August 2026 update

Summer holidays 2026 was a blast! Using 6 weeks of my UPL across the summer meant I didn't work a single day in August, essentially swapping a month's salary for a month's worth of family time.

For this month I'm gonna swap the Finance / Non-Finance sections around as I think the Non-Finance one might be a bit rambly!

Finance update

Breakdown for the month:

• ISA up £3k
• Pension up £8.5k
• GIA/easy access up £0.5k
• Crypto up £12.5 
• House price up £18.5
• Total: up £45k

Green across the board in August, and a healthy bump up especially in Crypto and house price! New money wise, I've obviously not been paid much at all for August given the Unpaid Parental Leave. My pension payments continue, but aside from that it has just been a bit of a tax rebate on the PAYE assumption for this month as well as the bank holiday. So only around £2k of new contributions went in to Pension and savings, however the market gain from those were around £12k, so not bad!

With that increase in August, the £1.5m net worth barrier has been broken! It's very evident in months where I am not able to feed the money machine as much as normally, but the compounding of the gains has been great to observe, it now seems to be normal that my investments are comfortably outearning myself. Still feels like a cheat code, but there's no magic involved, just a decade of concentrated saving and investing, feeding the machine to get it going and living within your means. That's it.

And I suppose that's increasingly the point. The aim was never just to make the number bigger; it was to build enough financial resilience that I could trade some income for time. Taking August off with the kids while the investments quietly did their thing in the background feels like a pretty good example of that.

One thing August has reinforced is that this is ultimately what all the saving and investing is for. I could have worked through the summer, earned a few thousand quid more and added it to the pile, but at some point you have to actually start spending some of the financial freedom you've built. I'm not FIRE yet, but taking two months off work each year feels like I've started cashing in a few of the benefits early. I'm never getting another summer with the kids at 8 and 10 again, whereas hopefully there will be plenty more opportunities to earn money!

2026/27 tax year:

The investments outearning my salary is even more evident in the tax year chart.

Contributions tax YTD: £18.5k

Market gains tax YTD: £153k

Going through this calculation certainly adds a bit of comfort to my FIRE plans that's for sure!

Current plan and priority:

1. Buy 2 months off work via Unpaid Parental Leave

2. £20k in S&S ISA

3. Regular savers (First Direct & Natwest) and high interest savings (Revolut). Aiming to get as close to the £1k savings allowance for the year.

4. Pay into SIPP to get income below £50k. This maximises the higher rate relief, swerves the HICBC and gets me basic rate savings allowance for point #3. The reason this is last is that I only know how much I will need to lump sum in towards the end of the tax year.

5. Anything leftover will go into Premium Bonds up to the £50k limit.

Non-Finance update

Gladiators

Gladiators is something I grew up with in the 1990s, and since the reboot started a few years back my kids have really got into it as well.  They actually film the shows just down the road from me in Sheffield, and although audience tickets are free, it's a bit of a faff to get. I've managed to get tickets for the past couple of years but we've never made it work with our other plans. To be sure of getting entry you need to turn up early and be prepared to queue for a few hours. This year, the stars aligned and we got offered semi-final tickets on a day we were actually free. We all got up early, shot down the M1 and managed to bag some tickets. Can't really mention much else other than that, as obviously it won't be shown until the winter, but we saw some great events and had a fab day, all for free as well!

Jimmy Eat World

Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American was a seminal album for me. For an aspiring pop-punk/emo/alternative guitarist in my teenage years, the album was chock-full of bangers. They announced late last year that they would be marking the 25th anniversary of their album with a tour, including a handful of UK dates. Luckily one of them was at Halifax Piece Hall, which is an absolutely fantastic venue. They played the full album back to back. We took the kids, they loved it. It cost a fortune, but my god it was worth every penny!

France road trip!

Second road trip of the year, after the jaunt across the North Sea to The Netherlands at Easter. With the price of fuel we certainly chose the wrong year to do this kind of holiday!

