As is customary for bloggers at this time of year, here are the top twenty posts on Pounds and Sense in 2022, based on comments, page-views and social media shares. They are in no particular order. I have excluded any posts that are no longer relevant.
I hope you will enjoy revisiting these posts, or seeing them for the first time if you are new to PAS.
All posts in the list below should open in a new tab/window when you click on the link concerned.
I’ll be taking a break from blogging over the festive period (though I’ll still be around on Twitter and Facebook). I’ll therefore close by wishing you a Very Merry Christmas (strikes and cost-of-living crisis permitting) and for all of us a much better new year 🍾
If you have any comments or questions, of course, feel free to leave them below as usual.
If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:
I’ll begin as usual with my Nutmeg Stocks and Shares ISA. This is the largest investment I hold other than my Bestinvest SIPP (personal pension). I will discuss the latter a bit further down.
As the screenshot below of performance last month shows, my main Nutmeg portfolio is currently valued at £20,391. Last month it stood at £19,733 so that is a rise of £658.
Apart from my main portfolio, I also have a second, smaller pot using Nutmeg’s Smart Alpha option. This is now worth £3,114 compared with £2,987 a month ago, an increase of £127.
Here is a screen capture showing performance since January 2022. As you can see, I topped up this account in February this year.
That is an overall month-on-month increase of £785. Furthermore since mid-October the total value of my Nutmeg investments has risen by £2,007 or around 8%. Anyone who was brave enough to invest in Nutmeg around the middle of October will therefore be looking at a substantial profit now. Of course, it’s always easy to spot an investment opportunity with 20/20 hindsight!
In my case, while the recent rises are very welcome, my Nutmeg investments are still down £1,607 or about 6.5% since the start of the year. To put this in context, though, in 2021 they rose by £3,552 (over 21%). And overall, I am still over £6,000 ahead since I started investing with Nutmeg in 2016. For my main portfolio that represents a return on capital of 42% or 51.03% time-weighted.
Of course, the real point of this is that investing is (or should be) a long-term endeavour. Over a period of years stock market investments such as those used by Nutmeg typically produce better returns than cash accounts, often by substantial margins. But there are never any guarantees, and in in the short to medium term at least, losses are always possible.
You can read my full Nutmeg review here (including a special offer at the end for PAS readers). If you are looking for a home for your annual ISA allowance, based on my experience over the last six years, they are certainly worth considering.
Moving on, my Assetz Exchange investments continue to perform well. Regular readers will know that this is a P2P property investment platform focusing on lower-risk properties (e.g. sheltered housing). I put an initial £100 into this in mid-February 2021 and another £400 in April. In June 2021 I added another £500, bringing my total investment up to £1,000.
Since I opened my account, my AE portfolio has generated £88.30 in revenue from rental and £17.59 in capital growth, a total of £105.89. That’s a decent rate of return on my £1,000 investment and does illustrate the value of P2P property investment for diversifying your portfolio when equity markets are volatile.
I now have investments in 23 different projects and all are performing as expected, generating rental income and in most cases showing a profit on capital as well. So I am very happy with how this investment has been doing. And it doesn’t hurt that most projects are socially beneficial as well.
To control risk with all my property crowdfunding investments nowadays, I invest relatively modest amounts in individual projects. This is a particular attraction of AE as far as i am concerned. You can actually invest from as little as 80p per property if you really want to proceed cautiously.
Another property platform I have investments with is Kuflink. They continue to do well, with new projects launching almost every day. I currently have around £2,600 invested with them in 14 different projects. To date I have never lost any money with Kuflink, though some loan terms have been extended once or twice. On the plus side, when this happens additional interest is paid for the period in question. At present most of my Kuflink loans are performing to schedule, though two recently had their repayment dates put back by three months.
My loans with Kuflink pay annual interest rates of 6 to 7.5 percent. These days I invest no more than £200 per loan (and often less). That is not because of any issues with Kuflink but more to do with losses of larger amounts on other P2P property platforms in the past. My days of putting four-figure sums into any single property investment are behind me now!
Nowadays I mainly opt to reinvest the monthly repayments I receive from Kuflink, which has the effect of boosting the percentage rate of return on the projects in question
Obviously a possible drawback with Kuflink and similar platforms is that your money is tied up in bricks and mortar, so not as easily accessible as cash savings or even (to some extent) shares. They do, however, have a secondary market on which you can offer any loan part for sale (as long as the loan in question is performing and not in arrears). Clearly that does depend on someone else wanting to buy it, but my experience has been that any loan parts offered are typically snapped up very quickly. So if an urgent need arises, withdrawing your money (or part of it) is unlikely to be an issue.
You can read my full Kuflink review here. They offer a variety of investment options, including a tax-free IFISA paying up to 7% interest per year with built-in automatic diversification. Alternatively you can now build your own IFISA, with most loans on the platform (including the one shown above) being IFISA-eligible.
My investment in European crowdlending platform Nibble continues to perform as advertised. My latest investment was in their Legal Strategy. These are loans that are in default and facing legal action. Nibble buy these loans at a heavily discounted rate and then seek to recover as much as possible of the money owed. The minimum investment is 10 euros and the minimum period is six months. I invested 100 euros for 12 months initially at a target annual interest rate of 12.5%.
The Legal Strategy comes with a deposit-back guarantee. This is a guarantee to return the full investment amount at the end of the investment period and a minimum yield of 9% per year. The actual yield depends on how successful recovery efforts prove, so in practice you may end up with a return of anywhere between 9% and 14.5%. All has gone to plan so far, but I will obviously continue to report on this in the months ahead.
Earlier this year I set up an account with investment and trading platform eToro, using their popular ‘copy trader’ facility. I chose to invest $500 (then about £412) copying an experienced eToro trader called Aukie2008 (real name Mike Moest). My investment has been up and down in the last few months, but it is currently $38 (about £31) in profit. In these turbulent times I am quite happy with that.
In any event, I’m looking on this as a long-term investment so won’t be judging it yet. I am also considering a further investment with eToro, possibly in one of their themed portfolios. You can read my full review of eToro here. You may also like to check out my recent more in-depth look at eToro copy trading.
Moving on, earlier I mentioned my Bestinvest SIPP (personal pension). This is now in drawdown, but regular readers will know that I suspended withdrawals from it in May this year to reduce the risk of pound-cost ravaging. I was able to do this because since December 2021 I have been receiving the state pension. And in association with my other income streams this has given me enough to live on (though by no means in luxury).
Anyway, with the cost of living crisis starting to bite, and energy bills shooting up at an alarming rate, I decided the time had come to resume taking payments from my SIPP. Plus, with the markets seemingly on an upward trajectory, the risk of pound-cost ravaging appeared to have receded.
I therefore asked Bestinvest to reinstate my payments from this month, though at a lower rate of £100 a month. One of the attractions of flexible drawdown pensions such as those from Bestinvest is that you can increase or decrease withdrawals at any time or even (as I did) suspend them completely. Obviously if you draw an excessive amount there is a risk of depleting your fund too quickly, so it runs out before you do. But Bestinvest sent me some reassuring projections that in any feasible scenario this was unlikely to happen in my case even if I live to the age of 99 (as I fully intend to 😀 ).
One other consideration I had with my SIPP is that withdrawals from it are taxable, whereas withdrawals from some of my other investments (e.g. Nutmeg ISA) are not. With the state pension also being taxable, this means withdrawing larger amounts from my SIPP would result in a portion of the money being grabbed by the taxman, which seems a waste. While I do of course accept that taxes have to be paid, I prefer to minimize my liability as much as possible (which we are all perfectly entitled to do).
I had two more articles published in November on the always-excellent Mouthy Money website. One of them was Win Fame and (Maybe) Fortune as a Quiz Show Contestant. This is something I have done myself in the past and enjoyed writing about again for MM. It can be a lot of fun, and any prizes you win are tax-free under UK law.
