Aha, the correction is here! This is going to be a fun few weeks. Or months. Who knows?!
On Friday Feb 21 the DJIA closed at 28,994. The next Friday it closed at 25,402 – the largest ever drop in any single week in its history. Naturally, our numbers are down as well.
We recorded our largest over drop in net worth, month over month, at over $47k. But …all is good. We’ve pumped in about $5k from our “dry powder” to take advantage of the dip. I’m almost hoping for a 20% correction, which would take us into official bear market. Bring it on!
Major expense for February was $1,183 we paid in home insurance premium. We decoupled the insurance payment from our escrow a couple of years ago and now use credit card to pay the premium, which is already saved for in a savings account. Another expense was regular and preemptive maintenance for one of our cars at $450.
Writing and publishing this post in the third week of February makes me cringe a little! What can I say, things got quite busy with the stay-at-home-parent thingy. 😀
Not a very flashy month but still humming along nicely. Modest increase of assets and similar decrease of liabilities.
Major expenses of the month was $817 for semi-yearly payment of car insurance premium.
Should have more updates when we post the February numbers.
We had a phenomenal 2019. Our net worth increased by over $231k. Assets rose not only because we maxed out contributing to our respective 401(k) and in taxable brokerage but primarily due to the extraordinary run of the stock market which raised the valuation of all our investment accounts. Debt has gone down by aggressively paying down our mortgage.
Since we started tracking and documenting our financial journey from beginning of 2017, we’re amazed how far we’ve come. In January 2017, our net worth stood at $458k. In 3 full years, it has more than doubled to $943k.
Now to keep us honest on our goals from the last year-end post.
First, we’ll be maximizing our 401(k) at our respective employers. With an increase to $19k in 2019, that’s $38k tax-free shaved right at the top.
– Check. Done.
Then, we’ll be contributing to the max in in either Roth or T-IRA. With new limits of $6k this year, that’s another $12k for both of us.
– Almost check, we’ll be working on this till April 15 to get our respective t-IRAs fully contributed with $6k each.
Next, we plan to invest at least $9k in our taxable accounts for the full year. This will almost certainly bump up to $10k by the end of the year. As a comparison, for 2018 we invested $6,850 in taxable accounts.
– Not quite but pretty darn close at $8,400.
With automated pulls we’ll be putting $2.4k in our child’s 529 account for the year. I want to top it off to $3k.
– Managed a bit more than just automated pulls, but at $2,550 a bit short where I wanted to be at. But we have about $500 that is laying in a saving account and I’ll pump that in when a correction happens.
Our mortgage balance stands at $206k right now. Aim is to bring this down to $160k, mixed between regular payments and additional payments applied towards principal. This will be the stretch goal!
– We were on our way to reach this stretch goal till about September but scaled back (reasons in the next section). Current balance of $175.8k is a reduction of $26.5 is not shabby
Looking forward to 2020.
So, a big change happened in the first week of 2020. M left the full time job and became a stay-at-home-parent, with part time work. We outlined the plan in this post. This is one of the reason that we slowed down aggressively paying down the mortgage. We still pay $106 extra to principal on the monthly mortgage payment.
Since this will be the first year riding out this big change, I’m not going to set goals for 2020. We’ll report the contributions to 401(k), Roth IRAs, taxable brokerage, and 529 account at the end of the year.
Here’s hoping to an amazing 2020 everyone! Maybe your life, and journey towards FIRE, be a glorious one.
Another solid month to wrap up the year. December 2018 was sort of a bloodbath for the markets, if you all recall. I was expecting at least a slow bleed for this time in 2019. But no, the markets just keep going forward!
Major expenses for last month was …surprisingly nothing, if you exclude the gifts purchased for the holiday season. As those are seasonal, and recurring every year, we already have them baked into our saving/spending buckets.
Net worth reaches another high of $915k. Buzz of an impending recession is everywhere but we still plow into our tax advantaged and taxable accounts. We are also hoarding some cash. The recession will come but we don’t, and neither does anyone else, know when. And it will pass too.
There were a major expense of $2,706 this month, where we booked a vacation with a credit card and then promptly paid it off.
Things to keep in mind when looking at these numbers:
These numbers are snapshots in time, most likely the last day of the month
Since I copy/paste the numbers from the online accounts, the decimals remain but they are insignificant (obviously, duh!). Neither are the ones and tens digits of each account balance. What is important is the trend.
If you’re reading this for the first time, welcome! If you’re thinking if now is the “right time” to invest in the market ….well, everyday is the right time to invest, if you’re in it for the long haul. Remember the adage, “time in the market is more important than timing the market“
Our net worth is close to $900K! After an initial hiccup at the beginning of October, the markets have continued moving up. As you’ll notice our cash holding is at an all-time high. Major part of it is due to known expenses coming up, part of it is dry powder when the markets takes a dive. Does this sound like market timing? Well, yes, it is! But the amounts are so small to what we have out in the market invested, it does not really matter in the large scheme of things. It’s more to do with mental jujitsu, that we have some cash around when the correction comes.
This is what we are on track to make through the end of the year.
W’s base salary is $101,296
W got a bonus of $2,865
M’s base salary is $153,000
M got a bonus of $11,400
Our total yearly income is (or would be if we continued our employment till the end of the year) $268,561
This puts us in the top 3% of US household income. Let’s pause for a moment and reflect on that. We are incredibly blessed to have a number of factors working in our favor, a lot of which are just plain birth circumstances. Sure, we work hard and made conscious choices to invest in college educations but that doesn’t even tell half the story.
