Another month in the books and I don’t know about you, but it seams like February went by at a lightning fast pace! Didn’t we just publish our January update?

But you won’t hear any complaining about time passing quickly from us. At this point we are itching to get the heck out of this place and move on to our next destination in Utah. We desperately need to get back on the road! Even more so, we need to put all of the negativity that has consumed our time here and pretty much ruined our work-camping experience behind us!

I have to admit, this months blog has been very difficult to write as there is so much we want to say about our current situation and the experience here. Not only would it be therapeutic to vent a little, it would also provide some food for thought to those of you that are looking at work-camping opportunities. We detailed some of our frustrations in last months blog mostly about how we were misled about the job responsibilities as the actual job we are doing is not what was sold to us during our interview. But there is so much more going on that we would like to express. We just can’t detail this stuff at the moment as we need to wait until we are either gone or closer to leaving this place.

While we are mostly anonymous on this blog I am using my real first name and we also do a little stealth advertising of our blog name wherever we are so people see it, hopefully sparking some curiosity to visit the blog. Since I use my real name and like to post photos if people have visited the blog and are paying attention when they meet us then it’s not that hard to put two and two together and figure out who we are. We have been found out before and we enjoy talking to people who figure it out, but in this case it just isn’t worth the risk and possible fallout while we still have some time on the clock left here.

So the best thing for us to do for now is to run out the clock and address the situation as soon as we are in the clear. It’s not like we plan on coming back so our experience can be of value to others.

Anyway, let’s get down to the fun financial stuff and turn this frown upside down! It was a negative month, but not a horrible month.

Here is how our portfolio performed in February 2023:

(Our original portfolio goal $1.5m)

Portfolio = $1,358,879

Our Portfolio Decreased By $44,778 or 3.05% From The End Of January

Year-To-Date Our Portfolio Has Increased By $34,252 or 2.59%

Net Worth = $1,415,820

Our Net Worth Decreased By $40,206 or 2.76% From The End Of January

Year-To-Date Our Net Worth Has Increased By $35,993 or 2.61%

After a nice start to the new year and a decent start to February the markets took a step back as investors are utterly confused by the economic data, how the fed will interpret that data and what steps they will take to meet their 2% inflation goal.

I’m no economist, but to me it feels as if some people at the fed have tunnel vision to meet this number as quickly as possible no matter what the consequences. That can be very dangerous thinking at a time when we are still experiencing unusual economic activity from the pandemic fallout and recovery.

I know some of the numbers that came out for January ran hotter than expected, but there is a lot to digest in those numbers and not all of it is good. And when it comes to the unemployment numbers we have to remember that there were an unprecedented number of job openings at the same time there were an unprecedented number of people leaving the work force. There are also seasonal factors at play and while many companies are still trying to fill positions there are many others laying people off or reducing the amount of hiring that they are doing. At some point these dynamics will level out and get back to more historical norms.

I guess my point is that many people believed the economy was heading directly into another recession, but it’s become apparent that this economy is much more resilient that anyone ever expected it to be. As such, we should probably consider ourselves lucky in that respect as we are holding up relatively good despite the fed and inflation pressures.

In my meaningless opinion the fed should look at this as a second chance to not screw things up with more massive rate hikes. But, it sounds like they are committed to making smaller 0.25% increases for the next few meetings even though a couple of people are still calling for more 0.50% increases, which to me sounds insane with the uncertainty reflected in some of the data.

It should be interesting to watch all of this play out over the year.

Turning to the spending side of the ledger, February was a pretty good month for us.

Here is how we did on our spending for February 2023:

Monthly Budget = $5,000

Total spend for February 2023 = $4,333

Over/Under Monthly Budget = $667

Over/Under Budget YTD = -$47

Less Prepaid Site Fees = -$418

Net Over/Under Budget YTD = $540

During the month of February we really did our best to reign in our spending after having to fork out almost $1,900 for our annual RV maintenance. I have to say we did a damn good job as even after paying for our annual vehicle registration fees and forking out another $418 in prepaid site fees we were still under budget by $667 for the month.

Year to date we are now over budget by just $47 and on a net basis, backing our our prepaid site fees, we are positive for the year by $540! That’s great news as we would love to be positive on our budget before hitting the road again and incurring some insane fuel costs!

March should be a pretty good month for us as we don’t have any large fixed expenditures. We are however going to take a quick road trip to visit Mrs. RVF’s family in California as she hasn’t seen them in two years. While this will be a little pricey we will do our best to control some of the expenses and avoid breaking our budget.

We would really like to have a bit of a cushion in our budget before we start traveling again this spring and before another large fixed expense hits in April. If all goes as planned and we are in a great position when we get to the longer trips in the summer it will make things a lot easier for he rest of the year.

Thank you as always for taking time to read our blog. We appreciate everyone following us on our journey and look forward to any feedback from our readers.

See you on the road!!

Joe

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