As the country continues to be in a pressure cooker economically, socially and politically with no end in sight, I want to provide a little inspiration to not quit. In the midst of these times, I’m continuing to pursue my FIRE (financial indepence, retire early) goal.
This is the month that I should be crossing another line off of my “21 steps to FIRE” chart, changing brokerages, starting a YouTube channel and preparing myself mentally and financially to leave one of my jobs. Let’s see how I did.
I’ll start with how I’m preparing to leave one of my jobs. I don’t know about you but I’m very clingy when it comes to income streams. Whether it be $50 or $5,000, I treat all my babies the same. And when one stream goes missing, I can’t help but feel a sense of loss. So how am I preparing?
I’m currently fixing things around the house that I had been procrastinating doing. I had a window reframed and resealed, a counter installed in my laundry room and I’ll be buying a few items that I hadn’t gotten around to buying (a Nutribullet and running shoes). I’ll also be looking to pad my savings a bit. With most of these things handled, I feel totally comfortable calling it a wrap from this other job. And perhaps sharing it all on YouTube.
Yes. YouTube is in my future. I have all kinds of anxiety about being on YouTube but I think it’s the next step for me. I’ll continue to do this blog because I don’t plan to ever track my net worth on YouTube (yikes). I’ll be using the last few months of the year to film and film some more until I’m comfortable with the process.
Speaking of comfort. I finally changed brokerages. I made the switch from Ally to Merrill Edge. And while Merrill Edge offers a lot of bells and whistles, I have to say, I’m not very happy with the change. I have one big issue and it’s a really big issue for me. Merrill doesn’t offer ex-dividend date notifications. That’s like kryptonite to superman. A dividend investor without ex-dividend alerts?! That vital alert just magically appeared on the Ally platform. With that, I would know exactly when to buy a stock if I wanted to increase the dividends on the next payout.
It wouldn’t be smart to jump ship right now but I have to say, I’m kind of miserable. I plan to let customer service know and then I’ll just hope that Merrill Edge adds a functioning dividend alert to their platform.
Okay, time for the net worth update. Did I make it to milestone six of 21 on my FIRE chart, which is $146,572? Unfortunately, no! The September stock market was rough and knocked my net worth down quite a bit. But you’ll get no complaints from me because I’m still above where I was last month.
FIRE is a fight and I’m up for the challenge.
September 2020 Net Worth Update
Cash Accounts
Checking $ 500.00 (no change)
Savings $ 4,800.00 (+$150)
Business $ 23,412.00 (+$412)
MM/E Fund $ 25,671.00 (+$571)
Taxable Investment Accounts
Ally Brokerage $ 20, 263.00 (-$36)
Investing MM $ 300.00 (-$100)
Vanguard $ 1,928.00 (+$71)
Acorns $ 1,432 ($62)
Tax Advantage/Retirement
Bonds $ 19,189.00 (+$261)
SEP IRA $ 17,019.00 (+$119)
Traditional IRA $ 27,823.00 (+$23)
$142,337.00
Liabilities: Credit Cards: $0.00
- Credit Card: Paid in-full every month
- Checking: No changes
- Savings (P to P): Decided to raise the amount in this account to $5,500; this is the extra padding I want to have since I’m leaving one of my jobs.
- SEP IRA: This account lost money and my automatic deposit held it above $17,000
- Traditional IRA: This account was also bolstered by my automatic deposit.
- Business Account: No big expenses here. I need to go stock shopping!
- The E/Fund: Interest rates have dropped to 0.60%
- (Apple is now a part of the portfolio)
Remember, it is a fight to build wealth no matter where you are in the process. Everything around us conspires to take money out of our hands. But you must fight the good fight. Continue to save, invest, and grow your net worth even when it seems impossible. Save your pennies (copper) until they become dollars (cotton).
