Financial Planning - 2020 Review

We're now seven years into the 10-year plan, and so here are the usual two graphs :-

SAVINGS POT to Mar-20

SIPP POT to Mar-20

After a very good year in 2019, we had been creeping ever closer to the targets, which will be met when the combined portfolio reaches a 225% increase over its March 2013 baseline value.  

And then 2020 arrived ...

The Savings Pot is still ahead of its target point at this 7-year mark, but only just.  As recently as a couple of weeks ago, it was in serious danger of dropping over to the wrong side of the target line.

The Pension Pot, bolstered by additional contributions which were unforeseen at the time the plan was formulated, has fallen as sharply but is still holding up above its final target level.

The combined portfolio value at this time last year had gained around 175% over the 2013 baseline value.  It had risen to touch the 200% level at the end of December 2019.   

But in just the first three months of this year, it's fallen back to below 170%, the same level as at February 2019, i.e. below the 6-year mark.   So the current slump has set us back over a year -  and that's assuming it doesn't get any worse.

Before the sharp market falls began a couple of months ago, I'd even hoped that fair winds could see this 225% target hit by the end of 2020, but it's certainly not looking likely now !  

As Robert Burns very neatly put it in his 1786 poem 'To a Mouse', 

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ Men 

Gang aft agley, 

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,  

For promis’d joy !

On the positive side, we haven't actually fallen behind the original targets.  We're still on track and plodding-on with caution, and let's hope for a rapid market recovery ...