THE
PAYBACK
£431k
The shares cost£431,061 with fees, net of £5.7k sold£364k
From the pocket£363,830 net deposits into three brokers since 2019. The rest was the machine's own money.£84,750
Paid back54 dividends, first one £36.9023.3%
Of your own money is back19.7% of what the shares cost. Cash only, before any share-price move.HOW MUCH OF THE MACHINE HAS PAID FOR ITSELF
The whole point of an income portfolio: one day the dividends will have handed back every pound of new money that went in, and everything after that is free money with a share price attached. This is how far along that road the goblin is.
£84,750 back against the £363,830 of new money that went in. Not against the £431,061 the shares cost: the difference was dividends and trims the machine reinvested itself, and the machine doesn't get credit for paying back its own money. At today's run-rate of £38,091 a year, with no raises and nothing reinvested, the remaining £279,080 comes back by 2034. The run-rate has roughly doubled every two years so far because the positions kept growing, not because the payers did, so treat that as the slow case.
WHERE THE £431K CAME FROM
Net deposits are what left the pocket. Dividends paid out of one broker and re-deposited into another cancel themselves out in that figure, so there is no double counting. Everything the shares cost above that line was the machine's own output, reinvested.
To 17 October 2026. Of every £1 the four pillars cost, 84p came from the pocket and 21p was dividends and trims the machine made itself; 6p of the pocket money went on early growth punts at Freetrade instead and never reached the pillars, and some of it is still held there. The June 2025 and June 2026 LGEN payouts from Freetrade and Trading 212 show up as Saxo deposits within a week. The 13 October NCYF buy is treated as September's payouts coming back in plus cash already sitting in Saxo; if fresh money went in for it, the pocket figure rises by that much.
FOUR JARS, FOUR FILL LINES
Each pillar's jar fills with the cash it has paid back, measured against the new money that bought it, not what it cost. The brokers don't say which dividend bought which share, so the rule is simple and the same everywhere: every dividend is spent on the very next buy, whichever pillar, and what's left of that buy is new money. The four jars add up to £347,664; the other £16k of what went in was lost on the early growth punts and counts against the machine in the big meter, not against any pillar. The price lines underneath say what the pencilled quote thinks the shares are worth today, and what that becomes once the income is counted.
LGEN
shares
28.8%
Pencilled at 283.5p the shares are worth £357,210: +£51,813 on price, +£128,502 once the income is counted.
SMIF
shares
11.9%
Pencilled at 85.8p the shares are worth £85,800: −£1,185 on price, +£5,519 once the income is counted.
RECI
shares
5.7%
Pencilled at 117p the shares are worth £18,451: −£726 on price, +£248 once the income is counted.
NCYF
shares
4.9%
Pencilled at 50.5p the shares are worth £19,114: −£386 on price, −£3 once the income is counted.
MONEY IN, MONEY BACK
The ink line is capital put in, month by month, net of the four small sales. The pink area is dividends banked. The gap between them is what still has to come home.
DIVIDENDS BANKED, BY YEAR
2026 is to 16 October. The first bar is 2020's £56.42, starting with £36.90 from 292 LGEN shares in June 2020. It is in the chart. You cannot see it. That is the point.
THIRTEEN PAY DAYS, ONE DIRECTION
All three brokers combined per pay day. Trading 212 pays in dollars; these are the pounds that actually landed after conversion.
BORING ON PURPOSE
173 LGEN fills over six years. Not a lump sum, not a clever entry, just buying whenever there was money. Each dot is a month with at least one buy, sized by how much went in. No table of fills; the shape is the story.
173
Fills46/71
Months with a buy£1,250
Median fill£2.43
Average cost per share£27k
Biggest month · Apr 2024£99.81
First buy · 37 shares · Nov 2019Three brokers hold the 126,000: Freetrade 50,937 · Saxo 30,249 · Trading 212 44,814. Two early trims in 2021–22 and one in June 2026 took 2,021 shares back out for £5,663; the June trim is what topped SMIF up to 100,000.