My other article was How to Cash in on Your Old Tech. Most of us have old technology we no longer use gathering dust in cupboards and drawers. This articles sets out ways you can make some much-needed cash out of this.
Obviously energy bills are a particular concern for many people at the moment, so I hope you are getting all the help you are entitled to. Everyone should be receiving a monthly rebate of £66 on their energy bill (going up to £67 in the new year). If you’re not, chase it up with your energy supplier.
I also recently updated my post about the Warm Home Discount, which this year is being increased from £140 to £150. The eligibility rules are changing somewhat, and I shall probably be one of the people who misses out, which is clearly disappointing. But on the plus side, most people won’t now have to apply for this benefit – if you are eligible, it should be applied automatically to your bill by your energy company.
The government’s Help for Households website has a helpful summary of all the financial assistance currently available and is regularly updated.
Please do check out as well some of the other posts on Pounds and Sense for advice and resources, especially in the Making Money and Saving Money categories.
Don’t forget, also, that there are currently two opportunities to claim a free share available. One is with Wealthyhood and the other with Trading 212 (the links will take you to the relevant blog posts). The current Trading 212 offer closes on 29 December 2022, so don’t delay if you want to take advantage of this one. As far as I know the Wealthyhood offer is open indefinitely, but that could always change, of course
That’s all for today. I hope you and your family are coping in these challenging times and wish you the happiest Christmas possible. I shall of course continue to update this blog over the coming weeks, and will return with a further update about my investments at the start of January.
As always, if you have any comments or queries, feel free to leave them below. I am always delighted to hear from PAS readers
Disclaimer: I am not a qualified financial adviser and nothing in this blog post should be construed as personal financial advice. Everyone should do their own ‘due diligence’ before investing and seek professional advice if in any doubt how best to proceed. All investing carries a risk of loss.
Note also that posts may include affiliate links. If you click through and perform a qualifying transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the product or service you receive or the terms you are offered, but it does help support me in publishing PAS and paying my bills. Thank you!
If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:
Today I’m reviewing a new book called Extreme Frugality by my blogging colleague Jane Berry, also known as Shoestring Jane.
Jane runs a popular blog called Shoestring Cottage which follows her journey towards making a creative, happy and sustainable life on much less. She also runs a YouTube channel as Shoestring Jane, where she shares her thrifty life and money-saving ideas. And she is also a writer for the estimable Mouthy Money site, to which I am a regular contributor myself.
Extreme Frugality is divided into 13 main chapters, as follows:
Chapter 1: Frugal Foundations
Chapter 2: Stuff, Stuff and More Stuff
Chapter 3: Cooking and Eating Like Grandma
Chapter 4: Granny’s advice – ‘Make do & Mend’ and ‘Waste Not, Want Not’
Chapter 5: Buying Second-Hand and Getting Everything for Less
Chapter 6: Slashing Your Monthly Bills
Chapter 7: Making a Frugal Home
Chapter 8: The Frugal Cleaner
Chapter 9: The Frugal Garden
Chapter 10: Frugal Fashion: Dress for Less
Chapter 11: Frugal Fun and Travel
Chapter 12: A Frugal Christmas
Chapter 13: Health and Well-being on a Budget
There is also a section of references and resources at the end.
As you may gather, Extreme Frugality aims to show you how to develop thrifty habits (as our grandparents had to). The author says the purpose of doing this is to cushion you against hard times, be creative with what you have, buy just what you need, and eliminate waste from your home.
As a one-time professional writer and editor myself, I was impressed by the high standard to which Extreme Frugality has been produced. The style is clear and accessible, and the content neatly set out without any unnecessary typographical or design gimmicks.
Obviously in the current cost-of-living crisis we are all having to tighten our belts, so the advice in the book is very apposite at present. There are also plenty of suggestions for preventing waste, so the book should appeal to anyone concerned with their environmental impact as well.
It’s hard to pick out highlights as every chapter is packed with valuable tips and advice, but I especially enjoyed Chapter 6, which takes you through a wide range of methods for slashing monthly bills, including energy, water, Council Tax, broadband and so on. The advice in this chapter alone could easily save you thousands of pounds a year. But all the chapters contain useful advice, ideas and information. Even as a money blogger myself, I don’t mind admitting I learned a lot from it.
In summary, Extreme Frugality is a great guide for anyone looking to save money and reduce waste in these challenging times. It would also make an excellent gift for a friend or family member. I am happy to give it my highest recommendation.
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.
Disclosure: I was sent a free copy of Extreme Frugality (in PDF form) to review. Please be aware also that this post (and others on PAS) includes affiliate links. If you click through one of these and make a purchase or perform some other defined action, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect in any way the price you pay or the product or service you receive.
If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:
I’ll begin as usual with my Nutmeg Stocks and Shares ISA. As I only updated my full review of Nutmeg last week, however, I will keep it fairly brief today.
Nutmeg is the largest investment I hold other than my Bestinvest SIPP (personal pension). Withdrawals from the latter are still on hold to avert the risk of pound-cost ravaging.
My main Nutmeg portfolio, which I opened back in 2016, is currently valued at £19,733. Last month it stood at £19,292 so that is a rise of £441. My smaller Smart Alpha investment (opened in 2020) is currently valued at £2,987. Last month it stood at £2,921, so that is a rise of £66. My total Nutmeg investments have therefore increased by £507 month on month.
While the rise in October is of course welcome, my Nutmeg investments are still down by about 11% in value since the start of the year. As I said in my recent Nutmeg review, that’s clearly disappointing, but it’s still a lot less than the amount by which they went up in 2021 alone. And I am still over £5,400 in profit overall. I am therefore philosophical about this, recognising that all investments have their ups and downs and Nutmeg is hardly alone in seeing a drop in values this year. But I do understand why people who started investing with them in the last twelve months or so may be feeling disappointed. You might like to read this recent article on the Nutmeg blog where they discuss the performance of Nutmeg portfolios in 2022 and examine the outlook going forward.
There is actually an argument that now may be a good opportunity to invest while asset values are depressed. At some point we will see a recovery and people who invest at the present time will be well placed to benefit from this. Of course, nobody knows for sure when the recovery will happen or how much further asset values might fall first. Nonetheless, I am certainly considering adding further to my Nutmeg investments in the coming months.
Moving on, my Assetz Exchange investments continue to perform well. Regular readers will know that this is a P2P property investment platform focusing on lower-risk properties (e.g. sheltered housing). I put an initial £100 into this in mid-February 2021 and another £400 in April. In June 2021 I added another £500, bringing my total investment up to £1,000.
Since I opened my account, my AE portfolio has generated £81.40 in revenue from rental and £30.80 in capital growth, a total of £112.20. That’s a decent rate of return on my £1,000 investment and does illustrate the value of P2P property investment for diversifying your portfolio when equity markets are volatile.
I now have investments in 23 different projects and all are performing as expected, generating rental income and in most cases showing a profit on capital as well. So I am very happy with how this investment has been doing. And it doesn’t hurt that most projects are socially beneficial as well.
To control risk with all my property crowdfunding investments nowadays, I invest relatively modest amounts in individual projects. This is a particular attraction of AE as far as i am concerned. You can actually invest from as little as 80p per property if you really want to proceed cautiously.
Another property platform I have investments with is Kuflink. They continue to do well, with new projects launching almost every day. I currently have around £2,600 invested with them in 17 different projects. To date I have never lost any money with Kuflink, though some loan terms have been extended once or twice. On the plus side, when this happens additional interest is paid for the period in question. At present most of my Kuflink loans are performing to schedule, though five have had their repayment dates put back.
