July 2023 results are the 7th consecutive post that is just about results and updates- nothing else, nothing to learn. Finally, I’ve caught up. If you want to know why I had to catch up on missed posts, click here. We’re almost up to date!
Before I share our July 2023 results with you, as promised in July 2021, I’ll share with you what we’ve been up to the past month. After that, we can talk about the numbers.
What have we been up to this month?
As part of our July 2023 results, as usual, I’ll share personal life positives and negatives. I can’t always recall negative things which goes to show how happy I am with my life.
Personal life positives
Recalling what happened the past month ago is an interesting activity. I use Google Maps’ timeline, Google Photos, WhatsApp messages, and our expenses to remember what happened.
A downside of this system, however, is that I have less visibility of stuff Lazy FI Mum did with the kids.
My son’s first birthday party
Our friends’ son celebrated his first birthday and they invited friends of the same age. We came with both of our kids and we had a great time! They put soft mats in their garden and rented some soft toys to turn their garden into a soft play! Luckily, we had good weather. When I bought my son his Manchester United kit, I ordered 2 because I knew that the boy’s dad is also a Manchester United fan. He got the kit for his birthday and my son wore his kit for the party, he was very cute.
First work mystery dine
Since starting my job 2.5 years ago, I’ve never had the chance to share my mystery dining with my team. In July 2023. I finally caught a visit for 4 people, and I invited my team, who came along.
We all enjoyed a nice lunch and one of my colleagues ordered a pizza so big, he couldn’t finish it.
Of course, you shouldn’t eat too much and there’s no shame in not finishing your food so I told him how disappointed I was in him and that he got an “F” for his performance. At least he got it to go so his dinner was sorted haha.
My daughter’s graduation
In July 2023, we had my daughter’s last day in her Children Centre.
My loyal readers already know how much I love the Children Centre my kids go to. It’s an amazing place and we love that our kids get to go to such a great place. However, the summer after a child turns three- they need to leave. That means that my daughter graduated. Such a weird word to use for a 3 year old but I think it’s accurate. The end is sad but the new beginning is exciting, more on that below.
Busiest Sunday ever!
2 days after my daughter’s graduation, we had our busiest Sunday ever!
It started with… Bat-Mitzvah pizza!
As you may recall, we love our neighbours that live just above us. The 12-year-old girl is my daughter’s best friend. She also celebrated her Bat Mitzvah not too long ago (Lazy FI Mum and my daughter went). As part of our gift (among other things), we promised we’ll take them all for pizza and ice cream. Their parents stayed at home to rest while we took our 2 kids and their 3 kids for pizza. It was a lot of fun to spend a couple of hours with them, my kids laughed so much!
I was a bit surprised by how little they ate! Their 3 kids (combined) ate less than 1 large pizza. Because of that, I had a LOT to eat. There’s no way I’m getting an “F” for my performance 🙂
After a fun couple of hours and a semi-food-coma for myself, we took the neighbours’ kids home and headed to my daughter’s new (to-be) school! Every year they have a little fun fair with inflatables, face painting, and some games. We went last year as well but this year was more special to us because my daughter knew this is where she’ll be going every day very soon. She was (and still is) very happy about it, it makes her feel “grown up” going to school.
Of course, she’s too young for actual school but they have the nursery and reception together in the same building as the school.
If this isn’t enough for one day- after the funfair, we headed home for dinner and then Lazy FI Mum and my daughter left for the airport for a week in Israel.
If you remember, back in May, she took our son and I stayed with my daughter. This time, I got to spend a week with my son.
What a day!
A week (and a bit) with my son and a (permanent) family visit
I had so much fun with my son!
Usually, when he wakes up (any time between 05:30-06:30), I have to wait for my daughter to wake up because I need to get her ready and feed her as well.
With him being the only kid, we could go out every morning before going to the Children Centre and it was amazing. We went several times to the pond for him to see ducks and go on the swing. In addition, I could take him out straight after childcare. One day we went to the library and another day we hurried to Hampstead Heath for a nice afternoon there. We had to hurry because he still needs to be home for dinner around 17:00.
Our local Tesco opens at 06:00 so we went there one morning and I let him run around. He had lots of fun trying to reorganise EVERY SINGLE THING HE SAW!
