I am excited to wrap up 2018 on a positive note and looking forward to the next year with anticipation! This blog, Life Beyond Fire (LBF), launched in August 2018, to share my journey with fellow like minded individuals who have an interest in finding financial freedom. I am pleasantly surprised at how much fun I am having with this blog. I was never much of a writer so one of my hopes for the new year is to improve on my writing skills so please bear with me. 😊

It’s been around 3 years since I sold my business and began this FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) lifestyle. I still feel grateful to this day for this freedom I have in life. Being the sole owner of my time is just amazing and realize I have grown to become more thankful in general towards many aspects of life.

Being inspired by other fellow FIRE bloggers I decided to launch a FIRE portfolio that is more simplified by using a mixture of ETF’s and few individual stocks. The plan is to keep it simple, very passive and gradually grow the dividends.

Here is a year end look at the portfolio:

“Click above Photo for Larger View”

I look forward to watching the yield on cost figures grow as it is more of an accurate representation of your dividend growth than the current yield numbers. The difference between the Yield on Cost (YOC) and Current Yield (CY) shows the discount on the yield at current asset prices. I thought it would be another fun and interesting figure to help spot those potential discounts in prices.

The last 3 months of the year was volatile ending the year with a net loss of $9,263.44. Not the greatest way to end the year for the portfolio but when a storm of this magnitude hits, not many places to hide for many investors.

The focus is to collect great assets indefinitely. Assets that have the best potential to appreciate and grow the dividends over time.

Fortunately, time is on my side and thanks to the correction, I was able to pick up some stocks at much better valuations.

 

Closer Look Into The Dividends

The storm may come and go but the dividends continue to roll in steadily. It’s amazing to have great companies consistently paying out dividends to investors. It’s even better when companies continue to grow them YOY.

It’s no different from receiving a raise from your salary jobs! There are some interesting data out there that shows with the reinvesting of dividends right back into the stock well outperformed the S&P by a wide margin!

The dividend growth from companies is one key factor how these stocks outperform the S&P over time. It’s what helps boost the YOC over time and fun to tract. Well, hypothetically it should so as long as the dividend growth is consistent. We will keep an eye out on that figure. 😊

Here is a look at the portfolios dividend payout for the year of 2018.

“Click above Photo for Larger View”

And comparing that to last year:

All holdings had a nice growth in dividends except LIT. Looks like the lithium related stocks had some issues with slower demand growth. The growth in demand is still expected to pick up but taking longer than expected for multiple reasons. I am still long on the ETF but I am considering selling due to the single dividend payout per year which I don’t like.

Here is a quick overview of the monthly dividends that came in for the portfolio in the year of 2018:

 

2018 Large Tax Bill

Last year, I sold a property in Los Angeles to simplify. My primary plan (Plan A) was to do a 1031 exchange if opportunity presented. If plan A didn’t pan out, plan B was to simply wipe out all debts to become completely debt free. The exchange didn’t pan out, so I went with the debt free path. This resulted in the largest capital gain tax bill ever in my life.

Selling the property really simplified my life. The property being an older building, built in the early 1900’s, the maintenance and upkeep was higher than I expected. However, I did manage to build a healthy cash flow over the time of my ownership which helped immensely with the sales price. The property located in a highly demanded part of central Los Angeles where the rents were very high resulted in a sizable amount of capital appreciation. I may write more about how I made a life changing return on this real estate investment in a later post.

 

Conclusion

2018 has been a great year overall. The year was mostly spent focusing on self-development, and health. Lately, I noticed myself having more interest in politics, and philosophy. Since the FIRE lifestyle began, learning in general has become very enjoyable. I always had a huge curious heart and to have the time to feed this curiosity with no limitations in time brings a great sense of freedom and satisfaction. I feel truly blessed and thankful for the life I have today.

My health in general seems to be improving naturally as well. My weight seems to have stabilized at a healthy range. Most of my lower belly probably from stress has greatly been reduced. I am much happier day by day and have almost no stress in my life. That doesn’t mean I don’t have new challenges! I am more excited about the new challenges rather than having them become a reason to stress over. Hard to explain! I am still trying to understand the changes that I am experiencing from this new life.

So, how was your 2018? Are you satisfied with the progress you made in 2018? I wish you a happy new year and looking forward to sharing my journey with you next year!

Thank you for reading! 😊