We spent July traveling through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Austria as part of our 15 week Eurotrip. It was a wonderful yet tiring month full of amazing sights and adventures. At this point we were solidly in the middle of our trip, and the energy and excitement from the beginning of the trip was starting to wear off, which meant we needed more rest and less jam packed days of sightseeing. Big cities in Western and Central Europe are all pretty expensive, but I did my best to keep costs lower to continue gradually increasing my net worth!
Income
The income generated by the websites this month decreased slightly, but I’m certainly not complaining. I was still able to make about 1.5 times my expenses for the month from the websites without touching my savings, which means about a 33% savings rate on the month. I’m very happy with that considering my expenses were much higher in July than they usually are due to our travels as well as some bills due back home.
Expenses
My expenses were a little less than in June due to trip expenses decreasing the further we headed east in Europe. After France and Luxembourg, I was very happy to see how much more affordable food and housing costs were in Poland and the Czech Republic. Despite being less than in June, my expenses were still higher than they would normally be on a typical month in the US, which I certainly expected.
Investments
According to my investment tracking on Personal Capital (a great free resource for tracking your net worth and investments) my portfolio was up only about .5% on the month. That’s a far cry from the huge increase in my portfolio value in June, but any increase is wonderful in my book! I haven’t invested any new funds lately, but my cash position is beginning to get quite a bit higher than I need, so I’ll probably be adding to my investment accounts in the near future.
Financial Independence Target Date
I’m still at 4% (3.94% to be exact) in terms of my current net worth compared to my project future yearly expenses. I’m really happy to see my net worth over 25x my yearly expenses for two straight months now (3 out of the last 4) and hope that this trend continues.
Next Month
We finish our Europe trip in August and spend the last few days of the month back at home in Virginia before setting out on a road trip across the US! It’s certainly been a busy year already with a lot of travel still to come in the near future. It looks like I’ll probably have my highest monthly expenses of the year in August, but luckily also potentially my highest earning month of all time between the websites if everything goes according to plan! There’s no predicting the stock market though, and things seem even more uncertain than usual with the volatility lately. Hopefully we’ll see a strong equity performance in August, but only time will tell!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 