Am I Making a Mistake?

Security of employment is not what it was once.  Changes including globalisation, technology, automation and lean (lean is basically doing more with less through the elimination of waste), amongst others, have sent it well on its way.  We see lack of security of employment manifest itself in many ways with one of the more recent ones making headlines in the mainstream media being zero hours contracts.

The problem with this change is that without security of employment there is always the risk of starving to death (maybe an extreme example given the UK’s welfare state status, but certainly not in some countries and hopefully you get my drift).  According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs inability to correct for this deficiency need (or d-need) then prevents one from ever reaching Self-Actualisation which is essentially the realisation of your full potential.

Click to enlarge, Source: www.convene.com

Personally, in my current career I’m also under no illusion of having any sort of security of employment.  I know that my current security is linked to nothing more than my last performance review or (not and) nobody anywhere else in the world being able to offer the equivalent service for a lower cost.  Part of this is within my control, but mistakes do happen, and part of this is outside my control.

With time I’ve come to realise that my solution to this problem in the short term has been to keep my skills current (the 1% inspiration) and then work hard (the 99% inspiration).  So far this is working with a recent notification that I’ll be receiving a salary increase of 4% and a bonus that exceeds my notional amount in recognition of my performance last year.  I never thought too much of this work hard approach, including was it too extreme, but when readers last week made comments like;

“I appreciate this is the path you've chosen, and for well thought out reasons, but your hours of work sound awful“;

and;

“Holy s**t - good job you have an escape plan as that is a brutal life you currently have carved out for yourself - 16 hour days!  You must be tough as nails!”;

it really did make me take a step back and think.

My Non-Financial Life

This blog is focused on charting my progress to Financial Independence and optional Early Retirement.  By having to continually to write about it I am forced to stay the course because I’m continually held accountable.  You the reader get to see my journey, warts and all, which also includes most of the financial research I do behind the scenes.  It stays very unemotional and fact based as that’s what personal finance in my opinion should be.

Behind all this though is a living breathing human being and also my family who are personally affected daily by what I publish here.  I rarely write about this side for a few reasons:

• At this time my anonymity is important.  I don’t think this will always be the case but right now it’s probably not a good idea if my boss knows I might retire in 18 months at 43 years of age;
• This is a personal finance site and not mumsnet;
• Even though I'm a STEM graduate it’s the financial side including all the planning that I've found the most difficult.  Executing on it including finding ways to Earn More, Spend Less by Living Well Below Your Means, Spend Less by effectively opting out of consumerism or even Spend Less by sweating the small stuff I haven’t found difficult at all; and
• Finally but importantly while achieving Financial Independence by 43 is pretty exciting stuff knowing that I eat Weetabix (I don’t BTW because I wouldn't buy a more costly brand when equivalent lower cost alternatives are available) for breakfast probably isn't.

All of that said it is of course relevant for anyone considering, but not currently on, a similar journey to my own.  Some 7 and a bit years on it’s now just the life my family and I live but thinking back our personal lives have changed a lot.  This was reinforced this weekwith a reader making the following comment:

“Have you previously posted on what you get up to in your daily life? I have a lot of respect for what you're achieving and would enjoy hearing how you enjoy daily living while being frugal. When last did you go on holiday? What do you do for entertainment? Etc. Does that make sense? Just trying to get a feel for the types of adjustments I'd have to make.”

So without further ado let me give some insights into how I live my personal life.

18 Months to Go?

6 Months ago, almost to the day, I made the bold statement that I had 2 Years to Go before Financial Independence beckoned and optional Early Retirement was staring me in the face.  If I'm on plan for that then today I need to be writing that I have 18 Months to Go.  So do I?  As always let’s run the numbers.

Saving Hard

One of the key pillars of my overall Retirement Investing Today strategy is to find ways to earn as much as possible while finding ways to spend as little as possible by living healthily and intentionally well below my means.  The difference between the two is savings that can be invested to start working for me.  So how have I done on this front given that to be successful I need to maintain a savings rate of 55% of gross earnings, which I define as Savings plus Employer Pension Contribution divided by Gross Earnings (ie before HMRC takes their portion) plus Employer Pension Contribution?  Against that 55% target I've actually averaged a savings rate of 53.9% over the last 6 months.

Note that here I don’t include any investment returns, EBay sales, savings account interest, credit card cashback or 5p coins picked up on the roadside as earnings.  I do however make it hard on myself by counting the tax from both my salary and investments/interest as spending which encourages me to structure my finances as tax efficiently as possible.

