In June, Whitney and I spent much of our time at home in Virginia working on our health and fitness. We did at least one long hike per week (we’re fortunate to live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and have access to lots of great hikes right off the Appalachian Trail). We also signed up at a gym near our new house (so great to have gyms open again!) and worked on improving our diets. We’re doing our best to get in better shape for our upcoming road trip so that we can try some difficult hikes out west!
Also in June, we started a garden at our new house which was good exercise, a good new skill, and will hopefully lead to some home grown veggies in the future. We also did our best to spend some time with family and friends before we leave the area again.
On the business side of things, we really ramped up the content creation over the month of June. We started a podcast, have been posting on social media more regularly, have been doing not one but two live videos each week, and wrote several articles for this blog and Travel Therapy Mentor website!
Income
Income from the websites (FifthWheelPT and Travel Therapy Mentor), continued to be very low in June, which was no surprise due to the pandemic. This will likely continue to be the case until the travel therapy market picks up again. Fortunately, we have seen some slight increases in jobs listed and have helped get some therapists placed in assignments recently though, which is an awesome thing all around.
I have been working on more bank account and credit card signup bonuses lately which are bringing in some extra income each month, which has been helpful since our website income has been down.
Expenses
June expenses were about on par with May, with both months being lower than average. This is mostly due to a combination of no longer having a monthly payment for housing, eating out less often, and not doing as much out of the house lately due to lock downs. Our gym memberships are inexpensive and hiking is free, plus spending more time on each of those has led to less spending on other things.
Investments
The S&P 500 was up 1.84% in June. My own portfolio was up about 0.5% on the month due to having only a small percentage of my net worth currently in equities. Volatility seems to be slowly decreasing in the market overall, but with earnings reports approaching in July, it will be interesting to see what happens.
Financial Independence Progress
My net worth increased by about 0.6% in June. While definitely not a big increase, it does put me at another all time high net worth, and I’m happy with any increases right now! With this increase, my yearly expenses have now dropped to 3.3% of my total net worth, which gives me some extra security on my withdrawal rate.
Next Month
In July, we will definitely continue to work on our health and fitness. This is our primary goal for the coming months and especially prior to leaving for the road trip. We’re going to keep working on planning the road trip and make sure we have everything nailed down with which national parks will be closed or have restrictions that we need to be aware of.
Income will almost certainly continue to be lower than normal, but it should be higher than the last two months since we’ll receive a quarterly affiliate payout at the end of July. Since the tax deadline is rapidly approaching, I need to finish my taxes and make a payment for taxes due in 2019 unfortunately.
Until next month. Stay safe and healthy!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 