February has been a month of good and bad news. The bad news, we missed our monthly savings goal again. The good news, one half of Team FIRE Bear got a promotion and subsequent pay rise.

As the stock market continued to explode and hit even more record highs, we took the decision to invest slightly less in February and do some much needed apartment renovations. After spending many long hours in IKEA we finally left £800 poorer. For the last 3 weekends we have spent what feels like every waking minute building furniture and decluttering our whole apartment. Despite spending all this money, the changes have brought us a lot of happiness as we only live in a tiny apartment (45m2) so we have to make every squared meter count.

The promotion which Ms. FIRE Bear received lead to an 18% pay increase which will go a long way towards helping us to achieve our saving goals. As always, we will be very careful to ensure that we do not get drawn into lifestyle inflation and instead continue with our modest lifestyle whilst investing even more.

How is your year going so far? Are you sticking to your savings goals? Let us know in the comments.