On a chart my savings look like this:

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So I've failed to meet this objective but I'm actually still happy with the result.  Why, because you’ll see the savings dip occurred just before and just after the end of 2014 during which time as a family we conducted some Early Retirement research by spending some time in one of our preferred Early Retirement locations – Puglia, Italy.  We went in the depths of winter as we know that part of the world is beautiful in summer as a tourist but we’re talking about living there permanently and so wanted to see it in its worst light.  The conclusion?  As a tourist location it’s still a pretty impressive part of the world:

Click to enlarge, Trullo in Alberobello, Puglia

Active vs Passive Portfolio Rebalancing

When I set out my Investing Strategy some years ago, which included my initial asset allocation as well as how that allocation would change over time, I effectively established a portfolio risk vs return characteristic.  Over time that asset allocation has and will continue to change as different asset classes provide different returns in relation to each other.  To recapture the required portfolio risk vs return characteristic I then need to periodically rebalance the portfolio.  Importantly, I rebalance to manage risk rather than to maximise returns.  Over the years I've found that I follow effectively two types of rebalancing – what I call Active and Passive Rebalancing.

Active Rebalancing

Active is what you will predominantly read about in books or online.  There is not much conflict out there as to what it is.  It is simply selling down the assets that have performed the best and using those funds to top up those assets that have performed the worst.  What you will see plenty of conflict about is the frequency of when you should rebalance.  I've seen preset frequencies talked about which could be monthly, quarterly, half yearly, annually or even longer periods.  It could also be triggered by a memorable date such as a birthday or the New Year.  Personally I'm conscious that every time I rebalance Actively it’s likely I’ll be staring down the barrel of trading expenses, possibly taxes and certainly lost time that could be spent doing something else.

With this in mind and given my whole mantra has always been to minimise expenses and taxes I instead adopted and have stayed with a valuation based rebalancing approach.  This is not complicated and is simply if any asset allocation moves more than 25% away from a nominal holding I will either sell or buy (as appropriate) enough of that asset to move the allocation back to nominal.  This methodology plus the Passive Rebalancing element, which I’ll cover in a minute, has meant I've been forced to do very infrequent rebalancing.

Why I Hold Gold in my Portfolio

In my experience if you’re discussing UK Equities as part of an investment portfolio its validity is unlikely to be challenged and any response is likely to be fairly passive.  A typical response might be something like what percentage allocation do you have.  If you say to somebody that you hold Gold then the responses can be far more variable.  At the extreme they can range from I don’t believe in Gold as an investment as it doesn’t pay a dividend because it just sits there looking shiny to I’m 100% invested in Gold, guns, ammo and tinned beans.

Within my own portfolio I target a holding of 5%.  So why do I hold gold?  It’s for the same reason that I buy property or gilts on top of my equities.  To quote Bernstein’s The Intelligent Asset Allocator it’s simply because ‘Dividing your portfolio between assets with uncorrelated results increases return while decreasing risk’ which is a key concept within Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT).  Bernstein continues with ‘Mixing assets with uncorrelated returns reduces risk, because when one of the assets is zigging, it is likely that the other is zagging.’  The keyword in the first quote is uncorrelated.  In the book he works up some examples to validate these statements.

Let’s run a simple analysis looking to see if we can find an example of gold being uncorrelated with another asset class.

My first chart shows how the Monthly Gold Price in Pounds Sterling (£’s) has changed since 1979.  Over the past year its Price has fallen by 0.6%.  We looked in detail at the FTSE100 last week so let’s use that as a different asset comparator as that dataset is up to date.  Over the past year the Price of the FTSE100 has risen 7.0%.

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Diverting quickly for completeness, as I always like to show charts in Real terms to remove the emotion that comes with the unit of measure continually being devalued by inflation, let me quickly also show the Real Gold Price in Pounds.

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Valuing the UK Equities Market (FTSE 100) - February 2015

I have an investment strategy that requires me to moderate my equity holdings based upon my view of current equity market values.  I run this valuation monthly for the Australian, US and UK Equity markets.  While I run it monthly I've just realised that I haven’t shared that analysis for the UK market for 4 months now.  So without further ado let’s run the numbers for all to see.

Firstly nominal values.  Between yesterday and the 2nd February 2015 (month on month) prices are up 5% and since the 3rd February 2014 (year on year) prices are up 6.3%.

