In April I saw friends in Boston after not travelling for over 600 days. I was in need of a change of and drove to Rhode Island one day since it was less an an hour away. Here are a couple pictures from that trip.
It made me think more about how life is not just about accumulating wealth. It’s about being healthy, and enjoying new experiences too. Whether that’s with someone or alone. So yes I plan to do more travelling over in some coming months. Definitely see a summer trip in my near future. I’m a little irked that my folks haven’t been vaccinated yet, nor are they pursuing it after the Johnson & Johnson single dose vaccine debacle.
The trips don’t have to be expensive either. My car rental from Tuesday – Friday was only $182, and gas was $25. I think I only ended up paying for 2 or 3 meals during the whole trip. I had a credit from American Airlines from my previously cancelled New York trip. I did have to pay extra fora checked in suitcase and to change my seats to main cabin extra but it was totally worth it.
Total Net Worth is up $11.701 or 8.4% vs previous month. I’ve had a series of dividend payments on my 401k, the latest was $145.60. It’s nice to lock these in to offset fluctuations in the marke.. So far since 2018 the total is $3,760.
401k Dividend History
Going back to the dark period of April 2020… There was so much uncertainty about what was going on in the economy. This time last year my total only around $65,285. Almost one year ago I made the last payment on my car and became officially debt free! I would never make it to the Dave Ramsey show but this is fine….
Since then… I’ve been aggressively squirrelling my dollars away into investments. With my car payment at the time I would have spent $6,500 over 12 months. S&P 500 comparing April 23, 2021 is $4,180.17 vs May 1, 2020 was $2,919.61 or +43%. Between the payment and the appreciation I would have been down $9,295. That’s a lot of $$$.
Still thinking about my next steps. Things are kinda stagnant right now. Getting closer to 40, 9 years experience in my industry, almost 10 in this city… Texas population is very much still booming, we gained 2 congressional seats, and almost 4 million people from 2010 to 2020.
I hope after 9 years of this blog I can inspire other people to become debt free too. 2012 was a long time ago! My biggest takeaway is hard work and sticking to a plan pays off. I’ve always thought along the way how to get to the next level and now is no different.
Posted a new video tonight to the Debt Free Alpha YouTube channel. I would like to own my own place again, just now isn’t the right time. This is a bit of a rant video recorded Sunday night and I didn’t do any editing.
So March was an interesting month. I’ve been enjoying more of my photography hobby. I keep telling myself that I need to create magic in my daily routine otherwise it’s never going to happen.
I got the Johnson & Johnson single dose Covid-19 vaccine several weeks ago. If my friend Ryan got it a month earlier he’s still be alive today. So it was bittersweet. One of my friends in Fort Worth currently has it but fortunately has minor symptoms. I know I can still catch or carry it but it seems like things are starting to feel a bit more like normal again.
Today I got my stimulus check in the mail from the United States Treasury. It’s not a huge amount at $1,400, but it definitely will be growing into a lot more over time. It also allowed me to make my final Roth IRA contribution for 2020, hitting the $6,000 max for the first time in my entire life.
Currently at 37 I have more invested than the average person in their 50s. Sure I don’t have the house but that shit is expensive relative to my income. Ideally I will be in a spot where my passive income allows me to buy the things I want. For example if I have $500k saved, buying a $30k slightly used 1-3 year old car really isn’t that big a deal. Or if I have $700k, buying a $200k house with a mortgage sounds pretty reasonable. I’m about a decade out from hitting that milestone assuming things stay fairly steady.
I made a 19.5% pre-tax return on my cryptocurrency holdings in 3 months. The amount of money invested was only a couple hundred so I’m not rolling in the dough. I do think crypto is crazy overvalued right now and there is a lot of uncertainty. I didn’t want to be the one left holding the bag so I sold it all. If it has a major dip I will consider buying again.
I still didn’t touch the emergency fund, nor am I including that or money in my checking account here.
That makes my net worth $8,359 or 6.4% higher than it was last month. March 2020 I only had a $50k net worth. 178% higher right now and yes it took lots of sacrifies but not too shabby. Still no debt and loving every moment of it. This might be sustainable if I don’t let consumerism get the best of me. The market is near record highs so there’s that too. Still expect things to crash and burn at some point like 2020. Just $6000 more on the Roth for 2021. $6k / 11 months = $545. $272 a paycheck, I got this.
