and their slice of the gains.

I have bought some more Glaxo shares this month as they have no gone ex-div, only for their price to plummet again so holding onto a loss – but as they go downwards I may buy some more to try and average out my price on them. I should received some dividends this month and next so my income is starting to look at bit more rosy that it was at the start of the year.

I am also pondering whether to buy some shares in the company I now work for. They seem to be doing OK and I missed out on their sharesave scheme this year (if I had joined a month or two earlier) so will have to wait another year before I get an opportunity and in the meantime there may be a chance to get some profit. I have cashed in the sharesave I had with my old company as their share price has tumbled and its below the offer price so I may use this money to invest in my new place.

Not sure if I like the new job, its management practices are quite different but there is quite a bit of growth and loads of new employees there. They are rapidly expanding, I have only been there a little while but it makes me also realise what I am trying to target – Financial Freedom – so I don’t have to work and don’t have to put up with these bullying style corporate institutions which just treat you as a number and not a person. I am fed up of being treated poorly and expected to work silly hours and ‘be lucky you have a job‘ and feel that my voice and contribution is not needed or valued.

The only down side I can see with not working at the moment is the amount of rules that try to hinder you from being FI:

– caps on the amount you can put in a pension annually

– higher car insurance premiums

– health and income insurance policies become void

– mortgage and banking rules which mean services either become void – or you have to pay charges for them.

Maybe I can actually have more of a life once I reduce my working hours, at Christmas you start to evaluate your life and that’s when you realise that another year has gone by. What I have noticed is that I have few friends (because of my job – I have stupidly put that first which has resulted in missing out on social occasions and losing contact with friends as a result). As my workplace has been either travelling around the country or at a distance – it has made making and keeping friends harder as you need to travel and find places to stay-over to enjoy an evening out. I have been too tired and it has worn me down to the point that I can only say I have 1 friend – who is away in Austria for Christmas.

Net Worth – ouch !!

I shouldn’t look – but I have.

My net worth is going down at the moment, since I ‘re-shuffled’ my portfolio to index trackers in my NISA, I have only seen my net worth and the NISA total drop for the past 3 months.

I should be grateful that I can continue to invest and must take the view – my next monthly buys will be at the cheaper price. Just keep looking long-term and in a few years time the indexes will have bounced back and all these units I am picking up at cheap prices will have grown.

My managed funds are still making a profit – even after charges – so the trackers are not looking good and I need to stop looking at the value erosion that’s going on at the moment.

The good news is that my pension transfer has happened, my old work pension has been moved to my personal pension. I have at least secured my transfer value.

I have noticed too, that there has been press coverage on this very subject and that the government want to change to rules so that companies cannot force people to close their pension when they have only worked for a company for < 2 years. They have realised that this will result in people losing out on fund growth.

If people didn’t take such big transfer fees out of the process it would help. In my case the value of the transfer was 30% less than the pot value! The actuary adjustment is a ridiculous value – where do they dream up these fees from?

Well, at least I have broken my ties with that fund and can only wonder what the pension will be like at my new company. Although I am not sure if they are following the rules – I thought that under auto-enrollment you had to join a pension from day 1? At my new job – I have to wait 3 months before I can join.

Off to do something else and stop looking at my net worth 🙂