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Regular readers will know I'm not a fan of this type of chart as:

• the unit of measure, £’s, is being constantly devalued through inflation (although in the current market one wonders for how much longer); plus
• Pricing should be plotted on a logarithmic scale as opposed to a linear one as by using this scale percentage changes in Price appear the same.  

So let’s correct the chart for the devaluation of the £ through inflation (I use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) here) and convert to a log chart.  This normalised chart shows that Friday’s FTSE 100 Price of 6,874 is actually still 26% below the Real high of 9,317 seen in October 2000.  We’re also still 23% below the last Real cycle high of 8,152 seen in June 2007.  We are therefore a long way from previous highs.

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The Investment Products to Build a Portfolio should be Trivial : Time Suggests Otherwise

Once you’ve done plenty of your own research (which in my opinion must include a thorough read of Tim Hale's Smarter Investing: Simpler Decisions for Better Results), decided upon the different asset classes that will form your balanced investment portfolio and then decided on the percentage allocation to those different asset classes it’s time to select (and buy) the Investment Products that will give you that real world balanced portfolio.

The theory says that this should be trivial and achievable with only a small amount of products.  At an extreme it could be nothing more than a Vanguard LifeStrategy Equity Fund.  Having now been at this investing game for over 7 years I've personally found that in its infancy you will need more products than you really should and you’ll also not always be able to select the optimum products so will end up with compromise.  Then as time progresses you will end up with more and more stamps for your stamp collection.

There are many reasons for this but some might include spreading provider (whether wrapper and/or investment) risk, new products that give benefits over what you currently hold, inability to buy your preferred product in a particular account, tinkering because personal finance is a hobby and even as a result of some good old fashioned investing mistakes.

Let me demonstrate with my own investment portfolio.  These are the top level asset classes and allocations to each class I'm currently holding:

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Looks simple doesn’t it?  Now let’s look in detail at ALL of the investment products that make up my portfolio.

UK Equities:

• Vanguard FTSE UK All Share Index Unit Trust (Income).  This fund tracks the FTSE All Share Index, has a TER of 0.08% and a Stamp Duty Reserve Tax at initial purchase of 0.2%.  I'm happy with this fund however there is one small consideration that would make me 100% satisfied.  I'm with the ermine in that psychologically during retirement I would very much prefer to live only on dividends rather than having to also sell down capital.  In partial conflict with this the Vanguard fund pays dividends only once per year.  One idea to keep expenses low but increase dividend frequency would be to create a pseudo All Share Index.  85% of the FTSE All Share Index is the FTSE100 Index with the majority of the remainder being FTSE250.  By buying 75% Vanguard FTSE100 UCITS ETF (VUKE) and 25% Vanguard FTSE100 UCITS ETF (VMID) results in a TER of 0.09% but dividends paid quarterly instead of yearly.  At this time I won’t act on this as in retirement I’ll be keeping at least 12 months essential living expenses in cash so should be able to manage with annual dividends.
• My High Yield Portfolio (HYP) which continues to build nicely.  This portfolio has a TER of 0.0% (but it does have buy/sell dealing fees and 0.5% stamp duty on initial purchase) and as a believer of expenses matter that’s fine by me.
• I'm generally happy with what’s going on with the UK Equities portion of my portfolio.

Increase Earnings to Accelerate Progress to Financial Independence

UK pay or earnings seems to have reached the main stream media again.  By my calculations Average Whole Economy Annual Earnings are increasing at a rate of 1.7% with inflation over the same period at 2.0%.  So on the whole the average punter’s purchasing power continues to be eroded.  To be honest I can’t say I'm surprised and think this is going to continue for a long time yet.  As the world continues to globalise then the difference between poorer salaried and richer salaried countries must close.

The Private Sector is fairing a little better than average and has kept pace with inflation having risen by 2.1%.  Austerity does look to be biting the public sector though with increases of 0.8% which is well below inflation.

The chart below shows the wider real adjusted for inflation UK earnings story.  The summary is pretty simple – real UK earnings for both the public and private sectors are still well below those of 2007 to 2009.  Though is that a sustainable uptick I can start to see beginning to occur before me?  Given what I’ve said above I’m not convinced.

