1500 Days to Freedom

Think different and escape the rat race.

Performance Update 5 of 50: May!

by

My main goal is to build a portfolio of $1,000,000 in 1500 days, starting from 1/1/2013. Every month, I provide an update on my status. My goal for 2013 is to get my portfolio up to $672,750, from a starting point of $586,043. Time to look back on the month of May.

danger-will-robinson3Stay away in May? No way! The markets had a great month with the S&P 500 gaining about 48 points to close at a lofty 1630. Scary!

My portfolio did really well too. I started the month at $617,495 and ended at $636,661 for a gain of $19,166. Some of this came from Google*, which became my first 10 bagger. I purchased the stock at IPO for $85 way back in 2004. It now sits at $871. Wooo!

Here are the juicy stats:

  • Days elapsed: 152
  • Days remaining: 1348
  • 2013 gains: $50,618
  • Left to go (2013): $36,089
May
I should design roller coasters

What will the rest of the year bring us? The markets have set a torrid pace so far. The S&P 500 is up a blistering 15% in 5 months (Danger, Will Robinson!). Everybody is talking about a correction, but it has yet to materialize. Will June finally be the month that the markets come back down to earth? I have no idea, but it sure is fun to watch!

On an unrelated note, life is extremely busy at the moment. I don’t want to jinx myself, so I’ll wait to spill the beans until I’m sure that sure I have the beans in the first place. Stay tuned. Lots of changes happening in June.

 

*Thinking back, Google was a silly purchase. I bought the stock because I thought they were a cool company. Put another way, this was mostly luck.

These days, my investments are pretty tame. I buy mutual funds through my company’s 401(k). After tax money goes mostly into real estate or index funds. The exceptions that I make are for Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) and anything Elon Musk does.

I realize that the Musk investments (Tesla and SolarCity) are also highly speculative, so these purchases make up a very small portion of my portfolio.

My buddy Johnny Moneyseed has a very timely article on investing. I wish I would have been as smart at his age. CMGI anyone?

Join the 10s who have signed up already!

Subscribing will improve your life in incredible ways*.

*Only if your life is pretty bad to begin with.

Powered by ConvertKit

Reader Interactions

Comments

    • You two and about everyone else I follow in the blogworld are hoping for a correction. I’ve been wanting one since February since I’ve been having higher than normal income and therefore higher than normal capital to invest. But the markets just continue on their quest to try and pull me away from my value investing roots.
      JC @ Passive-Income-Pursuit recently posted…Recent BuyMy Profile

      • Stay the couse JC, our time will come. I think my favorite investing quote of all time is Buffett’s: “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
        Soon, it will be our time to be greedy.

  4. This is great stuff. I’m super impressed! I, also, am anticipating a market correction. Fortunately I’m still working on selling a piece of real estate before I pounce. It’s going to suck if I sell that off and end up sitting on cash for a bit while I wait for a dip.
    So funny you used the Danger, Will Robinson reference. I threw that out to some employees of mind a few years ago and they just stared at my blankly. Damn, I’m old.
    Pretired Nick recently posted…Save money with a tool libraryMy Profile

    • Seattle is a pretty hot market, isn’t it? Seems like you’re selling at a good time if that is where your real estate is.

      Oh man, how could people not know the Lost in Space reference? Dah, now I feel old too.

  5. When you say portfolio do you mean retirement? Outside retirement? Or a combination of the two?

    • Portfolio is all for retirement, but only about half of my holdings are in pre-tax accounts. The reason for that is that I plan to retire well before I could access my 401(k).

      • Great. Thank you. That makes me help understand the whole picture a little better knowing that you’ll have about ~500K to live off of for a good bit. Thanks for all you do! Its great to hear your story.

  6. Wow! That’s awesome! We are still powering through our savings for a house down payment. We are so close. 78% of the way to go there. We will probably reach it in August. Then, I can turn to fund our ROTH IRAs for the year (one of my big, hard to reach goals this year).
    Savvy Financial Latina recently posted…June 2013 Net WorthMy Profile

    • Nice work on the down payment. You are going to be way past me by the time you hit my ripe old age of 39.

  7. Very impressive gains for 1 month. I always seem to get in at the top and then ride the wave down always hoping it will come back. I did a great job a buying a bunch of Apple shares right before it plummeted. I guess I need to stick with lifecycle funds.
    MrMilitaryMoney recently posted…Can you retire at 38?My Profile

    • “1 month” is key. I stunk it up for the first 3 months of the year and still trail the indices by about 5% for 2013.

      I don’t think Apple’s story is yet over. If I had to guess, I’ll bet they come on strong the second half of 2013.

Trackbacks