I share these net worth updates to stay accountable, seek feedback on our strategy, and prove that achieving financial independence in Australia is feasible without relying on extraordinary luck or wealth. The table below tracks our journey from $36K in debt to reaching our goals. 🔥
The data biz continue ticking along with a decently sized project coming to a close this month which resulted in a nice little cash bump which is always nice.
The co-working space just had its best month yet, both financially and culture-wise. We had a bunch of new members sign up and heaps of bookings across Feb and March.
We also hit our 1-year anniversary in March, which was a great milestone to celebrate. It’s taken a fair bit of work with the team to get to this point, but building my data business out of the space, meeting new people, and giving the town a venue for events has been incredibly rewarding.
We’re still running live podcasts at the space, and they’re hands down my favourite events. The ‘startup story’ format is always a hit. We get local business owners to share how they got started, the ups and downs, and everything in between. What makes it even better is that most people in the crowd already know the business or have used the product or service, so there’s a real connection when they hear the story behind it.
Net Worth Update
The trade war hammered the portfolio again in March.
I’m clinging to the hope that this chaos is temporary and that there’s some kind of strategy buried in all the madness. I mean, surely they knew slapping 100%+ tariffs on imports would rattle the market. Say what you want about Cheeto Jesus, but I reckon deep down he knew this would sting. What I’m trying to figure out is whether there’s any real upside once the dust settles.
Honestly, in the 18 or so years I’ve been eligible to vote, I can’t say a single Australian politician has inspired me. It’s just rinse and repeat — short-term thinking, corruption, party infighting, and a whole lot of nothing getting done.
It’d be refreshing to actually vote for someone, rather than just picking the least crap option.
Maybe the answer is finding a way to incentivise decent people to actually get involved or something.
I dunno, I just read about some of Australia’s greatest PM’s (Hawke, Menzies, Whitlam, etc.) and think to myself: Man, Australia is surely due one of these in my lifetime.
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*Expenses include everything we spend money on to maintain our lifestyle. We do not include paying down our PPoR loan as an expense, only the interest
*Investment income is simply 4% of our FIRE portfolio divided by 12
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Shares
The above graph was created by Sharesight
We didn’t buy any shares this month.
Networth
Deliberately tanking the economy to cause a recession to force the federal reserve to significantly drop interest rates might be Cheeto Jesus play for a faster economic recovery. It’s a bold strategy Cotton, lets see if it pays off for them.
I’m feeling the same regarding our politics. None of the ‘top’ 3 parties grab me at all. My industry – teaching English to foreigners – has been decimated because somehow the Strayans think an international student living in a tower in the city or Southbank is ‘taking’ away from their housing affordability. Meanwhile we’re out of supply. I don’t like the current version of the Liberals, Dutton is like Scrappy Doo with no ideas, and the Greens are (despite a few good ideas) way too extremist elsewhere.
According to the Australian Department of Education, in the year-to-date December 2024, there were 1,095,298 international student enrolments; I thought you would have heaps of foreigners?
Aussiefirebug – Congrats on the 1 year anniversary – that went fast.
Election time always seems to be who is least worst, with all sides making promises with taxpayers funds that they wont likely keep
No, that’s the universities. Our students come here usually for 2-6 months then travel around Australia and go home.
The universities have definitely taken advantage of the rules over the years and their directors are paid ridiculous amounts, but language colleges aren’t doing well. Counting our students – who are here temporarily – as part of ‘net migration’ is part of the problem.
Thanks Baz!
My perspective: the market is inherently retrospective. It has responded to a thing (in this case, TÅ™ump’s tariffs) and now it’s been priced into the market, so no reason not to take advantage of the lower prices. Of course it might get worse, but that will be because of a different thing. That’s my sensible perspective.
Emotional me wouldn’t mind if things went completely t*t’s up, and seppostanians start howling for blood, and Donald et. al. get run out of town on a rail.
Congratulations on your first biz anniversary!
Cheers Sianzilla
Interesting take too.
Congratulations on the one year Bug!
Yeah it’s a bit disappointing seeing what each party is currently proposing considering it’s only a few weeks away.
Past PM’s had a different social construct to deal with. These days people expect the government to help everyone at an individual level (at great cost to said government). Hawk, Menzies, Whitlam and co wouldn’t get voted in these days. In essence, we get the politicians we deserve. What we (mainly via the media) deem a ‘crisis’ these days would have my grandparents rolling in their graves.
That’s an interesting perspective—I haven’t come across it before. Would you mind expanding on it a little?
Looking overseas you should maybe reflect on how fragile the democracy is and needs to be actively engaged in. Travelling is a great way to get a feel of this but also the podcast series “Real Dictators” is a worthy listen to hear how democracy dies (along with a lot of people).
Help out on election day. Working in the AEC (Australian Electoral Commision) is something a lot of FIRE people do. This election alone they need 100,000+ temporary workers. Source: https://www.aec.gov.au/media/2024/08-05.htm
Thanks for the reccomendation Travis. I’ll add it to my list
Honestly I’ve felt the same way about leaders, I’ve always tended to lean towards the libs, but here in SA our current premier, who is Labour, seems one of these generational leaders. He gets things done and want what’s best for the people. So refreshing.
Are you talking about Peter Malinauskas?
I think I saw him on Q&A once—he spoke really well. No idea what he’s like when it comes to policy, though.
He paves over flaws in his policy by getting the wallet out for sporting events. Really very clever in a way, has people calling him generational 🤣
Gather Round, LIV Golf, World Beach volleyball championships. All great events for the state as a whole with massive funds and marketing opportunities for ongoing tourism, has won my “normally swinging” vote. Congrats Matt on 12 months
Good for sport, unless you’re a Mountain Biker. When he came into power he stopped funding for trail projects. SA has stalled compared to spending on these sporting facilities in other states. Participating in sport rather than watching someone else playing it is more beneficial. Mountain Bike projects moving forward
elsewhere: Tasmania (Derby, Georgetown, Mersey etc), WA (Dwellingup, Collie etc), Victoria Omeo, etc.
Random question, but what’s your preferred stack in your data business these days? I’ve started using GCP and I’m digging it
Python (extraction/loading), DBT (transformation) running on Snowflake with Power BI/Streamlit for data viz.
Couldn’t agree more about the incentive problem in politics. We are not putting our best candidates forward to run the country. I’m not sure how you fix this. Maybe we need to pay them a lot more (but that’s not going to be popular…). All my ‘best and brightest’ mates couldn’t think of anything worse!
Also – feel strongly that we need a huge policy investment in prefabricated housing to help the housing crisis – from development of the financing side of things to construction, regulation, etc
Depending on where the share market ends up in June, will you be doing tax loss harvesting and selling A200 shares. Not sure how long you have to wait to reinvest or you might have to buy back into VAS as a back up.
Hi AFB great blog and congrats to reaching RE. Reading this timeline of your net worth over the last few years is very inspirational to say the least. I just have a quick question regarding your FIRE portfolio. I understand this only includes income-producing assets so does not include your PPOR for example. But why is Bitcoin there since it doesn’t generate any income? Or is this just all the assets you can count on for the 4% rule?
Thanks Gavin,
We do plan to spend that BTC eventually, so we treat it as part of our FIRE portfolio, same as cash.
I’m still holding out hope it’ll gain broader acceptance here in Australia, though who knows how long that’ll take. At this rate, it might never happen!