Ok, the time for the next financial update – what progress has been made towards achieving Early Retirement?
March made up for the losses we’ve seen in February. While the markets had been up and down, we ended up in a positive territory for the month.
The gap to close shows what we need to accomplish by May 2023 to be able to retire early. Altogether we ended adding about $79K in March across the mortgage, pre- and post-tax accounts, bringing us closer to the early retirement goal.
Mortgage
This is the largest item in the table above. We want to retire without any debt, and the vacation house mortgage is the last debt item we have.
As of July 2021, we had $315,827 in principal due to the bank. In February we continued contributing $3,780 towards closing the gap. We weren’t able to put away additional $3.5K (as I would normally do) because we will have to pay our income tax bill and property taxes on two properties in April, so I’ve been saving extra cash for those expenses.
Cumulatively, since July 2021 we reduced the mortgage gap by $104.4K, 33% of the gap.
Post-tax accounts
Post-Tax accounts include cash and stock we own in our Brokerage Fidelity accounts. They also include the value of contributions I am making towards ESPP purchases.
In March, the value of our post-tax accounts increased by $24.1K, including the cash we are saving for the tax bills, and the contributions to ESPP purchases in the amount of $1.9K.
Pre-tax accounts
Pre-tax accounts include 401K plans with our current employers and Traditional IRAs.
In March the value of our pre-tax accounts have increased by $51.1K, driven mostly my market changes, as we contributed about $4K in 401K (including the employer’s match)
Conclusion
In summary, March turned out to be a better month for us, making up for some February losses in the market. At this point, we closed the gap by $255K. That represents about 49% of the gap we need to close, but if I exclude the gains in pre-tax accounts (which I did not plan for), we closed about 39% of the gap. We continue to chip away at our financial goals and hope that the market cooperates in the next couple of years! Markets can go up or down, we will still reach our goal 🙂
Stay tuned to the future updates!
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