 |
| Summary of March 2023 |
Lest we forget... war is still ongoing and it is very close to us. People are still losing their lives to defend their country. Inflation is still high and many countries have serious strikes going on either due to pay or due to increased pension age. Governments wants us to stop drinking, smoking and using drugs so that we live longer and once we live longer they increase the age required for us to go into retirement. Robotics will be the solution and not growing population and kicking the can to the next generation to pay the price and increasing the age of retirement is in my opinion also not the path to walk. Forcing a construction worker to work for 40 years with his or her body in shambles is just a disgrace.
Lately I've been poking around with AI, so pretty much every evening I'm asking questions and reasoning with ChatGPT or Bing AI. ChatGPT is clearly more intelligent and I prefer to work with it but I must also say that in the last week I've truly felt how ChatGPT has become more intelligent. It will be interesting to see what happens when it realises or starts acting on that mankind is a parasite on this lovely planet that we are inhabiting surrounded by in the cold, harsh Universe. There are gains (personal and business ones) to be made, for sure, using AI and currently I'm mainly using it as a clever source of information but I need to take it to the next level...
I did in the end hand in my letter of resignation on the 28 February and my final day will be sometime in the end of May. Are my calculations correct? We'll see. If not, then I'll just have to take a job again - I'm not worried, but sure, another year working and I could have bought a better place and had a much bigger buffer to rely on. No retreat no surrender!
At work I'm pushing the projects to the max to make sure that I walk away with the company and the team in an as good place as possible. I've heard about it before but I truly do believe that Swedish people have very high work moral. The UK boss assumed that I would just be slacking off and not be doing anything these three months of notice, which probably says more about him than it does me...
The significant reduction of the payment into the ETF mix (company pension scheme) leaves me with a lot more cash out each month. There might be a bit of a tax issue... I'll deal with that as and when it comes. Anyway... this means that I can directly when the new UK tax year starts on 6 April, transfer £20k to my stock ISA and invest it. It might sound irrational especially considering that I will need cash in the near future however, I do not know exactly when and I also have not decided if I will use the German or the UK broker account to buy the future property and until I've settled upon that I will move forward with what is currently the most financially beneficial option for me, which is to push money into the UK stock ISA.
I must also think about what to do with this blog once I step into my F.I.R.E. Should I report on how life is going on in a different blog/vlog? Should I just walk away and provide no further reports? Will I become even more active in buying and selling stocks to generate cash and then report on that?
For the previous summary please visit Summary of February 2023.
The total invested value is now at: 337,989 €. A minor monthly investment was made in ETF Mix with fresh cash.
The value of the portfolio is today: 466,743 € and I have 1,787 € in cash on my broker accounts. I have realised gains of 6,471 € and unrealised of 128,753 € (28%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 70% of my portfolio.
DAX is now up to 15,629 points which means that it has increased by 2.8% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has decreased by -0.9% in the same time period.
Conclusion: Lately the seas have been stormy and DAX has really been going well. I must however say that having recently bought UK banks just ahead of SVBs issues hasn't helped but I'm fairly pleased with my portfolios development considering how the stock markets in many countries (clearly Germany excluded) have decreased and I've pretty much just treaded water.
5 comments:
Good luck! Greetings from the other side!
What is your ETFs Mix, MSCSI World ?
Maybe you can explain your FIRE Life a bit. Maybe I missed something but do you think this fund will be enough to finance your Life?
Congratulations Frederik on taking this next step on your way to F.I.R.E.! I have been following your blog over the years and enjoyed to read about your journey, your decisions, the investements and see how thongs played out. All very relatable. Hope you keep us update going into FIRE using this blog, so we can keep following that part of your journey too.
All the best!
@2025 - Thank you! I'll get there soon!
@Matthias - The ETF mix is my company pension fund that is being held with the insurance company Aviva. I've there handpicked three low fee ETFs (since Aviva is also taking a fee) and they are 50% Aviva pension International Index Tracking S2 which is held in USD, 30% of Aviva pension Blackrock EU Equity Index tracker S6 and held in EUR, and finally 20% Aviva pension UK equity S6 held in GBP. The boost is coming from that for every 1 GBP you add you get 20% taxfree meaning in effect every 1 GBP provides 1.2 GBP of share holding. When I started to use it one could take out 1/4 taxfree at the age of 55 years. Now they have expanded that to 57 years (which is insane that they've done to do since it is my private money!) and they are talking about it increasing even further to 58 years to prevent people from retire too early.
@Anon - According to my calculations yes. Plan: Bought van in Sweden, drove it to the UK and will use it to move back my stuff to Sweden. Convert the van to "functional" camping van during the summer while enjoying life in my summerhouse. The van will not be fancy and must be easy to bring back to a functional van again. Drive to the south of Europe and see all my friends on the way. Look at places to buy (less than 100k €) in European locations that have <30 min to a warm beach and <1h to a ski resort. Once I've found it then buy it and start to fix it up including greenhouse to grow food, solar and wind power (off-grid), rainwater collection for ALL water purpose to keep running costs low. I live today on 1,200 GBP per month of which half is my rent. I have no debts and with no rent, less food costs, no electricity and no water costs then I'm expecting to live on less than 1,000 € per month, probably A LOT LESS. I can do this until I turn 57 and will then be able to take out the 1/4 taxfree from the UK private pension (I expect that to be ~90k €, time for a house upgrade?) + 13k per annum for every year afterwards until I die. I started this journey because I have worked in several EU countries and was uncertain if I would ever receive any pension. I have worked for 20+ years so I will receive something the day I turn ~65 years on a monthly basis from the collected EU pension pots, though not included in my calculations and will just be another boost. I'm sure it will work out. Worst case scenario I will have to work a bit again and probably I will anyway but more for the social aspect of it and not due to an actual need for it. I have no kids and since my divorce in 2020 I also have no wife. There is no need for me to leave something behind which means my holdings will go down over the years, many FIRE people seems to fear this and just wants to live on what is generated in dividends and share price increases. I fully understand why, it is in human nature, but I see no need for it. The big holding reduction will start when I need to take out 100k € from my investments to buy the property which should happen sometime in autumn 2023. I hope this answered your question.
@Jan - I shall do my very best! If it all goes wrong for me then there will hopefully be a lesson also in that.
Post a Comment