It’s already May, the sun is shining and so what better time to take a look back at the past month.

Work

Work continues to tick on by with increasing predictability. I work in an open plan office but it may as well be 6ft high cubicals on some days. My work has certainly got to the point now where nothing is particularly challenging anymore and so I can have most daily tasks completed within an hour leaving the next 7 to ‘look busy’. I don’t really mind that so much as it means I can spend time reading information online, writing updates for my website and extended lunch breaks wandering round town hitting the bookies. My manager knows I’m not busy but doesn’t seem too fussed at all, I guess he just needs me in the office on the odd occasion something urgent does pop up.. which I’m totally cool with.

Life

I started back at my local weekly Parkrun in April. It was a real struggle to get down there after several months of Saturday lie-ins. The first run time was not particularly good but not as bad as when I first started last year so at least things haven’t totally slipped. I’m keen to get back to my < 25min times so will try to get back into the routine of practice runs and a healthier diet.

A couple of weeks ago I began tracking my drinking on the excellent DrinkAware App. I shared the results with a friend of mine who works in the medical field and she was shocked at how high my average weekly intake was. I’ve always enjoyed drinking, I don’t do it because I’m stressed or depressed or need it to be social or any other number of stereotypes. I drink because I enjoy doing it, I enjoy the sensation and enjoy being drunk at the end of it. Unfortunately this is one hobby which is bound to catch up eventually so I’ve been doing some reading on it and am going to try and cut down especially on the weekday evenings.

Money

I made some large lump some deposits to my S&S ISA to get them in before the deadline at the start of April. My plan now is to invest most of my matched betting profits each month into the ISA up to the 20k limit. This should get me to £250k invested within 10 years as things are currently going. I’ll then using savings from the normal job income to overpay the mortgage and have that cleared within the next 7ish years leaving me with a fully paid off decent sized home and enough investments to sustain a £10k per year income.

While I’m grateful to my accountant for getting me out of the fix last year, his response times to simple enquirers was beginning to worry me. Last month I decided to switch to another accountant and I’m pleased to say they are much more responsive. My plan here is to have them prepare my self-assessment for the next couple of years before attempting it myself. The actual calculations are likely very basic but without any communication from the old accountant it was impossible to work out just how he had come to some of the figures.

Income/Networth

From Matched Betting I made £2,429.11 in April. As always I go into more detail of what bets I’ve done to make that profit on Matched Betting Guy Blog.

Affiliate income paid at the end of April was £263.87. This is all income from recommending the Matched Betting guide sites I use like Profit Accumulator.

On to the report:

Income

Salary: £2,261.28

Pension Contributions: £608.40

Matched Betting: £2,429.11

Affiliates: £263.87

Total: £5,562.66  (-13%)

Networth

House Equity: £88,106.74

Cash in bank: £3,483.12

Cash in betting accounts: £25,030.33

ISA Investments: £34,929.79

Other Investments: £2.730.77

Pension 1: £20,091.61

Pension 2: £12,074

Pension 3: £13,538.07

Total Networth: £199,984.43 (+4.2%)