OK, I’m back. It’s time for the September 2023 results but I’ll change the format a bit so you can see all the numbers upfront. That means that if you only care about the numbers (all good, not judging), you can read the tables below and move on 🙂 no more need to scroll down.
For me, this new format achieves 2 things:
- It allows me to focus more on the personal life part, something for us to go through in future years, kind of a journal.
- As a numbers person, I would want to see the numbers first.
It’s also a much easier way to look at numbers rather than looking for them within paragraphs.
Finally, it makes the posts shorter and (in my opinion) easier to read
Please let me know your thoughts.
Savings rate
| Monthly | 58.61% |
| Past 6 months | 51.63% |
| Past 12 months | 47.69% |
| Year to date (since January) | 52.03% |
Net worth
| Change (%) due to savings | 1.32% |
| Change (%) due to market performance | – 0.50% |
| Total change (%) in net worth (nominal)* | 0.83% |
| Inflation** | 0.31% |
| Total change (%) in net worth (real) | 0.51% |
| % of FI number achieved*** | 34.13% |
**Inflation decreases our real net worth. I use 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.
***Reminder- I set our FI number (how much we need to retire) in July 2020 and I update it every month for inflation.
What have we been up to this month?
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 in more detail.
Elephant park
Lazy FI Mum continued to find new activities for us to do and new places for us to visit.
One weekend, she planned for us to go to Elephant Park. It’s a beautiful place (although a bit far for us) and the kids ended up having a great time (and so did we).
I love that Lazy FI mum finds these places. It lets us see other parts of London (I love London so much).
My daughter’s new school
While my daughter is still in nursery, her new nursery is in the same building as her future school. In addition, the nursery and reception are together in this school. My daughter is very excited to start “school” and so are we.
It took her a while to settle in, especially as she is one of the smallest (age and size) in her class. However, she already has a best friend.
This is still true even in April 2024, when I’m writing this. Wow, crazy to think it’s only been 6-7 months.
Oh, and she looks adorable in her school uniform!
My daughter’s first visit to the cinema
Her new school decided to take a field trip to the cinema to watch “The Lion King”. My daughter had never been to the cinema before so we were pretty excited. We were even more excited when we heard they needed parents to volunteer to go with the kids. Of course, I volunteered!
“The Lion King” can be quite intense for a 3-year-old. Scar, as his name suggests, can, well… scar a child. that’s why we decided she’d watch it at home first. I think she watched it twice at home (with Lazy FI Mum sitting next to her).
You can imagine my surprise when the movie started and it was the live-action one from 2019 and not the animated one from 1994.
First of all, who the f**k takes nursery kids to the live-action “The lion king?”. They took the whole school, up to year 6, which makes sense but nursery and reception? Not sure that was appropriate.
Also, no offence, but the live-action version is shit anyway.
In any case, my daughter enjoyed her first visit to the cinema and ended up talking to her friend for half the movie (she got that from her mum).
Mystery dining
One of the first things I taught my brother about London (and the UK in general) is mystery dining.
He got to the Platinum level pretty quickly and we started notifying each other when good dines were available.
One of the funniest things happened when we both caught the same dine with less than a week apart from each other. He took me as his guest and I took him so we ended up at the same fancy steak restaurant twice in less than a week. We enjoyed the second visit much more (as we knew what to order and what to avoid)
September 2023 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) and a loan to a family member
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. September was a “no childcare cost” month.
However, we still had to top up my daughter’s school account for lunches and buy her some school clothes.
Going forward, as my daughter is eligible for 30 hours free childcare, we won’t be topping her account each quarter, only on an ad hoc basis.
Loan to a family member
I loaned a small amount to a family member at the end of September, I got paid back the following week (in October). As I account for income and expenses based on when they were paid, this is an expense in September 2023 and will be an income in October 2023.
That’s it, this month was pretty “normal”.
When can we achieve FI (and possibly retire)?
Warning: This section is for new readers, it’s a copy-paste from last month’s results. If you’ve read any of my monthly results posts, please skip to the next section.
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 (unless I need a payslip for a mortgage).
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 April 2026?
Based on my “regular” (which is more like a worst-case) scenario, we expect to be 46.27% 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
Warning: Another copy-paste section mainly for new readers.
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.
Summary
All in all, a good month. Numbers are good, still over 50% savings rate YTD.
Our kids were (and still are today) happy and healthy, that’s all I ask for 🙂
Well, that’s our September 2023 results, Have a great week everyone.
