Holly's Money Turkey Moments

Seeing as I spend most of the year sitting on my Wise Throne like a Wonga-Know-It-All, I thought in this last blog of the year I’d share some of my more turkey-like 2023 Money Moments. With a quick recovery at the end with some smarter investment decisions I’ve made which might be interesting food for thought.

Here goes.

1. The decision which has cost me most in terms of unachieved gains – I sold down too much too soon from the US. And the bloody S&P 500 rallied by 9% in November. I still think it looks overcooked, but the Fed are now giving signals of gay abandonment about future interest rate falls (compared to the Bank of England) and stock markets over there are getting giddy on this. Hmmm.

2. I was a bit too optimistic about China bouncing back from Covid and have just thrown in the towel with a China fund I had. I still think the long-term story is good but the opportunity cost of sitting here didn’t feel worth it. Momentum is a powerful wave and you can’t swim against it. So I had a China strop.

3. I forgot about £100 sitting in the Woodford fund in one of my 28 test accounts. £100 no more, my friends, I stumbled across it this week showing a loss of 99%. Well done me. To be fair, I did lose 100% of my youthful investment in the Australian ‘Sausage Software’ in the dot.com crash of 2001. That remains a personal Turkey best.

4. I had a run-in with a debt collector. A few mysterious texts which I dismissed as fraud eventually made me pick up the phone. Long story short it was 2 ULEZ charges which I hadn’t even realized I had to pay – going back a year for 2 uncharacteristic drives into London. Who knew that when you move house, you don’t only need to update the address on your driving licence, but on a mysterious archaic thing called a Log Book. And TFL send the fines to the Log Book address – where I haven’t been for 7 years! And if you don’t have this Log Book, you need to send a paper form and a cheque for £25 to the DVLA to update it. Which meant I had to order a cheque book too and make the children guess what it was… What a tale of woe.

5. Moving house (more on this later). Oh, I thought, I’ll get a combined washer and dryer to save space. So I Googled things with about 90 seconds to make a decision, and thought an integrated machine sounded just the job. It was expensive but you get 2 for 1. It turns out almost everyone else in the UK apart from me knows that the stupidly named ‘integrated’ machine is actually just an expensive ugly washing machine that you can stick a cupboard door on the front of. So it looks horrid, doesn’t dry clothes and costs more. Result!

6. And finally moving house. I had literally just finished writing an article about mortgages and the troubled housing market a few weeks ago when the phone rang. Three days before exchanging, my buyer’s buyer lost his job, so the chain collapsed. After months of answering questions on everything including the cat flap which practically had its own survey done. Oh the pain.

Those are a choice selection of my Money Turkey Moments, to show you that we all get things wrong or get caught in financial crossfire. Just before you all denounce me as a financial chocolate teapot, here are three things I did get right.

1. I bought short-term bonds. Treasury 0.25% 31/01/25 to be precise. Bought for about £92.50 in the summer, they’re currently trading at £95.30 and I know they will be worth £100 when they expire in Jan 2025. Higher rate taxpayers NB no tax on bonds so good for money not sheltered in an ISA. Calm, steady, sensible stuff.

2. I topped up my Jupiter India fund. That’s had a lovely run. The Indian market has just displaced the Hong Kong stock market as the 7th largest market in the world. About 25% of the world’s under-25s live in India. All that lovely youthful energy. Just like me.

3. I actually have some of the former golden child - Scottish Mortgage - in my ISA which is showing a positive return of 19%. High five! Have no idea how I managed that because it’s had a torrid run. Goes to show that sometimes buying something that is being bashed by the media when sentiment is low can be fruitful.

So there we have it. Another year done and dusted. Thank you all for reading and for all your comments, interest and feedback. I hope we have helped you to make some better money choices, or to feel more confident about your finances.

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• And finally – please follow me on Instagram for regular snippets, or tell your friends about the blog - and come back for more in 2024 as we navigate what promises to be another very un-Boring year!

We’ll be back in the New Year for penance, hair shirts, fitness, action and plans. (Just don’t expect me to give up wine in January, folks – that is the very month it is needed!) But before all that, some time to breathe. I wish you and your families a healthy, happy, fabulous holiday season. Merry Christmas x

Holly

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