My loans with Kuflink pay annual interest rates of 6 to 7.5 percent. These days I invest no more than £200 per loan (and often less). That is not because of any issues with Kuflink but more to do with losses of larger amounts on other P2P property platforms in the past. My days of putting four-figure sums into any single property investment are behind me now!
Nowadays I mainly opt to reinvest the monthly repayments I receive from Kuflink, which has the effect of boosting the percentage rate of return on the projects in question
Obviously a possible drawback with Kuflink and similar platforms is that your money is tied up in bricks and mortar, so not as easily accessible as cash savings or even (to some extent) shares. They do, however, have a secondary market on which you can offer any loan part for sale (as long as the loan in question is performing and not in arrears). Clearly that does depend on someone else wanting to buy it, but my experience has been that any loan parts offered are typically snapped up very quickly. So if an urgent need arises, withdrawing your money (or part of it) is unlikely to be an issue.
You can read my full Kuflink review here. They offer a variety of investment options, including a tax-free IFISA paying up to 7% interest per year with built-in automatic diversification. Alternatively you can now build your own IFISA, with most loans on the platform (including the one shown above) being IFISA-eligible.
My investment in European crowdlending platform Nibble continues to perform as advertised. My latest investment was in their Legal Strategy. These are loans that are in default and facing legal action. Nibble buy these loans at a heavily discounted rate and then seek to recover as much as possible of the money owed. The minimum investment is 10 euros and the minimum period is six months. I invested 100 euros for 12 months initially at a target annual interest rate of 12.5%.
The Legal Strategy comes with a deposit-back guarantee. This is a guarantee to return the full investment amount at the end of the investment period and a minimum yield of 9% per year. The actual yield depends on how successful recovery efforts prove, so in practice you may end up with a return of anywhere between 9% and 14.5%. All has gone to plan so far, but I will obviously continue to report on this in the months ahead.
Earlier this year I set up an account with investment and trading platform eToro, using their popular ‘copy trader’ facility. I chose to invest $500 (then about £412) copying an experienced eToro trader called Aukie. Unsurprisingly my investment has been up and down in the last few months, but it is currently about $8 in profit. In these turbulent times I am quite happy with that.
In addition, since I started on eToro, the pound has weakened against the US dollar, so my investment has benefited from this. My $508 US is now worth around £440 in UK pounds, so I am effectively £28 up overall. I am not claiming this as a particular benefit of eToro, but it does demonstrate how exchange rate fluctuations can sometimes work in your favour!
In any event, I’m looking on this as a long-term investment so won’t be judging it yet. I am also considering a further investment with eToro, possibly in one of their themed portfolios. You can read my full in-depth review of eToro here. I am also planning to publish a more in-depth look at eToro copy trading on the blog soon.
Moving on, I had another article published on the always-excellent Mouthy Money website. This one is entitled How to Save Money on Petrol. I was actually commissioned to write this when petrol prices were peaking. Since then they have fallen back somewhat, but with no end in sight to the war in Ukraine prices could easily shoot back up again. In the article I discuss my favourite website for monitoring petrol prices locally and also set out my top tips for cutting your petrol (or diesel) consumption.
As a matter of interest, Mouthy Money recently asked if I could increase the number of articles I write for them (so I guess I must be doing something right!). From November they will be publishing two articles a month from me. While they don’t pay me a fortune, the extra cash will undoubtedly help a lot in the cold winter months ahead.
Obviously energy bills are a particular concern for many people at the moment, so I hope you are getting all the help you are entitled to. By now everyone should have received the first instalment (£66) of the £400 rebate all UK residents are due on their energy bills for the next six months. If not, chase it up with your energy supplier.
I am with EDF, and they are crediting the rebate payments to my bank account once my monthly direct debit has been taken. Other energy suppliers are doing it differently, e.g. deducting the rebate from monthly direct debits before they are taken. This article from the popular Moneysavingexpert website explains how different energy suppliers are applying the rebate.
I also received a letter last week confirming that, as I receive the state pension, I shall be getting an enhanced Winter Fuel Payment of £500 in November or December this year, which will be very welcome as well 🙏
In the last few years I also qualified for the Warm Home Discount, which this year is being increased from £140 to £150. The rules are changing, however, and I suspect I shall be one of the people who misses out. The full new rules still haven’t been announced, but I will update my blog post about WHD as soon as I know more.
As I’ve said previously, the government’s Help for Households website has a helpful summary of all the financial assistance currently available and is regularly updated.
Please do check out as well some of the other posts on Pounds and Sense for advice and resources, especially in the Making Money and Saving Money categories.
Don’t forget, also, that there are currently two opportunities to claim a free share available. One is with Wealthyhood and the other with Trading 212 (the links will take you to the relevant blog posts). The Trading 212 offer closes on 8 November 2022, so don’t delay if you want to take advantage of this one. As far as I know the Wealthyhood offer is open indefinitely, but that could always change, of course 🙂
That’s all for today. As always, if you have any comments or queries, feel free to leave them below. I am always delighted to hear from PAS readers
Disclaimer: I am not a qualified financial adviser and nothing in this blog post should be construed as personal financial advice. Everyone should do their own ‘due diligence’ before investing and seek professional advice if in any doubt how best to proceed. All investing carries a risk of loss.
Note also that posts may include affiliate links. If you click through and perform a qualifying transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the product or service you receive or the terms you are offered, but it does help support me in publishing PAS and paying my bills. Thank you!
If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:
I recently returned from a three-night break in Barmouth in Wales. The town is also known by its Welsh name of Abermaw.
Barmouth is a traditional Welsh seaside resort. I’ve visited a few times over the last few years but haven’t actually stayed there for over 25. I thought it was high time I rectified that!
On this occasion I stayed at Tyr Graig Castle, a hotel I discovered online and booked via Booking.com. I’ll say more about the accommodation below.
Barmouth is about ten miles south of Harlech. The nearest large town is Aberystwyth. Here is a map of the area from Google Maps.
Accommodation
As mentioned above, I stayed at a hotel called Tyr Graig Castle. Unfortunately I neglected to take any photos of the exterior, but you can see the view from my bedroom window in the cover image (including a length of parapet!). There are, of course, more photos on the hotel website.
Tyr Graig Castle is a characterful Victorian building, originally constructed in the late 1890s. it retains the style of the Victorian era, with stained glass windows, wood panelling and highly decorated floors and ceilings.
Tyr Graig is a traditional Welsh name and translates as ‘House on the Rock’. It stands about 200 feet above Barmouth, overlooking Cardigan Bay, across which can be seen the Llyn peninsula and Bardsey Island. The building was completed in 1892 as a family home for W.W. Greener, a famous Birmingham gunsmith. It was designed in the Gothic style that was popular at the time. Its unique shape was chosen by Mr Greener himself. It resembles both a medieval castle and an open double-barrelled shotgun when viewed from above.
I stayed in a first-floor turret room. This had round walls, and windows providing stunning views across the bay. There was a small bathroom with a shower rather than a bath. While generally I found the room perfectly comfortable, I did find the lighting rather dim. There was no ceiling light, just some uplighters on the walls and bedside lamps with low-powered energy-saving bulbs. My eyes are admittedly not the best these days, but I had to use the torch app on my phone in the evening to see well enough to read!
The breakfasts (and optional evening meals) at Tyr Graig Castle are served in the dining room and adjacent conservatory. The latter has wonderful views out to sea and there was a bit of a rush to get one of the four window tables (see photo below). Early risers had a definite advantage here! I was pleased to discover that they recently reinstated the breakfast buffet, where you can help yourself to cereal, fruit, yogurt and so forth. You could then order a cooked breakfast which was brought to your table. These were excellent and set me up for the day 🙂
You could also opt to eat in the restaurant in the evening. Like most guests (as far as I could judge) I chose to do this, as Tyr Graig Castle is a little way out of the town centre and other dining options in the area are limited unless you want to drive. The food was good and the portions were generous. My only slight criticism is that the menu was the same every night. There was a reasonable choice, but a bit more variety day to day (even if just a daily special) would have been appreciated.
