We finished our 10 week European honeymoon near the end of August. At the beginning of the month, we finished up our time in Norway with a roadtrip around the southwestern part of the country. We started in Bergen but then spent about 10 days driving all around and through the fjords, mountains, and glaciers. This part of the trip was wonderful with a lot of hiking and beautiful views. After leaving Norway, we spent 5 days in Copenhagen followed by 5 days in Stockholm. Both were really cool cities to visit but felt underwhelming after such an incredible experience in Norway. Whitney and I will be writing full recap articles about our honeymoon trip soon! But to say the least, it was amazing.
We returned home from Europe for just a few days before heading out on a roadtrip to our last US national park! This wasn’t ideal because we were very tired after Europe, but our time was limited to make it to the park. The last national park was Isle Royale which is in the middle of Lake Superior. It starts to get cold there in September and the ferry also stops running then. Since this was our third attempt at this national park, we wanted to have a lot of buffer to stay as long as needed in case of any issues with the ferry like last year. Fortunately the ferry left on time to get to the island, but the weather got worse while we were there which meant the ferry didn’t come the next day to pick us up, so we ended up spending two nights camping there instead of one. It was a beautiful park though, so we weren’t too upset about staying an extra night and didn’t have any time sensitive plans.
As of the end of August, we’ve now been to all 50 states, all of the US national parks, and 52 countries!
Just 6 years ago, I’d only been out of my home state a handful of times, so those stats seem completely insane to me. Out of the last 5 years, we’ve spent almost 2.5 years of total time either on an international trip, a road trip, or exploring in Alaska/Hawaii. Travel has been such a huge part of our life for years now that it’s hard to know what our life will even look like once we aren’t on trips all of the time.
Income
Income from our websites (FifthWheelPT and Travel Therapy Mentor) for August was pretty good after a couple of pretty low earning months. August was the third highest earning month of the year, and our sixth highest earning month of all time. A big part of this was a large quarterly marketing payment that we received during the month. We didn’t do a great job of following up on payments due while traveling the last few months but will do a lot better job the rest of the year. We also have a lot of giveaways and sales coming up, which always help with business/revenue, so the last four months of the year should be much better.
Expenses
August expenses were very high due to the expensive Nordic countries. Gas in Norway on our roadtrips was over $9/gallon and food was at least twice as expensive as it is back home in Virginia. We did our best to find Airbnbs that were reasonably priced with a kitchen so that we could cook, but that was hit or miss depending on the area. In some parts of Norway that we wanted to visit, the lodging options were extremely limited, which meant we were at the mercy of whatever they were charging.
We also drove over 1,000 miles in two days at the end of the month to get to northern Michigan for our ferry to the national park, which meant a lot of stops for gas. We also narrowly avoided having to get some work done on our van when we almost broke down on this drive. Fortunately we were able to figure out it was just an issue with the battery which meant a quick fix.
Investments
The S&P 500 was down by about 1.8% in August. I’ve been expecting a market correction for quite a while now. It’s hard to say whether this is the beginning of that correction or just a small drop that will be completely erased next month. I’m still pretty convicted that the US will enter a recession in either Q4 of 2023 or Q1 of 2024 and that the market hasn’t priced that in at all yet. It seems that the market is priced for perfection right now with the Shiller PE ratio still around 30. For context, that’s still higher than the peak of the market before the great financial crisis in 2008. It’s extremely difficult for me to justify a earnings multiple that high especially with 10 year treasuries yielding over 4% and my savings account paying even more than that in interest.
Bitcoin was down by about 11.3% in August. It was a pretty rough month, but September is historically the worst month of the year for Bitcoin returns so the pain probably isn’t over yet. I’m continuing to treat any drops in the price as a buying opportunity though as Bitcoin is the asset I’m most bullish on over the long term. There should be some really good buying opportunities coming up once the market starts pricing in a recession and it’s more clear that the Fed will be very hesitant to go back to quantitative easing with inflation still above target. I have about 20% of my assets in Bitcoin right now but plan to be between 25-30% going into 2024. Worsening economic conditions going into 2024 combined with the halving in April and an inevitable Fed pivot back to QE once unemployment gets to worrying levels should be a massive Bitcoin catalyst in the second half of 2024.
Financial Independence Progress
My net assets decreased by about 0.6% in August. This is better than I was expecting considering my expenses were high and my investment did poorly. Having a good income month and having a lot of my assets earning interest in a high yield savings account right now helped buffer the drop though. The interest from my savings accounts are actually enough to cover all of my usual monthly expenses right now, which is pretty awesome in terms of financial security. Of course I don’t want this to be the case forever because I’d rather have most of that money invested in higher risk/reward options, but for now it’s working well.
With this decrease in my net asset value, my assets are now equal to approximately 71.8 times my annual expenses.
Next Month
In September, we’ll be getting back from our Isle Royale road trip just in time to pack to go to TravCon in Las Vegas in the middle of September. We’ll be in Vegas for a week before coming back home for a much needed actual break from traveling. We’ve got a full three months at home planned, which will be great for us to get back in a routine and make some progress on both personal and business pursuits.
How was August for you financially? Let me know in the comments!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 