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For anyone seeking Early Financial Independence, giving the option of Early Retirement, finding methods to increase earnings is extremely important.  Importantly this does not have to mean increasing your day job earnings but instead can involve a new business, a second job, a side hustle, even selling stuff you no longer need now that you’ve opted out of consumerism so think creatively. So why is it important?  I believe there are 3 elements to reaching the Financial Independence – generating cash savings, investing those savings to gain a return and then understanding how much wealth you need to accrue and how to manage it before calling it a day.

The RateSetter Experiment (6 month update)

My low charge investment portfolio today holds 7.4% of my total wealth in cash.  I currently use 2 main repositories for this.

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The first of these is a Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) Savings Account which 6 months ago was earning an interest rate of 1.25% AER.  Looking today they seem to have stealthily reduced that to 1.24% AER for which I have received no notification.  YBS, if you’re reading this, I hope you make good use of that extra 0.01%!  As a higher rate tax payer and with inflation now running at 2.1% this savings account is allowing my savings to be eroded at the rate of 1.36% per year.  So every day that goes by a pound held in this account has less purchasing power than it did the day before.  I’m going backwards.  If you happen to be a basic rate taxpayer then you’re also going backwards, albeit at a more leisurely 1.11%.

Little to no movement here is of course no surprise given the latest average savings account data from the Bank of England shown in the chart below.  It shows instant access savings rates up a mere 0.03% in the last 6 months.

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What alternative do I have?  Well moneysavingexpert.com tells me the Santander 123 current account which pays interest of 3% AER on balances between £3,000 and £20,000 is still hanging around.  It of course also comes with a monthly fee and minimum deposit requirements but it also offers cashback opportunities although I already get that with my American Express Platinum cashback credit card.  Personally, I prefer clean simple accounts and today that looks to be Coventry Building Society with a 1.4% interest rate but these accounts can’t be run online.  I mean honestly an account that cannot be accessed and managed online.  Do the Directors have shares in Royal Mail or something or are they just trying to grab headlines...  For now I’ll just leave what I have in YBS and continue to deposit new savings into my second newer different risk profile repository, Peer to Peer lending (P2P).

How about those falling oil prices – Adding BP to my High Dividend Yield Portfolio

Unless you've been living under a rock you will be very familiar with oil prices falling for a few months now.  Regular readers will know that I have a monster commute so I’m certainly noticing the difference at the petrol pump.  That said I also have Royal Dutch Shell within my High Yield Portfolio (HYP) which as I write this post is now under water by 15.3%.   Search online for some oil data and you won’t have to go far before you find a chart not unlike this:

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I have a problem with these types of charts because the unit of measure used to compare oil against is being constantly devalued through inflation.  Let’s therefore correct for that:

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With West Texas Intermediate Oil (WTI) for February delivery settling at $48.69 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange the real oil price is certainly now below the trend line.  It’s also 15% below the real average of $57.08 but it’s 7% above the real median price of $45.57.   What do you think, is oil now over or under valued?  Personally, I’m not even going to think about it because I’ve proven in the past that I’ll probably lose money if I do.  What I do know is that the oil price change has had a big effect on the share price of Oil & Gas Producers like Shell and BP.  It’s also had a big effect on Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution companies like AMEC Foster Wheeler and Petrofac.

2014 In Review

Retirement Investing Today charts my financial journey to hopefully Early Financial Independence with Early Retirement then being an option at any time thereafter.  This is not a model or a demonstration journey.  It is my real DIY financial life warts and all.  Get it right and it’s smiles all round.  Get it wrong and I have a long compulsory work life ahead of me followed by a derisory State Pension thereafter.

The headline numbers are that in 2014 net wealth has increased by 13.2% and spending has decreased by 5.1% allowing me to move significantly closer to Early Financial Independence.  In line with my Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) approach let’s now Check in detail by focusing on the three key focus areas that I believe are essential to get over the Financial Independence line - Save Hard, Invest Wisely and Retire Early.

SAVE HARD

Saving Hard is simply defined as Gross Earnings (ie before taxes) plus Employee Pension Contributions minus Spending minus Taxes.  Earn more and one is winning.  Spend less or pay less taxes and you’re also winning.  Savings Rate is then Savings divided by Gross Earnings plus Employee Pension Contributions.  To make it a little more conservative Taxes include any taxes on investments but Earnings include no investment returns.  This encourages me to continually look for the most tax efficient investment methods.

