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.
Velociraptors And Viruses
Life has been pretty good over here in the 1500 household. Last fall, I wasn’t thrilled that our fixer-upper had a pool. The unwanted body of water was the reason we got a great deal on the home (no one wants pools in Colorado) and the kids would like it, but it would just be another thing to take care of. However, in the age of COVID where access to public pools is extremely limited, we’re loving the 17,000 gallons of H-2-O in our backyard. It has taken minimal maintenance (30 minutes per week to vacuum) and the kids are having a great time.
And no one has been eaten by the velociraptor yet which is good:
Stay Away From May?
Have you ever heard this ridiculous Sell in May and go away. Not many sold this May: If ever there was a reason to go away, we have it: However, just like my children have no fear of raptors, Mrs. Market has no fear of The Virus. I make no predictions, but it feels like we have some irrational exuberance going on here. But, I invest for decades and the virus will go away much sooner, so I don’t care much either. Our investment portfolio (rental home, trailer park, private loans, syndication deals, coworking space) started the month $2,491,119 and ended at $2,526,338 for a gain of $35,219. Add in our $150,000 in home equity and our net worth comes out to $2,676,338: If the markets keep going, it won’t be long before we join the Triple Double-Comma Club. I will purchase a monocle and top hat from Amazon soon to prepare for this momentous event. I just added a new page to the blog that shows my investments in real-time. Check it out here: https://www.1500days.com/my-investments-2/ In it, you can view all of our investments, portfolio breakdown, and incredible lack of cash: I love farting around with spreadsheets and calculators. I could look at this stuff all day. And sometimes I do: *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. ****My 401(k) contributions include my own, Mrs. 1500’s, and the contributions from my corporation. Self-employment with a solo 401(k) is a very powerful savings tool. I should have done this years ago. Subscribing will improve your life in incredible ways*.
May Performance Update
2020 (as of 5/30/2020)
Since the Start (1/1/2013)
Portfolio and Net Worth
Real-Time
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*Only if your life is pretty bad to begin with.
i like the new stock holdings and asset allocation page. how you gonna raise that cash position? don’t wanna get caught with your drawers down!
freddy smidlap recently posted…What’s Dragging Down Your Beloved VTSAX? Hint: It Ain’t the QQQ Stocks!
Cash! I’ve never liked it! With the Mrs. working, I’m not so hung up on cash. We’ve oversaved anyway, so even if we had to sell some stuff in an emergency, it wouldn’t make much difference.
My household has an order of magnitude more cash on hand than Mr. 1500?! ?
Market’s gonna market, whatcha gonna do. On the bright side, last week I turned $31 of that cash position into a preorder of Hum’s Inlet (on CD, not vinyl, because I’m old but not THAT old) and a sweet band T-shirt. \m/
ADAM! It greatly excites me to talk about Hum! I bought the album/t-shirt too! So far, the new music has been difficult for me to get into. However, all of them took me a while to get into. I wish they put Inklings on the album too… But, hard to complain. Let’s go see a show if they tour behind it!
“My household has an order of magnitude more cash on hand than Mr. 1500?”
Haha! Yeah, if the Mrs. didn’t have a job, we’d have more cash around. I like having all of those dollars working!
We are like 1,600 miles apart and there’s a h*ckin’ pandemic, but once those hurdles can be cleared I am 100% down! Thanks for posting the Inklings video. Man, their sound is fantastic; I love just sitting back and letting it hit me square in the face.
It’s one of the trade-offs I made with my wife to undertake this whole FIRE thing — I invest our maxed-out 401(k)s and HSA, she saves huge wads of everything left over. A year of living expenses in a savings account helps keep her sane. Totally worth it!
Hi-
I was curious to hear how the real estate portion of your portfolio is doing. You had not great news the past 2 months on some of the sindication deals, trailer park and other loans. I hope that those are doing better. I definitely wish I had your pool in my back yard due to the weather and social distancing! I am also curious how teaching/school is going…did you wrap it up or are you still doing lessons even now? Or did you have “an end of school year” pool party – just throwing ideas out here…I hope you and your family are doing well. Thanks for the post as I always look forward to reading them.
Hi Deb!
Trailer park: This is doing better than expected, but not as good as it normally would. Evictions are on hold for at least another month which poses some interesting issues. A couple of tenants who hadn’t been paying moved out spontaneously, but we can’t take possession of the units until a formal eviction happens. We’re not taking any distributions, but the good news is that we’re building up our cash.
Syndications: Three are paying (under their goals) and four are not. Out of the latter, three of them are doing well, but the syndicator (Wildhorn) suspended distributions as a precautionary measure. The other one, Watermark, is a shitshow.
We have three private loans. All are paying and one is about to get paid off completely.
Homeschooling was harder than I ever thought it would be. Our youngest didn’t think she should be learning at home, so fought us at every corner. It didn’t help that the school didn’t provide any teaching, just outlines of what we were supposed to teach.
The pool has been awesome! It’s become a small, socially distanced, neighborhood social hub. Different people wander in and out every day. If you’re in the area, come on by!
Thank you for the kind comments!
TBH- the stock market performance has been puzzling me the last few months, as well.
As for a monocle and top hat- there’s a guy (with an epic wizard beard) in north shore that wears a mother effing top hat while kite surfing. WHILE kite surfing. He recently upgraded to a mercedes benz van that says “top hatter’s tours”. So remember, you can use your top hat while kite surfing. Therefore, it’s an investment.
We just finished going through our June review (so a month ahead of you all), and similarly are looking at the market with a bit of surprise. While it is “forward-looking”, it’s still surprising to see it continue to stabilize and even rise a couple of percent through June. Like you said, it seems to be shrugging off the …not great pandemic news in the US.
But, to your point, fortunately we’re looking at investments over decades of time horizon. Thanks for keeping your updates coming.
Chris@TTL recently posted…Credits & Dividends Yield 78% Savings Rate for June 2020
Nice pick on some of your individual tech stocks. They are pushing all time highs. With such good stock selection, have you thought about starting your own hedge fund? 🙂
Sport of Money recently posted…6 Steps To A 10% Cash On Cash Return And 18% Total Return
$35,000 in the green is not bad for one month.
haha you know, I always wonder, being a single fellow, what I will do in retirement without someone to ask the question “What have you been doing all day?” That said, I never seem to have a problem being busy, even with a job. And who knows, maybe I will find someone by then!
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