Hi all, this might be one of the last posts I do for a while due to the imminent arrival of baby TV #2 – so I thought I’d give a general update of what I’ve been doing lately with regards to investments and life in general.
Investments Update
I’ve not made any other purchases or sales in my NISA, which is where we are slowly building a dividend-paying value stocks portfolio. I might make one more purchase this month, and this will probably be Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN). The price has been down to -35% up to -20% and back down again recently from where I purchased it at. I had a feeling it would go down again, which has happened. If I make my regular monthly purchase this month, hopefully it’ll stay low in price so I can massively average down my purchase price.
Investing for Your Baby
I have been preparing to set up investment accounts for the new baby – cash JISA (okay, not investment, but still, another account), stocks and shares JISA, and a Junior SIPP. These will be set up in the same way as with baby TV #1 – which I spoke about in my very first post here, as well as clarification in the comments.
Investing for Your Mother-in-Law
I have also been preparing a portfolio for my retired mother-in-law. We are taking on managing her money, so I have created a portfolio based on Ray Dalio’s ‘All Weather’ portfolio:
7.5% gold – iShares physical gold ETC (OCF 0.25%)
7.5% commodities – Lyxor ETF Commodities Reuters/Jeffries CRB TR (OCF 0.35%)
30 % stocks – Vanguard LS100 (0.24%)
55% gilts – Split 50:50 between Vanguard UK Inflation-Linked Gilts (OCF 0.15%) and Vanguard UK Gilts ETF (OCF 0.12%)
This portfolio is pretty boring, low on stocks, and extremely defensive. Ray Dalio created this portfolio mix so as to provide rock-solid defence. It’s a lot simpler than Tim Hale’s ‘All Seasons’ portfolio, which is also very defensive, but I wanted something simple and easy to follow and manage for my mother-in-law, who might not even use the money, but I’m sure would want it to be very protected either way.
Preparing for a New Baby
I’ve been typically frugal, and done some batch cooking in preparation for having a new baby. My aim is to make around 10+ days’ worth of dinners for my husband and I for when we are whacked after the new baby arrives. So far, I’ve made 3 days’ worth of Irish stew. I made it extra hearty by adding barley soup mix (i.e. barley with splits peas and extra bits like that) instead of plain barley. I also added smokey bacon lardons (YUM). I also would like to make a batch of veggie burgers, a chilli/spagbol type mix, and something chicken-y which I’ve not decided on yet. It’ll probably be boiling down a large chicken, dicing and shredding the meat, and then making an enormous amount of stock, which can be used for soups, stews, and various types of risotti.
Also typically, I’ve not bought anything new for the new baby, as I’m reusing everything we had from our first child. I will buy a new soft toy to put in its Moses’ basket, but other than that I don’t think we need anything else. We even have 47 of 48 terry nappies remaining (one somehow, and very mysteriously, got slightly shredded) which will be used at home. Outside of the home, it’s Aldi nappies all the way! Less than half the price of Pampers and at least as good in my opinion.
At this time of year, and feeling heavy and uncomfortable, I’m not wanting to go out and about much. I already started maternity leave, so have been using that time to set the house up for the new arrival. This is all very frugal of course, although I’ve had quite a few visitors recently, which caned our grocery budget. We also took one of the visitors out for quite an expensive meal, which blew our eating out budget in ONE GO. That would have annoyed me normally, but since the baby could literally arrive at any moment now, I was glad to be able to have a super nice meal out before I’ll be basically pretty much indoors for a month after the baby is born.
That’s about it for now, if you get another post soon, then that means the baby is still hanging out in my belly, and the post will thus be probably me ranting about wanting it to hurry up and be born (ADVANCE WARNING OF POTENTIAL RANT)!
Aah the joy of parenthood. I just hope you haven’t actually named your children TV #1 and TV #2!
LOL, thankfully, I didn’t!
Hey M
Sounds like you have been super busy – it’s great that you’ve been so organised with sorting out investments for the new baby – all the best with those and also to your mother-in-law’s investments – that one does look pretty solid, although I’ve never thought about investing in commodities myself.
You must have a huge freezer to be able to accommodate all your batch cooking – that, or it’s highly organised in neat little stacks (maybe that’s where I’m going wrong with my freezer, it’s not organised haha!)
Hope you enjoyed your meal out – like you say, it’ll be a while before you do that again after baby is born. Imagine if you didn’t budget, you’d be eating out all the time and not only would it not be special but you’d be wondering where all your money went!
All the best – hope the baby comes out when he/she’s supposed to!
weenie recently posted…November 2015 Savings, plus other updates
Thanks Weenie. Life of always busy, just the types of activities in which we’re involved varies!
I’ve never really thought in great detail about investing in commodities, although metals are beaten down right now so maybe this is a good idea, especially as we’re creating the portfolio imminently? The baby’s JISA will have a small allocation to gold, but I’ve not considered commodities for him/her whatsoever.
Freezer recently got organised because we ate a lot of meat out of it, it wouldn’t have been otherwise! But that was just perfect to then use the space to organise it properly and fill the gaps with the batch cooking
Thanks for the well wishes, hope to be in touch soon.