Financial Independence Update- April 2021

At the end of April, we got some good news, and things have been pretty busy since then: Whitney’s Hawaii PT license was finally approved! We had nearly given up on her ever actually getting this license since she originally started the process in July of last year. Prior to receiving this license, we had been planning to spend the month of April at home regrouping and getting some business caught up before heading to Costa Rica in May. But, once she heard that the license had been approved, we thought we’d at least check to see if there were any good Travel PT jobs in Hawaii. To our surprise, there were several options, and one of them ended up being absolutely perfect for her! So we had a total change of plans, and now we’ll be heading to the Big Island at the end of May where Whitney will be working a part time Travel PT contract at what sounds like an amazing outpatient clinic.

Besides this change in plans, April was pretty quiet for us. We spent some time at home in Virginia working on future business plans; got back into our gym routines; got our taxes done; and Whitney worked a couple days per week at our local PRN physical therapy job. I also did my best to take advantage of the beautiful spring days to get some hiking in on the Appalachian Trail whenever possible. We also spent some time with our families and took a trip to Eastern North Carolina to visit some of our friends from a prior travel contract. Overall, it was a really great laid back month of “retirement.”

Income

Income from our websites (FifthWheelPT and Travel Therapy Mentor) has not only gotten back to, but has now surpassed, “Pre-Covid” levels. We’re well on our way to having our biggest year ever, and we are consistently growing our placements, page views, social media followers, and email list each month. The course we launched earlier this year is also doing very well. We’ve gotten all 5-star reviews on it, and it looks like it will continue to be a significant source of revenue in the future. We also decided to start doing some sponsored social media posts to bring in some additional revenue, which is adding up quickly. I’m shocked at how well revenue has rebounded and how smoothly things are going with it all. Whitney has taken a much larger role in managing day to day tasks and has done a great job creating new relationships with companies that are directly leading to more revenue. In reality, I’ve really been slacking since we got back from Mexico. I haven’t had much motivation to write or create lately, and I’ve mostly just been spending small amounts of time responding to messages and emails each day. I don’t always do a great job of keeping track of monthly income anymore, but I believe that April was our highest month ever. Even still, we anticipate that some months later this year will be even higher, which is great news.

Expenses

Expenses for the month of April were minimal as we spent most of the month at home. I’m much more lenient on my spending these days, but even so, our lifestyle is fairly low cost even if I don’t purposely try to keep spending in check. We’ve been eating out a lot more recently, but besides that, I didn’t have any major expenditures this month, and our fixed monthly costs are very low these days. I’m not positive on my savings rate this month, but there’s no doubt it was well over 80% thanks to the increasing monthly income from the business.

Investments

The S&P 500 was up about 5.2% in April with almost daily new all time highs it seemed. Bitcoin had it’s first negative month in quite a while. Fortunately it was only down a small amount in April; but unfortunately that was just the beginning of a much larger drop to come in May. I’ve been gradually reducing my exposure to crypto, but even so, the big drops are still pretty painful.

Financial Independence Progress

My net worth actually increased by 4.0% in April despite the drop in cryptocurrency prices. I have a feeling that May is going to be much less kind though… With this 4% month over month increase, I’m now sitting at almost exactly 50x my annual expenses which is kind of ridiculous. I’m extremely grateful for the success both in investments and our growing business though.

Next Month

In May we’ll be spending a lot of time getting everything squared away at home as well as with our living arrangements in Hawaii! We’re very excited for this upcoming adventure, as we have been talking about Whitney eventually taking a travel assignment in Hawaii for years. It’s hard to believe that it’s actually about to happen!

How was April for you financially? Let me know in the comments!