March 2019 Journey to Financial Freedom update

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 March, I wrote a post about the tax working group report and the current tax system in NZ. NZ has one of the simplest tax systems with universal goods and service tax and automatic pay as you earn tax. Also, a surprise to me was that NZ has one of the lowest taxes on labour in the OECD

I also wrote a post about how much free time a person really has over their lifetime. It turns out that it’s not actually that much. When you consider all the time taken during your education, working, doing choirs, and even sleeping. It makes you realise that you need to actively spend your free time on things that will improve your life and give you true value. Rather than passively watching TV and social media.

Compound interest is another topic that I love to explore when I have some time. It still amazes me. You can get your money working for you through compound interest, rather than have it work against you when you take on debt. I would argue that if you have too many debts that you should consider rolling them into one consolidation debt with the lowest possible interest and pay it off as soon as you can. Check out lending crown, where you can get a competitive interest rate on personal loans.

Spending in March


It’s been a good month on the spending front. We manage to get the grocery bill down to under $600 per month. Although this has been counteracted by the excessive expenses on entertainment for my birthday.

Portfolio March 2019

It’s been one whole year of tracking my investment portfolio. In March 2018 there was $33k invested. In March 2019, there $72 invested. That’s an increase of $39k. Pretty good effort if I do say so myself.

Investment portfolio growth

Goals

I have started a savings account for our trip to South America. Unfortunately, it’s likely that this won’t happen until next year. Gives me more time to save though. I have left my automatic transfer set up, and once I reach my savings goal I will just redirect that automatic transfer towards my investments.

Total Portfolio >100K by December 2019

My goal of reaching $100k invested still stands. I’m now 72% of the way there. I now have only 8 months left to achieve my goal. That means I need to invest at least $3,500 per month. Since I exceeded my target last month this has gone down.

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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