We set off for France in the middle of August, had planned 2 stops for 2 nights each (Reims and Beaune), then a week at a Eurocamp at Lake Annecy, then stopping off at 2 places on the way back up (Troyes and Amiens).

Reims

First stop was Reims, staying at a very decent AirBnb in the north of the city. Harry Potter themed, £60 a night, free parking, fantastic! I went to the surrender museum where they had preserved the room where the German surrender was signed in May 1945, the Mrs went on a run around all of the champagne houses, checked out the impressive Cathedral, ate lots of canard.

Lovely city, but I think by the end of the 2nd day we had 'completed it'.

Beaune / Chagny

2nd stop was Beaune, staying in a lodge (with aircon!) at a small campsite just South in Chagny. 

Picked up a load of mustard in Beaune, and visited a mad Chateau that had a motorbike, Abarth, fire-engine, tractor and model aircraft museum as well as having the Guinness world record for the largest private collection of fighter aircraft, including an F-16 - mad! 

Lake Annecy

On to Annecy where we stayed for a week! Stunning scenery everywhere, everyone is either jumping off cliffs paragliding or on the lake boating/paddle-boarding or kayaking! Great fun and we're already planning to come back in the future, although we may brave camping rather than having one of the Eurocamp 'safari tents'. Spent our time by the lake, by the pool, visiting gorges and waterfalls, playing tennis and mini-golf, on a pedalo, diving board, kayak and going up mountains having fondue/raclettes! Made a lot of new friends close to our tent that all seemed to have a similar mindset; focussing their money and efforts on experience holidays rather than lifestyle upgrades. In our aisle it was around 90% 8-10 year old cars, maybe there's something in that?

Dijon / Troyes

Sad to leave Lake Annecy but excited to see what we can on the way back up, next stop was Dijon on the way to Troyes. Dijon was fairly 'meh' but picked up some more mustard anyway. Troyes on the other hand was phenomenal, an absolute tonne of history, whether it was the Treaty of Troyes and Henry V in the wake of Agincourt, or the founding of the Knights Templar, or indeed the links to King Arthur as well, you felt like you were walking in a living museum, even in comparison to an equivalent UK city like York. Every other house was 500 years old (there was a large fire in the early 1500s which meant rebuilding the city).

We liked it that much in Troyes that instead of heading up to Amiens early doors on the last day, we stayed the morning in Troyes and travelled to Amiens in the afternoon. We went to the tourist information and bought a kids trail of the city where we had to answer questions and find clues, I think it was 3 EUR and kept us entertained all day! The day after we visited the stained glass museum and there was also a medieval festival on where I had a go at crossbow, got a bullseye and the people proceeded to initiate me as a chief archer within their ranks!

 

Amiens

Very brief stop in Amiens, we stayed on the outskirts and didn't even make it into the city itself. We had planned on doing some of the Jules Verne stuff with the kids but glad we chose the extra time in Troyes instead.

Instead, we went to the Newfoundland WWI Memorial site, one of the very few that still has the trenches, reserve trenches and no-mans land intact. My eldest is reading a lot more about WWI / WWII and I think this excellent site made it very real for him (as well as us!). Highly recommend if you're passing. Completely free and very well maintained, free tours offered as well.

Despite being away for two weeks and covering a ridiculous number of miles (almost 2000!), the road trip didn't actually feel particularly extravagant. We mixed Airbnbs and campsites, drove our own ageing car, did loads of free or cheap activities and spent money on the things we actually cared about. It's probably a decent example of where my attitude to money has ended up, I'm still very reluctant to spend £500 a month financing a shiny new car, but I'll happily spend that money taking the family somewhere we'll remember.

The kids are also getting to a brilliant age for this sort of thing. They're old enough now that we can drag them around historical sites, up mountains and across France without it being a complete logistical nightmare, but still young enough that they actually want to spend their summer holidays with us! I'm increasingly conscious that the window for these big family summers isn't actually that long.

It's safe to say I'll be doing my darn best to take next summer off with the kids again. For now I'm back at work, where I can finally get some rest!

That's it, that's the update,

See you next time! Bonne journee!