THE MONTHLY LADDER
SMIF pays every month. Twenty-one payments so far, from £8.90 on 1,780 shares in January 2025 to a flat £500 on the full 100,000. The tall rungs are the fund's variable top-up months, not a cut anywhere.
PAYBACK MILESTONES
The ones already hit, and the next few the meter is pointed at.
£99.81
First buy. 37 LGEN shares. The hoard begins.
£36.90
First dividend ever. The machine makes a noise.
£15.7k
In one month. The first serious money goes in.
£1,327
First four-figure pay day.
£18,114
First five-figure pay day.
100k
SMIF hits its target. Four pillars standing.
¼ back
LGEN crosses a quarter of its new money returned in cash.
¼ back
The whole machine. £6,200 away; at today's run-rate it lands by May 2027.
£100k
Total paid back. About £15k away, LGEN's June 2027 pay day does it.
SMIF ¼
About £7,400 away. Fifteen months of £500, sooner with the top-ups.
ONE LINE PER PILLAR
| Pillar | Since | Fills | Shares | Shares cost | New money | Machine's money | Paid back | Returned | A year now | Paid back by* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LGEN | Nov 2019 | 173 | 126,000 | £305,397 | £266,535 | £44,525 | £76,689 | 28.8% | £27,695 | 2033 |
| SMIF | Jan 2025 | 24 | 100,000 | £86,985 | £56,218 | £30,768 | £6,704 | 11.9% | £6,793 | 2034 |
| RECI | Feb 2026 | 4 | 15,770 | £19,177 | £17,054 | £2,123 | £974 | 5.7% | £1,892 | 2035 |
| NCYF | Apr 2026 | 4 | 37,850 | £19,501 | £7,856 | £11,644 | £383 | 4.9% | £1,711 | 2031 |
| All four | Nov 2019 | 205 | £431,061 | £347,664 | £89,060 | £84,750 | 24.4% | £38,091 | 2034 |
*Straight line at today's pencilled run-rate, no dividend raises, nothing reinvested. Shares cost = fees and stamp duty included, net of £5,663 of LGEN sold. New money + machine's money = gross buys (£436,724) before the trims came back out. The big meter's 23.3% measures against all £363,830 that went in, including the £16k that went on early growth punts and never reached a pillar; this table's 24.4% is against the £347,664 that did.
WHERE THESE NUMBERS COME FROM
- Three broker exports, every fill and every dividend, pulled on 6 October 2026. The 13 October NCYF buy and the 16 October RECI dividend are added from the ledger, so every figure on the page is to 17 October 2026.
- The shares cost includes stamp duty and commission on every fill. LGEN is net of four small sales (2,021 shares, £5,663).
- From the pocket is deposits minus withdrawals across all three brokers, £417,562 in and £53,731 out. A dividend paid out of Freetrade or Trading 212 and re-deposited into Saxo is a withdrawal and a deposit, so it nets to nothing and is never counted as new money.
- Paid back is cash that landed. Trading 212 pays LGEN in US dollars; the pounds shown are after conversion and its fee, so June 2026 reads £19,820 here against the £19,830 the declared rate implies.
- Share values use the pencilled quotes from the hoard page, not a live price. They move daily; the payback number does not.
- New money per pillar uses one rule: every dividend and trim is spent on the very next buy, whichever pillar it was, and what's left of that buy is new money. The brokers don't record it, so this is an assumption, stated once here and used everywhere.
- Paid back by is the slow case: today's run-rate, flat, nothing reinvested. The real machine reinvests, so the share counts keep growing. The per-share dividends themselves are a mixed bag and no growth is assumed from them: LGEN has raised most years, NCYF nudges up a fraction of a penny a year, RECI has paid a flat 12p since 2019, and SMIF's base rate has never been cut but its top-up months vary.