My exits – a post mortem

Readers will know that I dabble with active investing – I pick stocks.

Lord, make me passive, but not yet

Rather like The Investor at Monevator, I firmly believe in the merits of low cost index tracking as an investment strategy, but I also enjoy the thrills / intellectual excitement of deviating from the true path.

Over the years I have owned dozens of ‘single line’ stocks. These days, partly due to my competing desire to reduce complexity, I have a rather simpler portfolio with ‘only’ around 25 single company holdings.

One question I have wondered about for a while is: what happened to those stocks I used to own, but have ‘exited’? Was I right to exit them? Are the stocks I continue to hold better than the ones I used to own?

A full analysis of this question is beyond the scope of my blog or, for that matter, my abilities.

But let’s start with Facebook.

Continue reading “My exits – a post mortem”

From ISA $millionaire to £millionaire

The best tax break in the UK is the ISA tax-free savings regime. Each UK tax-resident adult can put £20k per year into an ISA account – use it for a wide range of investing activities – and not even have to report on what happens in those accounts, let alone pay tax on them.

This tax break is not exactly mass-market – not many people have £20k of spare funds every year – but for those of us who can avail of it, it is potentially enormous. Kids can have ISAs too, with an annual allowance of £9k. So a family of four, that can find £58k of liquid funds every year, can rapidly shelter a very large sum.

If you are a dual citizen, especially if you are a US citizen / green card holder, then Uncle Sam is certainly going to want to hear about these accounts and is absolutely going to tax them, but for plain UK citizens 100% resident in the UK, these tax breaks are awesome.

I’m now one of thousands of ISA millionaires

ISAs have now been around long enough that the number of investors whose ISA accounts exceed £1m is reaching many thousand. Expect to see this number skyrocket in the next few years. The top 25 largest ISAs average £11.66m of pot each – with I imagine a healthy dose of NVidia / similar holdings. If you haven’t followed the story of (Lord) John Lee, who is one of the first UK investors to amass £1m in ISA accounts, he’s worth checking out (£paywall).

My aim is to see my ISA accounts grow to well beyond £10m – which if I live another three or four decades, and the current policies don’t change, appears achievable.

Continue reading “From ISA $millionaire to £millionaire”

I’m 28, and can’t figure out how to start on FatFIRE – what would you do in my shoes?

From: Taz
To: FvL

Hi FvL

I’ve read your blog on and off for the past year or three. I graduated from the London School of Economics in 2017 after which I went through the hardest few years of my life mentally and ended up unemployed or in dead-end low paid jobs.

I currently work in the motor trade for Jaguar Land Rover earning £35,000 which I can save most of as I live at home.

I’m now 28 and can’t seem to figure out how to begin my FatFIRE journey, in terms of a job/career what would you do in my shoes?

Continue reading “I’m 28, and can’t figure out how to start on FatFIRE – what would you do in my shoes?”