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. 🔥
I turned 35 in May, which firmly places me in my mid-thirties and the start of what some might call middle adulthood (35-49).
I’ve always been a ‘man with a plan’ kinda guy, and turning 35 got me thinking back to when I was 25, wondering where the younger Matt expected to be in 10 years’ time.
I had a few milestones I wanted to achieve:
- Married ✅
- Kids ✅ (one is a start)
- Home ✅
- Millionaire by 30 ❌
- Win a seniors flag ❌
- Live overseas ✅
- Reach financial freedom ❌
- Escaped the corporate grind ✅❌ (I still do some ‘grindy’ stuff for my business)
- Maintain good health and fitness ✅
- Write a book ❌
- Buy a Tesla ❌
There was probably more, but that’s all I can think of.
The 25-year-old me would probably be quite shocked that I haven’t reached FIRE yet. We were on track to get there well and truly before 35 with no show-stoppers in the way.
I had the right job, a low-cost-of-living area, and an amazing partner who was on the same page.
What happened, dude?
Well, heaps, actually.
The main factor being how fantastic meaningful work, blended with a better work-life, could be. This combination greatly diminishes the urge to race towards financial freedom.
I would have loved to have sat down and told my younger self to head overseas sooner rather than wait another four years.
That trip was the catalyst for a lot of great stuff that’s in my life right now.
I’m still working on the rest of the list that isn’t tied to a specific age (this includes my football career 😅).
You bet I’ve been watching the latest Model Y price drops with great interest.
I think the Tesla might turn from a red cross to a green tick any month now 😎🚗
Net Worth Update
Decent month all around with the big influx of cash coming from a recent contract.
.
*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
Our passive income has never been this close to covering our expenses! It won’t be long before it crosses over. At that point, I might reduce these updates, as my goal was to continue them until our passive income exceeded our expenses. I’ll write more about this as we get closer to reaching this milestone.
Shares
The above graph was created by Sharesight
Solid month all around.
Question: Why do we have A200 & VAS?
Answer: We started buying A200 in August 2018 after Vanguard didn’t lower their MER to match A200. Practically speaking, A200 and VAS are almost identical so it makes sense to go with the lower MER. As an added benefit, I like the fund diversification between Vanguard and Betashares. We decided to hold both after making the switch since it doesn’t have any impact other than some extra accounting work once a year.
Does have VEU, an American domiciled ETF, cause you any tax issues? What does this mean at tax time for you?
Nope. I just have to fill out the W-8BEN form every 3 or so years.
Matt, I have listened to your podcast and followed your Monthly Network Updates almost since you first started them many years ago. I’m 34, Aussie male, so very similar.
Your Networth updates have motivated me to (finally) start my own blog on Substack documenting my own journey;
https://wrighty626.substack.com/ (sorry shameless plug 😆).
I have a very different take on FIRE now (don’t invest in ETFs anymore) but still look forward to reading your updates. Hope you start pumping out the podcasts again soon.
You come across as quite douchey, especially describing people as sheep and investing heavily in coal and oil. You’re a young douche though, so there is still time to grow some compassion.
Agreed. Stopped reading halfway through Tom’s blog when I saw sexism about how each “man” should have 1m net worth. Then a cringe remark about how some woman should too with a wink emoji.
Even posting the blog on Aussie Firebugs Is a faux paus. Write well and they will come. I don’t think that will be the case for this young lad.
Seems to be a circle of ‘Alpha Males’. He’s linked a friend of his on his blog called GeologoTrader (also a Aussie). Geo has full blow articles where all he does it criticise women for not liking trump and for being ‘democrat voters’. I suppose independent thought is only when everyone thinks like you? right?
I am younger than Tom and have a similar NW that’ve managed to accrue without being sexist or a self proclaimed alpha male.
Yep. I’m younger than this dude, AND a woman to boot, and I’m well past this guy’s net worth already.
Had a quick look at your site Tom – geez, a few commercial hoops to jump through which is an immediate turn-off. I agree with the others who posted here
Your story, as with Jordan@Geologo_Trader is interesting, but to be honest – misses the mark, as Joey Swole says “Do Better” and you could do well if you took a different tact.
