October 2025 update

Finance update Breakdown for December: ISA flat Pension up £2.3k GIA /easy access savings up £0.5k Crypto flat House price down £10.5k Total : down £2.5k I know I used this meme during the November update, but it's staying in again for December, just swapping out Crypto for house price! With my ISA and SIPP both pretty equal in terms of value, the difference in underlying performance is due to the funds underneath. My ISA (fully in equities) was flat for December, whilst my SIPP has a good chunk of Gold ETFs in it, which performed well during December. I tend to update house prices when Zoopla does about mid-month, and it looks like it fell off a cliff in December, not that it matters that much as I've no intention of moving anywhere. I was very pleased to see the announcement of Interactive Investor in December that they are changing their fees in Feb 2026. I swapped over to the platform because the flat fees makes a lot of sense when you have bigg...

October 2025 update

Finance update

Breakdown for October:

ISA up £6k
Pension up £6k
GIA/easy access savings up £2.8k
Crypto up £2.5k
House price up £4.5k

Total: up £25.5k

A good lift up in October again, with gains across all assets, especially surprised that house prices seem to keep ticking up.

One quick addition to a thing I mentioned last month, some of you might remember that I've swapped a chunk of my easy access savings from Chase to Cahoot as the Chase rate was dropping and the Cahoot one seemed decent (5% up to £3k). If you do decide to go with this then if you go through TopCashback then you'll get an additional £25, making it effectively 5.83%

2025/26 tax year:

Total change since the start of the tax year is now +£173k.

Really happy with how the year has been so far. With Winter approaching, I'm aleady making a few plans for what to do in the next few months and analysing the cashflow around the end of the tax year. Here's how it looks:

At the minute I've got some odd savings in Premium Bonds, Cahoot, Marcus, First Direct (Regular Saver 7%!) as well as some in my GIA. The amount I have for saving/investing after bills have been looked after is roughly £3300, which twinned with the existing savings pots should be enough to put in my target of a £12k lump sum to my SIPP come next March, and also it means that I should in theory have enough to put in the full £20k into my S&S ISA on the first day of the new tax year. This would be the first time that I've been managed to do this, I think the earliest I've done in previous years has been about June time. After I've done this I will focus on filling up my Premium Bonds account as it will be back down to £0 if this plan comes off.

Saying that, I do have a few expensive months coming up. We obviously hacve Christmas, but I also have both kids birthdays either side of it, as well as MOT and service for both cars!

Non-Finance update

Roman Gladiator Exhibition at the Royal Armouries

A self confessed history geek, I used to live next door to the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds for about 7 years. If you've never visited, it's a fantastic Museum in Leeds which houses an enormous amount of arms and armour, with collections spanning from ancient weapons to modern military technology. They even have elephant armour!
Entrance to the museum is completely free, but at the minute they have a paid exhibition all about Roman Gladiators. We took the kids to this during October and they loved it, very immersive and extremely educational! Personally I learnt all about the different classes of gladiators and what different weapons they had.

Boys trip to Prague

I feel extremely grateful that approaching 40 years old, I'm still in touch with close friends I made at age 12 when I started high school. We live spread out across the length and breadth of the country but we try our best to keep in touch with each other and once in a blue moon we get to meet up. This was a bit more regular when we were all getting married in our 30s, with stag do's and wedding events to attend, but with us all married these have dried up.
For our "renewal of stag" we chose to go to Prague, mainly because of how easily and cheaply it was to get there. The 4 of us went from 3 different airports so regular flights was very important!
We stayed in an absolutely phenomenal apartment to the West of the river, in Mala Strana. With the view from the living room having a beautiful vista of the Castle (see right). As the organised of the holiday and accomodation I feel I nailed it! Also, it worked out at something like £50 each per night which was an absolute bargain! I can wholeheartedly recommend this place to anyone going to Prague, link here.
My group of friends are big history geeks so we spent quite a lot of time doing various WWII/Cold War places of interest including; the bullet scarred church where special agents from Operation Anthropoid hid out and a Cold War bunker excursion and guided walking tour.
Fantastic beer and food, beautiful city and great company with lots of conversations about time/money and work/family life balance. Came back feeling very blessed to have such a good group of friends, even if I don't see them as much as I'd like.