#107 Bonus Usage

The world is going through an immense battle with Covid and everywhere it is all I can see or hear. I fear for a lot of things, but truly believe we can come out of this better.

To distract myself - and I realise how fortunate we are to be considering this - I am reviewing my options for what to do with the annual bonus.

Luckily, I am right at the outset of my investing journey and so this is probably an opportunity to invest at a comparative bottom of the markets.

Tomorrow I will receive my bonus of £8,666.

£1k of that will be given to the wife for her to do with as she pleases.

£5k of that will be added to our emergency fund. Coupled with the £4.7k that was put aside for our summer holiday - no longer going to happen - that will take us to £14.7k cash in our emergency fund. Coupled with the fact that I've got a 3 month notice period which would be tax free.. any concerns about redundancy following the economic affects of all of this should be minimal now. Very lucky.

So what to do with the remaining £2,666....

My initial thought was to plow it all into my dividend portfolio. However, I do thoroughly believe that over time global index funds will be the best place for my long term investments. So I want to stick to at least 50% of my equity investments in that.

Currently I have a dividend portfolio worth £1,200~. It is entirely likely or possible I will not be in a position to add in any further cash over the next 12 months.

My Global Index fund currently has 0 invested, but a monthly direct debit of £200, with the 1st installment coming in April. Therefore in 12 months I expect to have invested £2,400.

So currently I am over-weight on my dividend portfolio, but expect to have twice as much within the Global Fund in 12 months time.

Maybe it's best to just split it in 2. £1,300 for the dividend portfolio and £1,300 to be drip fed into Global fund.

With my current approach of investing £200 per position in the Dividend portfolio, this would allow me to buy into 6 more companies, 7 if I took £1,400. That would take me 14 companies which is roughly what I am looking to get too (between 15-20) to spread the risk.

So £1,400 into dividend portfolio... and £1,200 into the Global Fund it is then....

I'll drip the £1,200 Global Fund money in 6 £200 installments every month, sandwiched between my current direct debit.

Now to decide on where and when to put that £1,400...