The service from both the staff and the charming owners (Mike and Trudy) was uniformly excellent. The hotel had free wifi which worked perfectly during my stay (not always the case in my experience).
One other observation is that this is the first time I had stayed in a hotel – as opposed to self-catering – since the days of the pandemic. I was pleased to discover that by and large things are back to normal now. One small difference is that I was asked at check-in if I wanted my room serviced every day. It was the first time I can remember being asked this, as pre-Covid it would have been assumed. But I guess some people are still nervous about having someone else in their room even if they aren’t there at the time. So I do understand why the hotel ask this now.
Financials
As Pounds and Sense is primarily a money blog, I should say a word about this.
I paid £336 for my three-night stay at Tyr Graig Castle, which works out to £112 per night (including VAT). Considering that included a substantial breakfast as well, I thought the price was very reasonable.
The optional evening meals were, of course, extra. The prices were, I would say, good value as well. I paid around £25 a night for my evening meals, which included a main course and dessert (or cheese and biscuits) and coffee. I generally had a small bottle of sparkling water with the meal, but if I had gone for wine or beer, that would obviously have pushed the price up a bit.
Things to Do
I won’t give you a full account of everything I did while I was there, but here are a few highlights.
Harlech
Harlech is about 20 minutes’ drive north from Barmouth (or a short train journey on the scenic Cambrian line). I spent my first morning here.
Harlech has some charming shops and cafes, and a long, sandy beach. But it is probably best known for its stunning castle (see photo above).
Harlech Castle was built by Edward I during his invasion of Wales between 1282 and 1289. Since then it has had a long and interesting history, including serving as the home and military HQ of Owen Glendower, the Welsh prince who led a long-running war of independence with England during the late Middle Ages. UNESCO considers Harlech Castle, with three others at Beaumaris, Conwy and Caernarfon, to be one of “the finest examples of late 13th century and early 14th century military architecture in Europe”, and it is classed as a World Heritage Site.
Admission to Harlech Castle costs £8.30 for adults or £7.70 for seniors (over 65). You can also buy a family ticket for two adults and up to three children for £27.40. Children under 5 receive free entry, as do people with disabilities and their companions. All prices are correct as at September 2022.
Harlech Castle is impressive and well worth a visit. You can climb the stone staircases in several of the towers and walk along the battlements (obviously you need to be reasonably fit to do this). From up here you can enjoy spectacular views across the sea and towards the mountains of Snowdonia. At ground level there is a room with some information about the castle and its history. I was glad to have this, as the ticket office had run out of guidebooks in English and only Welsh language ones were available.
I should maybe also mention that Harlech Castle has an excellent cafe with plenty of seating inside and out. I enjoyed a very nice cappuccino and cake here!
Portmeirion
Portmeirion is a beautiful Italianate village created by the architect Clough Williams Ellis. These days it is probably best known as the location for the 1960s cult TV series The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan. I drove here in the afternoon after spending the morning in Harlech. It’s a wonderful place to while away a few hours.
There is an admission fee to get into Portmeirion, At the time of writing (September 2022) this is as follows:
Adult £17.00
Concessions £13.50 (this applies to anyone aged 60+ or a student with a valid student ID)
Children £10.00 (5-15 years)
Children (under 5 years) Free
There are also discounted family tickets for various permutations of adults and children.
You can also get free admission (in the afternoon) by booking a minimum two-course lunch at Castell Deudraeth; this is part of the Portmeirion estate, a short walk from the village itself. Free admission to the village is also available if you book a spa treatment or afternoon cream tea there.
More information is available on the Portmeirion website. One thing you may need to know is that they don’t allow dogs (other than guide dogs) into the grounds.
Fairbourne Railway
The Fairbourne Railway is a miniature steam railway. It’s a bit of a drive to get there from Barmouth, as you have to cross the estuary, which entails driving several miles inland and back again. However, you can get a ferry (actually a motorboat) from Barmouth seafront that takes you to the far end of the Fairbourne Railway in under ten minutes. This costs the princely sum of £2.50 (September 2022 price) and provides some wonderful views of Barmouth and the railway bridge. Highly recommended!
If you are energetic you can also walk from Barmouth to Fairbourne via the railway bridge (which isn’t open to cars). On this visit I ended up walking to the Fairbourne Railway and then getting a ferry back.
A one-way trip on the Fairbourne Railway costs £7.60. Alternatively you can buy a Day Rover ticket for £11.50 which entitles you to go up and down the line as many times as you like. This is obviously better value! You can choose whether to travel in an open or closed carriage (it all costs the same). There is a small museum at the Fairbourne end of the line with information about the railway’s history and some exhibits. There is also a separate room housing a large model railway. This is free to enter, but you have to insert a coin to watch the train go round 🙂
The ticket office at Fairbourne incorporates a cafe selling drinks, sandwiches and snacks (no cooked meals though). At the Barmouth Ferry end of the line there is also a cafe but this is only open during the peak summer months.
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed my short break in Barmouth and am happy to recommend both the town and the hotel where I stayed for a short break.
As mentioned above, Barmouth is a traditional Welsh seaside resort, and none the worse for that. It has a clean, attractive promenade and a beautiful sandy beach which goes out a long way to the sea. It is hard to imagine it getting overcrowded!
There is plenty to do for families with children, including a funfair and amusement arcades. There are various restaurants and fast food outlets along the seafront. There is also a railway station with regular trains to Pwllheli in one direction and Aberystwyth and beyond in the other. Road connections are good as well.
Also worth checking out while you are there are Ty Crwn, a 19th century lockup for drunks and petty offenders (picture below). There is also a small museum near the seafront dedicated to the town’s maritime history. Entry to this is free, though donations are appreciated.
Finally, as mentioned above, I recommend taking a stroll across the half-mile-long railway bridge over the Afon Mawddach river. This is the longest timber viaduct in Wales and one of the oldest in regular use in Britain (it opened in 1867). It offers some stunning views across the estuary. You can also walk on to Fairbourne and the Fairbourne Railway (see above).
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.
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I’ll begin as usual with my Nutmeg Stocks and Shares ISA. This is the largest investment I hold other than my Bestinvest SIPP (personal pension). Withdrawals from the latter are still on hold, incidentally, to avert the risk of pound-cost ravaging.
As the screenshot below of performance last month shows, my main portfolio is currently valued at £19,292. Last month it stood at £20,344 so that is a fall of £1,052.
Apart from my main portfolio, I also have a second, smaller pot using Nutmeg’s Smart Alpha option. This is now worth £2,921 compared with £3,091 a month ago, another fall of £170.
Here is a screen capture showing performance since January 2022. As you can see, I topped up this account in February this year.
There is no denying that these falls are disappointing, especially with my Smart Alpha portfolio now worth less in total than I have contributed to it. As I’ve noted previously on PAS, however, you do have to expect ups and downs with equity-based investments. And this year there has been no lack of volatility, caused by rising inflation, the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic (among other things).
About my only consolation is that things could have been even worse if – paradoxically – I’d opted for a lower-risk level with my investments. In their latest blog update, Nutmeg reveal that low and medium-risk portfolios actually performed worse overall last month than high-risk ones. I have copied below their explanation for this:
By design, Nutmeg’s low- and medium-risk portfolios have more exposure through ETFs to assets that are priced in sterling and with limited foreign currency exposure. As you will have seen in the headlines this week, the pound hit an all-time low against the dollar with markets initially placing little faith in the chancellor’s tax-cutting and pro-growth agenda.