Don’t worry, I tidied up after him.
During the weekend, I took him to a Mexican restaurant (he loved the beans and the chicken fajitas!) to meet my brother and his wife. Both of them moved to the UK! My kids now have an uncle and aunt who live near them, they love it.
I already had a great relationship with my son but this week brought us even closer.
During this week, I also got lots of pictures and videos of my daughter having lots of fun in Israel. She came back a lot more confident in her Hebrew, I love it!
Family visit 2- My dad came over
My dad came over again and stayed with us for a couple of days. We had lots of fun. He came with us to the local park, the soft play, and we even had a family Mystery dine with the kids (Lazy FI Mum got some well-deserved rest).
We also got to have a “large” Friday night dinner with Me, Lazy FI Mum, our 2 kids, my dad, my brother, and his wife.
Family visits 3- Lazy FI Mum’s mother
Although she saw my daughter a week earlier, Lazy FI Mum’s mother missed my son and came over. Funny enough, she came a few hours after my dad left, just enough time to change the sheets on the sofa haha.
She stayed with us for just under a week and really enjoyed herself (we did too).
Our kids were super excited to have their grandparents here and ran to the living room every morning. When Lazy FI Mum’s mother was here, she made breakfast for the kids, which meant I could go to bed for an extra 5-10 minutes.
Don’t worry, I took her to a Mystery dine too. We went to a very posh cafe for lunch (ÂŁ15 for a tiny tart!).
We actually ordered 3 mains to share, paid more than the budget (which was ÂŁ100) and I was still hungry after haha. I’m less of a “fine dining” person and more of a “street food” kind of guy.
Reflections from this month
The week with my son and the fact that I cherish 5 minutes of rest in the morning just reminded me of what’s important to me in life.
I know that the time I have with my kids is very limited and precious. If you want to read more about it, this post (not mine) does an amazing job laying it out and is one of my favourite texts:
The quote “It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.” makes me think about my relationship with my parents but also with my kids, which is what I want to focus on here.
We have roughly 18 years of daily in-person time with them, after that, it becomes a rarer occasion, weekly if you’re lucky.
Nothing is more important to me than time with my kids, nothing. I’m very fortunate to be able to be so involved in their lives and I’m very grateful for that. However, raising 2 kids is tiring. I want to teach Excel, spend time with my kids, go to self-defence, and spend time with Lazy FI Mum. Funny enough, there are enough hours in the day/week to do those, easily. There’s one thing that’s taking too much of my time- work.
As Mr. 1500 once said, “I can’t be the man I want to be and hold a full-time job”.
I wish this was my way to reveal to you that I resigned from my job but sadly, we’re not there yet.
Don’t get me wrong, my job is great but if I had the money, I’d quit yesterday, no doubt.
Meanwhile, I’ll use these feelings as motivation to keep going down this FI path until we move to Israel (3 more years). This is just me reminding myself (and you, the readers) of the reason or the “why” behind this journey.
Personal life negatives
Nothing that I can remember. The only “negative” thing was that during the week with my son, I couldn’t go to training sessions. Here, I found something negative to say 🙂
July 2023 results- savings rate
Our savings rate for July 2023 was 60.75%.
As a reminder, my long-term target is 50%, hoping to hit that target for 3 years in a row.
Our (weighted) average savings rate for the past 6 months is 47.61%.
Our 12-month-weighted average savings rate is 48.16%.
Finally, our YTD (since January) weighted average savings rate is 53.52%.
July results- What was different this month?
Every month something unusual happens. Sometimes it’s a one-off expense and sometimes it’s a one-off income. The fact that this happens every month amuses me but also makes it harder to analyse the savings rate and draw conclusions. That’s why I also use the 6-month, 12-month, and YTD average figures to “smooth” the data.
Anyway, what was different this month?
In short- childcare (as usual)
Childcare costs
As you may remember, we usually contribute to our children’s tax-free childcare account once every quarter (every 3 months). Both children’s contributions are in the same month. This causes a huge fluctuation in our monthly savings rates. July was supposed to be a “no childcare cost” month.
