So, it’s April now. Just like that a quarter of the year gone. Dayum! It is still freezing cold here with snows still expected, so it sure doesn’t feel like April. If this weather won’t change soon, I’ll be mowing the grass in the snow. But enough about the weather… Let’s review the interesting month of March that was.
You can always check the latest and greatest info on the Track Our Progress page.
First, the numbers:
Net Worth: $332,835 Down $4,721 (-1.40%)
Portfolio Balance: $247,094 Down $2,349 (-0.94%)
Bleeding all over the stats with red ink for the 2nd consecutive month.
March, simply put, was odd. Let’s try to piece this thing together.
Caveats
There was definitely some out of the ordinary action in March.
First, as I previously posted HERE, I traded in my old pick’em up truck for a Honda Accord. We put down over 50% in cash and paid the sales tax which gutted our cash position pretty thoroughly. It’s a new vehicle, so it has a fair retail value that I could count in our net worth calculation, but there is also a portion that is financed. The end result is a bit of additional equity that could be added to our net worth but I am excluding this for now. I didn’t include the value of my truck previously, so why start now?
Second, we parted ways with Edward Jones and began the process of transferring all our investments to Vanguard. The more I dug into the numbers I just could not see how our fund performance at Edward Jones could ever consistently match, much less beat, the performance of low cost index funds. I just finished reading John Bogle’s Little Book on Common Sense Investing and finally decided to take Apathy Ends’ advice and “Dude, Just Effing Do It.”
Some of the transfers went quickly, while others are still in process. This led to a very curious looking portfolio value chart. It looks like the giant dip in the numbers on the 22nd corresponds to the day our Roth accounts were mid-transfer. I assume we will see a similar goofy graph in April when the rest of the accounts finally matriculate on over to Vanguard.
As part of the transfers, we are drastically thinning the herd of funds, going from nearly two dozen funds down to two or three. This should make these monthly updates a bit simpler… yay, me!
Speaking of funds…
What did What in March?
The performance of our portfolio n March can be summed up with this gif:
Least Disappointing:
- My wife’s Traditional IRA at Edward Jones was only down 3%.
The Bottom of the Barrel:
- My Edward Jones Roth – well duh, I emptied it.
- In reality, it was my Vanguard Roth – it was down 8.47%. To be honest, I suspect this is do to some goofy aspect with the transfer rather than fund performance. I sold off the old funds and bought Vanguard funds which triggered fees for the transactions that certainly took a chunk out.
What’s on Tap
The next few months will be focused on paying off the car loan. As such, our monthly investment contributions will remain low until the car loan is gone.
As for the portfolio performance, who the hell knows? The market has been quite volatile of late and if I had to guess, I suppose that trend will continue.
One aspect is quite apparent. As I mentioned earlier, we are greatly simplifying our mutual fund situation by selling off the Edward Jones funds and buying Vanguard funds. This will incur transaction fees. Man, I hate fees. These fees will most definitely hold down our performance for at least the next month. I reeeaaaly hope this is the last time we have to move these things.
Life Insurance – after years of my wife stumping for getting life insurance, I finally threw up my hands. So I am trying my hand at “adulting” and seeking to get a policy in place. I told my wife I didn’t want the policy too high to make sure she doesn’t get any crazy thoughts… but if there is no Progress Update 5 next month, well, you know what happened. 😉
That’s it for March. I’m happy to put this poor excuse for the beginning of Spring in the rear view. Maybe, just maybe, Spring will finally have sprung sometime here in April. Thanks for reading and check back in next week!