A new month means it is time again to update The Ultimate Dream Fund again, as I continue our journey to early retirement. The Ultimate Dream Fund is named because it is our dream to retire early, and we need the funds to make that happen! One day, this fund will provide us with the money to live on when we leave our 9-5 jobs and time will be all ours. That’s the biggest motivator for achieving our goal.
I’m going to post updates on our fund for two reasons; one, so that I can show that living a frugal lifestyle means that we can retire earlier than we should do and still live a good life on the journey, and two; to keep me motivated for the long haul. This journey is going to take us a long time, but it’ll be worth it in the end. This plan also includes us being mortgage free, so that our monthly outgoings are reduced and manageable.
May was the first month that I was able to post an update for the Ultimate Dream Fund, as it was the starting point of our journey. I said in that post that this is definitely a challenge for us; the savings target is very steep and there is a very good chance we will miss our target. June was the second month of me updating our Ultimate Dream Fund so the end of July marks the third month of us working on our dreams.
At the moment, as I said in June’s update, all of my Ultimate Dream Fund is sat in an instant access savings account, which doesn’t particularly pay a great deal of interest. In fact, the interest paid for July was a whole 70p – not really going to get us far in our plans! I must sound like a broken record, but I still haven’t opened a stocks and shares ISA. There is absolutely no reason for this; I just need to get a grip.
Anyway, as of July 31st, our Ultimate Dream Fund stands at £2,330.98 which is an increase of £765.52 from last month. Whilst I’m pleased with this amount, as it’s a step in the right direction, we need to be consistently hitting £1,000 a month savings to not fall too far behind in our plans. The only (major) sticking point with this now is that because I’m now on maternity leave, our household income is vastly reduced, so saving any money in the long term will be a challenge, never mind four figures. I really need to start working on some side hustles, though with a new baby I don’t know how easy this will be time-wise. However, life is boring without a bit of a challenge! If you would like to work with me, please check out my Hire Me/Advertise tab!
How was July for your savings/investing targets? Are you still on track?
hi Nicola! Reading this post with interest as it’s my own goal to retire early, by hook or by crook 🙂 I meant to comment last time about the S&S Isa – my thought is that it’s not that easy to take the first step as the providers are mostly not what you’d call “high street names” like the providers of cash Isas, so you feel as if you don’t know much about them and it’s hard to know where to start, but the best thing by far would be to take it in small steps ie first research everything on MSE and Monevator about which providers are good for what sort of product. You can’t open the S&S Isa until you have decided what provider you want, and you can’t do that till you have decided what you want to hold in the Isa (funds, shares?). The recommendation on most of the early retirement/personal finance blogs is to hold passive index funds and this is what I did. It seems to be going fine so far. You might know all this though, I’m just saying. 🙂 I’ll post a couple of links from Monevator if you like? … Monevator is a fantastically useful site.
If you could post those links, that’d be helpful 🙂 I think I may have made a decision today, just worried that I’ll mess up somehow!
Nice work! I made negative progress on my net worth goal in July, but I’m using it as motivation for an even more awesome August!
Here’s to August being great for both of us 🙂
The birth of a new baby is a great time to start something new. Your whole life is different and crazy and sometimes you forget to eat (and sleep is certainly out of the question!), but it’s during this time you realize WHY you have a dream fund. I’m excited for you! Keep up the good work, and give yourself grace with the new baby’s arrival. You’ll quickly realize you’re not the one in control anymore.
I’m sure that why we’re doing this will be further cemented once we have a little one in the mix too 🙂 not looking forward to the lack of sleep though…!
3 months in and already making great headway! You have some very exciting months coming up so best of luck with those, hopefully you can keep your targets going 🙂
Thank you; I hope so too 🙂
Great job on your growing dream fund!
I put a lot of money in retirement last month but we had a setback because we had to replace a HVAC unit in one of our rental properties. You win some, you lose some!
I like the Dream Fund name!
It’s always fun to have a purpose for the money we earn or make!
Best, Sam
Nicola, I am also working on my ultimate dream fund. I hope I can have the funds by the age of 45 years so that I and my family could fully enjoy all those years, traveling and having fun, not worrying work anymore.