Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past.
Niccolo Machiavelli
This is my seventy-sixth monthly portfolio update. I complete this regular update to check progress against my goal.
Portfolio goal
My objective is to achieve and maintain a portfolio of at least $2,750,000 by 31 December 2024 or earlier. This should be capable of producing an annual income from total portfolio returns of about $94,800 (in 2023 dollars).
This portfolio objective is based on an assumed safe withdrawal rate of 3.45 per cent.
A secondary focus will be achieving the minimum equity target of $2,200,000.
Portfolio summary
| Vanguard Lifestrategy High Growth Fund | $737,901 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund | $38,046 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Balanced Fund | $71,101 |
| Vanguard Diversified Bonds Fund | $88,334 |
| Vanguard Australian Shares ETF (VAS) | $369,990 |
| Vanguard International Shares ETF (VGS) | $512,253 |
| Betashares Australia 200 ETF (A200) | $280,551 |
| Telstra shares (TLS) | $2,251 |
| Insurance Australia Group shares (IAG) | $5,942 |
| NIB Holdings shares (NHF) | $8,448 |
| Gold ETF (GOLD.ASX) | $133,066 |
| Secured physical gold | $21,067 |
| Bitcoin | $465,899 |
| Raiz app (Aggressive portfolio) | $21,067 |
| Spaceship Voyager app (Index portfolio) | $3,330 |
| BrickX (P2P rental real estate) | $4,484 |
| Total portfolio value | $2,763,381 (+$124,630) |
Asset allocation
| Australian shares | 35.4% |
| Global shares | 31.1% |
| Emerging market shares | 1.5% |
| International small companies | 1.8% |
| Total international shares | 34.4% |
| Total shares | 69.8% (-10.2%) |
| Total property securities | 0.2% (+0.2%) |
| Australian bonds | 2.3% |
| International bonds | 5.3% |
| Total bonds | 7.6% (+2.6%) |
| Gold | 5.6% |
| Bitcoin | 16.9% |
| Gold and alternatives | 22.4% (+7.4%) |
Presented visually, the chart below is a high-level view of the current asset allocation of the portfolio.
Comments
The financial independence portfolio expanded by around 4.7 per cent this month, or nearly $125,000.
This brings the portfolio just beyond its final goal of $2.75 million, which it had previously reached and exceeded over a year ago.
This progress was made principally due to a rebound in the value of Bitcoin, following a series of banking failures across the United States and Europe, which lowered future interest rate expectations while increasing the attractiveness of bearer assets, with no counterparty.
Over the same period the capital value of Australian shares declined by around 0.3 per cent. By contrast the value of global shares, held mostly on an unhedged basis, grew by around 2.0 per cent.
Continue reading “Monthly Portfolio Report – March 2023”