March has been quite the quiet month in terms of outings and general get togethers. Besides doing a couple family and friend visits and just hanging out, most of the month was spent tinkering around at home. Fiddling a bit with some DIY, lots of dog walks, and just helping out family where we could. It was just a generally nice time and a benefit of being financially independent.
So how did the numbers look for March?
Financial update
March was another month where the net worth was all over the place. Huge run up for the first few weeks, down and then back up again. Overall it was quite reasonable with net worth growth of $32k for a total liquid net worth of $1.15m. I don’t include the home in the net worth since it’s already benefiting us through lower expenses. All the growth came from our local stock market growth plus an improved currency.
Investment income for the month was decent at $2.2k from a range of dividends, preference shares and fixed income. We didn’t generate any other income besides from investments.
Expenses continued at $2.5k for the month, although $200 of that hasn’t actually been spent yet (just allocated for a future expense). No real stand out expenses this month, just normal spending. Breakdown of the expenses in March were:
- 34% to food and groceries including pet food and dining out.
- 26% to household expenses like utilities, levies, taxes, cleaning staff, maintenance and any new furnishings/plants.
- 21% to medical and other insurance.
- 23% 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
The hunt for a business continues. I received additional financial information on the fire business, but the financing of the deal is going to be a challenge. Under the assumption of the business costing $800k, with half of that as equity of $400k and half as debt, it was already challenging to take on a business that would suck up around 40% of my net worth, plus the same again as debt. From chatting to a few of the bankers, my initial hesitation around whether they would fund the business with such low assets is proving correct. It is always a challenge to get long term acquisition debt when there are no assets and only service business. Doesn’t matter that the business has been around for 40 years, bankers want security. And I’m not going to be giving a personal guarantee, it needs to be the business only.
Remember the first rule of keeping your investments, namely don’t mess up taking a lot of risk and losing everything you’ve worked so hard to build, by swinging for the fences with too much capital!
So I guess it’ll be a case of pushing through with a few other bankers, or continuing the search for something else. I’m not too keen on splitting the equity on this asset with others, since the debt issue doesn’t go away.
On the website side, growth continues to be in line with expectations since the starting point was basically zero:
- 739 views (+25%)
- 175 visitors (+28%)
- 4 posts published
A continued thanks to those readers that continue to read and comment on the side and welcome to everyone new!
March has been great on all fronts. A good growth in net worth, nothing unexpected on the expenses side, great family time and a pleasant time spent out doors.
Congrats on anothe rpositive mont Charlie,
I’ve just realised, I read your entire post on analysing the firs business as ZAR and not USD. You must have thought I was bonkers when I said the returns don’t look too great considering your living costs!
Very interested to hear how this one pans out, good luck with it
Thanks Mr H! Haha, no worries I realised that we were talking different currencies =)