Haircut

I just cut my own hair for the first time.

Aaagh. Now to wash it and see how it came out. I'm too nervous to look properly yet!

posted from Bloggeroid

Summery yumminess in winter

Sitting on the couch feeling hungry but unwilling to get up and cook. Sorry that I didn't stop at the supermarket to buy crisps, chocolate and frozen pizza while at the same time really pleased with myself for not doing that since I'd have eaten it all by now and half regretting the blow to my diet and my purse.
My lovely brother rang me for just a quick chat before heading out to his jiu jitsu class which at least got me moving enough to get into the kitchen, even if I still didn't feel much like cooking, and then he mentioned eggs and I had a brainwave: eggs poached in tomatoes. So very glad now for putting in a bit of work during the summer so that I can have that lovely summeriness to eat at this time of year.

posted from Bloggeroid

Net worth in February

I'm still not quite doing this correctly as this is the first time I've even checked anything since last time so all of the caveats from then still apply. I've just checked online balances where I could (and it only took me a couple of minutes to find the documentation with user IDs, notes on passwords etc. - progress!) and taken previous values or simply what I have paid in for the others. All in all though, especially given the way things seemed to be going when I first started checking a few months ago (down, down, down and that was enough reason to stop checking), I'm pleased to see pretty good increases overall. I'm not willing to devote so much time to this spreadsheet that I separate out how much of each increase is due to what I'm paying in and how much is actually return on investment but am content for now to know that either way the numbers are going up. Although now that I've said that, I want to figure it out. Maybe I'll just do a quick and dirty calculation now and figure out how to incorporate it into the spreadsheet later.

Increase in net worth overall: 16.51%
Made up of:
Irish Pension: +10.91%
Irish Retirement Bond: no new statement yet so no change here
German Riesterrente: +33.49% (payments I actually made account for about 11% - these returns seem way too high to be accurate so I should figure out where my mistake is)
German BAV: +167% (haven't received a statement yet so the 167% increase here is only the payments I've made and doesn't include fees I'll have to pay or any gains made)
Vodafone shares: +21.24% (if I check the actual share price in September and now, this can't be correct so perhaps I had it wrong then? Without taking screenshots of everything all the time, I may never know)

Although percentages are a great way to track things, what counts for me in the final analysis is that I've gotten my net worth to just over €30,000. Small compared to the mustachian crowd but seems like a huge amount to me. I'll doubt I'll be able to retire early but at least every time I check on these figures it feels a bit more like I will be able to retire someday.