Another day, another dollar. Or in this case, another month and (roughly) $5,000 – put away towards retirement that is.

To start off, I am glad I waited until the very end of February to do this post because the market has been quite red as of late. As money and retirement is hugely psychological, this actually HELPS my mindset since I try to frame it as “stocks are on sale” instead of “I just lost tons of money”.

To keep roughly the same format as last month, here are the figures through Feb 28:

Vanguard Roth IRA – $93,545.39 (-$4.5K from last month)

TSP – Just over $71K (no change in value, despite -$2.3K invested)

Taxable accounts – $31.2K (+$6.2K, but also -$4K invested) . As I have been waiting for at least some correction and a potential pull-back, instead of sitting on the side-lines, I decided to grow a little bit of my dividend portfolio as a slight hedge. I really liked the news of AT&T dumping their stake of DirecTV, and thought the price on Friday near close of markets was quite attractive and ended up throwing $4K into T at an average cost of $28.04.

Crypto – $20K (+$2.7K, no additional investment) Although ETH and XLM both had huge rallies (reaching $2K and $.60 respectively) I am continuing to hold.

Cash – $5K (-$5K) Besides the additional investments into my taxable accounts, I had a few larger-than-typical bills come due from some items purchased around the holiday season that I paid off, so my cash position has decreased.

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Now then, for the things I enjoyed or accomplished this month.

This month was a blur and work has definitely been kicking my ass as of late. With COVID restrictions slowly easing up, my workplace is back to regular office hours. Unfortunately, with many other sections following suit, that means we are getting more requests than ever – especially after people realize what has been missing after the extended holiday break as well. This meant that painting my minis and getting my car checked out have taken a backseat since weekends so far are firmly for my mental health and relaxation with my wife.

Despite COVID restrictions loosening around our area, the slopes are still closed, which means it’s nearly a sure bet that I won’t be able to ride my new board at all, which is something that really frustrates me.

On the bright side, the weather is getting much warmer and more pleasant, so going out on weekends for anything is just much more enjoyable and we have been trying to do so on a regular basis. With the sun sets getting later and later, it is becoming much easier and my mood has definitely improved from being outdoors more often.

I also picked up a video game – Valheim (a survival, crafting game for those interested) that has been taking up a lot of my personal free time and I’ve really been enjoying it. Hoping to get my wife into it as well so we can have another hobby to spend time on together.

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An odd addition, but I feel that it deserves its own space due to the nature of FIRE – getting you time back. One of the larger purchases we made over the holidays was a Roomba vacuum cleaner with a self-cleaning base that hopefully would have decreased all the time we spent cleaning/sweeping the floor from our dog’s constantly shedding fur. It finally arrived a couple of weeks ago and it has been working far better than I could have imagined! My wife loves it and sets up little routes for it every day. Due to its wifi capabilities and our dog not being bothered by it, we can have it running while we are off running errands, or just hanging out/doing other chores around the house. It probably adds at least 20-30 minutes back to our lives DAILY.

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Next month I hope that the shares keep sliding so I can pick up more. I doubt I will be able to throw as much in as I did this time around, but the financial goal is an extra $1K on top of my TSP contribution with a “stretch” goal of an extra $1K (so $2,000 total) if I can be thrifty enough to pull it off despite the pull of going to more restaurants and spending more on gas as things are opening up (for now).

Outside of finances, I hope that I can catch up a bit with work so I can chill out more during my time off and won’t need as much time to recharge. Being more productive with not only my hobbies, but also some tasks around the house that I have been neglecting is definitely a big goal.

A little background on these first… After my deployment last year, I came back to Italy when it was a semi-open country. We were able to travel a little bit, with a few days spent in Florence and Venice, along with some local trips up to some historical towns, caverns, and up into the mountains. Shortly after, cases continued to rise and the country went on full lockdown (we’re not even supposed to walk our dog in the neighborhood!). After spending nearly all of November and December either in our house or at work (splitting half of my usual work time at home), the days REALLY started to blend together and the monotony started to breed boredom and discouragement that started crossing over into depression. We had a few days in January that were a little relaxed that we took advantage of, so I hope by writing and focusing on the positives as monthly posts, they will be similar to the “gratitude” journals that help foster optimistic thoughts.

Since this is primarily a financial blog, let’s start with that – finances.

I know it’s not Jan 31st and the market has some time to go up or down, but since all of my bills are paid for the month and all of my paychecks are in, I don’t think it’s too disingenuous to talk about that today.

Another month of headache free house rentals, with us paying a little bit to our PM for a walk-through + filter replacements.

True to form, on Jan 1 I initiated my annual Roth IRA transfer. At the time, my balance was just a hair over $85K. Along with my $6K deposit, my positions grew by just a hair under $7K over the last 3 weeks – this market is CRAZY – bringing my total Roth IRA balance to $98K.

As I mentioned before, I am frontloading my TSP with a 60% contribution from my base pay. Although, the DOD deposit has yet to officially hit my TSP, it WAS taken out of my account, so for the purposes of this post, I will add that number into it. In any case, I was just short of $70K on 1 Jan and now I am just over $73K. Adding in my 60% pay deposit brings my total TSP balance to just over $75K.

One thing to note on the above, it’s awesome to see that my growth so far outpaces my contributions. Of course it’s silly to think this is always going to happen, but it is definitely encouraging. Of course if when the market will finally slip, I am completely happy to buy more at lower prices!

My taxable equity investments have had no additional deposits and so my regular investments are totaling just over 25K.

As a pretty large bonus, I “found” 11.94 ETH (in addition to my 10K XLM) coins, so my crypto assets are currently totaling around $17.3K.

Adding in my checking account total gives me a grand total of $~225K in fairly liquid monies. Great start to the year so far.

Finances aside, let’s talk about some things I enjoyed or accomplished this month.

As I mentioned a few posts ago about my camera purchase, I was able to go out on the few days we were not fully locked in and do some shoots of my friends car and a couple of impromptu shots of my dog on our walks. After messing around with edits, it was something that took me a few days to finalize, so time well spent!

Additionally , just before the most recent lockdown that started last weekend, we had Friday off (in conjunction with the MLK holiday) and were able to rally a few of my coworkers for a sit down lunch. Although it felt so odd to actually have the opportunity (the first and ultimately, last chance to do so for all of January) to do so, the act of just dressing up, going out, and having face to face conversation was a huge boost to our overall mood.

Lastly, a bittersweet event – after waiting for nearly four months, my snowboard finally came in! I was able to get my bindings installed on it so I am ready to hit the slopes as soon as they open. Unfortunately, it seems that the earliest possible open time will be mid-February, but all signs point to that opening being exclusive for (semi)professional athletes and their training.

As I am working from home next week, I plan on finishing up some more photo-edits, finally catching up on all my non-uniform laundry, and perhaps finally start painting my miniatures that have been sitting on my desk for far longer than I want to admit if my work schedule allows it. I also want to start doing a refresh/restoration on my current car, so if the body shops are open, I will potentially swing by and see if they can do a thorough rust check and get a price for repairing some hail damage the car suffered a couple of years ago.