Welcome to Lazy FI Family’s March 2024 results.
For those who only care about the numbers (all good, not judging), you can read the tables below and move on 🙂 After the numbers, I share what happened in our personal life and then what happened in our financial life.
Savings rate
| Monthly | 37.19% |
| Past 6 months | 48.82% |
| Past 12 months | 50.04% |
| Year to date (since January) | 45.50% |
Net worth
| Change (%) due to savings | 0.76% |
| Change (%) due to market performance | 2.90% |
| Total change (%) in net worth (nominal)* | 3.65% |
| Inflation** | 0.62% |
| Total change (%) in net worth (real) | 3.02% |
| % of FI number achieved*** | 40.23% |
**Inflation decreases our real net worth. I use CPIH- “Consumer Price Inflation including owner-occupiers’ Housing costs”. As we are consumers and 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 monthly 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.
The month of grandparents
Looking at photos from March 2024, I think it’s the first month all 4 of our kids’ grandparents were in London.
My dad’s visit
My dad came to visit us in London back in February, went to work elsewhere in England and then came back in March.
Lazy FI mum’s dad’s visit
Lazy FI Mum came to London for business and rented a 3-bedroom AirBnB flat, allowing us to stay at his place for a night. My kids loved it.
My mum’s visit
My mum came over to London at the same time my dad did. He stayed with us and she stayed with my brother. However, she still joined us on a trip to a London farm and I took her out for sushi (it wasn’t good).
Lazy FI Mum’s mum’s visit
I must admit I don’t really remember her visit (sorry!). The only thing I remember is that she took our daughter to a Disney exhibition and both of them absolutely loved it.
Our son’s birthday
Our son turned two and was very excited to wake up and see balloons in the living room. After nursery, we celebrated with our neighbours with a make-your-own-pizza party. Everyone had a great time (it was delicious, way better than that sushi).
Purim
During March, we had the holiday of “Purim”, where we dress up (kind of like Halloween but with a very different backstory). My son dressed up as a ladybug, I got an inflatable unicorn costume, and my daughter dressed up as Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
To this day, that girl in that yellow dress is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I try to keep this blog anonymous but I’m SO TEMPTED to show you how beautiful she was in that dress.
Every year, my son’s nursery and my daughter’s school dress up a bit before Purim and I dress up to take them to school. It’s always fun going with them to school. However, riding the bus home, dressed up, without the kids… yeah, that looks weird.
Bluey at Kew Gardens
In March 2024, the Lazy FI family, along with my brother and his wife went to Kew Gardens for a day. While other people might go there for the flowers and trees, my kids (I mean “I”) only wanted to see Bluey, and we did!
Wow, that was a busy month!
March 2024 results- What was different this month from a financial perspective?
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 holidays
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. March 2024 was a “no childcare cost” month, which should result in a higher savings rate for such months.
However, our daughter’s school requests an annual donation and we did that in March 2024 so in fact, this was a “childcare cost” month even though we didn’t top up our tax-free childcare account.
Holidays
In March 2024, we prepaid for flights to Greece for a holiday with my side of the family.
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 50.08% FI by April 2026. We are finally over the 50% mark, hallelujah! 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
From a financial perspective, 37.19% is pretty low for us but it’s mainly due to prepaid holidays and it was an annual school donation, so a low savings rate was expected. However, to see a forecast of over 50% of our FI number in April 2026 is very exciting.
From a personal life perspective, it was a fantastic month with so much going on.
Well, that’s our March 2024 results, Have a great week everyone.
