February 2021: Rays Of Light, Even If We’re Down $84,411

My main goal* was to build an investment and cash portfolio of $1,120,000* ($1,000,000 to retire on and $120,000 to pay off the house) in 1500 days**, starting from 1/1/2013 and ending in February of 2017. I made my goal in 2016, my 1500 Days are over, and I’ve left my job. In the interest of openness, I’ll continue to share my numbers.

Rays Of Light

Sitting around in one place doesn’t make me happy. I hate being cooped up. But last week, Mindy, me, and the girls finally got a chance to get out of the house for a spell. We traveled west to see family and our first stop was Moab.

Our destination was Las Vegas.

In Las Vegas, we went to Omega Mart.

On the way back, a county in rural Colorado that we happened to be passing through had excess vaccine doses and was offering them to everyone. Mindy and I stopped and received our first sharp pokes.

It was good to get out of the home and see friends in Moab and family in Las Vegas. In the time of COVID, we haven’t had a lot of interaction with other humans. Despite being a pretty severe introvert, this trip reminded me that spending time with others makes me happy.

I’ve been in a funk, but the world seems to be opening up as COVID recedes. It’s just small rays of light now, but they’re getting brighter and more numerous.

Home Sale

The big news in February was that we sold our old home. We had planned on hanging on to it as an Airbnb, but since decided that we needed more time than more money. With the real estate market white-hot, we put the home on the market and had multiple offers within 24 hours.

I’m not sure how to write about the home from a financial perspective. We bought if it for about $175,000 back in 2013. By the time we sold it, we had close to $300,000 into it ($125,000 in remodeling) and sold it for close to $600,000. Perhaps those numbers sound great, but the remodeling was cheap because I did much of the work myself. Looking back, I gave up too much time. If you asked me what the main benefit of owning this home was, I wouldn’t say it was the money, but the experience. I learned loads and gained confidence from the remodel. Now, I don’t find any projects around the home intimidating.

We netted around $500,000 from the sale and are dumping the proceeds mostly into VTI. Interactive Brokers allows a $100,000 deposit every 7 business days, so we haven’t completed the process yet. Good problem.

Side note: In case you missed it, we had could have paid cash for this home, but got a mortgage instead which worked out spectacularly well financially. See the numbers here.

February Performance

For net worth purposes on this blog, I had been conservative and valued the home at $550,000. Despite selling it for more than expected, February was still a downer. We started the month at $3,756,567 and ended at $3,672,156 for a loss of $84,411.

2021 (as of 2/28/2021)

• Days elapsed: 59
• Net worth gains: $152,410

Since the Start (1/1/2013)

• Days elapsed: 2980
• Net worth gains: $2,946,113

Living A FI

Living A FI (LAF) is the purest FIRE blogger I can think of. He doesn’t monetize his work and writes thoughtful posts. After a layoff of years, he just provided an update that has a lot of wisdom:

LAF talks about when his life went sideways:

That discomfort did exactly what it was supposed to do. It prompted me to make some major changes that moved me in the right direction.

Discussing early retirement:

If you are yourself working on becoming FI and you have any specific takeaway from this post, let it be this:  You are making future plans based on what your current life looks like. Your current job, your current income, your current partner, your current percentage of savings, your expected market return, your housing costs, your location, and so-on. You’re assuming large parts of your life will remain static over the next X years, where, for many early-retiree hopefuls, X is 30+ years, perhaps even fifty.

They may not be static. It might be a mistake to think that things will be as smooth as you believe they will be. The ability to recover from changes and disruptions — to be adaptable and resilient in the face of adversity — will show itself to be perhaps the most critical Early Retirement skill of them all.

And this:

Happiness is spending as much time as I possibly can with my partner.  

Happiness is thinking about growth and joy and changes in the days to come.

Happiness is a mix of thinking about now and ten or twenty years from now — pleasure in the moment, satisfaction through the week, and some sense that you have a lot to look forward to as the world continues to turn.

Check out the rest here.

LAF, you went through some hard times. We’ve never met, but it sounds like you’re in a better place now or will be soon. Thanks for the thoughtful post.

*My goal wasn’t to have $1,120,000 at the end of 1500 days, but at any time before the day count was up. Why? It all goes back to the 4% Rule. Remember that our little friend, Mr. 4%, is nothing more than the most conservative safe withdrawal rate. Since my investment portfolio now sits at $1,550,000, I can spend about $62,000 in my first year of retirement.

**My original goal was $1,000,000 and no debt, I later raised the goal by $120,000 to $1,120,000 because I will have debt in the form of a mortgage and I firmly believe in not paying it off (LOOK at the MONEY I’m MAKING!). My compromise was to have enough money put away to cover the mortgage at the time of retirement.

***This is an affiliate link. If you sign up, the blog (me) makes some cold, hard, beautiful, cash. Personal Capital is a totally free and awesome way to keep watch over your investments. It’s worth it for the fee analyzer alone. I would never recommend anything that I don’t personally use and completely believe in, so give it a try. If you’ve already signed up through the link, please know that you are a fine person of above-average intelligence.