Welcome to Lazy FI Family’s April 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	68.51%
Past 6 months	55.20%
Past 12 months	51.09%
Year to date (since January)	54.65%

Net worth

Change (%) due to savings	2.60%
Change (%) due to market performance	-1.37%
Total change (%) in net worth (nominal)*	1.23%
Inflation**	0.61%
Total change (%) in net worth (real)	0.62%
% of FI number achieved***	40.48%

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

HOLY SH*T, April 2024 was SUPER busy, so much happened then. Buckle up, this is going to be a long post.

Flight to Israel and my brother’s wedding

At the beginning of April, we flew to Israel for my brother’s wedding. This is the brother who lives in the UK. The kids had to be back in school and nursery and we had to be back for work (who said FIRE?), so we went for less than a week. That means that besides the wedding, we were rushing to meet all of our friends and family in the short time we had.

The wedding was awesome, we really enjoyed it. Lazy FI Mum’s mum took the kids home after the ceremony so we could stay and celebrate with the happy couple.

It was all going great until Iran decided to launch the biggest drone attack in human history against Israel, lovely.

Our nightmare way home

All flights from Israel were cancelled (naturally) and there were no flights to London. Our main goal was to get to anywhere in Europe and get a connecting flight. We managed to get a flight to Prague for the next day and another flight from Prague to London.
Level 1 complete.

Our flight from Israel to Prague flew as normal but for some reason, our connecting flight was cancelled. We were able to quickly book a different flight from Prague to London.
Level 2 complete.

My daughter’s second Febrile seizure

As we were waiting for our connecting flight in the airport, Lazy FI Mum started shouting to me “Lazy FI Dad! She’s having a seizure!”.
Flashback to May 2023, the scariest night of my life, when my daughter had her first febrile seizure.
This time, we knew what to do- she had to get to a hospital ASAP! We started running around the airport telling staff we needed an ambulance. They insisted on doing some tests at the airport and we kept insisting she needed a hospital ASAP. At some point, they tried to explain to me that an ambulance to the hospital would cost me a lot of money, to which we said “We don’t care, get an ambulance now”.

They then said there was only room for one other person in the ambulance. We agreed that Lazy FI Mum would take our son and get on their flight and that I would stay with our daughter. For them- Level 3 complete.

For me and my daughter- not even close.

While we were in the ambulance, the seizure ended but she was still burning up. The ambulance dropped us off in a children’s hospital. I’ll try and paint the picture for you:

It’s late evening, everything is pretty quiet, and we’re waiting to see a doctor. Suddenly, we hear shouting, a boy around 10-12 years old is trying to hit the policeman who brought him in. I don’t speak the language so have no idea what’s going on but keep my daughter close to me. After a few more minutes of shouting (I gave her my phone so she could watch Frozen, so she didn’t notice anything), it ended (I have no idea how) and the doctor came to see us. She was lovely, ran some tests and said my daughter had to stay overnight but I couldn’t stay with her as only mothers were allowed to stay there. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen!

After over an hour of one of the nurses trying to find us a hospital that we could stay in, they agreed for me to stay there but we couldn’t leave the room (fine).

After the scene with the violent kid, I didn’t feel comfortable staying there. Also, the sofa I slept on was further from the door than my daughter’s bed. I channelled my inner MacGyver and put the toothpaste pack we were given on the door handle so that every time someone opened the door- it fell on the floor and woke me up. Fun times! Around the afternoon of the next day, after a day of eating bread and butter, we were finally released and allowed to go home. I booked the first flight I could and finally: Level 3 was complete for us too.

I told you this post was going to be long, and this was only my first out of 3 trips/holidays in April 2024.

Also, I’ll talk about the cost of the Czech hospitalisation when we get to the numbers later in this post.

Center Parcs

A week and a bit after our unpleasant experience in the Czech Republic, the kids had time off from school and nursery for Passover.

As both kids were home, we headed to our favourite place- Center Parcs!
There was nothing very different in this visit compared to previous visits, which means we had a great time once again.

As usual, we spent a lot of time in the pool, the kids did some activities and we got excited when we saw wildlife walking next to our cabin, it was fantastic.

Edinburgh

As if we didn’t travel enough, I had one more trip in April 2024. A good friend of mine had his stag do in Edinburgh. We came back from Center Parcs on a Friday and I was on a flight to Edinburg early in the next morning.

Lazy FI Mum stayed with the kids for two days while I went to try some clay pigeon shooting and drink way too much cider.

As the stag do was still technically during Passover, it meant I couldn’t have anything with wheat which ruled out beer and most spirits. I was talking to another friend of mine who was also going and I told him I was planning on having wine that whole weekend (not the best idea, I’m a lightweight when it comes to alcohol anyway). I’m really happy I talked to him as he said “What about cider?”. Weekend sorted!

I really enjoyed that weekend, the guys were hilarious. I had lots of fun.

Wow, that was a busy month!

April 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), Holidays, Misc, Health, and Gifts.

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. April 2024 was a “no childcare cost” month, which should result in a higher savings rate for such months.

Holidays

A big part of our holiday expense was the trip to Israel. Although we prebooked the flights, we had to book new flights to London (through Prague) after our original flights were cancelled. In addition, there were the normal holiday expenses- renting a car etc.

Then, there were all the expenses related to Center Parcs (except the actual cost of staying there, which we prepaid for) and all the Edinburgh-related costs (except flights and hotel that were paid for in advance too).

Oh yeah, we also prepaid for flights to Crete in June 2024 for a holiday with my side of the family.

So yeah, lots of holiday-related expenses as part of our April 2024 results.

In April 2024, we prepaid for flights to Greece for a holiday with my side of the family.

Misc

Mainly the wedding gift and fixing my laptop (which I need to teach Excel) that my kids dropped on the floor. I love how I’m smiling/laughing to myself as I type these words.

Health

In April 2024, I learned that healthcare in the Czech Republic isn’t free. Thank god for the NHS.

We were charged for the paramedics who looked at my daughter in the airport, for the ambulance, and for the night in that hospital. It wasn’t cheap either. At that point, I was thankful for 2 things:

1. We are on the FI path and we had money to pay for the treatment and deal with money issues later. There wasn’t a “where do we get the money from?!” moment. This allowed me to fully focus on my daughter’s health.
2. We had travel insurance, which I called once the doctor finished her tests. They said we could keep the receipts and deal with everything once we got home.

Gifts

If you’re still with me and you’ve been paying attention to stories AND the numbers, you must be wondering:
“With all these expenses, how on earth did you manage a savings rate of 68.51%?”

Well, while in Israel, a relative from Lazy FI Mum’s side of the family gave us a very generous cash gift. This, of course, improved our April 2024 results.

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 49.84% FI by April 2026. After finally going over the 50% mark last month, we’re back under it! Thanks Mr. Market (*sarcasm*). Anyway, 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, it was a crazy month, with A LOT of expenses and one gift, which landed in a great savings rate altogether. However, to see a forecast of under 50% of our FI number in April 2026 is a bit annoying.

From a personal life perspective, despite the great wedding and our 3 very enjoyable trips, I will probably mainly remember the hellish way home from Israel and that night in the hospital. It is what it is. I’m happy this is all behind us now.

Well, that’s our April 2024 results, Have a great week everyone.