December felt like it flew by. It kinda seems like that every year, but this one was particularly fast.
At the beginning of the month, we went on a weekend trip out of state with some friends to the Smoky Mountains. This was either our third or fourth visit to the Smoky Mountains National Park, and each time we see different awesome scenery. After that, we were out of town for about a week on a Caribbean cruise in the middle of the month with our families. This was a surprise trip that we booked as a gift for them. This was only my second ever cruise. It went well overall, but we did miss one of the planned ports due to weather, and since we ran into that pretty severe storm, this meant the boat was very rocky. The rest of the month was full of seeing friends and family, preparing for Christmas, Christmas festivities, and preparing for our next big international trip.
We got a lot of work done throughout the month and got everything wrapped up, accounting wise, for the end of the year. December is usually one of our highest earning and busiest months each year, and this year was no different.
Income
Income from our websites (FifthWheelPT and Travel Therapy Mentor) for December was really good. It was our 2nd highest earning month of the year and our 5th highest earning month all time. Q4 was our highest earning quarter of all time, and we set a new yearly revenue and profit record in 2023! We’ve been extremely fortunate with the continued growth of our online business, and we are very thankful for all of the support that we’ve gotten over the years!
Expenses
My expenses were very high this month. Paying for the cruise for us and our families, paying for some of the expenses of our upcoming trip in January, and buying Christmas gifts, as well as paying my Q4 estimated taxes early made December by far my most expensive month of the year. With the great business profits this year came really high tax payments. Taxes are a pain to pay, but I definitely can’t complain. It’s always better to make a lot of money and pay a lot in taxes than to make very little money and pay no taxes.
My savings rate was just under 50% in December when taking into account the high spending for the month.
Investments
The S&P 500 was up by about 4.4% in December. The year ended strong with a total one year return of over 24%! Very few people, including myself, would have guessed that would happen in 2023. That goes to show how difficult it is to predict the market and how much more difficult to is to get the timing right even if you are able to predict the direction. I’m still predicting a recession starting in Q1 of 2024, but that prediction could very well end up being wrong.
Bitcoin was also up by about 12.1% in December! Bitcoin really defied almost all predictions for 2023. I was cautiously optimistic going into 2023 after accumulating a lot of Bitcoin and GBTC in the second half of 2022, but it ended up being a much better year than I expected. The over 300% increase of GBTC during 2023 was huge for my investment portfolio. The Bitcoin portion of my asset allocation has expanded significantly with the gains this year. In 2024, we have the Bitcoin ETF and the halving to look forward to, which could both be big catalysts for price increases. The price has increased a little quicker than I’d like, especially in Q4, and there’s no doubt that a correction is most likely coming soon. But, I’m more optimistic for 2024 than I was for 2023 for Bitcoin. I think that a new all time high in 2024 is very likely, but we’ll see how that prediction turns out.
Financial Independence Progress
My net assets increased by about 4.4% in December.
This increase put me at another new all time high in both net assets and net worth!
For 2023 as a whole, I had a 55% increase in my net worth, which is huge and much better than I could have expected. Holding so much of my assets in cash definitely held back my investment returns for the year, but I was still able to outperform the S&P 500 by a significant amount with less volatility. In hindsight, a more risky portfolio would have done extremely well, but I’m happy with my cash and Bitcoin heavy allocation and think it will outperform again in 2024.
With this increase in my net asset value, my assets are now equal to approximately 86.7 times my annual expenses.
Next Month
In January, we’ll be traveling again for the whole month. We have a 6 week trip starting to a couple of big bucket list destinations that we’re very excited about! My spending will be high again, but our revenue should be very high as well.
How was December for you financially? Let me know in the comments!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 