Millionaire Challenge

UltimateNYC

Hi everyone!

Sorry it's been a while since I last popped up. Lesson Learned, I do you hope you are ok, I cannot imagine how difficult things have been for you, but I am so thankful for everyone on here who has rallied around with best wishes: it's such a lovely forum to be a part of!

Things have been going ok from this end I suppose; March has been a big month so far, with big outlays for birthdays and some unexpected expenditures, but I think I've managed ok. I can't quite believe how far my mindset with regard to spending and saving has come in just a few short months; thank you all for your advice!

I suppose the biggest development for me is that I've taken the plunge and opened an ISA! It doesn't sound a big deal, and granted there's not a huge amount in it, but for me it was more a psychological step, a commitment to properly saving, putting out of reach a sum of money for the future. It's a good feeling!

lessonlearned

Good evening everyone.

Well what can I say. I went down with the flu, today is the first day Ive felt human. :rotfl:

Needless to say ive done nothing, even reading was too much of an effort. So no news this end.

Good to see you making such good progress, Biscuits. No harm in trying for 5 years. If you manage then great, if it takes a bit longer then you've not lost anything.

NYC - well done on the ISA. Mighty oaks grow from little acorns.:D

A few more days resting and playing catch up with all the stuff i have let pile up whilst I have been unwell and then it's back to the master plan.

Karmacat

Morning! LL, sorry to hear you've had that flu - its no joke this year, it really isn't, I'm still catching up on the garden, which I wasn't able to tend to for months - even during the slow season, brambles still got going and spread. Nearly under control now tho.

Biscuits - not seen your post till now, sorry! I think thats a great idea, to aim to accelerate to get the next £100k, that should certainly be possible: of the pension savings listed in my sig, almost half come from increases to my established pension funds - the wonders of compound interest, in other words.

My own stuff is going not too badly - I've finally designed my book cover and proof read the book again, since the last time I did it was before Christmas (that was the effect of the flu!). I've started to write articles for my own blog in support of the book, and they've been well received, tho its a small audience so far.

And I've joined elance, as a writer, but not seriously tried to get any commissions yet - been going through havoc on the domestic front, breakdowns of appliances etc, you all know what its like, I think! I hope to be putting in some tenders for work by Friday, tho.

Broken_Biscuits

cheers, yeah i don't earn loads. Not much over 20k gross to be honest, so to increase net worth by about 20k a year is going to have to come largely from the work ive already put in place and the effects of compound interest as you say.

although unlikely to be sustainable, my pension is currently giving 9% returns. House prices could realistically go up 5% a year and obviously gearing means in getting returns on the bits i don't own too. Cash is earning 5%. Peer to peer is earning 6.2% and above.. the stocks and shares isa is less than a month old so too early to say. still only spending 70% max of what i earn so adding value there too. unless house prices and the markets majorly crash/reverse then i would think that fast forward a few years and i will be improving net wealth by considerably more than my annual salary.. I could, if the mood takes me, stop saving entirely and live off the good work already done. Hard to change a mindset though!

ratesetter is addictive. Put another £400 in there yesterday. I don't like getting partial repayments of a few quid... meaning they are sat there waiting to get to a tenner before they are reinvested. So bung some more in to be able to get the repayments reinvested. I worked out i need about 15k in there spread out over the days to make sure each day gets £10 or more paid meaning i can completely stop paying so much attention as the money wont be sat idle with auto reinvest. Im about 10% into that target!

lost the lodger and quite enjoying the freedom so that's an income stream lost.

it all looks good when written down, but with about 50% net worth in shares/pension there's always that nagging fear that something can and will all blow up and ruin the best of plans!!!

sorry to hear a few of you havnt been well. The suns trying to come out and fix it all!

Karmacat

Hi BB - I'm hearing a lot about P2P at the moment, must research that a little further.

As for things going boom, yes, I'm really tempted to change some of my pension money over to bond funds ... doesn't seem sensible otherwise, quite frankly.

Broken_Biscuits

im thinking of using peer to peer instead of/ as well as bonds. They work fairly similarly with what appears to be higher returns. The only factor is risk. Ratesetter claim that no one has lost capital.

im thinking of going 80% equities, 10% bonds and 10% p2p.

Black_Dynamite

This thread is so inspiring, well done BB, great work! Me and the better half have a net worth of around £30k at the minute. This is £20k in our house and £10k in savings. With house prices rising, this is probably closer to £40k now, we brought when the market was hitting bottom a few years ago.

