Page 20 - DIY Investor Magazine February 2018

Overall Wealth
THIS DISAPPOINTING, AND PROBABLY AVOIDABLE, WEAK RESULT HAS POTENTIALLY COST ME MANY THOUSANDS OF QUIDS’
concentrate a bit on Sky TV and BT Broadband - ‘The Power of Compounding’ blog will tell you that a pound saved today is equivalent to perhaps £5 in the future when it has been Compounded.
Conclusion
So there it all is in its glorious beauty; overall a good year but tinged with the disappointment that I had achieved pretty much the same as this by the end of May and in the last 7 Months of 2017 were rather frustrating at times with my portfolio nearly breaking out to new all time highs but never quite making it - hopefully I will see this early in 2018.
In addition, markets overall were very buoyant
and as I mentioned earlier, before I get all excited and congratulating myself it needs to be probably acknowledged that this was probably an ‘easy’ year if any such thing really exists.
Apart from doing something with my Unit Trusts I don’t plan to do a great deal at the moment - I am pretty much happy with the stocks I hold and I have learnt through bitter experience that it rarely helps to tinker too much. I will of course be alert for any pullbacks in the markets and ready to hedge a bit if need be, but that’s about it.
My focus really needs to go on my spreadbetting as
this is clearly where I am really underperforming what I think I should be able to achieve; this disappointing, and probably avoidable, weak result has potentially cost me many thousands of quids which I should have captured - obviously this is a situation that cannot continue.
Anyway, I hope you found this blog informative and helpful and here’s wishing all WD Readers a superbly lucrative 2018; gotta rush off now ‘cos there is the new Series of ‘Wheeler Dealers’ with the ‘new’ Ed China
on Discovery at 9pm - and obviously that is essential viewing for me !! (the clue’s in the name......)
Happy New Year, WD
After my 8th year of retirement and freedom (try it, it‘s marvellous) my overall wealth increased nicely so I am very pleased as my pot is now quite a bit bigger than it was at the start of 2017 - obviously this is a really handy thing because the bigger the pot becomes, the less return I need every year to eat etc.
Across all my stockmarket activities, I was up 15% on the year across my Trading ISA, my Spreadbetting Account, my Overseas Unit Trusts and my Income Portfolio, but this does not include my Prudential With- Profits Bond which I think has a partial exposure to stocks.
Spending
I spent the sum total of £16,724 on ‘living expenses’ in 2017, an increase of 14%.
Due to the government pretending to care about how costs are hitting low earners etc., my rent (I live in a housing association bungalow adapted for my use after I had a motorcycle accident in 1998 which resulted in me being a wheelchair user) supposedly reduced for 2017 and came to the princely sum of £6511 (although it was actually a ‘freeze’ rather than a reduction), so my living expenses excluding rent were £10,213.
I don’t pay any car tax on my Seat Leon because it
is registered as a ‘disabled vehicle’ - with 200 BHP!!
- and my subscriptions to Investors Chronicle and ShareScope/SharePad, which total £450-£500 come out of this, but I see these as essential living expenses!
I don’t have expensive holidays (really down to the physical limitations of being paraplegic - in all honesty going away just means hassle and health problems for me) and I don’t smoke or anything like that but I suspect if I really tried I could get my living expenses down to around £8000; I don’t obsess about it, but I think I will
DIY Investor Magazine | Jan 2018 20