July 2021 numbers update

I’ve been quiet for a bit on the blog! Still commenting and reading other blogs and on Twitter, but this personal site hasn’t had as much love.

I guess I haven’t had much to say really and the situation in South Africa (riots and Covid) had been somewhat discouraging. Plus winter I prefer to hibernate.

I’ve continued to explore options to get involved in new projects. I’m reaching out to a few folks and am tinkering with either some form of involvement in an equity-type role (private equity or venture capital), or moving into a more technical role. I’ve been spending a lot of time pursuing my first love of software development and with that in mind have been brushing up on my programming and C# skills. Over and above that still looking at businesses both online and offline to acquire.

We also got to do some wonderful hikes this past month, quite cold early in the mornings but beautiful to be out and about a bit. There are some nice trails not too far from home that we enjoy. Also been walking our dogs every day and just enjoying the stillness that only a pandemic with stay-at-home can afford.

Financially July was a better month financially than June even if I haven’t gotten my consulting/new projects off the ground yet.

Financial update

July saw further improvements on the net worth side. This month the net worth grew by $19k to a total of $1.18m in liquid net worth. Still slightly down from the highs reached in May. I don’t include the home in the net worth since it’s already benefiting us through lower expenses. The growth came from an improved currency and the strong performance of all our locally listed resource companies of which I own quite a bit through index and direct shares. In local currency we hit our highest ever net worth and an improvement of R500k for the month despite no earned income. Year to date we’re way up in both local currency and in USD, so happy with the performance overall.

Investment income for the month was very satisfying at $4000 which exceeded our expenses by some margin. No side hustle income or consulting income to report yet.

Expenses were normal at $3k for the month.

Breakdown of the expenses in July were:

• 32% to food and groceries including pet food and dining out and the parties.
• 24% to household expenses like utilities, levies, taxes, cleaning staff, maintenance and any new furnishings/plants.
• 23% to medical and other insurance.
• 21% to everything else (hobbies, leisure, gifts etc).

We have no debt or house/car payments to make. As noted I don’t count the house (or the cars) in our net worth. I paid the large expense for both of those items when we bought them.

Projects

I’ve been in discussions with a few firms about what role I could fulfil in terms of consulting, but nothing concrete yet. It’s a balance between helping them and not getting sucked into a full-time role. The type of work I did goes in waves of massively busy versus not busy. I’d prefer something that was more consistent, like 3 hours a day type of projects, but no luck there yet.

On top of that, I’m also doing my studies on my programming passion. I used to love coding having done it since I was very young. I thought I might as well use this time to get back into it and maybe see if someone needs a technical coder for a new venture. I’m looking to have some chats and will see where it goes. Luckily I don’t need to earn anything from it, but this is something I would do even for free. I use to like coding even more than I like investing if that’s possible.

July was another great month in terms of financial performance. Winter is slowly ending, and we have some exciting trips, projects, hobbies and family time to look forward to.