This year it has been rewarding to hold foreign currency with sterling particularly weak versus the dollar. Some of our high-risk portfolios have benefited from currency moves, while low- and medium-risk portfolios have not. They haven’t lost money from having low foreign currency exposure, they just haven’t benefited from it.
Secondly, low- and medium-risk portfolios by design have more exposure – again through ETFs – to government bonds, which in ‘normal’ times are considered something of a safe haven and have much lower volatility than equities. After all, it is still highly unlikely that the UK government would default on its debts.
In a nutshell (no pun intended) low- and medium-risk Nutmeg portfolios hold a higher proportion of investments in pounds sterling and UK government bonds. These are normally regarded as lower risk, but last month both took a particular hammering. So in comparison nominally higher-risk portfolios like mine actually performed somewhat better.
This is one more reason I’m glad I opted for higher risk levels with my Nutmeg portfolios (9/10 for my main one and 5/5 for my Smart Alpha). If you haven’t yet seen it, you might also like to check out my blog post in which I looked at the performance over time of Nutmeg fully managed portfolios at every risk level from 1 to 10 . I was actually pretty amazed by the difference risk level makes, with higher-risk ports over almost any period of three or more years in the last ten generating significantly better overall returns. If you are investing for the long term (and you almost certainly should) opting for a hyper-cautious low-risk strategy may not be the smartest thing to do.
Since I started investing with Nutmeg in 2016 – and despite everything that has happened this year – I have still made a total net return on capital of £4,977 (35% or 52.35% time-weighted) on my main portfolio. So I can afford to be philosophical about the recent falls. Indeed, I am considering topping up my Nutmeg investments again now while asset values are depressed.
You can read my full Nutmeg review here (including a special offer at the end for PAS readers). If you are looking for a home for your annual ISA allowance, based on my experience over the last six years, they are certainly worth considering.
Moving on, my Assetz Exchange investments continue to perform well. Regular readers will know that this is a P2P property investment platform focusing on lower-risk properties (e.g. sheltered housing). I put an initial £100 into this in mid-February 2021 and another £400 in April. In June 2021 I added another £500, bringing my total investment up to £1,000.
Since I opened my account, my AE portfolio has generated £76.51 in revenue from rental and £63.58 in capital growth, a total of £140.09. That’s a decent rate of return on my £1,000 investment and does illustrate the value of P2P property investment for diversifying your portfolio when equity markets are volatile.
I now have investments in 23 different projects and all are performing as expected, generating rental income and in most cases showing a profit on capital as well. So I am very happy with how this investment has been doing. And it doesn’t hurt that most projects are socially beneficial as well.
To control risk with all my property crowdfunding investments nowadays, I invest relatively modest amounts in individual projects. This is a particular attraction of AE as far as i am concerned. You can actually invest from as little as 80p per property if you really want to proceed cautiously.
Another property platform I have investments with is Kuflink. They continue to do well, with new projects launching almost every day. I currently have around £2,500 invested with them in 14 different projects. To date I have never lost any money with Kuflink, though some loan terms have been extended once or twice. On the plus side, when this happens additional interest is paid for the period in question. At present most of my Kuflink loans are performing to schedule, though two recently had their repayment dates put back by three months.
My loans with Kuflink pay annual interest rates of 6 to 7.5 percent. These days I invest no more than £200 per loan (and often less). That is not because of any issues with Kuflink but more to do with losses of larger amounts on other P2P property platforms in the past. My days of putting four-figure sums into any single property investment are behind me now!
Nowadays I mainly opt to reinvest the monthly repayments I receive from Kuflink, which has the effect of boosting the percentage rate of return on the projects in question
Obviously a possible drawback with Kuflink and similar platforms is that your money is tied up in bricks and mortar, so not as easily accessible as cash savings or even (to some extent) shares. They do, however, have a secondary market on which you can offer any loan part for sale (as long as the loan in question is performing and not in arrears). Clearly that does depend on someone else wanting to buy it, but my experience has been that any loan parts offered are typically snapped up very quickly. So if an urgent need arises, withdrawing your money (or part of it) is unlikely to be an issue.
You can read my full Kuflink review here. They offer a variety of investment options, including a tax-free IFISA paying up to 7% interest per year with built-in automatic diversification. Alternatively you can now build your own IFISA, with most loans on the platform (including the one shown above) being IFISA-eligible.
My investment in European crowdlending platform Nibble continues to perform as advertised. My latest investment was in their Legal Strategy. These are loans that are in default and facing legal action. Nibble buy these loans at a heavily discounted rate and then seek to recover as much as possible of the money owed. The minimum investment is 10 euros and the minimum period is six months. I invested 100 euros for 12 months initially at a target annual interest rate of 12.5%.
The Legal Strategy comes with a deposit-back guarantee. This is a guarantee to return the full investment amount at the end of the investment period and a minimum yield of 9% per year. The actual yield depends on how successful recovery efforts prove, so in practice you may end up with a return of anywhere between 9% and 14.5%. All has gone to plan so far, but I will obviously continue to report on this in the months ahead.
Moving on, I had another article published on the always-excellent Mouthy Money website. This one is entitled My Odd Smart Meter Story and Why Despite This I Still Recommend Them. In the article I discuss my rather strange experiences with a smart meter, which stopped working after I switched supplier and then rather mysteriously started again two years later! As per the article title, I do still recommend getting a smart meter, especially in these times of soaring energy bills.
Also in September I enjoyed a final (probably) short break of the year in Barmouth in Wales. I stayed at a Victorian Gothic hotel called Tyr Graig Castle. I was lucky with the weather, and enjoyed visiting nearby Harlech and Portmeirion (see cover image) as well as Barmouth itself.
I shall be publishing a full review of my short break in Barmouth soon. In the meantime, here is a photo of a rather splendid sunset taken from the hotel restaurant…
Finally, I know a lot of people are extremely anxious about the cost-of-living crisis. As I said last time, though, it’s important not to panic. I recommend a three pronged-approach of maximizing your income, minimizing your expenditure, and budgeting carefully (using your resources as effectively as possible, in other words).
Bear in mind, also, that a range of government support measures have been announced to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. This government Help for Households website has a useful summary of all the help available and is regularly updated.
In the meantime, please do check out some of the other posts on Pounds and Sense for additional advice and resources, especially in the Making Money and Saving Money categories.
That’s all for today. As always, if you have any comments or queries, feel free to leave them below. I am always delighted to hear from PAS readers
Disclaimer: I am not a qualified financial adviser and nothing in this blog post should be construed as personal financial advice. Everyone should do their own ‘due diligence’ before investing and seek professional advice if in any doubt how best to proceed. All investing carries a risk of loss.
Note also that posts may include affiliate links. If you click through and perform a qualifying transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the product or service you receive or the terms you are offered, but it does help support me in publishing PAS and paying my bills. Thank you!
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Today I’m looking at Cardeo, a new, free credit card management app. It is designed to help save you money on your credit cards.
How Does Cardeo Work?
Cardeo brings together data from all your credit cards into a single app using open banking.
It then gives you insights into your borrowing and spending. Their payment plan works out how long it will take to pay off your cards. You can set a repayment target, decide how to get there, and repay all your cards through a single monthly payment (you can also use it with just a single credit card). Reminders make sure that you never miss a repayment.
You can change the payment plan as much as you like: edit the date, target or the monthly amount, make extra one-off payments, and pause/restart the plan as it suits you.
Cardeo works with most (though not yet all) UK credit cards. You can view the entire list here. All the most popular credit card providers appear to be covered, including Barclays, HSBC, Santander, MBNA, Virgin Money, and so on.
How Can Cardeo Save You Money?
First and foremost, payment reminders from Cardeo help you pay your cards on time each month. That way you avoid extra interest and late payment fees from your card provider. If – like me – you are prone to forget these payments on occasion, this is a valuable money-saving feature in its own right.