I’m still thinking about other life priorities. Do I move or just do enough things outside the apartment with all the cash I’m saving including saving for something nicer. I know I sound like a broken record but 6+ years is a long time in one unit. Especially when you literally have never invited a single neighbor in the other 159 units to your apartment and the only person you really know in the zip code of 135k people you don’t get along with. Just keeping it real, after 5 tries it’s a lost cause.
Do I move when this lease is up? Do I wait until I hit some arbitrary number maybe $200k? $250k? What really would make me happy? All questions I find myself struggling to find answers for. I don’t have the energy or drinking capacity I had in my 20s and that makese me sad sometimes.
Sweet sweet stimulus check
What are you doing with your stimulus check? How is 2021 treating you?
The post I’ve been putting off for weeks. I experienced some recent losses lately… The second was the loss of someone I’ve been friends with for over 15 years. His name was Ryan, he lived just a couple miles away from me when I lived on Long Island. Like me, he started out working in a regional grocery store and wasn’t sure about his future career. He eventually started landing writing gigs, moved to NYC, and became CEO of the site Manhattan Digest. He also was into food blogging and wasn’t ashamed about being who he was. I saw some messages from 2011 we exchanged where he was struggling to make any money from writing. Only 34 years old and it was Covid-related. It all happened so quick, he posted regular social media updates of what was happening. Then all of a sudden the posts stopped. I learned he passed from one of our mutual friends, and saw several posts from his sister on his status later on. I cried and just wasn’t sure how process it all. I thought maybe I’d see him again next time I went to NYC.
The first was the loss of one of my aunts, she was 74 and had some health problems. I was a lot closer to her as a child and leading up to the time my father passed away. Then we kind of lost touch. I called her once after I moved to Texas, she was friendly as always. We just didn’t have a ton to talk about. No one in the family told me either via phone or even sent me a message. I learned 2 weeks after it happened via Facebook. I was quite upset about that, felt like the wind got knocked out of me. I also wasn’t able to attend or even see the service, there also was a bad snowstorm in NY at the same so even if I flew it probably would’ve been delayed. I planned to visit last year during my planned trip to see my mom for her 60th birthday. Then Covid happened and that trip got cancelled. I haven’t seen family on my father’s side in almost 5 years (I wish we were closer than we are but it is what it is), have no siblings, and on my mom’s side no one in person for over 800 days.
Then yesterday a guy I went on two dates with and messaged back and forth daily for 2 weeks said he felt like something was missing and didn’t think another date was right for us. I read the text literally after I finished brunch with a friend and was grabbing a few drinks. Maybe I drank a little more than I should have. It’s hard to date during a pandemic, and the last couple guys I had a strong interest in dating really left me feeling broken. I try to forget bad past experiences, but they seem to keep happening over and over again. Then a different guy I matched with, exchanged some messages with for half the day and was having a somewhat normal conversation with drops “sorry to do this but I just ended a relationship recently and I thought I was ready but I don’t think so now”. We were just supposed to meet for a beverage… Straight people have it a lot easier. February has been a rough month, I’m glad it’s almost over.
So let’s move onto personal finances.
2/28 Update: 401K: $117,738 (including my pending contribution) Roth IRA: $10,239 M1 Acct: $1,452 Crypto: $181 HSA: $1,037 Total Investments $130,647 I was tempted to touch the emergency fund to cover a small credit card balance or more quickly contribute to the Roth IRA 2020 cutoff but decided not to. The market had a couple of rough days last week. Still managed to grow my portfolio by $4,606 or 3.65% higher than last month. Had another vet bill to the tune of $250, this time for some annual tests plus treatment for some growth in her ear. So that, plus a $195 tax bill, several dates, the $200 dehumidifer, and a meal plan service I signed up for. Just a year ago I had $80k in retirement and $6,975 in debt. My net worth is up 79% from 2/22/2020, still not where I want it to be, but still nothing to scoff at. I read somewhere that once you pass the age of 30 you should only compare yourself to where you were previously, not to others. In your 20s, you and your peers are beginning from generally the same starting line but so many things are unique to individual situations after that.
