Happy New Year to all!
I'm spending some of my New Year's Eve downloading year-end numbers for our portfolio. My goal was to end the year with $3.3 million and we just made it with a final total of $3,302,333.14.
That represents an increase of $1,677,361.02 for the year. Of course, the bulk of that came from the inheritance I received when my cousin died, but he "only" left me about $1.2 M. The rest is from growth of our existing holdings and the growth on that money once it became mine.
I'm certainly happy with that, but it could have been more except that $551,000 is still tied up in the estate account earning nothing. All of the paperwork has been filed to release it - over two months ago actually - but the court hasn't gotten around to it yet. Hopefully sometime early in 2022 that money will come into my control and I can start putting it to work for us.
Our year-end asset allocation is still overly conservative, thrown off by that 551K sitting in cash. We are now at:
Stock 58.12%
Bond 18.79%
Cash 23.09%
I haven't started to analyze performance yet. I just know that 7 of our holdings ended the year at or near their 52-week high and 4 ended at or near their 52-week low. The rest fell somewhere in between. Not too bad overall.
I hope everyone had a successful 2021 and I wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2022.
January 1st, 2022 at 02:47 am 1641005240
January 1st, 2022 at 02:56 am 1641005772
Oh, just the contrary actually. He lived below his means, saved diligently, and was able to retire at 55. He had a beautiful house built in Florida where he got to enjoy 10 years of paradise before his death. He traveled the country and abroad right up until the last year of his life. Thanks to market dynamics, he died with more in his accounts than he had when he retired 11 years earlier even though he did and had everything he wanted. Other than getting cancer, obviously, he enjoyed every minute of the 11 years of retirement he had.
That's the lesson to take from this story. Enjoy life but live below your means so that you can retire and enjoy yourself for however long you have. What would really have sucked is if he had worked until he was 65 and then died at 66.
January 1st, 2022 at 08:42 pm 1641069725
Best wishes for a happy and healthy new year!
January 1st, 2022 at 10:07 pm 1641074842
January 2nd, 2022 at 12:19 am 1641082774
The inheritance wasn't unexpected. I knew it was coming and I've known since 2018 how much it would be approximately (it actually ended up larger than anticipated thanks to the stock market).
What was my retirement goal? I figured $3 million would be sufficient so at $3.3 M now we've crossed the FI threshold. Of course, if the market crashes next week that could change, but overall we're where we need to be for me to stop whenever I decide to do so.
Based on that, I did give notice in August to drop to part time. That became effective at the end of November. My general plan now is to remain part time for at least the first half of the year and see how it's going. If COVID ever slows down and work gets back to some degree of normalcy, I may keep at it. If not and it just seems that "crazy" is going to be the new normal indefinitely, I'll probably give notice to drop to per diem at that point so that by the fall that will take effect (my contract requires 4 months notice). Then I'd only be expected to do a minimum of 8 hours/month, though I'm sure I'd do more than that. I'd lose insurance coverage but could pick up COBRA for 18 months or switch to ACA, whichever seems to be the better option when the time comes. Keeping an eye on the market and our portfolio over the next 6 months will also help guide the decision.
January 2nd, 2022 at 08:30 pm 1641155411