The Cardeo payment plan offers a choice of repayment strategies, including the so-called avalanche method. This repays the highest interest rate cards first (after minimum payments are covered). By this means you will minimise interest charges and pay off your cards in the shortest possible time.
Cardeo gives you insights into your credit card usage, helping you make smarter decisions about your spending and saving. Finally, Cardeo also offer deals from other parties which are designed to save you money.
How Does Cardeo Make Money?
As already mentioned, the Cardeo app is free to download and to use, with no in-app purchases or charges.
Cardeo say they make a small amount of money from deal providers each time a customer takes up a deal from the Cardeo app (e.g. a low-interest loan).
My Experience
I found downloading and installing the Cardeo app straightforward – I got mine from Google Play as I have an Android phone.
When you first open the app you have to put in certain details, including your full name and address, phone number (for log-in purposes), and so on. You may also be required to enter an email invitation code. All this took me maybe five minutes at most. I then saw the screen below…
After that, I clicked on ‘Add a Card’ and selected the name of my credit card provider, MBNA. I then had to follow a link to their website and log in with my usual online security credentials to authorize open banking.
Frustratingly, this took me a few attempts. MBNA required me to answer an automated call from them and enter a four-digit code on the telephone keypad to complete the process. Initially it told me I had got the code wrong, despite the fact that I had copied it from the MBNA site. I persevered, however, and eventually the card was linked to my Cardeo account 🙂
As a side note, I am probably not the ideal candidate for Cardeo, as these days I only have one credit card and use it just once or twice a year. The rest of the time, I use my bank debit card instead. I am in the fortunate position of having enough income/savings that I don’t need to borrow on my credit card. On the odd occasion I do use it, it is typically for larger purchases to take advantage of the extra legal protections you get with credit card purchases over £100.
Nevertheless, I am happy to confirm that everything in the Cardeo set-up process went smoothly for me, with the sole exception of the hiccup regarding authorizing open banking with MBNA. The latter wasn’t Cardeo’s fault, and has in fact happened to me before with MBNA. Hopefully you will be luckier!
My Thoughts
If you’re a regular credit card user, and especially if you pay interest on an outstanding balance (or balances), in my view Cardeo offers a great way to minimize the charges you pay and help reduce your debts as quickly as possible.
As I have noted before on Pounds and Sense, credit card borrowing can be very expensive, especially over a long period. So if you are in debt on your cards, it is important to take all possible steps to pay this off as quickly as possible, and Cardeo will certainly help you with this. It can also help build your credit score by ensuring you don’t miss any payments.
A further benefit is that Cardeo will save you administrative time and hassle. You simply make one monthly payment and this is automatically allocated by the app across all your credit cards.
I know some people are uneasy about open banking, and if this is a major concern then Cardeo may not be for you. Open banking is, however, now a well-established option allowing consumers to gain an overview of their financial products. If you’re trying to get (and keep) your finances under better control, this can only be beneficial. Cardeo require your permission to use open banking and you can remove this at any time. Your data is encrypted and your login details are kept hidden. You can read more about the security and privacy protections here if you wish.
As always if you have any comments or questions about this post, or Cardeo more generally, please do leave them below.
Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. If you click through and download the Cardeo app or perform some other qualifying transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the product or service you receive in any way.
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I recently returned from a four-night break in Lavenham in Suffolk.
Lavenham is said to be England’s best-preserved medieval town, with over 300 listed, timber-framed houses (see cover image). But I must admit I had never heard of it until I read that my favourite Pink Floyd tribute band, Darkside, were performing there in August. It seemed a great opportunity to see the band and visit somewhere new at the same time. As I live in Staffordshire I normally head west towards Wales for my UK short breaks, so it felt quite strange to be driving east on the A14 instead!
I stayed in a beautiful, self-contained cottage in the heart of Lavenham, which I booked through Airbnb. I’ll say more about the accommodation below.
Lavenham is around five miles north-east of Sudbury. The nearest large town is Bury St Edmunds. Here is a map of the area from Google Maps.
Accommodation
I stayed in a charming, self-catering cottage called The Hay Loft in the centre of Lavenham. It had two bedrooms and bathrooms, so was actually larger than I needed.
I originally booked it so my sister Annie could join me for some of the time. Sadly she broke her wrist in a fall the day before, however, which meant she couldn’t come after all. So I had plenty of room to spread myself out!
This being an Airbnb property, I am not supposed to say exactly where it is, but I guess I can reveal that it’s in a very convenient, central location. There was plenty of free parking on the road outside and in the village itself. The location was quiet and peaceful (in the evenings especially) and I slept well throughout my stay. You can see a photo of the front of the cottage below.
You can read more about the accommodation on this page of the Airbnb website. It had an open-plan lounge/kitchen/dining room on the first floor, and two bedrooms and bathrooms (one ensuite) downstairs. That’s a slightly unusual configuration, but I was actually very grateful for it as my visit coincided with a four-day heatwave. Being downstairs, the bedrooms stayed comfortably cool. Electric fans were thoughtfully provided, though.
The cottage had all the facilities you could want for a short (or longer) stay. The kitchen area was well equipped with a gas cooker, microwave, fridge/freezer, dishwasher, toaster, sink, and so forth.
The cottage had free wifi which worked perfectly during my stay (not always the case in my experience). There was also a small garden at the front, down some steps from the gate. This was well tended and pleasant to sit out in (when it wasn’t too hot!).
Financials
As Pounds and Sense is primarily a money blog, I should say a word about this.
I paid £550 for my four-night stay, which works out to £137.50 per day. I thought that was very reasonable bearing in mind the size and standard of the accommodation and the convenience of the location. Obviously as this was self-catering no meals were included, but there was more space and better facilities than you would get in any comparable hotel or B&B.
Things to Do
I won’t give you a blow-by-blow account of what I did while I was there, but here are a few highlights.
The Guildhall
Lavenham Guildhall is an impressive timber-framed building. It was originally built in the early 16th century for the Guild of Corpus Christi, an alliance of wealthy local merchant families. In later years, as Lavenham’s wool trade declined, it served as a bridewell (prison) and workhouse. More recently in WW2 it housed a social club for American troops and also served as a restaurant around that time.
The Guildhall became the property of the National Trust in 1951 and it was subsequently opened to the public as a local history museum. It has a range of interesting exhibits, though I did find some of the material about the building’s use as a prison and workhouse a little depressing. My favourite room housed an exhibition dedicated to Lavenham in WW2, including posters and other interesting documents from that period.
At one end of The Guildhall, with its own entry from the square, is the National Trust tea-room. This serves the usual range of snacks and light lunches. It also has a very pleasant garden outside. You don’t need to pay for admission to the Guildhall to use the tea room or sit in its garden.
Little Hall
Little Hall is a late 14th century hall house on Lavenham main square. First built in the 1390s as a family house and workplace, it was enlarged, improved and modernised in the mid-1550s, and greatly extended later. By the 1700s it was giving homes to six families. It was restored in the 1920s/30s.
Little Hall was restored by the Gayer-Anderson brothers, who were both soldiers. They filled the house with art and artefacts collected during their extensive travels, many of which can still be seen there. It is privately owned – by a trust, I believe – and open to the public most afternoons for an entry fee of about £5.
I enjoyed visiting Little Hall and hearing about its long and varied history from the volunteer guide. It also has an attractive walled garden. It doesn’t have any refreshment facilities, but then again the Guildhall tea-room is just a stone’s thrown away!
The Church of St Peter and St Paul
My Airbnb hostess Sheila told me that the Church of St Peter and St Paul was a ‘must see’ in Lavenham and she wasn’t wrong. To quote from the Wikipedia article about it, ‘It is a notable wool church and regarded as one of the finest examples of Late Perpendicular Gothic architecture in England.’