I’m probably on the border of a mid-life crisis. Not sure if I should stay in this apartment, in this city, heck even in the state of Texas. Not sure if I should go for a low cost STEM related degee online, or maybe work on my skills in my current industry. Maybe I need to travel somewhere, been super stir crazy. Still no word yet on a date for the vaccine. I registered in two separate counties, one last week and the first in late January. Things could be a lot worse I know. I didn’t lose power, or get stuck with a $700 electricity bill like Harlan of Out and Out (terrific travel / points / lifestyle / personal finance site) did. I watched someone I follow on YouTube whose girlfriend got sick and had to be hospitalized. He paid for her rent for a month but he’s also on unemployment. Yikes!
In spite of this I did have a good weekend in Deep Ellum. Cool place but a bit more congested than I’m used to in the burbs. Anywhere you have to circle the streets 4 or 5 times to find a paid parking spot on the street or pay even more to use a parking lot a bit extra to me. Either way cool place to grab drinks/food, shoot the shit, and admire the art. North Dallas lacks culture. I’m looking forward to March, doing a mental reset and to start making some solid gains.
Sign at Emporium Pies in Deep Ellum
Fancy dessert type drink at Thunderbird Station
Smiling in Deep Ellum
Watered down Old Fashion in the Medical District
Last but not least I hope good things are happening in your lives. Hard to believe I’ve been blogging here for almost 9 years. Net worth is up almost 4X in that timeframe and that’s with buying 2 new cars…. I was such a hot mess back in the early days…
I recently experienced my coldest week in Texas on record. We had two major snowstorms in the area. In a state like New York these would have been an inconvenience but after a day or two most of the snow would have been shoveled and the roads cleared. However here…
There were sheets of ice covered by snow. This of course led to abysmal driving conditions. In Fort Worth there was a 100+ car pileup in addition to accidents spread out all over the country. It also lead to record breaking energy consumption, leading to ERCOT (lectric Reliability Council of Texas) to initiate rolling blackouts. In reality many of these blackouts weren’t rolling and people in some cases didn’t have power for days.
I briefly left my apartment with the washing machine running to go to the gym, and grab a couple of groceries on my way back. This in retrospect was a huge mistake. With groceries in hand I stepped in water, both on the tile near the door, and in the carpet, all the rugs I had were literally soaking wet. I panicked and had to quickly think of the best way to extract the water quickly. I don’t own a wet/dry vac and it was questionable whether Home Depot or Lowes would even be open. My carpet cleaner saved the day and I effectively was able to suck up literally 11 gallons of water from the flooring.
A very panicked phone call was left with apartment maintenance along with an online ‘Critical” severity ticket. Tried to pick up a dehumidifer that night with no luck. The next day I drive to HD on ice and they have none, and a f’ing fire alarm goes off literally the moment I walk into the door at Lowes. After 15 minutes sitting in the parking lot in freezing temps I head home. A friend tells me to try Ace Hardware and they only have 2 in the whole store. The cheapest one was $199 plus tax. It pained me to spend so much when I could shop around and save $40 potentially but I was in a pinch.
I filled the 22 pint dehumidifer with water at least twice since Tuesday. Luckily all electronics and furniture were spared, the water didn’t make it to my bedroom. A carpet cleaning company came by to do a half ass job cleaning the carpet, over the next 4 weeks they’ll replace the water soaked padding.
It could be a whole lot worse, I’ll be the first to admit that. Still had electricity, water, internet access, and heat the entire week. Many other Texans were not so lucky, so I’m counting my blessings. There’s also been a lot of conversation surrounding how Texas is not connected to the national power grid, is not deregulated, and the system isn’t really weatherproofed. Then one of our state senators flies out to Cancun when millions of people in his state have no power. Poltiics aside, I’m hopeful something good will come out of these recent experiences.
Pedestrians walk along a snow-covered street on Feb. 15 in Austin. Montinique Monroe / Getty ImagesWoodall Rodgers Tunnel – Dallas Covered in Snow (posted on Fox)
Debt Free Alpha 