However, with my daughter graduating almost two months before she starts school, we had to enrol her into a different childcare provider for these 2 months. She loves it and has lots of fun but her Tax-Free Childcare account was empty. That meant that I had to make a one-off payment (with no government top-up) in addition to the regular quarterly contributions we make.
Of course, that payment affected our July 2023 results.
July 2023 results- Net worth
In July 2023, our net worth increased by 2.87%. The 2.87% is made of two parts:
- Our actual savings increased our net worth by 1.43%
- Our investments increased in value, which increased our net worth by 1.44%**.
Achieving FI– how far are we on our journey?
Reminder: I set our FI number (how much we need to retire) in July 2020 and update it every month for inflation (I use CPIH* index).
At the end of July 2023, our net worth is 33.40% (June 2023: 32.54%) of that number.
We finally have more than a third of our FI number! We also set a new record for the sixth(!) month straight, beating our previous all-time-high 32.54% (June 2023). Woohoo!
Obviously, the market can crash at any moment (which would be a great buying opportunity) and we would have no control over that. Until that happens, it’s cool to see our real net worth go up.
Real change
The 0.86% increase in our FI journey (as a percentage of our FI number) from 32.54% to 33.40% means a real (inflation-adjusted) increase of 2.63% (33.40 / 32.54 – 1)**, which can be broken down into these two parts:
- Our nominal net worth increased by 2.87% as mentioned above.
- The CPIH index increased by 0.23%, which decreased our real (inflation-adjusted) net worth**.
As you can see, 2 factors are out of our control:
- The market performance (are our investments worth more or less this month?)
- Inflation (are things more expensive than last month?)
As these factors are out of our control- I tend to focus on our savings rate.
A 60.75% is good for a non-childcare month. However, as we had to make an extra contribution to my daughter’s tax-free childcare account, I think that’s a great result.
Also, I’m still hoping to hit 55% this year and our YTD rate of 53.52% looks very good!
When can we achieve FI (and possibly retire)?
As I told you in the October 2021 results, calculating an FI date is not relevant for us anymore. We will move back to Israel sometime between December 2025 and August 2026. As my models are split into tax years, that means April 2026 is our relevant date.
Once we move back to Israel, I will either move to “just” teaching (no accounting) or try and keep my current job but part-time.
If anyone’s wondering if moving to Israel will help or hurt our FI journey, I present to you this article:
Tel Aviv named as world’s most expensive city to live in – BBC News.
No need to click the link, the title gives it away. Good luck to us.
In any case, we will not reach our full FI number by the time we move to Israel. Therefore, the only relevant question is…
How far into our journey to FI will we be by July 2026?
Based on my “regular” (which is more like a worst-case) scenario, we expect to be 46.34% FI by April 2026. We are still close enough to the 50% mark to make it happen. I think it’s going to be very close to that benchmark in the end.
As a reminder, this number is based on our UK level of expenses. I don’t know how expensive Israel will be for us. We’ll need to track our expenses for a few months there to get a better understanding. Also, I will have to learn all the little local tricks (like I learned in the UK) on how to save money, get free stuff, and reduce my tax bill.
The April 2026 model assumptions
My model assumes that only our ISAs, LISAs and pensions (essentially, our stock/equity investments) will generate an annual real return of 4%. Meanwhile, I assume our real estate and cash will retain their real value but not increase.
In addition, I assume no future income from teaching as I can’t reliably forecast how much I’ll earn from this side hustle. That means any future income from teaching will be treated as a pleasant surprise.
Another future income I ignore is my job’s annual bonus. Just like teaching, any future bonus is not guaranteed. That means that if my employer has a bad year, the bonus can potentially be 0%. My model assumes every year is such a year. Again, any bonus that does come through will be treated as a pleasant surprise.
I know these assumptions are very prudent but I prefer being prudent and positively surprised to “realistic” and having to deal with unforeseen issues.
Well, that’s our July 2023 results, have a great week everyone!
Notes
*CPIH- “Consumer Price Inflation including owner-occupiers’ Housing costs”. As we are consumers and we own our home- I think this is the best inflation metric for us. You can see the changes in the index here.
** You might get a slightly different number (by 0.01% or so). That’s due to rounding. The numbers I share are the accurate ones, the equations are so that you understand the way I calculate the numbers.
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