Has anyone else noticed as you get older time seems to fly passed with an ever-increasing speed? It doesn’t seem that long ago that I last wrote a massive update on here and yet looking back it’s actually been over 6 months. Alot has changed in that time so perhaps now is as good as any to provide an update for anyone who still lurks around these parts.

Work

Back in April I had some (relatively minor) surgery which meant a few weeks off work, this was then immediately followed by other events which meant I had 6 weeks away from work in total. During that time a new round of redundancies were announced in my department although thankfully no-one from my team was affected. It’s no secret that my company is shrinking and they continue to offshore work to cheaper continents so the threat of redundancy is never far away. My team are now one of the largest in the department and our work is primarily supporting other users so if the size of the UK headcount reduces it has a direct impact on our workload. The result is that our team is now without doubt over-staffed and there’s just not enough work to really go round everyone. I’d be shocked if we didn’t have a target on our backs in the next round of redundancies.

This was all brought home when I returned to work after my long time off and had a meeting with my line manager who was very open about the fact that we really didn’t have that much to be doing on day-to-day activities. I’ve always got on well with my manager so he was very honest in saying that for the past month the team has been trying to ‘look busy’ rather than actually being particularly busy, and that my return will only make the issue more evident. I was totally honest with him, and he knows me well enough to know anyway, in saying that without much work to focus on; my attention would drift elsewhere. Previously that meant starting to look around for employment elsewhere however with the last 6 weeks off giving me time to focus alot more on my side-hustles it gave me a great taste of the possibility that perhaps I ought to just jack-in the whole 9-5 entirely.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for awhile now, heavily encouraged by a couple of friends in the FIRE community who think I’m mad for staying at the day job anyway now I can consistently earn more on the side-hustles. Personally I’m not sure I could morally accept seeing another member of the team go through redundancy knowing I didn’t actually need the job myself anyway.  I also thought perhaps I could go part-time, although that would certainly paint an even bigger cross on my back and might not even save another member of the team either.

Things feel like they are at a bit of a crossroads with regards to work at the moment. The very focus of this site and my financial goals have always been to retire early so I had more free time to spend as I wished. Perhaps that needs to be re-evaluated to more of a semi-retire-early plan with part-time work or solely focusing on the side-hustles and self employment?

Life

At the start of the year my wife & I went for an incredibly cold holiday in New York. It’s always been on my wish list to visit and we utilised a 2-for-1 voucher and BA airmiles from all our wedding spending to purchase 2 business class return tickets, paying just the taxes. The whole business class experience was amazing and has totally ruined economy flying for me now! New York was great but it’s kind of a “been there, done that” for me, I don’t think it’s somewhere I need to visit again having seen all the main tourist sights and not being much of a foodie to enjoy the high-end restaurants.

The wife standing up to Wall Street

My surgery back in April didn’t go completely to plan and as a result I ended up being signed-off from work for 3 weeks. On the day I was due to return to work it seems fate had other ideas and my wife went into labour a few weeks early. We did the whole movie style dramatic dash to the maternity ward at midnight on Wednesday and were blessed with the arrival of our son on Thursday afternoon.

 

Mother and baby did a fantastic job, and they are both doing well. My wife has taken to motherhood really well, despite the lack of sleep and our boy is already growing at an alarming rate. Everyone told me that having a child would completely change my outlook on life but personally I haven’t really had that feeling. I wonder if perhaps working towards FIRE naturally sets you in the ‘preserve and build for the future’ kind of mindset many new parents develop?

 

Money

Last year was the first time I managed to completely fill my ISA allowance and i’m already over half-way to filling the 19/20 allowance for this year. It’s been great to see meaningful investment increases and pretty soon we’re going to have to open a S&S ISA for my wife to start using her previously un-used allowance.

Matched Betting continues to be my primary source of income. I’ve started taking advantage of a new offer which gives a level of sustainability not previously seen from anything else. The result has been a record breaking month in May despite the end of the football season and June is looking very strong too. I’m not kidding myself that eventually the whole Matched Betting gig could end one day but while it continues I’m going to hammer it as much as possible.

The Matched Betting Guy site continues to grow and the Facebook group along with it. I finally released my Minimum Bet Guarantee Course which was months in the making, delayed primarily due to having a baby so I gave myself some leeway there. I was initially worried as I received a flood of negativity when the course was first released, it seemed 7 or so people took great offence to the idea of being charged for this new content I’d worked on for countless hours whereas all my previous content has been freely consumed for a couple of years now. A bit of digging showed all of this negativity was coming from staff members of other matched betting groups and so I suspect it may have been a coordinated attack on their competitor. All the offending accounts were blocked and uptake of the course has been strong since. I was very pleased to see course members already reporting decent profits and hopefully everyone will get value from it. On the FIRE side of things it has been great to get this new passive source of income up and running, hopefully the sales will continue trickling through. If any readers of this blog are interested in buying the course, please drop me an email and I’ll set you up with a discount by way of thank you for reading through my occasional ramblings here.

I suspect many would have found it difficult to ignore all the hype around Trading212 earlier this year with their fantastic new account offer giving away shares. As a result; every UK financial forum and blog were flooded with people posting their affiliate links in order to gain some free shares for themselves. I too jumped on the bandwagon early and posted a single link in my matched betting facebook group while on holiday in New York. I was shocked to wake up and see I’d had a flood of signups and made well over £2000 in affiliate shares. Apparently the early shares given away were anything from £10-£99 each whereas later on they greatly reduced the giveaway to just £5 so it had been good timing on my part.

 

 

Income/Networth

From Matched Betting I made £7,223.94 in May. 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 May was £187.60. This is all income from recommending the Matched Betting guide sites I use like Profit Accumulator.

Minimum Bet Guarantee Course sales so far in June have come to £3,282.56

Free shares earned from Trading212 over the past 6 months came to £2423.92

 

 

Networth

House Equity: £193,074 (House revalued & combined with wife)

Cash in bank: £5,777

Cash in betting accounts: £55,684.68

ISA Investments: £69,516.52

Other Investments: £2,017.75

Pension 1: £21,127.43

Pension 2: £12,768

Pension 3: £23,240.56

Total Networth: £383,206