Keeping it rolling, only 29 months from Financial Independence!
A pretty good month to celebrate!
- For the first time, our investment assets (not counting savings, checking, home, etc.) hit over $1M
- Good month for gains – got a 1.36% monthly gain, in addition to what I put in
- Was able to roll my Dad’s IRA required distribution and some additional savings (total of $9K) directly into investments, and I bumped up my deferred pay allotment as well. All total, I put in about $13K into my investments in January alone. Getting into FIRE really motivates you to save.
- Did my first travel hack! Mrs. 39 Months and I attended a dulcimer conference in mid-January, and got to stay at a nice hotel for free. Sweet!
- Traffic on the site exploded, up over 200% from my 2017 monthly average. Thanks for tuning in!
A great way to start the year. I want to keep the momentum going.
My “fun money” value portfolio was interesting. I have three stocks in them (Gilead, Beasley Broadcast and SBS). I’ve already gone over why I chose them. Gilead is up 12% for the month, and SBS is up 10%, However, Beasley is down about 1.5%. Overall, they’ve been great picks, and I’m up 2.5% for January (even counting my bond fund losses). About that – when I was originally planning it, I thought I’d set it up as a dividend account as well – so I have Bond Funds in it. Since I want to evaluate value with this money, I’ve decided to sell the bond funds, and invest the money in a Vanguard Value fund. I’ll do that at the beginning of February, so I will have a “baseline” to compare my stock picks to.
My inherited IRA that I set up for Dividends didn’t do well in January. Since its 25% REITs and 50% bond funds, you would expect with the raging economy and work on raising the prime interest rate, they’d suffer – and they did. Overall, they are down -1.8% for January. Not unexpected.
My company 401K and deferred accounts are up about 6% for January, because they are more heavily invested in stocks (25% S&P, 25% Small Cap, 25% Int’l, 25% bonds). Small cap really knocked it out of the park.
Our IRAs and Roth IRAs came back in around 1.2% for the month – pretty good. These are the ones that are 30% bonds, and then evenly split over REITs, Small Cap, Int’l and S&P 500. Again, good returns, and not unexpected.
While I expect a market correction at some point, I think we will be able to weather it, provided the Zombie Apocalypse doesn’t come. My plan is to re-balance in July, unless the market really goes crazy.
Hope your new year is starting well!
Mr. 39 Months.