Welcome to Passive Income NZ, my Journey to Financial Independence. Every month I share how I am tracking towards financial freedom by providing you with an update of where my portfolio is at and how far I am from financial freedom, and how my spending is tracking. My definition of financial freedom is not really the same as everyone definition. It’s not to just stop working, it is much more than that. It’s about living a more intentional life.
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In April, I wrote a post about Passive Income NZ turning one year old. Letting you have a bit of an insight into how the website is going. I’m glad what I write is resonating with you and that it is helpful. For a number of reasons. One reason is that my writing skills aren’t always the best.
I also wrote a post about the difference between wealth and income. This is often something that people don’t understand. Even the new statistics NZ calculator “how wealthy am I” includes income in their estimations, and only includes the value of your house and mortgage to calculate your wealth. There is much more to wealth than your house, mortgage, and income!
Simple Money Saving Tips for Everyday Kiwis is another topic I explored in April. I wrote about 10 easy money saving tips you can make. One that I am implementing now is paying for insurance yearly instead of monthly/weekly. All my insurances come up for renewal in the month of May, so I have some work cut out for me in finding what companies are offering. Last years premiums totalled $2164.36, this year they have offered me the same insurance for $2244.21, an increase of 3.6%. Not too bad, but I will still shop around to see what I can get.
Spending in March
It’s been an expensive month! The grocery bill is up to $734.91 per month with more spending on celebrating my birthday. There was more money spend on entertainment than any other month on record, at 29% of all spending. But I guess you only turn 30 once. It’s easy to say that my investing has taken a hit in April.
Portfolio March 2019
Asset allocation
Up until l this point I have just been winging my asset allocation. The one goal I did have is to not let any of my asset categories become greater than 30% of the total. I don’t know where I got that number from or the logic behind it. It’s only recently that I have decided to do some research about asset allocation.
So far my I have not been fruitful in determining if there is a correct receipt on asset allocation. There seem to be many rules out there, such as 100 – you ages should be the percentage of shares you hold. Using this simple rule of thumb I should have 70% allocated to shares. Let me know in the comments if you have some information about asset allocation.
Over time I knew that I have too much in Peer to Peer and have rebalanced that. You can clearly see that in the graph below.
- Australasian Shares – 27%
- International Shares – 25%
- Europe Shares – 2%
- US shares – 4%
- Total Shares – 58%
- Kiwisaver – 9%
- Peer to Peer Lending – 22%
- Bonds – 0%
- Cash 3%
I’ve decided to change the way I track my investment portfolio. Splitting my investments and returns to see overall how my portfolio is performing over time.
Goals
Total Portfolio >100K by December 2019
My goal of reaching $100k invested still stands. I’m now 74% of the way there. I now have only 6 months left to achieve my goal. That means I need to invest at least $4,400 per month.
I hope you enjoyed my financial update. I’m considering including my net worth in a future one. Let me know if you would be interested in that. I still suffer from the stigma of sharing financials with total strangers, it kind of feels like bragging- but in reality, I want to help you out by showing how I’m doing, what I’m doing right, and what’s not working.
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