May 2016 Progress Report

At the end of every month I like to round up the latest happenings from my little part of the world.

Its a great way to keep myself on track with my goals, to curate the most popular articles I shared on social media last month and generally to get a little more “personal” than my average blog post. In essence, in these progress reports I let my hair down a little.

While this update is a few days late (ahem!) I think we’d better get started, don’t you…?

Life Update

May is always a tremendously busy month for me, as it’s really the biggest month on the vegetable plot. It’s the month when all those juicy little seedlings start going out into the big wide world.

In just the last few weeks I’ve planted out everything from green beans to sweetcorn, asparagus peas to pumpkins. And while we had a nasty storm a week or so ago which caused me some major headaches, things are starting to look good.

In the last few days I’ve started to pick my strawberries – a daily treat for the next few weeks. It’s always exciting to pick a juicy pot of fresh strawberries you’ve grown yourself!

Hopefully now things will calm down a little. While there are still a few bits and pieces to go outside, the worst of the hard work is done. By mid-June we should pretty much be there, just keeping ontop of the weeding while all my crops grow away happily.

Hopefully I’ll have time this month to write an update on my vegetable plot this year, so you can can an idea of what I’m growing. There have been quite a few changes since my last update two years ago (where does the time go?!) and I’m excited to discuss what changes have been made and why.

If all goes according to plan, in the next few months I should be enjoying all of the following:

• Tomatoes
• Sweetcorn
• Baby sweetcorn (check out my growing guide here)
• Cucumbers
• Melons
• Green beans
• Peas
• Mange tout
• Butternut squash
• Pumpkins
• Potatoes
• Sweet potatoes
• Beetroot
• Carrots
• Grapes

…and that’s if I haven’t forgotten anything (which I’m sure I have!). In other words after a couple of months of hard work I have months of delicious, organically grown (and virtually free) food to look forward to. Bring on the sunshine!

Goals Update

At the beginning of 2016 I laid out a number of goals for this year. While some have changed somewhat, I’m managing to stick to a healthy number so far. Right now, my plan to get into the Amazon FBA business is looking unlikely.

I follow a fair number of blogs, Facebook Groups and discussion forums on the subject, and it seems this year that more and more people are struggling to make a profit. The evidence suggests that the big opportunity might be slowly getting ever more competitive.

While I would never say never, my view on the Amazon FBA model is that its getting ever tougher – and more expensive – to really gain market penetration. The days of “easy money” seem numbered in this marketplace, so I’m focusing my efforts elsewhere at present, where I think there are better chances of long-term profits.

So with FBA dispensed with, how did we do with the other goals?

Project 10K

The biggest and most important goal of this year – which takes priority over everything else – is to save an additional £10,000 in 12 months, which is ontop of my normal savings. And boy is it tough!

I chose this number originally because I knew it would be a stretch – I didn’t want anything too easy to achieve. But now I’m wondering if I was a little too ambitious. Last month I reported that I’d managed to smash my iPhone, so blew my budget a little bit on replacing it, together with buying a load of stuff I needed for the vegetable garden.

I also mentioned that I had concerns over May because my car was due in for some work.

Here’s what happened on that fateful day…

I took my car into the garage as agreed, left it with them and waited for a phone call. Many hours later my mechanic rang with the words “it’s not good news”. My heart sank.

He listed a menu of work that needed doing, which he estimated would cost £800. That’s roughly how much my car is worth. The last thing I wanted was to pay out this kind of money – the budget would truly be blown!

After an hour of thought, trying to decide on the best course of action, I decided to take it to another garage for their opinion.

The answer? They reckoned that most of the work suggested was unnecessary, and that they could get it safe, legal and roadworthy for less than £400. And sure enough, £360 later I was back on the road.

Now, this is still of course far more than I wanted to spend – but its a lot less than replacing my car!

This is the benefit of asking for a second opinion when quoted for expensive auto repair work.

The end result is this; once again the budget has been painfully smashed, but the good news is the repair work cost me a lot less than if I’d just accepted the first quote going.

So where do we stand with project 10K?

Well, according to my math, £10,000 divided by 12 months is £833 per month I need to save. Wow, that’s a lot of money looking at it that way!

By the end of May my target was therefore £4,167 (833*5).

We’re obviously going to be a long way off thanks to my car, but how far off?

Well, the account currently sits at £3,500.

This is some way off the target, so I’m really going to have to pull out all the stops going forward.

The good news is that despite the major spending on my car, I still managed to add £500 to my savings ontop of my usual.

While hitting my target of £10,000 in savings by Christmas is looking less and less likely, the reality is that any extra savings is better than nothing. So I refuse to give up! I shall keep on pushing and we’ll see just how close we can get as the year continues on. Wish me luck!

Start a New Blog

The new blog I started earlier this year is moving along quite nicely. My Pinterest followers have now topped 300, and my Twitter account continues to grow. I’m adding new blog posts on a weekly basis, and I’m seeing some healthy growth in traffic. In other words – everything is moving in the right direction.

By the end of June I hope to start doing some proper marketing of the site, and in July I have plans to launch a second new blog.

It’s that second new blog that I have very high hopes for.

The reason is simple; it’s in a huge niche (that I’m passionate about) and I think there is massive potential for traffic and earnings. This is in comparison to my current new blog, which is in a far smaller niche so has less traffic potential.

Indeed, in the next month or so I plan to start talking rather more about blogging here on Frugality Magazine. It’s something that I’m hugely passionate about, and is something that I believe anyone can use to grow their income.

Expect a whole load of posts in the coming months about exactly how to get started – and how to grow your blog into a healthy side income.

Goals Summary

In general I’m reasonably happy with progress in May. Despite a lack of time, and the car situation, I still managed to grow my savings while seeing very obvious growth in my new blog.

Moving forward, I should find I have far more time available now the major task of planting out all the vegetables is over, and with the car situation behind me I can focus more on budgeting hard. Add to this the new blog is growing, and another is on the horizon, and I’m happy that things are moving along nicely.

I just need to hustle my way to get those savings up to speed!

Top Posts

Every month I share dozens of personal finance articles on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. I encourage you to follow me there for plenty more tips, advice and inspiration.

However its always interesting to see which articles really took off. Below you’ll find the top ten articles I shared – both mine and those of others – that saw the most clicks and reshares.

I’d encourage you to visit them all if you haven’t seen them yet…

1) 10 Money Rules Not Everyone Follows (But Should)
2) 12 Smart Financial Strategies for People Struggling to Get Started
3) 12 Things That Changed My Life (and Cost Less Than $50)
4) How to Ditch Your Debt in Less Than a Week
5) 5 Things You Can Do Today that Will Save You Money
6) How I Paid off $40,000 of Debt 
7) Eight Jobs Where You Determine Your Salary
8) How You Should Think About Money
9) 5 Little Habits That Are Ruining Your Budget
10) The Simple Lifestyle Change That Doubled My Income

If you click through to all those articles you’ll find a number of them are guest posts I’ve written recently – and I’d really like to thank those bloggers for accepting my posts 🙂

Well that’s this month’s update done, and I’ll see you at the end of June for the next instalment.

How are things going with your goals? Are you on track, or struggling with unforeseen circumstances? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below…