A few developments for me, I've been hovering just over the £1,000 per month in my freelance business for the last few months, February saw me make £1,500 which was amazing. Gave me a massive confidence boost.

This month I'm still in shock, I've already made £800, plus a new client has just accepted a quote for a new website for £1,000 which they're going to pay up front at the weekend. Pretty much unheard of in my business! Also, with a little luck 2 of my biggest clients have just provisionally accepted quotes for £900 and £800.

So if I do no extra work but for the 3 projects above, I will have made £5,000, before tax, in three months (Feb, March and April)! Coupled with my monthly salary and that's a total of nearly £12,000, before tax, in 3 months, crazy amount of money for the area I live in!

My fianc! is 6 months pregnant and we're planning on moving next year to a bigger house so this extra income is going straight towards lowering the amount we need to borrow. I'll then concentrate on over-paying the mortgage each month.

Next step for me is to make this extra income work for me, I'm hesitant to use a P2P service but I love the idea of it. What are the chances I'll lose the money that I invest? Does anybody have any bad experiences?

Realistically, I've got £500 per month I can pile into something like this, I don't mind taking risks, aslong as the reward is worth it.

I'm 26 and my "aim" is to be retired from a day job by the time I'm 40. That means no mortgage on my main home, tenants on any other property that are paying off the mortgage and making me a nice monthly amount. Long way to go but i'm starting strong!

Kayalana99

It's so interesting reading about all this, I've never touched stock market bonds or P2P, to be honest I don't have any spare money to invest...although hoping that's going to change this year.

My Dad's dropped a bomb shell on me that he is going to gift me £1,500 towards the wedding... (could of told us this earlier haha weddings in June) but obviously we didn't know this was coming and we already have all the money in place bar £500 for the honey moon but I had it all worked out and we would of had the money by June.

This has never happened to me before if it makes sense I am waiting for the big bill to come!? My Dad and my Grandad have gifted me lump sums in the past but for some reason they are always after a bomb shell (that they didn't know of) and the money is put towards the problem..(I know I'm a lucky sod in first place to get gifted such amounts one thing this wedding has made me realise is how lucky I am to have such great parents and friends...)


I'm wavering on this house move now...I can see the money piling up over the next year and IF we move we'd be starting again, plus we would be further away from everyone which I thought I wanted (just far enough away that they can't pop over but not to far that we can't come back whenever we like) but the more I think about it the more I see what we would be missing out....on the other hand if OH struggles with these long drives/early mornings/bad traffic I don't see a choice in the matter because I would rather things be easier for him in the long run. (He starts his new job this Monday so going to see how we go) The plan for now is still to move in March 2016 though and I will plough the savings into that, so hopefully once (if) we move then we can start saving to invest.

If for some reason the house move doesn't go ahead I think the plan for March 16 will be to pay £5k of the mortgage unless I need the money to reinvest in the business(I'm estimating if I don't spend to much on the business this is how much my profits will be about.) and then we can concentrate on getting our first B2L...in fact we are £7,100 short of 25% eq in this house, assuming I took the extra 1k (Dad's gift) and the mortgage I think goes down about £800 a year (or did this year) ...if I could just pull that 5k together that would be more or less 25% in the house...so then we'd just need the money for the next house deposit. Obviously if we move or I can't raise the 5k (I don't see why not but I guess I lack faith/always feel like something is going to go wrong) this is all goes back to the drawing board

Long story short though if nothing unexpected comes up, we should have a nice lump sum to put in our house fund at least....

I guess as per my goals theirs the dream of the decent garden for the kids to play in and the better kitchen...I guess we'd be sacrificing quality of life to get ahead but realistically assuming nothing drastic happens these figures in mind in 3 years (2 years to save the extra 10-12k for the next house) we could have a B2L...

Karmacat

For both Black Dynamite and Kaya, have you read MrMoneyMustache? For BD, its a great push towards Financial Independence for anybody in their 20s and 30s. Kaya, I think you know of it, but he has a lot to say about long commutes - might help you and your OH think it through. I'm loving what he's writing about.

Kayalana99

Thank you I did just read one of his articles on commuting and it makes sense, I think my hopes lie on him car sharing. If I didn't say before (I think I did?) that one of his new work mates literally lives 2 min walk away... cross our street down a alley type thing onto a new street and his co worker lives on that street...and the best part is the car is owned by the company so the worker doesn't pay petrol but until he starts we just don't know what's going to happen.