30 December 2014

Annual Spending Review - 2014


It's that time of the year again.  Here's a breakdown of where all the money went in 2014....click for a larger image...




Basic ground rules are generally as last year's post, and a few points of note are listed below :-

03 December 2014

Hedgehog Rescue....


Around six weeks ago, we spotted a small hedgehog wandering around on the lawn in the middle of the afternoon.  It's a bad sign seeing any hedgehog out during daylight hours, and particularly autumn juveniles, so we picked him up and took him inside in a cardboard box. The wife fed him some cooked chicken while I set about building a hospital enclosure in the garden from some old materials and wire mesh, basically anything we had lying around.

We kept him confined in a remote area of the garden down the side of one of the sheds, made a nest box from an upturned plastic container with an entrance arch cut into one corner, and stuffed it with shredded paper.  

He took to his new territory immediately and soon lost his fear of us, even allowing the wife to stroke his nose without him curling up into a ball !

We fed him on tinned cat food, mashed-up boiled eggs, pet shop hedgehog food* and assorted kitchen scraps, and after four or five days he'd returned to more nocturnal habits.


01 December 2014

Investment Review - November 2014


I'm considering posting updates of my investment pot progress on a more regular basis, maybe even at the end of each month if I can find the time and energy...

In theory at least, it shouldn't be too much of an effort.  On the last working day of each month, I usually log the portfolio component valuations based on bid prices refreshed at some time when the London market is open.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes over the next few months.

With each update, I'll also include the preceding post's dataset alongside, for comparison.  Therefore, in the first of such posts in this format, the right-hand columns in the Table below are those from this previous post.