On the Gross Earnings front it’s been a great year with total earnings having increased by 37.7%.  Spending on the other hand has decreased by 5.1% by continuing to challenge all spending.  My one fail is that taxes are up a long way.  This is caused by the earnings increase but also more investment taxes as the portfolio continues to grow and is now significant.  The end result is the chart below which shows an average 2014 Savings Rate of 48.1% against a target of 55%.  The majority of the big gap was all caused by my good friend HM Revenue & Customs making a pigs ear of my taxes in years gone by and then chasing me for it at the start of this year.  By the back half of this year that Savings Rate had recovered to 52.8%.

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Saving Hard score: Conceded Pass.  Savings contributed 7.8% of my net wealth increase.  I’m also earning more and spending less but my big problem is taxes which I’m struggling to control.  Any extra £ that I now make is taxed at the Higher Rate of 40% plus 2% National Insurance plus as my non-tax efficient investments grow in size I’m being taxed on these as well.  I could solve some of this by increasing personal pension contributions but I don’t want to go there for 3 reasons:

• They’re very open to tinkering by government which includes extending the age at which you can access them.  That’s not conducive to Early Retirement.
• I’m already making big pension contributions.  2014 saw 71% of Savings put into them.
• I may need a big cash or cash like pile to be able to buy (not mortgage) my family home in the not too distant future.

The High Yield Portfolio (HYP) – Year 3

We've just completed the 3rd calendar year for my real life, warts and all, High Yield Portfolio (HYP) that’s still in the accrual stage.  While at the moment it only forms a small portion of my total wealth I keep a close eye on it for 2 reasons:

• Ideally at the point I reach Early Financial Independence I can have enough dividends being spun off that should I choose to Retire Early I can be in a situation where living expenses can be covered by dividends and interest only plus a bit.  I think psychologically this would be easier than having to sell down assets to live from.  With me targeting a withdrawal rate of 2.5% of wealth I'm targeting dividends and interest after I net off the cash I’ll need for a home of 3%.  Today I'm at 2.4% so have a way to go yet and the HYP is key to increasing that value.
• With the majority of my wealth being tied up in index trackers this is one of the few areas where I'm stock picking and trying to beat the market.  It’s fine to have a high dividend yield but if my total return (dividends + capital gains) can’t beat a simple FTSE tracker over the medium term then I might as well pack it in, buy that tracker and accept I may have to sell down some assets in retirement.

The HYP today now has 12 stocks.  These are:

• Sainsbury’s.  Bought on the 28 November 2011 and currently sitting on an annualised capital loss of -5.7% and a forecast dividend yield of 5.4%.
• Astra Zeneca.  Also bought on the 28 November 2011 and currently sitting on an annualised capital gain of 17.2% and a forecast dividend yield of 3.9%.
• Scottish and Southern.  Again bought on the 28 November 2011 and currently sitting on an annualised capital gain of 7.7% and a forecast dividend yield of 5.5%.
• Vodafone.  First bought on the 21 December 2012 and then sold on the 21 January 2014 to avoid the Verizon Wireless sale palaver.  Then re-bought on the 30 April 2014 for an annualised capital loss of -1.9% since re-purchase and a forecast dividend yield of 5.1%.
• Royal Mail Group which is not strictly speaking HYP but I lump it here as I have no other holding like it within my portfolio.  I saw it as a government bribe and it’s turned out to be exactly that with an annualised capital gain of 22.4% and a forecast dividend yield of 5.0%.
• HSBC.   Bought on the 30 March 2014 and currently sitting on an annualised capital loss of -2.6% and a forecast dividend yield of 5.3%.
• Royal Dutch Shell.  Bought on the 30 June 2014 and currently sitting on an annualised capital loss of -22.4% and a forecast dividend yield of 5.3%.
• Pearson.  Also bought on the 30 June 2014 and currently sitting on an annualised capital gain of 2.1% and a forecast dividend yield of 4.3%.
• GlaxoSmithKline.  Bought on the 01 August 2014 and currently sitting on an annualised capital loss of -8.1% and a forecast dividend yield of 5.8%.
• Amlin.  Bought on the 29 August 2014 and currently sitting on an annualised capital gain of 14.8% and a forecast dividend yield of 6.3%.
• BHP Billiton.  Bought on the 29 September 2014 and currently sitting on an annualised capital loss of -54.7% and a forecast dividend yield of 5.1%.
• Tate & Lyle.  Bought on the 31 October 2014 and currently sitting on an annualised capital loss of -13.4% and a forecast dividend yield of 4.8%.