Well, this quarter has been a bit of a roller coaster hasn’t it?  Once the new year had passed I got to organizing my trip back to the USA.  I left my parents in good shape with various family members looking after them.  The car I purchased for my visit, I offered to my niece to use on the basis that she can use it to look after my folks. This way I know she has reliable transport.

With the outbreak of war in Ukraine and the subsequent Russian embargoes and sanctions, the markets took a bit of a nose dive.  We can see this is in the end of quarter numbers.

There is some good news this quarter; I received a pay raise that positions me in the right place for my responsibilities and title, and a bonus which acknowledged the hard work and effort that was put into my new role this past year.  To say I’m pleased with that is a bit of an understatement.

The Numbers

And here they are in all their glory. As we can see, I had solid growth for three quarters, but the last quarter has really sucked. The cash investment account and the HSA have done ok, but the retirement accounts have suffered.  I am hoping this is short term, and that over the next quarter, we will see a recovery, but I see mixed headlines about that, so we will have to see.

So what is on the agenda for the next quarter?

There are a number of things that I like to track; the numbers above, health, my job, and Cat’s progress with the saving.  Both our financial numbers have been depressed over the last quarter with our combined net worth moving from $990k at its lowest to $1.06M at its highest.  With some luck, I would like us to be at $1.1m by the end of the year, with a new revised FI number of $1.5M. Also this year I am contributing more to my 401k with the hope that I get to fully contribute by the end of this year.

The new FI number has been calculated because we have decided to purchase a house.  Houses in northern Colorado are not cheap.  We needed to add some padding to the FI number to account for the mortgage payment.  It will be nice to have a home base, but this opens up a whole list of risks we might face.

Also with regards the numbers, I started using Nerdwallet and that seems to be working well.  I don’t normally include assets like the cars in my net worth. However including them, Nerdwallet says I have an overall net worth of about $419k.  It would be nice to see that hit $500k by the end of the year.

Health has been an issue with me being in the UK for 5 months.  My diet went to hell, I did not get enough exercise and my stress levels went up.  However now that I am home, my weight is down to the same as when I left.  Also Cat and I have been going for a walk almost every day; we walk about 2.5 miles eat time, but occasionally we got to do longer walks.  We both feel better for doing this.

Final Thoughts

We are trying to get out and be more sociable this year.  With the pandemic we’ve all become shut ins, ordering from DoordDash and Instacart, and binging Netflix and Amazon.  It’s time to break those habits.  lets actually talk to people face to face, as long as its safe.  This feels weird but we have to do it or we will become reclusive and miserable I think.  Anyway thats it for this quarter, lets see what happens over the next three months.