We celebrate every quarter by taking a morning to have some brunch and discuss our wins and goals. We figured that sharing our numbers might be motivational if anyone actually stumbles across our blog (the analytics suggest this is not happening…ho hum).

Back in Q1

Net worth: $788,721 / Portfolio: $235,824

What a quarter it has been! We contributed $10,525 to our portfolio, although this is going to go up significantly as a result of Shortbread getting a bonus at work. This will technically still be Q2, but after our Dividend Day celebrations so we’ll just include it in our Q3 update.

That said, we’ve had quite a slide backwards. Our flat has dipped in value and the markets have tanked. We’re not too worried though, this is the long game!

The numbers now look like this:

• Net worth: $719,501 (-$69,220)
• House: $454,700 (-$43,300)
• Retirement Accounts: $37,298 (-$3,599)
• Portfolio: $213,504 (-$22,320)
• Cash: $14,000

Wins this quarter:

Another largest dividend for the quarter – $1,229.75! That’s nearly $2k for the year, which is more than we got throughout 2021 combined and we’re only two quarters done. Obviously all this just gets reinvested at the moment, but it’s a nice mental boost when things are a bit tough. I know some in the FIRE community would scoff at any level of emotional reaction to markets and proclaim dividends as a forced sell-off. However, we live in a jurisdiction where there is no taxation on capital gains or dividends, so the downside is the (very low) fee we pay for reinvesting. We’ll appreciate that dividend income when we move from the accumulation phase.

As a result of tracking our spending for the last year (we use a tool called Firefly III) we have set ourselves a fairly aggressive budget. We live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, but we have found it doesn’t have to be as expensive as we first considered. We have become a lot more conscious of our spending, as well as living somewhere that reflects what we really value (namely cooking and eating great food!). We have had a couple of expenses we didn’t expect, but we still came in under budget.

Goals going forward:

• Increase our cash allocation.

Shortbread is pregnant! This has come at a great time as her bonus will cover private pre- and post-natal healthcare. This is going to cost a lot of money, but we have decided this is something we will value. We have heard that the public system here is fantastic, but somewhat brisk. We are going to pay to avoid it because we can, and we value what going private offers. We have held a relatively small amount of cash over the past few years, largely because of access to a lot of credit and the liquidity of ETFs as investments. We think it might be a good idea to have a bit more cash on hand now though – it’s our first child and we have only a rough idea of what things cost at the moment! 6 months living expenses seems a good idea to aim for.

• Save for a new iPhone

In years gone past we have rarely ever saved for something – we just bought what we wanted and moved a little less money into savings that month. This was never a huge problem as we never really spent much anyway! My iPhone is 5 years old now and the battery is struggling to make it through a day. I used to have a nice little side business fixing iPhones, but the newer models are less friendly to that if I want to keep using features like touch id. I figure I’d just set up a piggy bank in Firefly and put the recommended amount of money in each month until October when the new models come out. Look at this intentionality!

• Summer holiday

Is it the best part of being a teacher? It’s definitely not the worst part.

Here’s to Q3.