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All net proceeds go to charity! (Always and forever.)

Sherry’s December 2020 Net Worth

$1,112,807.36
Or a decrease of…
+$6688.63 or +0.60%

This is how I invest half of money in the stock market and the other half is split between alternate lending (Lending Loop review here), and mostly in dividends (here is my dividend short list of stocks I was looking at to buy for Canada and the U.S.)

The drop is for a few reasons….

1. Re-adjusted my car’s worth using the updated resale value of the car – knocked off about $30K off my net worth. Once it reaches $25K (?), I’ll remove it completely from my net worth and consider it $0 but for now, I can truly resell my car for a significant amount of money (over $25K)
2. I take the day after the end of the month market balances. A few days before that (December 28), I was up by about $5K, but I’d rather have accurate numbers than false ones for the purposes of looking like it went up or not
3. I also spent a significant amount of money this month of about $5K

The Net Worth Breakdown in Detail

Overall doing well, considering I dropped my net worth this month by about $30K off the balance sheet for the actual resale value of my car. I also have donated and sent quite a lot of money this year as well.

All will be revealed in my 2020 Year in Review.

December 2020 Savings Rate = 76.18%

I honestly don’t freak out about any of this because it’s all going up, it’s all good, I am not doing this to freak out over $1 here or 10% here. It’s just to see the stats over time. Over 75% is great for me.

Goal: $1M in invested liquid assets

My new goal is to remove all of my fixed assets (mentally) from my net worth, and reach $1M in invested assets, basically my cash, investments and so on.

I have about $628K in invested assets. I mentioned last month how it’d be nice to go over $600K and I made it, so that’s nice.

Net Worth Year in Review

Future goal: 5-digits in savings without my day job

It is easy to save when you make lots of money. I know this sounds like nonsense (DUH) but .. it’s true. I am going to work on increasing my side income past $10K so that I can save 5-digits, and to work my PASSIVE income up to cover all of my living expenses without lifting a finger (dividends, books, bank interest)….

If you are interested, my money is parked here:

• EQ Bank: 2% now.
• Tangerine: Use my Orange key { 32726976S1 } for free money ($50 once you deposit $100; and I get $50 too) — At 2.74% until June!

…cashback sites and cash-earning sites for surveys:

• Rakuten: Use my referral link for $5 in cash to get started – I use them to shop on sites ALL THE TIME.
• Swagbucks: Use my referral link for 300 Swagbucks to get started; you need 750 to redeem for $10 CAD

It is invested here:

• Lending Loop: Use my referral code { 7b03f0 } to earn $25 once you lend out $1500 to small businesses yourself; I have $10,000 on loan right now. My yield is 11.8% right now (this is how you get started in private lending with Lending Loop)
• Questrade: Use my QTrade referral { o0soehds } for $50 in free trades (this is how you buy & trade on Questrade)
• TD Bank: In their E-Series mutual funds, I can’t move this locked in retirement money (this is how you buy e-series with them)

THE INVESTMENTS ROUNDUP

General Investment Strategy

My strategy is to have 50/50 as in:

50% of my portfolio in index mutual funds
50% of my portfolio in dividend-paying stocks

The ultimate goal is that my portfolio for dividend paying stocks will yield $12,000 at a minimum in dividend income (I hit that this year) each year, up to $50,000.

I am also playing the other side by having money invested in index mutual funds, and letting them grow slowly and appreciate. They too, pay out dividends at about 1.24% so it isn’t zero, just not as fast.

As my dividend stocks go up, I do sell for capital gains, and then I take that money and plow it into index funds, which drops my dividend payout rate, but it makes it ‘safer’ in the sense that it diversifies it more.

Small business lending is way down…

My money just keeps accumulating in cash there. It’s just not getting lent out for 2 main reasons:

1. Small businesses are not starting up or needing money (they’re closing at an alarming rate)
2. They’ve increased restrictions on who they will lend to taking into account the pandemic

Drained my emergency fund to $10K

I have decided to drain my emergency fund to $10K. I only need that as a buffer to pay for bills, and if I need any more money, I will have to wait, or sell investments (I AM LOATHE TO DO THIS), so this is in a way, a trick to get me to stop spending money.

Since I don’t like to sell investments, I won’t do it to buy a $3000 coat. I’ll decide against it.

I also only have $10K as buffer for bills, so I also won’t spend $3000 on a coat without thinking long and hard about it because it tightens up my cash flow to $7K if I did that.

I also bring enough in side incomes to cover / replenish, and I will continually drain the coffers each time it pops over $10K or so, and invest every single penny.

FYI my investments are all here:

• • Lending Loop: Use my referral code { 7b03f0 } to earn $25 once you lend out $1500 to small businesses yourself; I have $10,000 on loan right now. My yield is 11.8% right now (this is how you get started in private lending with Lending Loop)
  • Questrade: Use my QTrade referral { o0soehds } for $50 in free trades (this is how you buy & trade on Questrade)
  • TD Bank: In their E-Series mutual funds, I can’t move this locked in retirement money (this is how you buy e-series with them)