Spring is here, and with it comes allergy season here in the Midwest. This April, the market was making me feel as uncomfortable as the ragweed. Check out the deets!
You can check the latest and greatest info on the Track Our Progress page.
First, the numbers:
Net Worth:
- End of April Balance: $1,009,128 down $53,358
- Year to Date (YTD): Down $55,590(-5.2%)
- Since January 2018 (this is when I started tracking our net worth): Up $704,128
Portfolio:
- End of April Balance: $788,151 down $65,319
- YTD: Down $86,109 (-9.9%)*
- Since January 2018: Up $548,151*
*All numbers above include contributions and are not indicative of investment returns.
April Highlights
Getting into the RV Groove
We had two trips in the RV in April. The first was a family camping trip to Meramec State Park. While a bit cold, it was a great time and we were able to take our kids to Meramec Caverns to tour the cave.
Our second trip was a couples-only camping trip to our family’s property for some turkey hunting. We all had a blast, and I bagged my first turkey! I can’t wait to get it on the smoker!
Reconsidering our Savings Approach
Both my wife and I recently received raises. We’ve been discussing how we should deploy the extra money left over after covering the truck and RV bills. Ordinarily, this would all go towards our Roths or our taxable brokerage account.
However, recently our mindset has shifted to having a bit more cash on hand. One of these days we plan to move, likely to a ranch. Our current two-story house is just fine, and we didn’t know how many kids we were going to have when we bought it. But now that we’ve settled on 2 it looks like a ranch would present a more efficient use of space and many ranches have layouts that we prefer over our current floorplan. So we’ve been snooping around a little…
One thing that stood out in our “snooping” is that cash remains King. In our local real estate market things are still very hot. Houses are going far over listing and many people are putting up very large earnest money deposits with their offers. Additionally, we have some updates that need to happen to our current house if we were to put it on the market. While we aren’t desperate to relocate, we do want to have our ducks in a row to jump on the perfect house, should it appear.
Needless to say, extra cash on hand puts us in a better position. From a pure cost perspective, the math says it is better to stash your cash into investment vehicles, but the relative illiquidity of investments reduces the attractiveness.
So, moving forward we will likely push more money into our “emergency fund” account.
Coming Up in May
We only have 1 RV trip planned in May, so it’s a good month to knock out some “honey do list” items while we are in town. We have a mix of landscaping, garden planting, painting, bath room remodeling and miscellaneous fixes and tweaks around our house. I don’t like sitting still, apparently. In fact, I’m getting fidgety just typing this. Enough! Now, about that bathroom remodel…
Thanks for reading.
