The Ultimate Dream Fund Update - April 2017

I must be getting older, because it seems to get to this post each month more and more quickly. They say time goes faster the older you get? However, getting to update my Ultimate Dream Fund at the end of each month is one of my favourite parts of our journey. Each month, I can see us inching slowly towards our goal. There is nothing more transparent about aiming for something than documenting it. The highs and the lows. I hope that others can see that just by doing little things, over time, can make such a big impact on your finances.

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. Being able to spend our time with our family is what we’re doing this for; there’s nothing more meaningful to us than that.

I continue 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. Secondly, 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. Our monthly outgoings can be fairly low without a mortgage payment. I think that we can definitely live below £1,000 a month without our mortgage payment.

April’s dividend income has already been reinvested so that they are working hard for us. Receiving dividends throughout the month means that I get multiple small pay checks each month. For doing nothing! I still love the dividend investing approach. Over time, the percentage reinvested will increase and so the amount needed to be saved from income will decrease, or we’ll be able to speed up the process! All of this is within my stocks and shares ISA which is with Hargreaves Lansdown. It is very easy to use and I’d definitely recommend them. You can get information about that here or even open an ISA today.

As of April 30th, our Ultimate Dream Fund looks like this:

We’ve broken the £15,000 mark! I’m getting closer and closer to having that first year of retirement spending banked. It has been slowly that I would have liked, but there you go. This is an overall increase of £640.80 for the month of April which is okay. Again, this shows that the markets can do. I transferred just over £500 into the fund but it has grown more than that. It would be very helpful if it did that every month 😉

Finally, here is the fund’s progress since I started it in June 2015: