Welcome to Lazy FI Family’s May 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 | 60.34% |
Past 6 months | 56.26% |
Past 12 months | 54.81% |
Year to date (since January) | 56.00% |
Net worth
Change (%) due to savings | 1.77% |
Change (%) due to market performance | 0.54% |
Total change (%) in net worth (nominal)* | 2.31% |
Inflation** | 0.46% |
Total change (%) in net worth (real) | 1.84% |
% of FI number achieved*** | 41.23% |
**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.
My daughter’s birthday
The day before my daughter’s birthday, I went to our local shop to buy helium balloons. We like our kids to wake up on their birthday with balloons in the living room.
Anyway, our local shop was closed that day so I had to find another one, a bit further. I’m so happy I did! They had the best balloon selection I’ve seen, I was actually excited. I got a pink balloon with my daughter’s age and another balloon that had Anna on one side and Elsa on the other, she was very excited in the morning when she saw that.
For my daughter’s actual birthday, Lazy FI Mum took our daughter, her best friend (and her mum) to the cinema to watch Migration. They had an amazing time and me and my son met up with them afterwards for some pizza. My daughter was very happy (and so was anyone else of course, there was pizza). Well done Lazy FI Mum!
For a gift, we got Frozen musical tickets but more on the below.
My son’s medical condition
May 2024 will always be remembered (for me) as the month my son got hospitalised. I spent 3 weeks with him in hospital and as it’s a long story, I wrote a separate post on it, you can read it here.
Happy moments
While in the hospital, I left my son 3 times (Lazy FI Mum stayed with him of course) and it was all for happy reasons.
FA Cup final
The first time I left the hospital without my son was to watch the FA Cup final at Wembley. I went with my brother and another friend (who is also part of the FI community). It was an amazing experience (mainly due to the result). I was also happy that I was able to get back to the hospital much quicker than I expected.

Frozen Musical
It was my daughter’s birthday and I prebooked 3 tickets for the Frozen musical. My daughter loves Frozen and I knew she would love it. I also knew that Lazy FI Mum’s mum would be in London, hence 3 tickets.
I asked Lazy FI Mum to go with her mum and our daughter as I was in the hospital but she said I would enjoy it more and preferred to stay in the hospital. I really was missing quality time with my daughter (I guess she was missing quality time with our son).
We did enjoy ourselves and it was amazing to see my daughter (and my mother-in-law) so excited. Although, I did find it weird you weren’t allowed to sing along. It was a room full of little girls who knew “Let It Go” by heart. We still enjoyed ourselves.

London Eye
The following day, everyone came to visit again so Lazy FI mum and her mum stayed in the hospital with my son while I took my daughter to the London Eye, she loved it!
I know I’m not giving a lot of detail on these experiences (besides the birthday). That’s because, as mentioned above, May 2024 was all about the hospitalisation. I don’t remember much of anything else. This means it’s going to be mainly a numbers post.
May 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), Holiday, Bonus, and Health.
Childcare costs
As you may remember, we usually contribute to our children’s tax-free childcare account once every quarter (every 3 months). This causes a huge fluctuation in our monthly savings rates. As my daughter is old enough, we only contribute to our son’s account nowadays (woohoo!).
May 2024 was a “childcare cost” month, which should result in a lower savings rate for such months.
Holidays
Nothing special here, only a release of funds. When we rented a car in Israel back in April 2024, a large deposit was taken from our account (which was treated as an expense in April). In May, we got the money back so it’s a negative expense.
Bonus
As I already shared in the post about My son’s medical condition, I quit my job. Just before doing so, I got a very generous annual bonus which makes this whole month look very good.
Health
As part of the whole adventure of my son’s hospitalisation, we went to a private dermatologist and a private A&E. While these expenses were paid out of pocket, we got reimbursed for them in June, so the next monthly results will look very good (heads up: the numbers for June are WEIRD!)
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 50.16% FI by April 2026. We’re back over the 50% mark!
As I say every month, 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, great month! Over 60% savings rate in a month where we paid for childcare.
From a personal life perspective, we went through an experience I’d rather not have gone through. However, our son is doing much better, thank god. I’m thankful for the opportunity to be there for him.
I’m also thankful for our hard work and decision-making in the past as we were able to make decisions only based on “What’s best for our son?” and not worry about money or job security.
Well, that’s our May 2024 results, Have a great week everyone.