April 2021 Income Report

Ok, the title image of this post gives away the big news this month. That’s right, we hit the major milestone of £10,000 of total money made since we started this project less than three years ago.

In this post we’ll cover what tipped us over this milestone during April, and why there should be some huge caveats on our £10k total.

Summary of result for the month

Here’s where we made our money this month:

Cryptocurrency (+£169.06)

We made almost £350 last month on crypto, and we made another £169.06 this month. To state the obvious: these sorts of gains can’t go on forever.

Indeed, it’s probably more likely that we’re going to take a hefty loss sooner or later. The larger our exposure to cryptocurrency becomes, the bigger the valuation swings are going to be.

Just look at where we’ve got to so far, from just a £700 investment:

That’s a crazy journey we’ve been on and we’re under no illusions that it represents a huge slice of luck. We certainly don’t sit around slapping ourselves on the back about the profit we’ve made. Our only success was being prepared to take a gamble in the first place. It’s a lesson in diversification, at least.

Other (+£165.27)

It has been a while since I’ve had to revisit the online business that we set up, never got off the ground, and ultimately decided to close.

But this month we had a happy reason to do so, because we managed to finally get the last of the funds back from that business. It’s technically money I should have always been accounting for, but I forgot.

Surveys (+£165.05)

It’s really hard to find anything exciting to say about surveys each month. You all know the drill by now: our favorite is Prolific and that accounts for the vast majority of the earnings. We also plug away at YouGov which is much worse paid but still just about worth a shot.

Of the three of us, Ben is the master at doing these surveys and seems to set new records each month on how many surveys he seems to be able to do.

Matched Betting (+£91.69)

We’ve been talking about the wind-down in our matched betting profits and this month was a continuation of that theme. There’s just not as much lucrative stuff out there as there used to be. In addition, the number of bookies that have gubbed us keep piling up.

We’ll keep giving it a go, squeezing out what profits we can, but it’s definitely not the powerhouse of our portfolio that it used to be.

Shares (+£89.02)

The markets continue to be kind to us and our growing portfolio of shares increased once again. This month we put over £450 more into shares, and our total holdings are now over £3,000 -more than what we hold in crypto.

Again, as I said for crypto above, the larger this balance gets, the more volatile our monthly profits (and, sadly, losses) are going to be. From my perspective, however, shares seem far more sustainable than crypto.

For those who are new to this, we’ve split our holdings of shares between Blackrock Consensus 85 fund and VWRL. We receive quarterly dividends on the latter, which this month were just enough to buy ourselves a cup of coffee.

Total value of the fund

All of that brings us over the £10k mark. That should be treated with some caution because over half of that sits in shares and crypto. As I’ve said above, the big gains we’ve taken on them could quickly and easily reverse, taking us back down several thousand pounds.

But let’s enjoy the moment for now. I sometimes find myself looking at this chart twice, finding it difficult to believe that we’ve made that much!

And here’s now our progress over time chart looks now:

And here’s where all of our money is held / invested right now:

The change from last month is that we’ve shifted 3% out of our bank account cash into shares.

Aims for May

Our goals for 2021 continue to be:

• Try to generate an average of £300 per month
• Pursue new investment ideas so we can put our cash to some use.

We’re doing ok on the first of these still. Time continues to be the enemy of the second target. How can you make reliable additional income when you’ve got no extra spare time to dedicate to it? That’s the puzzle that we keep asking ourselves… any ideas are welcome.