Month: November 2015

Financial Independence Progress Report for November 2015

/ humblefi / 4 Comments
11/30/2015
Emergency Fund ($72K) 100.0% 100.0%
College Fund (80K) 36.52% 38.05%
Passive Income Streams ($4000 pm) $226.42 pm (11/2014)% $515.17 pm (11/2015)
Retirement Fund ($900K) 58.03% 58.31%
Roof for our Family($1 mil) 00.00%
Medical Fund 00.00%
Life Insurance Done (term life insurance payments initiated)

Main Takeaways

Markets made a small move on the positive side and the following portions of my portfolio definitely saw some benefit from it.

  • Retirement Fund
    • Moved some more of my gains from my Vanguard IRA into VGSLX (Vanguard REIT Index). This moves my VGSLX % to 6% of my IRA holdings….final goal is to have it be 10% of my IRA and add a solid dividend stream in my IRA account.
  • 529 plan
    • Money set aside for a birthday party for my kid went unused and that went into the college fund. So, positive markets and the small funding boost, courtesy my kid’s generosity, helped propel the 529 fund.

I did take advantage of some down days in VTMGX (Developed Markets International fund) and boosted my investments to dollar cost average my investment in VTMGX. I am hoping for some decent dividends from the International fund…mainly to diversify my dividend income stream across many countries.

The passive income portion of my portfolio is chugging along nicely. Passive income for November 2015 continued the winning trend vs November of last year.

  • I compute Passive Income per month as (total passive income in this year) / number of months completed this year.
    • Total passive income is a sum of dividends + capital gains distributions.
    • November Passive Income = (total passive income in this year) / 11 == $515.17 pm.
    • Doing it this way keeps the monthly passive income more realistic because I can instantly know which of my monthly expenses are covered by this amount. I keep a separate tracker for this which I will write about at a later date.
  • My final goal for passive income is $4000 pm. This is going to take a while. So, my intermediate goal is to get $1000 pm in passive income first. Right now, I am at $515 pm. But, next month is December….the biggest month for dividends for me and possibly for most people. I am expecting monthly passive income to reach $600 pm. Can’t wait to get to the end of this month.

Financial Independence Progress Report for October 2015

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10/31/2015
Emergency Fund ($72K) 100.0% 100.0%
College Fund (80K) 33.94% 36.52%
Passive Income Streams ($4000 pm) $214.08 pm (10/2014)% $492.51 pm (10/2015)
Retirement Fund ($900K) 54.62% 58.03%
Roof for our Family($1 mil) 00.00%
Medical Fund 00.00%
Life Insurance Done (term life insurance payments initiated)

Main Takeaways

Markets made a reasonably noticeable turn towards the positive side and the following portions of my portfolio definitely saw some benefit from it.

  • Retirement Fund
  • 529 plan

I did take advantage of some down days in the market and boosted my investments to dollar cost average some of my mutual fund investments (another post on this coming up on how). But, October has been a super busy month for me, including a couple days spent in the hospital for a freakish accident of cause unknown. So, I am happy to see a positive gain without putting in any serious effort…..the precise definition of passive income 😉

The passive income portion of my portfolio is chugging along nicely. I am aggressively funding my passive income portfolio and (try to) make use of every down day in the markets. My funding sometimes is as low as $100 and as high as $500. Most of the days, I have gotten lucky and dollar cost averaged down my mutual funds….a tiny bit, but hey, each bit matters right 🙂

Passive income for October 2015 continued the winning trend vs last year.

  • I compute Passive Income per month as (total passive income in this year) / number of months completed this year.
    • Total passive income is a sum of dividends + capital gains distributions.
    • October Passive Income = (total passive income in this year) / 10 == $492.51  pm.
  • Doing it this way keeps the monthly passive income more realistic because I can instantly know which of my monthly expenses are covered by this amount. I keep a separate tracker for this which I will write about at a later date.
  • I did take advantage of the down markets and added to my investment in VDIGX , VTMFX and VTMGX (developed markets ex-north america). All these investments have hovered around their respective 52 month lows These new investments will contribute towards dollar cost averaging my holdings.
  • November will be a slow month for me as usual…but looking forward to December for the next big dividend income month.