In April we had our first long-ish road trip with Aria. We drove 7 hours each way to Philadelphia for the OT national conference. It went fairly well overall, but she doesn’t sleep well in the car and gets fussy after an hour or so in her car seat. Including stops and traffic on the way up, the 7 hour drive turned into 10 hours… Traveling these days definitely takes longer and is more complicated. We’re hoping that she will get more content and able to sleep in the car over the next few months, which would really improve things, but for now, our traveling is probably best limited to a few hours away in most cases.
The conference went really well. In the past, the OT conference was often pretty slow with not a ton of interest in travel therapy, but this year was completely different. I talked to at least twice as many people this year than in the last two years of the OT conferences combined who were very interested in traveling. There was a lot of excitement and enthusiasm this year both at the conference and at our meetup which was really nice to see.
Besides the conference trip, it was a quiet month. We got into doing some short hikes with Aria in a chest carrier and that’s gone well. With the nice weather so far this spring it’s been good to be able to get out with her and for Whitney and I to stay active. She isn’t quite ready for a hiking backpack/child carrier yet, but when she is that will allow us to start going on longer hikes again which will be great.
Income
Income from our business (FifthWheelPT and Travel Therapy Mentor) for April was about 20% higher than in March. Still not a great month compared to December or January, but right around what should be our average. We still haven’t been spending nearly as much time as we should or we used to on the business and content, but hopefully that will change in the near future when we get to a more predictable schedule with Aria. A little extra time spent on the business would definitely increase our average monthly revenue.
Expenses
Expenses this month were higher due to the trip to Philadelphia. We still did pretty good at keeping things reasonable though. We took my mom with us to watch Aria and help with some things for a few hours during the day while we went to the conference center so we had to get two hotel rooms. We used points for both rooms though so there weren’t any out of pocket costs for that. Mainly the increase in costs came from gas and food.
In total, my savings rate for the month was around 85% when all was said and done.
Investments
The S&P 500 was down by about 0.8% on the month. That doesn’t tell the whole story though because at one point during the month it was down almost 14%. There was a really strong rally going into the end of the month which really mitigated the losses. I’m sure a lot of people panic sold on some of the drops throughout the month though because there was quite a bit of fear in the markets. It still remains to be seen whether this is just a bear market rally before putting in new lows or if the very short bear market is over and we’ll be back to all time highs in May. I think that the most likely outcome is to just bounce around between the February highs and the April lows for at least a few months until it becomes more clear what the labor market and inflation will look like going forward. Right now the labor market remains resilient and inflation is gradually declining back toward 2%. According to Truflation, we’ve actually been below 2% for a couple of months now, so that is a good sign for upcoming inflation rate prints. If inflation remains under control and unemployment stays below 5%, then there’s not a lot of impetus for much lower equity prices. There’s also probably not a lot of impetus for much higher prices either though with multiples still expanded relative to the average and considerable uncertainty.
Bitcoin was up by about 14.1% in April. To anyone watching the markets closely, this should be pretty surprising. It’s pretty rare to see the equity market down and Bitcoin up to such a large degree. Bitcoin has held up really well during this equity selloff. In the past, a 20% drop in the S&P would have meant a 50%+ drop in Bitcoin but that didn’t happen this time. Bitcoin dropped only about 30% from the peak and is recovering much quicker than equities are off of the lows. I think that this is a very positive development for Bitcoin. It’s no secret that Bitcoin outperforms equities over longer periods of time, but normally that comes at the cost of much bigger drawdowns and volatility. For the past several years there have been a lot of people saying that Bitcoin is nothing more than a leverage version of equities, but that’s now really in question. TQQQ, the triple leveraged Nasdaq ETF was down 60% at the bottom of this market correction, which is a much bigger drop that Bitcoin had and it isn’t recovering nearly as quickly either. I’ve long thought that the correlation of equities and Bitcoin was more a result of the massive monetary debasement that happened over the last 5 years and that the correlation would eventually breakdown. If that’s happening now, then I expect many big institutional investors will have to reconsider their allocation, or lack thereof, to Bitcoin. I remain much more optimistic about the performance of Bitcoin than the performance of equities over the remainder of 2025.
Financial Independence Progress
My net assets increased by 8.7% in April and is now at a new all time high! This is despite the S&P still being down about 10% from the highs and Bitcoin down about 15% from the highs. The primary reason for my portfolio outperforming is that during the Bitcoin dips in March and April, I increased my holdings significantly. The dip felt like a major buying opportunity to me since I think we’re still in the middle of this bull market and Bitcoin will probably be much higher at some point in 2025. My conviction was high enough that I even made some small gambles on options purchases that are up significantly now that Bitcoin is recovering. I’ll probably take profits on those leveraged positions soon but continue to hold the regular purchases I made for a while.
My assets are now equal to approximately 130.5 times my average annual expenses!
Next Month
In May we have another longer road trip planned with Aria, but that will probably be the last one for a while. We’ll still continue working on her sleeping through the night as we haven’t made much progress there. May should be a good month for the business, and I’m hoping that the Bitcoin recovery continues and am optimistic that we’ll see new all time highs be we’ll see how that pans out.
How was April for you financially? Let me know in the comments!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 