Dad on FIRE

  Phew! What a month! For those of you that have been following me for a while, you'll know that I took the entirety of August off work, 6 weeks in total, through Unpaid Parental Leave. And boy did we pack a lot in, more on that in the non-Finance update but first...   Finance update After being up £60k in May and £55k in July, August was fairly meh, closing at up just £2k. I've also had a fair amount of negative months this year (-£36k in Feb and -£25k in April) so at least it wasn't that bad! Breakdown for July: ISA  up £2k Pension  up £5k GIA /easy access savings up £1.5k Crypto  down £8k House price  down £2k Total : up £2k Such is the way with Crypto, it's a hell of a rollercoaster, and one that I've been sat on for approaching 10 years now. I'm used to the ups and downs, but as Crypto - and Bitcoin especially - become more mainstream and thus the price gets bigger, the monthly ups and downs become bigger and bigger. Not necessarily all down to big cry...

Apologies for the delay on this one, it'll be a short one this month as I'm in the middle of the Summer hols with the kids, and trying to pack in a lot! .... More on that in August's update.   Finance update Another fantastic month in July, ending up £55k! Markets did well, as did Crypto. Breakdown for July: ISA  up £12.5k Pension  up £14k GIA /easy access savings up £3k Crypto up £16k House price  up £5k Total : up £55k For those of you who are regular readers you'll know that I opted to put in a couple of grand into Premium Bonds last month;  "I'm very conscious that the Premium Bonds prize rate has just been lowered again, however I'm running out of pots to put it". (Me last month) I found out at the start of August that this had won me £100! So even if I win sod all else for the rest of the year, then this will effectively work out at 5% interest, a lot higher than the effective rate (average across holdings for chance of winning) which is 3.6% I p...