Welcome back! I hope your summer has been enjoyable. Read on to see how we’ve spent ours.
You can check the latest and greatest info on the Track Our Progress page.
First, the numbers:
Net Worth:
- End of Quarter 3 Balance: $1,202,520 Down $33,960 for Quarter 3
- Year to Date (YTD): Up 135,638 (13.0%)
- Since January 2018 (this is when I started tracking our net worth): Up $897,560
Portfolio:
- End of Quarter 3 Balance: $945,520 Up $11,931 for Quarter 3
- YTD: Up $119,089 (13.6%)*
- Since January 2018: Up $705,520*
*This total value as opposed to an internal rate of return.
What We’ve Been Doing
Another Loan Bites the Dust!
Last December we doubled down on our new found passion of RVing and bought a bigger, better rig.
We signed up for about $45,000 in debt to do so.
Ouch
…at a 7.25% interest rate
Double Ouch. Kill it with FIRE!
Our plan in 2022 was to pay off the original RV at the end of 2022. Obviously, by upsizing, we dashed that plan. So, for 2023 we raised the stakes and determined to pay off the new, larger loan.
Well, I’m happy to say…
As of September, we had the funds and pushed a large pile of cash over to the lien holder. It was a sickening feeling, but we are very excited to be done with it. Now, all we have left (aside from the mortgage) is the truck payment. I feel that one will take a bit longer to pay off. More below.
RV Rambling
We’ve really embraced the nomad life this summer. At the time of this post, we’ve taken the RV out sixteen times this year! We’ve made some great memories this summer.!
The big trip during Q3 was a road trip up to Indiana Dunes State Park, up through Michigan with stops in Traverse City, Mackinac Island/Mackinaw City and finally Munising in the Upper Peninsula, before heading home through Wisconsin and Illinois. This trip was awesome and I feel almost certain that we will be back.
The biggest highlights (for me) were Sleeping Bear Dunes, getting in the water in three great lakes in three days, and the beautiful Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore at Lake Superior.
We are really getting in a grove now and our confidence is growing. Looking down the road a year or two, I see some longer trips coming. Yellowstone? The Badlands? Perhaps…
The RV investment really seems to be paying off.
Running Man
I started jogging to build a healthy habit in March this year. Fairly quickly, I was able to progress to running 5k’s every weekday. When I last posted, I was wondering if it ever got easier. Well…
It did.
Then it didn’t
I noticed every run getting a bit easier in Late July and early August. My 5k times, which had been fairly consistent in May and June, suddenly dropped by nearly 2 minutes and I finally started to see changes on the scale. It felt good. Real good.
Fast forward to September. Things were going well, but I started to feel a slight twinge in my knees in the evening. Idiotically, I keep jogging through it, just chalking it up to some unusual, but temporary stiffness. By late September, it was apparent that this was full blown case of runner’s knee (in both knees). I tried taking a few days off, but no improvement. Things reached a head during our last campout where I could barely go up and down the RV stairs.
So, I’m shuttin’ er down for a couple weeks. Now I’m aggressively treating my knees through strength exercises and stretching. On the plus side, I’m still finding ways to get my exercise in each day despite the setback. It’s funny though. Earlier this year, I couldn’t imagine running for 10 minutes, much less a mile, or *gasp* a 5k. Now, it kills me not to be able to knock out my usual 3+ miles.
Habits are no joke.
Hopefully, I can report back in Q4 that I’m back in the saddle again.
Buying In?
I mentioned earlier that the payoff of the truck loan will likely take some time. If we hate debt and high interest rates so much, then why aren’t we throwing everything at that?
All that extra cash flow from paying off the RV and a raise at work in August (13%!) is going somewhere else.
My company reached out and indicated they would like for me to buy into the company in January 2025. This had been discussed on and off over the last few years and, honestly, I was starting to doubt it ever was going to happen. The offer is to purchase a small percentage of the company’s stock and the cost to doing so could range into the $30k+ range.
The upside is that by owning a share of the company, I would be entitled to quarterly distributions as well as potential appreciation of share value which could be redeemed upon retirement. If recent history is predictive on returns (it isn’t, but it’s the best info we have) then the purchase would pay itself off with the distributions alone within 5 years. That’s a decent return on investment.
And if I was going to work 20+ more years, it would be a slam dunk. But I don’t want to do that.
I really like the idea of being financially independent by age 50. Maybe then, I’d choose to keep working. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll do something completely different. Either way, I had to compare expected returns from buying in against other options, such as aggressively paying off the truck, or rolling extra monthly contributions into my index funds.
At the end of the day, the numbers still support buying in. So the current plan is to build up the savings account in preparation for the share purchase in 2025.
Coming Up in Q4
What’s on tap in the fourth quarter? Well, we’ve still got a trip or two left on the calendar in Q4. Typically, my thoughts in the fall turn to duck and deer season, so I am hopeful to have opportunities and good luck in that regard. My work bonus usually comes in right before Christmas, and I have no idea what to expect there this year. In the meantime, we’ll have our heads down saving ahead of the buy in at work, and we’ll be putting the legwork in on planning and booking RV trips for 2024.
Thanks for reading!