When I arrived a service was just ending and there were quite a few people milling around. While it’s obviously a beautiful building, it is also a busy parish church. I enjoyed browsing in the second-hand bookshop and spent some time admiring pictures by local artists in an exhibition by the main door. But what really impressed me most were the magnificent stained glass windows, such as the one below.
Final Thoughts
As you may gather, I enjoyed my short break in Lavenham and am happy to recommend both the village and the accommodation where I stayed for a short break.
Lavenham is a lovely place to relax and chill out. It is full of beautiful, historic buildings to admire (and photograph) and several you can visit to get a sense of the village’s long history.
Of course, my initial reason for going was to see Darkside (pictured at the foot of this post), and that was inevitably a highlight for me. The concert took place in a large marquee (‘Lavenham Air Theatre’) in a field between the church and the local tennis club. It was a magical setting as the sun went down and a full moon appeared in the clear summer sky. And yes, the band did perform the classic Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon!
Although I didn’t eat out in the evenings, there are some highly regarded pubs and restaurants which if I hadn’t been on my own (and staying in a self-catering cottage) I would certainly have tried. I had lunch at the National Trust tea-room at The Guildhall on two days. Another day I had a delicious light lunch at The Nook, a cosy bookshop-cum-cafe just down the road from the church.
There are also some lovely circular walks from Lavenham (ask at the tourist information office near the Guildhall for more details). And a bit further afield there are other National Trust properties such as Melford Hall and Ickworth, and the historic village of Long Melford. Because it was so hot during my stay I didn’t really want to go out in my car (which doesn’t have working aircon). But if – or more likely when – I return, I will certainly explore this beautiful area a little more widely.
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.
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I’ll begin as usual with my Nutmeg Stocks and Shares ISA. This is the largest investment I hold other than my Bestinvest SIPP (personal pension).
As the screenshot below of performance last month shows, my main portfolio is currently valued at £20,344. Last month it stood at £20,407 so that is a modest fall of £73.
Apart from my main portfolio, I also have a second, smaller pot using Nutmeg’s Smart Alpha option. This is now worth £3,091 compared with £3,108 a month ago, another modest fall of £17.
Here is a screen capture showing performance since January 2022. As you can see, I have topped up this account several times this year.
The falls are obviously disappointing, though August was a roller-coaster month and until about a week ago both portfolios were showing a good profit since the end of July. As I’ve noted previously on PAS, you do have to expect ups and downs with equity-based investments. And this year there has been no lack of volatility in world markets, caused by rising inflation, the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic (among other things).
Even so, since I started investing with Nutmeg in 2016 – and despite everything that has happened this year – I have still made a total net return on capital of 42.12% (or 60.65% time-weighted) on my main portfolio.
I should say as well that I selected quite a high risk level for both my Nutmeg accounts (9/10 for the main one and 5/5 for Smart Alpha). This has served me well generally, but I’m sure investors who selected lower risk levels will have seen fewer ups and downs over the last few months. If you also have a Nutmeg portfolio and plan to withdraw from it soon, there is certainly a case for switching to a lower risk level now.
You can read my full Nutmeg review here (including a special offer at the end for PAS readers). If you are looking for a home for your annual ISA allowance, based on my experience over the last six years, they are certainly worth considering.
My Assetz Exchange investments continue to perform well. Regular readers will know that this is a P2P property investment platform focusing on lower-risk properties (e.g. sheltered housing). I put an initial £100 into this in mid-February 2021 and another £400 in April. In June 2021 I added another £500, bringing my total investment up to £1,000.
Since I opened my account, my AE portfolio has generated £70.81 in revenue from rental and £85.35 in capital growth, a total of £156.16. That’s a decent rate of return on my £1,000 investment and does illustrate the value of P2P property investment for diversifying your portfolio when equity markets are volatile (as at the moment).
I now have investments in 23 different projects and all are performing as expected, generating rental income and in most cases showing a profit on capital as well. So I am very happy with how this investment has been doing. And it doesn’t hurt that most projects are socially beneficial as well.
To control risk with all my property crowdfunding investments nowadays, I invest relatively modest amounts in individual projects. This is a particular attraction of AE as far as i am concerned. You can actually invest from as little as 80p per property if you really want to proceed cautiously.
Another property platform I have investments with is Kuflink. They continue to do well, with new projects launching almost every day. I currently have around £2,500 invested with them in 14 different projects. To date I have never lost any money with Kuflink, though some loan terms have been extended once or twice. On the plus side, when this happens additional interest is paid for the period in question. At present most of my Kuflink loans are performing to schedule, though two recently had their repayment dates put back by three months.
My loans with Kuflink pay annual interest rates of 6 to 7.5 percent. These days I invest no more than £200 per loan (and often less). That is not because of any issues with Kuflink but more to do with losses of larger amounts on other P2P property platforms in the past. My days of putting four-figure sums into any single property investment are behind me now!
Nowadays I mainly opt to reinvest the monthly repayments I receive from Kuflink, which has the effect of boosting the percentage rate of return on the projects in question
Obviously a possible drawback with Kuflink and similar platforms is that your money is tied up in bricks and mortar, so not as easily accessible as cash savings or even (to some extent) shares. They do, however, have a secondary market on which you can offer any loan part for sale (as long as the loan in question is performing and not in arrears). Clearly that does depend on someone else wanting to buy it, but my experience has been that any loan parts offered are typically snapped up very quickly. So if an urgent need arises, withdrawing your money (or part of it) is unlikely to be an issue.
You can read my full Kuflink review here. They offer a variety of investment options, including a tax-free IFISA paying up to 7% interest per year with built-in automatic diversification. Alternatively you can now build your own IFISA, with most loans on the platform (including the one shown above) being IFISA-eligible.
My investment in European crowdlending platform Nibble continues to perform as advertised. My latest investment was in their Legal Strategy. These are loans that are in default and facing legal action. Nibble buy these loans at a heavily discounted rate and then seek to recover as much as possible of the money owed. The minimum investment is 10 euros and the minimum period is six months. I invested 100 euros for 12 months initially at a target annual interest rate of 12.5%.
The Legal Strategy comes with a deposit-back guarantee. This is a guarantee to return the full investment amount at the end of the investment period and a minimum yield of 9% per year. The actual yield depends on how successful recovery efforts prove, so in practice you may end up with a return of anywhere between 9% and 14.5%. All has gone to plan so far, but I will obviously continue to report on this in the months ahead.
As mentioned last time, I recently set up an account with investment and trading platform eToro, using their popular ‘copy trader’ facility. I chose to invest $500 (about £412) copying an experienced eToro trader called Aukie. My investment initially dipped, but I am now about $21 in profit. In these turbulent times I am quite happy with that. But in any event I’m looking on this as a long-term investment so won’t be judging it yet. I am also considering a further investment with eToro, possibly in one of their themed portfolios. You can read my full in-depth review of eToro here.
Moving on, I had another article published on the always-excellent Mouthy Money website. This one is titled Earn a Sideline Income From Online Surveys. In this article I set out my five favourite survey sites for generating a sideline income. Surveys represent an easy, stress-free way to give your income a bit of a boost, which clearly we could all do with just now.
I had quite a busy month in August (one reason I haven’t updated the blog for a while!). In particular, I agreed to present a session for The Joy Club (an online social group for retired and semi-retired people) on the subject of budgeting in the cost of living crisis. This involved rather more work than I anticipated, as I had to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, resources list and accompanying 7000 word script. But it seemed to go down well and I enjoyed the questions and discussion at the end. I know PAS has acquired some extra readers and subscribers as a result of this event, so a very warm welcome if that includes you!