You are not going to win many subscribers on your current course of action
Wow, I never thought i would have seen Joey Swoles name on the AFB post. I wonder how many people actually know who that is with out Google.
Got a follow from me! Nice to read different approach. Different strategies to the same goal – financial freedom
haha Cheers Danny – have received nothing but positive feedback so far (despite the few unhinged comments above 😅).
Thanks for the comment, Tom.
I’m glad I could provide some motivation. Writing down your journey is a great way to analyse your strategy and serves as a financial diary. Everyone should do it, even if it’s private and no one reads it.
Good luck with your writing, mate!
By the way, I have some new podcast episodes coming up soon. I’ve been so busy with my 8-month-old and the new business that AFB content has been lacking lately.
Cheers man, means a lot coming from you! Yeah I find it super cathartic getting it all down on paper, regardless if anyone actually reads it or not 😅 Surprised at the positive I’ve been getting from it though.
Excited to see how your business evolves over the next few years – my vague plan for 2025 is to dump 100k to 300k of my portfolio (on a spike) and invest it into online businesses for cashflow, via the same method that Captain FI talked about on your podcasts with him, RE investing into websites.
Looking forward to the next podcast! 🍻
Must have been painful for AFB to read you think you two are “very similar”, apart from age and what I believe you would describe as both being “alpha males”.
As a mining engineer, I got excited to read your blog for a second, thinking it could be relatable. That quickly went away though. As others have said, you come across as douchey, and the sheer number of sexist and conspiracy theorist remarks on your intro post made me think the mines you worked at provided tin foil safety hard hats.
I actually liked the blog and subscribed. Rick Rule, Multimillionaire Investor says that he loves hated stocks because they are so cheap, and eventually, when the market realises their value, they pile in and he makes a bundle. Coal, Oil and Uranium are high on his list of hated (but loved) stocks. Worth reading the energy angle on AI, it’s interesting stuff.
Cheers Mailbox, appreciate that! Yes, it’s pretty standard Aussie tall poppy culture, as soon as you stick your head above the parapet, people take a shot at you 😅 I have taken a semi controversial angle on purpose, consider myself a black sheep.
At the end of the day, I have not worked for over a year and my life is pretty damn amazing, so 🤷♂️
Funny how offended some people get just from a somewhat differing opinion.
Hoping that uranium goes to the moon in 2025! 🍻
Hi and thank you for the read. First timer so I just lost my Firebug virginity LOL
Qu: How / why are you able to have Super income? TIA
Hi and welsome to the blog 🙂
To answer your question… we don’t include Super in our FIRE portfolio because we plan to retire before we reach the preservation age.
Thanks for the update and congrats on the progress. What do you do with your passive income at the moment?
You’re welcome, GIZDA.
We currently spend our passive income on lifestyle expenses.
Sometimes I also invest it in growing my business.
Big influx of cash coming from a recent contract.
With a $56k bump I’d agree on that – Congratulations
My portfolio is similar to yours with VTS/VEU/VAS but I’ve had it since 2012
I’ve also had RAIZ for the kid’s savings accounts rather than Term Deposits and tried a few others such as Bamboo, Kraken, Sharesies, Spaceship, and more recently Betashares Direct for other funds
Thanks Baz!
Hi Mate, been following your website for ages. I love how open you are with the investment strategy and networth. We are two high income earners and we find our monthly spending high. Although we are only 30% away from our fire number I cannot stop thinking about how much easier it will be if our monthly expenses are much lower. Are you willing to share how you guys manage to get away with such a low expense rate or have any other good resource where I can compare me and my family to try and establish how other people get away with such low expenses.
Hi Jaco,
It’s funny, but I think we spend way too much each month and have tried to rein it in a bit. Everything is relative, I guess.
One thing to note is that we do not include our PPoR repayments as an expense (only the interest component). We also don’t have income insurance, which I hear can be quite expensive each month.
Holidays is the one area where we indulge.
Is there a particular area where you’re spending a lot?
