Welcome to Lazy FI Family’s August 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 | 68.43% |
| Past 6 months | 62.43% |
| Past 12 months | 57.86% |
| Year to date (since January) | 59.57% |
Net worth
| Change (%) due to savings | 1.20% |
| Change (%) due to market performance | 0.18% |
| Total change (%) in net worth (nominal)* | 1.38% |
| Inflation** | -0.08% |
| Total change (%) in net worth (real) | 1.45% |
| % of FI number achieved*** | 42.64% |
**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 over the past month. After that, we can talk about the numbers in more detail.
The Pooseum at the zoo.
I love London Zoo, I really do. It’s never too busy, it’s pretty easy to get to from our home, and they always have something going on. When we visited in August 2024, they set up a Pooseum, which is exactly what it sounds like; my daughter loved it (and found it funny)
Bluey at the Cinema
From time to time, they put some Bluey (we’re big fans) episodes under a theme and show them in the cinema. It’s a great opportunity for an age-appropriate movie.
This time, the theme was “Bluey at the Cinema: Family Trip Collection“. My daughter loved it!
My last day at work
In part 5 of “My son’s medical condition” post, I shared that I handed in my notice.
After working through my notice period, it was finally time to return my laptop.
Lazy FI Mum took my daughter to work once. She loved it and asked why she couldn’t come to my workplace. My (then) employer didn’t really accommodate that, but it was my last day, what could they do? Fire me?
I took my daughter to return the laptop and have lunch. It was a Friday, and she couldn’t believe she could choose between fish and chips or Pizza (Pizza won), and that they even had cupcakes at the canteen.
While I am much happier in my new job, I think my daughter wants me to go back to work where they serve chips, pizza, and cupcakes.
TFL day
My son is crazy about public transport, so I decided to take him on as many modes of transport as possible.
In one day, we managed to go on the:
- Bus
- Overground
- Tube
- Boat
- Cable Car
- DLR
I think we did everything except the tram and a taxi
Planning a day around these modes of transport naturally led us to Greenwich. We both had an amazing day. We even replicated that type of day with Lazy FI Mum and our daughter (and son, of course) a few months later.
Family visits
We started the month with Lazy FI Mum’s dad came over.
We went with him and the kids to two museums (on separate days)- the Cartoon Museum (where the kids got to dress up) and the Paradox Museum, which was more about optical illusions.
Towards the end of the month, Lazy FI Mum’s mum came over, and we even had a day trip to Amberley, including Amberley Museum, which my kids loved! It had old buses and trains, so my son was an easy sell, but my daughter had a great time too.
We actually spent some time in the museum, left for a local pub for lunch, and then came back to the museum, as my kids loved it so much.
I highly recommend it and have to give credit to Lazy FI Mum for organising the trip.
August 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, Excel and Misc.
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!).
August 2024 was a “childcare cost” month, which resulted in a lower savings rate.
As announced in the 2023 UK budget, from September 2024, all kids between 9 months and 3 years old will start getting 15 hours of free childcare. This should really help our journey.
Holidays
While my dad was here in July, Lazy FI Mum booked another visit to Center Parcs for September 2024.
We booked a 4-bed cabin for us, the kids, my dad, and Lazy FI Mum’s mum.
As soon as Lazy FI Mum booked it, my dad offered to pay for it. He repaid us in August, so this was a holiday expense in July 2024, but is a “negative expense” in August 2024.
In addition, in April 2024 results, I shared with you the story of our nightmare way home from Israel.
This included a cancelled flight with Virgin Atlantic, for which we got airline credit. In August, a family member used it and paid us the value of the credit voucher.
As this money was categorised as an expense when we originally booked this holiday, in August 2024, this is treated as a “negative” expense.
Excel
I had two different clients pay me for Excel courses, which obviously improved our August 2024 results as well.
Misc
Our neighbours from upstairs went away on holiday during July 2024, so Lazy FI Mum’s mum sublet their flat from them.
I paid my neighbour in July 2024, and Lazy FI Mum’s mum repaid us in August 204. It’s another case of an expense in July 2024 and a “negative expense” in August 2024. Crazy that we had three of these in one month!
Wait, I forgot, there’s a fourth one, hahaha.
I also got reimbursed by my employers for paying my annual fee for my accounting license, which I paid back in December 2023!
So yeah, four.
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 51.11% FI by April 2026. I’m still excited to be 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 be as low as 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 being “realistic” and having to deal with unforeseen issues.
Summary
From a financial perspective, it was another decent month. Our savings rate of 68.43% is artificially high because of 4 (!) “negative expenses” that reverse old expenses. If I ignored these four expenses, our savings rate would be 44.10%, which is more in line with other months where we pay for childcare.
From a personal life perspective, it was great spending quality time with family and finally returning my laptop and closing that chapter of my life.
Well, that’s our August 2024 results. Have a great week, everyone.
