I've fallen down the rabbit hole of other people's investing diaries and blogs about retiring early.
Much of last week was spent reading and comparing what I'm doing to what others are doing.
Not sure how helpful that is to my situation but reading about the wealth-generating efforts of others can be inspiring.
And it's surprising how similar my thinking is to that of others. One blog poster spoke of losing out on promotions because he didn't do extra hours at work.
When I was a full-time, permanent employee I made sure to do all my contracted hours - but no more.
In at 8am (or more like half 7) and out at 4pm on the dot.
"My employer doesn't give me free money and I don't give them free work"
Please don't assume that I was a lazy employee. Quite the opposite. Indeed, due to the nature of the work it was straightforward to find smart shortcuts and so I would often be able to do as much in one hour as it took one of my less-capable colleagues ALL DAY to do. However, as he was a yes-man I'm pretty sure he was more highly regarded by management - what little we had of it.
If he was happy to do extra work then good for him. Turns out that none of us got payrises so it was all in vain anyway.
Welcome to the world of IT.
The moment the prospect of redundancy came up I JUMPED on it and walked off with a year's pay. Truth be told the only reason I stayed in the job so long was because I had a feeling I could snag a large bonus if I waited for the right moment to step to the front of the redundancy queue.
I've been self-employed ever since and never once regretted the decision. I've so many stories of office-based idiocy I could write a book.
But that's not the point. Where was I? Ah yes, other bloggers...
It's great to see that despite the trend being to publish every moment of your life on Facebook/Instagram there are still plenty of people who will update "old fashioned" blogs and websites with their financial independence progress.
For someone like me, who doesn't do Facebook and so can't or won't view progress reports on Zuckerberg's site, it's a result.
I'll put up a new page with a selection of decent blog reads shortly but in the meantime here's the state of play as of Friday's close:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM001 LM001-2 |
Equity Investment Instruments | 11/06/2018 16/09/2019 |
£2020 | £2360 | 16.72% |
| LM009 LM009-2 |
Gas, Water & Multiutilities | 05/02/2019 04/02/2020 |
£2020 | £2220 | 9.63% |
| LM012 LM012-2 |
Real Estate Investment Trusts | 20/05/2019 28/11/2019 |
£2030 | £2470 | 21.71% |
| LM014 LM014-2 |
ETF | 17/06/2019 02/12/2019 |
£1950 | £2770 | 41.62% |
| LM015 | ETF | 27/08/2019 | £970 | £920 | (4.36%) |
| LM016 | Travel & Leisure | 29/08/2019 | £1020 | £1070 | 5.29% |
| LM018 | Construction & Materials | 11/11/2019 | £1020 | £1130 | 11.70% |
| LM019 | Travel & Leisure | 11/11/2019 | £1020 | £1070 | 5.45% |
| LM020 | Software & Computer Services | 28/11/2019 | £1010 | £1120 | 10.59% |
| LM022 | Household Goods | 29/01/2020 | £1020 | £1060 | 4.23% |
Nothing bought, nothing sold and no dividends this week. It's smooth sailing at the moment so my investing efforts only involve a 5 minute check each weekday, a more thorough check/spreadsheet update on a Saturday and the 20 minutes it takes to do this weekly website update on a Sunday.
I keep thinking how amusing it would be if I managed to get my Lifetime ISA to £1mm by 2039 through "working" only an hour or so a week.
Half-term next week and I've got two 8 year olds and a 6 year old to entertain for 4 days. Wish me luck!