Tag: dividends

The stocks & shares ‘property’ portfolio, one year on

FIRE v London4 Comments

A year ago this week I sold my Modern Flat. And shortly afterwards, I reinvested £500k into a liquid stocks/shares portfolio with a property-like mandate. One year on, here’s a short review of the performance.

The portfolio has been set up to spit out £2000 pcm, which I take into general household expenses. This amounts to a 4.8% withdrawal yield on the £500k initial portfolio value.

What’s happened?

I ran out of money once, by about £100. As it happened, when that happened I ended up receiving a dividend on the 31st of the month which meant I had *not* in fact ran out of money, but by then I had already lent the portfolio the money to cover. I charged the portfolio £50 of interest costs for the trouble.

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Sep ’24: Ominous politics, juicy economics

FIRE v London1 Comment

September was fairly action-packed.

I enjoyed getting out on a friend’s boat around Poole and the Solent.

The Isle of Wight’s needles
Old Harry’s Rocks

I made it to the Labour party conference in Liverpool, which was fascinating albeit wet. I am apparently firmly in the tax-raising sights of the Government, but I wasn’t the only potential target at the conference.

I enjoyed some work drinks with an elevated view of the Thames.

I was also invited to a formal dinner at an Oxford college, Harry Potter style.

And I took an out of town visitor around some of the sights in London town.

Markets in September 2024

I didn’t pay enormous attention to the markets in September. The pound continued to rise. Equities generally were quite strong, though the wider mood in the UK is gloomy – with the new Labour government taking a ‘freebies’ hammering in the media, and business fearing the worst from the new government’s budget due on 30 October. Inflation news was mostly for the better, which helped bonds.

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