Monthly Financial Update – May 1, 2023

The Monthly Financial Update gives our readers an inside look at the allocation and performance of our investment 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.

The stock market has gone up over the past month, yet the value of our investment portfolio decreased. How could this be? Big spending, that’s how! No, we didn’t blow our money on an extravagant trip, an expensive new car, or a bunch of luxury items. Instead we “blew” it on a new place to lay our heads. That’s right, we have officially closed on our very first home! The downpayment and closing costs did a doozy on our portfolio! This month we were actually projected to have our highest total of all time! But alas, everyone needs a place to live and even though renting is better than buying, we decided we wanted a lifestyle change and a new home was the best option for us at this time.

Check out the numbers below and you’ll see a new category for "Home Equity". We wanted to show this number because it is part of our net worth, however, it is not included in our retirement number. That’s because the equity contained in our home does not represent money that we can actually spend to help fund our early retirement. The only way to access the money is by using the house as collateral for a loan or selling it outright. These are some of the reasons that we don’t consider our house an investment. Instead, it’s just a great place for us to live!

One more thing, we have now officially achieved one of our goals for 2023!

Results:
-2.01% month-over-month growth
121.8% of retirement number saved

Check out our detailed performance in the table below.