The Monthly Financial Update gives our readers an inside look at the allocation and performance of our personal portfolio. At the beginning of each month, we share a snapshot of our investments and highlight their performance over the previous month. In addition, we compute our progress towards achieving our retirement number.
From Best...To Worst
It was inevitable. After many, many consecutive months of positive growth, after the record-breaking (for us) 6.45% growth we saw just last month, we have finally come to our first down month. I've got to say, folks, I couldn't be happier! Well, that's not 100% true. If it were totally up to me, I'd prefer that my investments continuously grow, non-stop, forever. But that's simply not the reality of the stock market. Warren Buffet is frequently credited with saying, "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." In the simplest financial terms, this means, buy when everybody else is selling. Well, right now a lot of people are selling, and I'm buying up as much as I can afford. I'm still hiring the exact same great "employees" for my financial empire, only now, I'm hiring them at a discounted rate! I truly believe in the value and productivity of the US economy and so I have ultimate confidence that the market will bounce back (and history backs me up).
Results:
-1.85% month over month growth
34.6% of retirement number saved
Check out our performance in the table below.
The Numbers
Accounts Portfolio Allocation Change In Value (Feb-March)
Liquid Funds 1.5% 12.5%
High-Yield Savings 8.1% 1.5%
REITs 1.4% -11.0%
401(k)s 52.1% -1.7%
IRAs 3.7% -4.9%
HSA 0.1% 92.8%
Cryptocurrencies 0.1% 27.3%
P2P Lending 0.3% -0.2%
Taxable Stock Investments 32.6% -2.8%
Debt 0.1% 62.6%
Total = 100%
Portfolio Allocation = Current asset distribution of our portfolio
Investment Performance = Change in account value due to asset appreciation/depreciation, deposits, and withdrawals
Tools To Get You Started
Get a head start on your journey toward achieving financial independence by analyzing and tracking your income, expenses, investment performance, and overall net worth with the free online wealth management tool Personal Capital.
We use Personal Capital regularly to analyze our investment fees, track our investments, and project our net worth. We also periodically review our progress toward retirement with their retirement planning calculator.
If you’d rather do things on your own, become a subscriber today and you’ll receive our Free Financial Planning Dashboard. This tool allows you to enter your income and expenses to create a detailed budget. You can use it to track your spending habits over time or just to get an idea of where your money is going each month. Take a look at the automatically generated charts and you may discover you have a little more cash to invest than you thought.
If you’re interested in detailed instructions on how to budget, save, pay off debt, and invest, check out The 6 Phases of Building Wealth. This book provides step-by-step instructions for working through each “Phase” in the process of achieving Financial Freedom. If you're just starting out, the information in this book will provide you with an invaluable resource. You can pick up the digital version for only $2.99 on Amazon.
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Very helpful to us layfolks! Being so transparent and all!
Just want to show that we are work hard on our own goals along with everyone else!