Early Retirement Tracker – July 2018

This is probably one of the posts I was least looking forward to doing, as I knew that after the poor results from my June net worth summary there wouldn’t be much to look forward to there. While I’m not constantly checking my portfolio, there is something addicting about seeing the numbers going up every month.  I have to realize that things aren’t always going to look that way, especially as my portfolio gets larger and larger. My savings will have a much smaller affect on the total compared to where the market is taking me. This was probably an excellent lesson for that, and in the end the results really weren’t that bad.

A reminder of the three ways I will tracking my progress:

  1. The first way will actually be with a simple excel calculator that I made. I’ll plug in my current monthly expenses, savings rate, and net worth. And the calculator will say just how long I have until retirement. Maybe it will say that I can retire tomorrow?
  2. The second way I’ll be calculating this is through an equation and the help of Wolfram Alpha.
  3. The third and final way I’ll be calculating my early retirement date is with the help of Mad Fientist Laboratory. I’ll input expenses, savings, and net worth and let his calculations do the rest of the work.

Retirement estimation based on 4% market growth:

Retirement estimation based on 7% market growth:

The results are pretty much what I expected, and actually a little bit better. The date remained relatively steady when I was expecting it to increase. I think this is great, as it just reinforces my perspective that this small drop in net worth was just a bump in the road.

Retirement estimation if I never save another dollar:

Even with the slight decrease in net worth, being able to drop my spending this month (most of the net worth impact was from the previous month) caused this number to drop. When your target number decreases more than your net worth – the results end up being positive in the end.

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