I’ve made 3% of my Rs.5 Crores goal! 97% to go -Apr’20 FIRE Update

Another month spent at home and another month of the economy getting flushed down the drain. Factories and businesses are being allowed to operate, but at a much less than optimal capacity. Banks are seeing sharp increases in NPA, and they expect this to go up even higher. Earnings for the rest of the year is going to be muted as well. It took a bit over a year for the markets to bounce back during the 2008 financial crisis.

But one comforting knowledge is, the last time during the financial crisis, people did not have the money to spend hence revival of the economy was difficult and took longer. This time, people do have money (most do), but are not allowed to go out to spend. So it is not entirely on how quickly a cure can be found, mass produced and deployed across the globe!

April’20 In a nutshell:

• I have a total of Rs.15 Lakhs as savings. My target for this month was Rs.12.14 lakhs, so I am doing pretty well meeting this target
• Mutual Funds and stocks are not doing well, but has recovered a lot from last month
• I have added a total of Rs.1,15,000 from my bonus and some windfalls to my total investments.
• The Franklin liquidity funds I was holding on to has been sold. Money from it has been added to buying Goldbees
• I have increased my gold holdings, now about 6.6% of my portfolio is in Gold

My Overall Investments and Progress as of April’20

Have you seen what is new on Little Saves in April’20

I have been very active in April’20. Here is what I have achieved

Podcast on Personal Finance

I have also started a podcast (coz speaking is much better), I am hoping to update and put up new episodes every two weeks. I shall continue with this for 2-3 months, based on how well it is received then take a call if I should continue the podcast or not.

• Welcome – Introduction to the Little Saves Podcast on Personal Finance
• All about FIRE and bits of Gold, Bitcoins and Nelson Mandela

Personal Updates

I realized that I am not really talking about myself that much. So I have made a commitment to share a bi-weekly personal updates on what is going on in my life, my family, personal learning and best practices. Here is the first one I wrote on Day 180 of my FIRE Journey.

• Day 180 on FIRE: Of Happiness and Kicking off my personal updates
• All about FIRE and bits of Gold, Bitcoins and Nelson Mandela

Articles on FIRE and Personal Finance

A couple of articles around saving money, offers and reducing Debt.

• The Sun Exchange Review: Passive Income from Solar Energy for 20 yrs
• 7 easy ways to save money you can start immediately
• Pay rent with your Credit card using the CRED app Rentpay feature
• 5 strategies to reduce debt and put together a Debt Reduction Plan
• Is Early retirement and FIRE only for Rich? What if my salary is low?
• What is the FIRE movement? How does it work? How to get started?

Value of Investments and breakdown as of Apr’2020

Passive Income earned in April’2020

Stock Market Investments Update for March 2020

I took two noteworthy actions in April’20

1. Tax loss harvesting: I sold some stocks I was holding and much later in the month picked up similar/same stocks at a somewhat lower price
2. I have expanded my portfolio a bit to take on LIC, MAGMA, UJJIVAN, IOC, BEL and TATAMOTORS
3. I have picked up near a lakh in Goldbees

Mutual Fund Investment Updates for Apr 2020

You are probably aware of the 6 funds from Franklin that are being closed. I managed to sell them a week before the closure putting that money into gold.

My funds are bouncing back to their purchase price quite well. I am hoping to invest a bit more into mutual funds at these levels.

Alternate Investments Update Apr’20

I have still not been able to buy any bitcoins! 🙁 Everytime I go to buy, I get cold feet and skip. I wanted to buy it when BTC was at $7000 levels, now it is currently at $8800. Bloody thing is quite getting on my nerves!

All other alternate investments remain the same. Sun exchange investment is showing a little return. They have been impacted due to the lockdown as new plants are not being set up. But, I received an update last week that things are getting back to normalcy. I am hoping to increase my portfolio of solar cells to Rs.1 Lakh gradually.

P2P Lending Updates for Apr-2020

My investments in P2P has taken up a notch with an additional Rs.50,000. There are some troubles on this front due to several of the countries where I have lent money such as Kazakhstan and Poland etc. Since the Governments have implemented a morartium on paying back loans, 60% of my loans are impacted and I have not got the interest payments on them.

Rewards and Cashbacks balance in the month of April’20

Cashbacks, Rewards and Points – Redeemed

• I reached 24K in my American Express Gold collection. So I cashed in and got Rs.9000 this month.
• Due to the COVID situation not much rewards or earnings in April

Cashbacks, Loyalty Points and rewards – Balance

• I paid off a couple of Insurance premiums for my family members using my credit cards, so some increase in points from CRED and the cards 🙂
• Nothing much here, all quite till Corona dies down.

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