We did it! We sold the house! Now, how did we deploy our cash? Read on to find out.
You can check the latest and greatest info on the Track Our Progress page.
First, the numbers:
Net Worth:
- End of October
- Year to Date (YTD): Up $130,117 (up 23%)
- Since January 2018 (this is when I started tracking our net worth): Up $390,659
Portfolio:
- End of October Balance: $565,443 up $74,220 (15.11%)
- YTD: Up $150,205 (up 36%)
- Since January 2018: Up $325,443
We saw a big bump in the portfolio value this month. This about 50 percent due to contributions and 50 percent due to price appreciation and quarterly dividends.
Monthly Contributions: $47,067
In baseball this would be called “putting up a crooked number”. Our contributions are roughly 10X our September amount. This is due to the sale proceeds from our old rental house and our long awaited receipt of our federal tax return.
October Highlights
She Gone
We finally closed on the sale of our rental property! After all the drama and hijinks of the process we were deeply relieved to get it done.
The next step was to take the sale proceeds and figure out what to do with them. First off, since the house was not our primary residence for 2 of the last 5 years, it’s sale is subject to capital gains tax. So we estimated what we might owe and stashed that money immediately into a savings account.
Next we topped off our Roth IRA buckets for the year.
Finally, we moved the rest into our taxable brokerage account. With it being a decent lump sum, our next consideration was whether to dump it all in at once or dollar cost average it over a period of time. Statistics say that a single lump sum investment is most likely to yield the best return.
But 2020 laughs in the face of statisticians everywhere. Swings of 2%+ per day in the market seem to be a weekly occurrence. And let’s not forget March’s nose dive.
I asked my wife her thoughts and she just threw up her hands and said. “Whatever. I don’t care.” So… left to my own devices I decided to break it up into 3 chunks that would be pushed in between early October and the election.
The first installment seemed to go OK as I was able to take advantage of a decent price pullback. But I got antsy and pushed the second chunk in at a higher price than I wanted. I thought I was doing good when I executed the trade for the third chunk… only to see the market drop 3%+ the next day.
Lesson 90,987 on why to you shouldn’t try to time the market.
Hi Ho, Hi Ho Let’s Build a Patio
With the rental sale done and over, we decided to take some time off before starting our next “adventure”.
All of 1 week.
We noted the nice weather forecast coming up and dove headlong into a project to build a paver patio. We have been wanting to extend our covered patio for years and even had a contractor give us an estimate last year to do it in concrete. This project was funded by our federal tax return and refunded escrow from the house sale.
We decided to take on the project on a Monday and had everything ordered, delivered, and installed by the end of the following weekend (in no small thanks to my brother and father in law for sacrificing their backs) and the yard graded out with seed and straw by the following Tuesday night. It was an intense effort.
We started with this:
And ended with this:
Total cost, including equipment rental, the chairs, and fire pit came out around $4,400.00.
Holy Crap a Vacation!
Originally, we planned on a trip to the Smoky Mountains and a Caribbean Cruise this year. However, with the *gestures wildly at everything* stuff going on this year we had not been able to get away for a family vacation. But with all the rental drama and super busy work schedule a break was greatly needed.
So we decided to sneak one in there over the girl’s fall school break. We surprised them with a trip to Disney World!
At first blush, it seemed like a bad time to go, but we decided that our kids were already going to school and being exposed to people on a daily basis, and also that they were used to wearing masks all day. So we went for it.
I have to say it turned out better than I imagined. The plane ride was not particularly crowded, and the parks were much less crowded than I imagined. People generally did a good job of socially distancing. To top it off we used credikiu87t card points to cover the airfares and the AirBnB stay, so the whole deal was reasonable (for a Disney trip)!
Coming Up in November
Remaster the Master Bathroom?
Hot on the trails of the patio project, we are strongly considering redoing our Master Bath. It is still mostly original to the home’s construction (30+ year old, builder’s grade stuff). Yuck. If we sell this house down the road, this will need to be updated.
While this will no doubt be a pricey endeavor, we will again do the work ourselves and believe that the combination of equity boost and personal enjoyment will be worth it for us.
Thanks for reading and stay safe out there!
