July 2024 Update

July was pretty eventful. A US presidential candidate got shot and the UK government changed. At time of writing in the beginning of August, the UK interest rate has also been lowered for the first time since 2020.

From the little I’ve read about UK politics recently, it felt similar to the time Labour handed over to the Conservatives in 2010, what with the financial state the country is in.
Reading some commentary of the bickering and trash talk, I couldn’t help but wonder how these characters (from both parties) end up being in such senior positions running a country. The drama reminds me of playground arguments in primary school.

Why do we not have heads of industry, entrepreneurs and business owners in charge? People that have some kind of real world track record. Anyway I digress.

The initial decisions of the incoming party mostly seem sensible to me, especially the house building and energy policies. However, early decisions are one thing, but lets see how we’re looking 2-3 years in. Let’s hope they’re a bit more stable than the Conservatives have been over the last few years. One thing that is certain is the country is running out of money quickly.

Either they man up and make some difficult, painful, unpopular, long-term decisions, or they try and keep voters happy by taking the short term options which will have the inevitable outcome. The debt is growing and the interest payments are large. Anyone that understands compound interest will be twitching. Unfortunately, anyone that understands compound interest will not be keen on getting less tax relief on pension contributions, having the state pension fiddled with, ISA rules changed etc etc. It’s a difficult job and I wouldn’t want it.

Net Worth Comments

My market watching consists mostly of keeping an eye on the price of VWRL. It hit an all time high as few weeks ago (£104), dropped back a couple of percent recently, but has climbed back up over the last few days and is currently around the £103 mark at time of spreadsheet update. (Just prior to publishing the market got hammered, so the August update will include the damage!)

The portfolio was up a solid but non-dramatic amount this month. The table has had an upgrade to colour.