investing – Page 2 – FIRE v London

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

2025-10-19 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 ’25: Gains continue, and I trim

2025-10-112025-10-11 FIRE v LondonLeave a comment

September was a busy month.

In the middle of it we saw a disruptive tube strike. I don’t use the tube that much so didn’t expect it to affect me much but two important meetings were postponed, one of which still hasn’t happened, so that event has stayed in my memory. Thank goodness for rental bikes – Lime in particular played a blinder by ‘flooding the zone’ around train stations in particular.

The evenings are drawing in. But that does afford a new view of central London – there aren’t too many of those around – at the new development at Paddington station.