September was a bitter sweet month. We had an amazing time on our month long road trip but coming back to the old sticks and bricks home has been rough to say the least. While we were forced to make many adjustments to our original plans due to restrictions, fires, hurricanes and something called a derecho we never felt more at home being in our RV. The freedom to choose our direction and change course as we pleased was very liberating. Heck we drove 400 miles out of the way just to check out a resort in Oklahoma because some random people we met in Texas recommended it. Who does that? 🙋🏻‍♂️

Adding to the frustration of returning home is that fact that this was the time where we were supposed to be selling our house and belongings in preparation for moving into our RV full time, but those plans had to be put on hold until at least January. So instead of being weeks away from our dream we are months away at best with a timetable still contingent on other outside factors. It’s hard to be positive when the goal posts keep moving back.

During our trip we wanted to get a better idea of full time RV costs so we made sure to inquire about monthly rates and inclusions wherever we stayed. What we found out was that we were grossly over budgeting for this expense which is great news. This along with getting more information on insurance and registration costs will allow us to make significant positive adjustments to our future budget.

We have always had a FI number of $1.5M as we expected to need $5k per month for expenses. While I’m not ready to officially move off of that number yet it is starting to look like $1.2M is more indicative of our actual costs. The wild card in the calculation is health insurance for us as full time RVers. We do have an amount for this built into the budget but it is only an estimate based on limited information. Until we find a plan that works best for us and we can get some actual dollar quotes it’s probably best if we keep our goal at $1.5M. Once we get a better idea of the actual costs for health insurance it’s a real possibility that we could retire next year instead of working from our RV a little longer. But we are not getting our hopes up just yet as 2020 is still throwing curveballs and who knows what else will happen this year.

Here is where we ended the month of September 2020:

Portfolio = $1,088,042

Portfolio Goal = $1,500,000

Amount needed to reach goal = $411,958

Our portfolio decreased by $22,014 or 1.98% from the end of August

Year-to-date our portfolio is up 3.87%

Net Worth = $1,303,330

This is a decrease of $21,893 or 1.65% from the end of August

Year-to-date our Net Worth is up 4.19%

As anticipated the streak of consecutive positive months ended in September. This is actually good news as there has to be a point of consolidation and pullbacks are a healthy part of that process.

October is always a toss up month for the markets. Throughout history this is the month of booms and busts. The way 2020 is going it appears anything is possible which probably means the markets will be flat just because that would be unusual. But would it really be unusual?

Taking into consideration all that has happened this year it wouldn’t be usual at all. We had a boom followed by a bust followed by another boom. Now we have a Presidential election coming up and an economy slowly on the mend from an unprecedented shut down. The markets have every reason to trade in a range short term and continue to consolidate at current levels until some of the uncertainty is removed.

As a fervent market observer this is my opinion of the current environment which means I’ll probably be wrong. That’s why we are long term investors and it doesn’t really matter what happens. Our investment strategy always remains the same regardless of the conditions or environment.

The rest of this year will be very interesting to watch. Leave your market prediction for the rest of the year below in the comments. I’m interested to know what other’s are thinking as we head into the last quarter of a crazy year.

Thank you as always for reading our blog.

Until next time……………………

Joe