April 2019 Net Worth $97,812 (+$9,214)

There was a pretty good jump in NW this month. Especially compared to
last months’ disappointing increase of +$24.

The main contributors to this were a recovering cryptocurrency portfolio and a solid month of saving (aka not buying crap off OzBargain I don’t need just because “it was such a good deal”).

We did move house though, which incurred a bunch of once off expenses, e.g. removalists, steam cleaning of the old place, multiple trips to Bunnings for bits and pieces. Also going forward our new rent is $2100/month, up from $1800/month. However the new place is much more spacious so I feel it is definitely worth it in my books. I no longer feel like we’re cramped in a tiny shoebox apartment as we now have things like a backyard and double garage.

Because I missed my ETF/LIC purchase last month, I made two $5k purchases of AFI and VGS to catch up.

Hopefully by next month I should tick over to the 6 figure mark for the first time ever. Looking very forward to this mini FIRE milestone!

Here are the usual monthly graphs.

Net Worth Tracker

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New progress trackers

Here are some new graphs which I think will be useful for tracking my progress against my extremely ambitious goal to hit a 7 figure NW before I turn 35 (Oct 2025).

The first is an ETF/LIC portfolio tracker. I’ve budgeted a $5k ETF purchase every month, so by Oct 2025 I’m targeting that my portfolio should be $540k (using an annualised average return of 7%).

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The second is an overall NW tracker. In order to hit a 7 figure NW by Oct 2025, I’ll need to save $8.5k/month (again assuming an average of 7% annual returns on investments).

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My prediction is that for the first few years, I will fall behind this target as I don’t save $8.5k/month. On a good month I might save $7k. However as time goes by, I hope my income from my main job and side hustles increase enough to catch up in time to achieve my NW goal.

How do I plan to increase my income?

Increasing my income for my primary job (IT consulting) is pretty straightforward. With more experience comes more responsibility, and therefore greater remuneration. But at the end of the day, whether I work 40 hours/week or 80 – I’ll receive the same amount of money in my bank account. There’s no such thing as overtime in my industry*. You agree to deliver a scope of work to your client, and it doesn’t matter how many hours you put in. The only thing that matters is if you successfully deliver the complete scope of the project on time, on budget, and to a high quality that ensures your stakeholders are happy.

* Note: To clarify, if you have to work on the weekend then of course you will get paid for it (or you might get a day off in lieu instead). But what I mean is in a regular work week, it doesn’t matter if one person works 40 hours and another works 80 hours. They’ll both get paid for a standard 40 hour work week.

My side hustle on the other hand is a different story.

I can’t go into too much detail on my side hustle. But it’s something that I get paid for depending on how many clients and contract work I take on at any given time. At the moment I may be working on a mini project which pays me an additional $2k/month, which take up 30 hours of my time. I can take on more project work and the income will scale linearly, however this would mean less and less free time. Therefore if I ever feel like I’m falling too far behind on progress for my FIRE goal, this is one lever I can pull to put me back on track. It’s the complete opposite of passive income; I get paid directly in proportion to how much human effort I am willing to give.

I believe paid work is simply an exchange of your time for money. Or to be even more pessimistic, work is simply trading your life for money. To that regard I hope that by making these sacrifices early on (taking on additional contract work and giving up more of my free time), I’ll reap the rewards of a passive income stream and the freedom that comes with it later in life.

Thanks again for reading – see you next month!