August. AUGUST! The last time we posted anything was nearly 5 months ago – a frankly shameful effort on our part; you’d think that one of us could have found a few minutes to write something, wouldn’t you?
It’s not that we didn’t want to, rather, like keeping in touch with old friends, you always put it off until tomorrow. Dave has been getting to grips with fatherhood as well as trying to keep his own business afloat, which is no mean feat under current circumstances so that has more or less ruled him out of action for a while. Chris has been at The Man’s beckon call for months now which has meant more or less living at his home office desk 7 days a week, while I, frankly speaking, lost all enthusiasm for anything and everything – yes folks, they got to me. There were periods in the months between the end of August (when we had a brief glimpse of what life used to be like) and now, when I found life very tough. I am not unique, I am not special, there are millions more out there like me in the same boat.
Hard months for all
I don’t want to dwell on it for too long as it could become a little self-indulgent and the last thing anyone wants to read about is someone else’s problems; everyone has enough of their own. Suffice to say however as someone who had always regarded himself as a realist rather than an optimist or pessimist (you take two steps forward and then one back, but over time the general trend is one of improvement), the removal of freedoms and shutting down of life was a bitter pill to swallow.
We have hinted at politics in the past although we do not want to discuss it here, you can do that on Twitter, so we will not comment on what our thoughts are on government policy and action right now, but their impact on me was hard and I found life and the curtailment of freedoms very difficult. I do not seek to diminish the suffering of others or those who have died in the last 10months – it is heartbreaking to hear their stories – I am well aware that I am not an exceptional case by any stretch of the imagination.
But enough of that for now, you are not here to listen to me whine like an adolescent about how unfair life is, you are here to see what we have been doing with ourselves in the months since we last posted.
Plus ça change…
The long and the short of it is, not much has changed. We’ve been persevering with matched betting, ebaying, surveys, investing in funds and cryptocurrency – the only thing we’ve not been doing is telling you about it. The fund has grown quite considerably and you can expect a full break down on that from Chris next week, so I hope you can make it back then to read all about that.
We also had our first video call of 2021 last night to talk about goals for the year and what to do with our cash. We’ve amassed a reasonable amount of money in our bank account which is doing nothing, so we’re branching out into a couple of new areas and will be buying some commodities as well as expanding our crypto portfolio – I will be updating you all about this later in the month once we’ve spent the money. We want to try to generate some more growth this year from these assets and while we will not be investing a massive % of our overall fund, we are hopeful that one of two of these investments can make a meaningful contribution by the time January 2022 rolls around.
I can update you to say that we are now in the final throws of owning a company. We are going through the motions of closing this down, doing the final accounts and letting Companies House know what a bunch of losers we are. Once it is all closed out, hopefully by spring, we’ll tell you all about it in more detail, including what the company was and what we tried to do with it. We toyed with the idea of keeping the holding company open with a view to a new project later in the year, but decided to close it down as it is cheaper and simpler. If something new comes our way, we’ll open up a new one, but for now, our brief foray into the business world is over.
As part of closing down the company, we have also liquidated our Ratesetter holdings (as much as we can) and got the money out of there. The risk on this was way too great for the returns on offer – a request to release the funds back in March was finally completed in December, so it took a long time for us to get our money back out – a valuable lesson to anyone looking at the more risky and less liquid assets such as P2P lending. I have cleared out my personal holdings for now too, but as a fan of P2P, I will be back lending via the various platforms again as soon as I consider it safe to do so…and that is very much dependent upon what is happening in the world. For now, it is safe to say that I am not touching it with a 50ft pole!
2021 targets
As well as setting a plan in motion for our existing cash pile, we have set ourselves a target of growing the fund by a further £3600 this year through new deposits, i.e. matched betting, surveys, ebaying and anything else which comes our way. As we have always maintained, these aren’t hugely lucrative, but are an easy way to make quick and easy money which suits us all with our relative work lives. The exiting thing about this year is that we can start to put that money to work in order to generate both capital growth and passive income, which I LOVE. I am very much in favour of the Warren Buffett “get rich slowly” methodology – I consider that to be infinitely more sustainable in the long term and the aim is that TMM fund will provide some measure of income in my old age; maybe it’ll just be a couple of hundred quid a year, but that’ll keep me in a monthly takeaway which is fine by me.
So in summary: we’re back. You can expect a weekly update from us again as we continue our hapless and low-rent attempts at making our fortune. While the economy is going to be buggered for a while, it is out of these kind of situations that great innovations can be forged, so I am very excited to see what the entrepreneurs of the United Kingdom come up with!
Chris will be in touch next week to tell you about the state of our fund and how we performed in 2020. I’ll be back the week after to tell you about our new(ish) ventures.
In the meantime, the days are getting longer, things are on the up.
Hi Ben
Good to hear what’s been going on and sorry to hear you have been suffering due to the lockdowns. I know from speaking to my friends that everyone copes with it all very differently, some much better than others.
Looking forward to reading how you plan on increasing your fund by £3.6k this year.
My Pi seems to be accruing (like yours I’m sure) – it will be interesting to see how this develops (if anything) in the future.
Anyway, keep safe and sane!
Thanks for the thoughtful words. We’re still here and plugging away.
Pi is going well for us, Chris in particular as it is his account that is getting all the referals – if one day we never hear from him again, we know that Pi did alright! We’re working on the principle that it’s cost nothing and if they end up being worth a quid each, then it will have been more than worth it. I’m sure Chris’ll give us a breakdown of how many gazillion he’s managed to accrue.
It does remind me a bit of bitcoin back in the day. I was on a business trip in Indonesia about 7 or 8 years ago and was talking to a guy out there about it; he wasn’t doing anything with it himself, but had a friend who was mining it at the time and the cost of mining was more than the Bitcoin was worth at the time. I really hope he persevered with it and make a fortune!
Fingers crossed we all make a killing!
Hey, I thought you fellas had bit the dust!
Good to hear you’re still on the case..
yeah – despite the trials and tribulations we’ve been persevering. If Tyson Fury can get up from *that* knockdown, then we can keep making a few quid using low-level means!