Also in August I enjoyed a break in Lavenham in Suffolk, said to be England’s best-preserved medieval village. My original reason for going was to see Darkside, my favourite Pink Floyd tribute band (see photo below). But I thought I’d make a holiday of it as well, so I ended up staying four nights.
Lavenham is a charming, picturesque place, with various interesting historical buildings you can visit. These include the early 16th century Guildhall and Little Hall, a former wool merchant’s house. I plan to write a post about my Lavenham trip soon.
Finally, I know a lot of people are extremely anxious about the cost-of-living crisis. As I said in my Joy Club presentation last week, though, it’s important not to panic. I recommend a three pronged-approach of maximizing your income, minimizing your expenditure, and budgeting carefully (using your resources as effectively as possible, in other words). Bear in mind, also, that various government support measures have already been announced to try to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. And once a new PM is (finally!) in place, more will certainly follow.
In the meantime, please do check out some of the other posts on Pounds and Sense for additional advice and resources, especially in the Making Money and Saving Money categories.
That’s all for today. As always, if you have any comments or queries, feel free to leave them below. I am always delighted to hear from PAS readers 🙂
Disclaimer: I am not a qualified financial adviser and nothing in this blog post should be construed as personal financial advice. Everyone should do their own ‘due diligence’ before investing and seek professional advice if in any doubt how best to proceed. All investing carries a risk of loss.
Note also that posts may include affiliate links. If you click through and perform a qualifying transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the product or service you receive or the terms you are offered, but it does help support me in publishing PAS and paying my bills. Thank you!
If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:
I’ll begin as usual with my Nutmeg Stocks and Shares ISA. This is the largest investment I hold other than my Bestinvest SIPP (personal pension).
As the screenshot below of performance last month shows, my main portfolio is currently valued at £20,407. Last month it stood at £19,357 so that is a (very welcome) rise of £1,050.
Apart from my main portfolio, I also have a second, smaller pot using Nutmeg’s Smart Alpha option. This is now worth £3,108 compared with £2,942 a month ago, a rise of £166
Here is a screen capture showing performance since January 2022. As you may be able to see, I have topped up this account several times this year.
The rises in July are obviously encouraging. In particular, it is nice that my Smart Alpha portfolio (which I haven’t had as long) is worth more than I put into it once again!
Nonetheless, this month’s rises still don’t quite cancel out the falls of last month. And the total value of my Nutmeg portfoiio is still around 8% less than it was at the start of 2022.
As I’ve noted previously on PAS, you do have to expect ups and downs with equity-based investments. And this year there has been no lack of volatility in world markets, caused by rising inflation, the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic (among other things).
Even so, since I started investing with Nutmeg in 2016 – and despite everything that has happened this year – I have still made a total net return on capital of 42.56% (or 61.15% time-weighted) on my main portfolio.
I should say as well that I selected quite a high risk level for both my Nutmeg accounts (9/10 for the main one and 5/5 for Smart Alpha). This has served me well generally, but I’m sure investors who selected lower risk levels will have seen smaller falls over the last few months. If you also have a Nutmeg portfolio and plan to withdraw from it soon, there may well be a case for switching to a lower risk level now.
You can read my full Nutmeg review here (including a special offer at the end for PAS readers). If you are looking for a home for your annual ISA allowance, based on my experience over the last six years, they are certainly worth considering.
Another property platform I have investments with is Kuflink. They continue to do well, with new projects launching almost every day. I currently have around £2,200 invested with them in 14 different projects. To date I have never lost any money with Kuflink, though some loan terms have been extended once or twice. On the plus side, when this happens additional interest is paid for the period in question. At present all my Kuflink loans are performing to schedule, though two are showing as ‘pending status update’, which may translate to a delay in repayment.
My loans with Kuflink pay annual interest rates of 6 to 7.5 percent. These days I invest no more than £200 per loan (and often less). That is not because of any issues with Kuflink but more to do with losses of larger amounts on other P2P property platforms in the past. My days of putting four-figure sums into any single property investment are behind me now!
Nowadays I mainly opt to reinvest the monthly repayments I receive from Kuflink, which has the effect of boosting the percentage rate of return on the projects in question
Obviously a possible drawback with Kuflink and similar platforms is that your money is tied up in bricks and mortar, so not as easily accessible as cash savings or even (to some extent) shares. They do, however, have a secondary market on which you can offer any loan part for sale (as long as the loan in question is performing and not in arrears). Clearly that does depend on someone else wanting to buy it, but my experience has been that any loan parts offered are typically snapped up very quickly. So if an urgent need arises, withdrawing your money (or part of it) is unlikely to be an issue.
You can read my full Kuflink review here. They offer a variety of investment options, including a tax-free IFISA paying up to 7% interest per year with built-in automatic diversification. Alternatively you can now build your own IFISA, with most loans on the platform (including the one shown above) being IFISA-eligible.
My investment in European crowdlending platform Nibble continues to perform as advertised. My latest investment was in their Legal Strategy. These are loans that are in default and facing legal action. Nibble buy these loans at a heavily discounted rate and then seek to recover as much as possible of the money owed. The minimum investment is 10 euros and the minimum period is six months. I invested 100 euros for 12 months initially at a target annual interest rate of 12.5%.
The Legal Strategy comes with a deposit-back guarantee. This is a guarantee to return the full investment amount at the end of the investment period and a minimum yield of 9% per year. The actual yield depends on how successful recovery efforts prove, so in practice you may end up with a return of anywhere between 9% and 14.5%. All has gone to plan so far, but I will obviously continue to report on this in the months ahead.
As mentioned last time, I recently set up an account with investment and trading platform eToro, using their popular ‘copy trader’ facility. I chose to invest $500 (about £412) copying an experienced eToro trader called Aukie. My investment initially dipped, but as the screen capture below (of the app page on my mobile phone) shows, I am now about $16 in profit. That’s an increase of over 3% in just over a month. Obviously if it continues to do as well as this, I shall be delighted 🙂
In any event I am looking on this as a long-term investment so won’t be judging it yet. I am also considering a further investment with eToro, possibly in one of their themed portfolios. You can read my full in-depth review of eToro here if you like.
Moving on, I had another article published on the always-excellent Mouthy Money website. This one is titled Is Car Leasing Right For You? I found this very interesting to research and it gave me food for thought about what I may do when the time comes to bid goodbye to my current vehicle.
Turning to non-financial matters. I hope you are enjoying the (mostly) fine summer weather and making the most of our greater freedoms as we (hopefully) leave the pandemic behind. I recently enjoyed a day out with my friend Jeff at the National Trust’s Snowshill Manor and Gardens in Gloucestershire (pictured in the cover photo).
It was my first visit and I found it a fascinating place. The manor was owned by Charles Wade, an eccentric ex-Army officer. He used it to house his extensive collection of objects of all kinds, from musical instruments to children’s toys, bicycles to Samurai armour (see my photo below). I will try to find time to write a proper review of my trip to Snowshill soon.
And on the subject of summer, can I also remind you about the collaborative Summer Giveaway I am sponsoring in association with other UK bloggers. It’s free to enter, and the lucky winner will receive not only an MSpahot tub worth almost £1,000 but a range of other great prizes as well. The contest closes on 14 August 2022. Here’s a link to my blog post with details of how to enter.
That’s enough for today. As always, if you have any comments or queries, feel free to leave them below. I am always delighted to hear from PAS readers 🙂
Disclaimer: I am not a qualified financial adviser and nothing in this blog post should be construed as personal financial advice. Everyone should do their own ‘due diligence’ before investing and seek professional advice if in any doubt how best to proceed. All investing carries a risk of loss.
Note also that posts may include affiliate links. If you click through and perform a qualifying transaction, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the product or service you receive or the terms you are offered, but it does help support me in publishing PAS and paying my bills. Thank you!
If you enjoyed this post, please link to it on your own blog or social media:
