September felt a little like a mad dash to get ready for the baby after we finished moving into the new house. Even though the baby isn’t due until the beginning of November, we wanted to have everything ready just in case he came early. We successfully got everything done though, and are now as ready as we’re going to be, so that was a big relief. We finished all of our small house projects, finished the nursery, and got fully settled in. It really feels great to own a house again and have everything set up and in place. We’re really loving our new house and how close we are to everything now. Getting to work at my part time job at the hospital, and Whitney’s OBGYN visits at the same hospital, now take us no time and are no big deal. The views aren’t as nice as at the house we were renting, but it’s extremely quiet here, all of the neighbors have been exceptionally friendly, and overall we love our new neighborhood.
Besides house things, we also had our baby shower, and we took a 2-night trip to the small town of Hot Springs, Virginia for our “baby moon” in September. We went there for the first time before Aria was born two years ago and really enjoyed it. There’s an awesome resort there that has spa services and good restaurants. There’s also a historic bath house with warm spring pools we visited. We had a great getaway and enjoyed it just as much this time. This is somewhere we could really see taking our kids for a few days as a yearly trip in the future. It’s a beautiful place to spend some time especially in the fall.
Income
Income from our business (FifthWheelPT and Travel Therapy Mentor) for September was up about 25% compared to August. It was a pretty average month overall. We didn’t get as much work done as we probably should have due to being busy with various plans and house things.
Expenses
My expenses for September were moderate. The Hot Springs trip was pretty expensive due to massages/spa services, nice dinners, as well as the historic Inn that we stayed at. Besides that, I just had the normal low monthly expenses now that we don’t have any monthly housing cost. Although paying cash for our house took up a big chunk of our assets, it’s really nice to have very low monthly expenses again.
My savings rate for the month was about 70% when all was said and done.
Investments
The S&P 500 was down by about 0.5% in September. Basically just a flat month without a ton of volatility despite a lot of doom and gloom narratives prevalent. Bull markets “climbing a wall of worry” really seems to be more true than ever right now. There are a million reasons why equity values should be lower, yet they just continue staying around the highs are far as the major indices go.
Bitcoin was up by about 6.4% in September. This was the third straight green month and as of the end of September, Bitcoin is now about $26k higher than the low at the end of June/beginning of July. This makes the case for the bear market low already being in much better despite so many people being convinced that we’d go below $58k. June/July was a little scary, but I remember exactly how I felt at the lows in 2022, so I just kept buying throughout because I knew that even if we did go lower in the short term, the odds were very high that prices would be much higher a few years from now. Now my only regret was not buying even more during the summer which is a good problem to have.
Financial Independence Progress
My net assets increased by 4.2% in September. I’m really happy with how the last few months have been going. Business keeps chugging along, allowing me to build my cash reserves back up after the home purchase, and the Bitcoin recovery is making my net worth look a lot better.
My assets are now equal to approximately 36.0 times my average annual expenses!
In case you missed it, check out this post for an update on why I adjusted my spending assumptions.
Next Month
In October, we have an extremely busy month. I turn 38 years old and we’ll also be celebrating Aria’s second birthday. We have 4 other family birthdays during the month as well and a strong possibility that the baby makes his appearance during the month. That combined with Halloween, play dates, work days, fall festivals, and Aria’s other activities, along with doing our best to keep up with business stuff, we won’t have much free time.
How was September for you financially? Let me know in the comments!
