Wow. I just reread this. I was a very naïve young, but lucky moron.
It’s crazy looking back over the last 5 or 6 years of my investing ‘experience’. I really thought I knew a lot more than I did for a long time. Now at least I realise I'm not a genius...
Thanks to those of you who commented previously, I’m sure it helped inform my way of thinking. I’m now much more relaxed and simple in my investing approach, but I still hold some Bitcoin…
I presume an update would be of mild interest. Aside from the investing itself my other main hobby is endlessly tinkering with the spreadsheet I use to track those investments, so I’ve got plenty of stats handy and everything, even our BTL equity, is assiduously unitised. Here goes:
1. Since I began investing in February 2015 I’ve turned £100 invested on day 1 into as of today, £446.87.
2. My annualised return since inception is 24.5%.
3. Investment growth now makes up 58.15% of our invested assets.
Here’s how our investment assets currently look:
All my 2017 excitement about crypto has paled into insignificance, but It was certainly a huge win. The chart looked pretty scary for a while but luckily drawing money out from crypto and putting it into BTL/ISAs/SIPPs later has shown how lucky I was. We've also seen a good increase in income and savings rate over time:
In each account, whether ISA, GIA or SIPP I have 4 holdings. A dev world ETF (65%), an EM ETF (15%), a global small cap ETF (15%), and one single 5% ‘fun’ holding. It works for me and keeps me sane, I still need a slightly bold ‘young’ tilt! I think of our BTLs as our ‘bonds’ and feel comfortable with 100 equity across our investment accounts.
We’ve now got a great little 2 year old, so priorities have changed just a bit, still busy working and saving hard to try and keep building the snowball. It’s been a journey with plenty of twists in the space of 6 years from thinking as a maverick 20-something that I wanted an HYP, then trying to beat the market with various ITs and getting lucky with crypto, to finally trying to build something that’s more balanced, simple and enduring through ups and downs.