FI Progress Report – February 2020

Hello! Happy St Patrick’s day! ☘ Welcome to the new normal – at least for now. I never would have thought our first financial independence (FI) progress report would be on day 4 of strict social distancing, but that’s where we are today. Mr BA has had several bouts of bronchitis recently that don’t seem to be fully going away, so I’m nervous with the Coronavirus. However, he’s working from home with me, given the virus is now spreading in our community to the point where we have several reported cases. 

On a monthly basis, my plan is to provide an update on our FI progress. And, given our new normal I’ll also be reporting progress on my Quarantine bucket list for fun.   As I write this update on our FI progress, it’s mid March, and while it was a bummer to have to see the drop at the end of February, I’m really dreading looking at March’s FI progress report, but we’ve built the practice of looking at our numbers on a monthly basis so we’ll keep up the routine.  It will be good to test out our risk tolerance.

I listened to JL Collins on the Mad Fientist’s podcast yesterday, and heard the phrase that “markets take the stairs up and the escalator down” – and boy have they ever, even this week. But with our FI date far in the future, we’ll be able to take advantage of a bear market and buy while stocks are on sale. Plus, no time like the present to think about how to mitigate sequence of returns risk in the future (but more on that in another post).

February 2020 Progress Report

So on to the the February 2020 FI progress report. First of all I’m a little late due to my last business trip (maybe for the year, who knows) the first couple of days of the month and then the focus on virus preparations. We did some extra grocery shopping the first 2 weekends of the month. Now, given we’ve decided not to share numbers, I’ll be focusing on percent changes month to month and an update on where we are toward our overall goal.

• Networth – down 5.66% compared to January
• Percent complete togoal – 48.59% 
• Months till goal – 87 (7.25 years/June 2027) vs. target of 79 (6.6 years Sep 2026) set back in Feb 2020 when I announced the goal.  The big question is should I adjust the count down on the blog. Seems like I should so that it’s more of a real time prediction for Mr BA and I.
• What drove the changes in February: Fears of Coronavirus between the 19th -29th brought our portfolio down 7.23%

Quarantine Bucket List Progress

COVID-19 was promoted to a pandemic on Wednesday, March 11th 2020. And since then things have been changing rapidly day by day. As of March 15th, our county Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is urging us all to practice social distancing, and we’ve happily complied.  There is no other way with an outbreak of this magnitude, that we are going to flatten the curve without major measures being taken in our communities, in the US and around the world. We all need to do our part. We have 11 known cases in our county with community spread occurring, so Mr BA and I have started to use the extra supplies we stocked up on earlier this month (no we didn’t hoard, but we did stock up).

We’ve moved to ordering groceries online instead of heading to the stores at the moment. Mainly because we don’t want to be out in the crowds during this critical time for community spread. Plus there still is not much testing available. My girlfriends and I had our first hangout call and it was a refreshing to see friends again and know they are safe and taking actions to prepare their families. But, on to the Quarantine Bucket List progress…

Planted Seed Starts for the Garden

I started the seed garden by planting tomatoes, kohlrabi, kale, cabbage, basil, celosia, coleus, and Bells of Ireland. My little starts are in the kitchen by the back window. They will live in our kitchen until May when we plant them in our veggie garden at Mr BA’s job. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out to the garden, but if not, we’ll plant them at our home garden. 

I also replanted several indoor plants to tidy them up and make them presentable around the house. We used to not be able to put out house plants since my kitty was very curious about them and would chew them up. With the passing of our last kitty at the end of last year, I can now have house plants outside of the kitchen. However, now I just have to monitor them for getting enough sunlight and make sure I remember to water them. 

Call Family More

Up until this weekend, I’m pretty sure my family thought I was making a big deal about nothing with the Coronavirus. I’ve had to share several compelling articles with them to get them to take action and stop acting like this is just a “flu”. The government’s decision to downplay the epidemic really hampered people’s preparedness.  After many texts, I called my middle brother. As for my parents, I’ve called them more to make sure they were taking actions to prepare for social distancing.

Books & Games

I started a new book called Make Time: How to focus on what matters every day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky.   I got the book out of the library after hearing about it on the ChooseFI podcast.  I’ve been reading it a little slowly. With the focus on the virus,  I’ve been a little distracted. However now that the library is shut down, I’ll have a whole additional month to read it.  One silver lining! 🙂

(New!) Refinance Mortgage

This item was not on the original bucket list,  however it was added 2 weeks ago when the rates dipped and we did the paperwork to lock in our rate and refinance our mortgage down from a 30 year fixed to a 15 year fixed at 2.75%. Pretty great. This will save us a bunch in interest, even in the short term. We’ll also have better control of our money since we aren’t going to escrow our taxes anymore, which will be nice.

We had an appraiser come by on Friday and things are moving along. We just refroze our credit again this weekend after the initial pull.  I’m not thrilled about having to go to a title company to sign papers but we can always wear disposable gloves and maybe a mask. We’ll see if we are able to still get around when the broker expects we’ll be able to sign the paper work. With the situation being so fluid I’m not sure what will happen by the end of this week, let alone next month when we get closer to the actual refinance date. 

Other Preventive Measures & Changes

Regarding what else we are doing related to the virus, we made a quick and dirty inventory of our stash of food and supplies. We mainly did this to see if we really needed to run out to the store any more. Or, could we stay put at home now that there were cases of COVID-19 in our community.  

We decided we could stay put and maybe order something if we find we really can’t live without it. But 32 toilet paper rolls should hold us for a while – at least it normally does.   Plus, it would be better to shop when the stores are stocked back up. It was crazy on Friday night to see the bare shelves in our grocery stores. 

Control What We Can Control

In general,  we are going to control what we can control and keep doing what we planned financially. We are going to keep making our monthly contributions to our brokerage accounts, 401k, and HSAs, and Limited Use FSAs. We’ll keep our monthly tracking up to date, so we can see what’s going on.

Maintaining our health is really important. So, we are going to keep exercising outside as much as possible (allowing at least 6 ft between us and others). We’ll continue to maintain a focus on long term goals such as acquiring a rental property, renovating our home, and writing this blog. With a longer term perspective, we can maintain our calm and not add to the panic around us. And lastly, we’ll look out for each other, friends, family and neighbors during this crazy time however we can. We’ll look for ways to support small businesses and neighbors which may need a hand in some way.

Since February I’ve gone a little off the deep end looking for good fact based information on COVID-19. And, I love that ChooseFI is looking to make a daily podcast now during these times of havoc. It’s comforting to hear familiar voices in the community.   But we also need to learn from others in the world that are further along with this virus than us in the US and heed their warnings. It’s unfortunate that the only way to control this will hurt the economy (having folks stay home and spend less), but it’s what we have to do now to get the virus under control.

What are you doing regarding the novel Coronavirus? How are you and your friends and family fairing with social distancing? Are you still tracking and reporting your FI progress? Or, ave you put tracking off to the side for more important topics? Leave me a comment below! And, thanks for coming by! We’ll get through this but the time for staying home is now. Might as well make it enjoyable.

Stay Healthy, 

Mrs BA 🙂