Cheers
I think it is across the board. Income protection is a lot. We also have a lot of children expenses which I believe yours will still come :-). Luckily our property is paid off so unfortunately I cannot blame that. We also splurge on holidays, but there is still a big discrepancy between our avg monthly expenses and yours 🙂
Hi Jaco, I use a web application call moorr (moorr.com.au) it’s a property/cashflow/money management tool that they guys who do The Property Couch podcast have built AND it’s free (i.e. you’ll get newsletter emails) to create account and use. It’ll take a while to get it all set up, but once you have, it’ll give you a heap of insight on what you earn, what you spend and a heap of forecasting functions. It also has a function where you can compare what you’re spending as a household against other members of the platform (over 5k users I think). @AussieFirebug, I love what you’re doing with this blog, looking forward to your next podcast update(s). Cheers.
Hopefully something like America’s “Personal Capital” app (now empower) will check this out Toui L
Hi Jaco, the big 3 expenses are house, car (transport) and food. If you bought too much house, renew your cars every couple years or eat out a lot – those could be causing your costs to go out of control.
You can start by scrutinising every expense bill you get and look for a better price option. For example your car insurance, home & contents insurance, other insurances, gas & electricity, your mortgages, credit card fees, banking fees, mobile phone, internet, streaming subscriptions, other subscriptions, etc. This is the area of negligence that costs most people their financial future. This sounds like a chore but the internet makes this easier to do and you will be very pleased with the results that will end up saving thousands by just doing this.
Next prepare a simple budget that shows all the income you receive and all your expenses into categories. This will show you where a lot of your money is going in expenses which then gives you the opportunity to manage this. What gets measured gets managed.
Doing both of these things will allow you to significantly cut your expenses and increase your savings rate.
Hey mate
Love your work, really enjoy your content from throughout the years.
One question I have is around the property you used to hold.
From memory you started down the IP path and accumulated 3 or 4?
Do you ever check the current valuations of these and have any regrets about selling them down?
The passive nature of ETFs is obviously amazing, but it’s hard to determine when to make the switch if at all.
Keep up the great work!
Hi, interesting that you have owning an EV on your list. Do you have specific reasons for this or is it primarily only a toy?
Vehicles in general depreciate fairly fast and hard, EV’s are significantly worse and likely not getting better any time soon.
There are many second hand ICE vehicle providing a significantly improved depreciation schedule and sometimes even running costs. Without the range anxiety, charging and current battery degradation issues.
It is relatively new tech with a massive range of issues yet to be ironed out.
Curious that someone looking to go f.i.r.e. would make that choice? Which of course is entirely your business and not really mine.
Hi Leo,
I’ve dreamed of owning this car for the last 12 years. It might not be the smartest financial choice, but I’ve been obsessed with it for so long that I just want one, haha.
When I was 22, I bought a second-hand Camry and still drive it today. That car saved me a fortune over the years, so I feel like I can justify spending big on the Tesla now.
Cheers
Hi AFB,
Twenty years ago I was nominated for the waiting list to join the MCC – Melbourne Cricket Club. I was excited about this but it was going to be a long wait. A few years ago I received a letter in the mail saying it was finally my turn to be admitted into this exclusive club. I was initially excited – until I read about all the yearly expenses and the criteria that was required to be met. In the end I realised there wasn’t enough value for me in joining and I passed up the offer. I’m now glad I made a rational decision.
I’ve been hearing and reading some very negative information about Tesla’s and EV’s. For example how the batteries only last a certain amount of time and are expensive to replace. How the car insurance costs are very high in general, and how the resale values drop quite a lot. So hopefully you go into this purchase objectively with your eyes wide open in the current day and not just from a dream from many years ago.
Hi,
Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.
Muz also made some valid points there.
Although life is to be lived and only you can decide what is important to you.
Might I suggest waiting a bit and buying one second hand to test out if it really is for you.
That way if you have to take a hit on it, the cost is limited.
From a cost benefit point of view your Camry (great choice by the way) is miles ahead of any current EV.
Cheers
Hi,
Just curious why your Aussie portion is > than international. Isn’t the biggest growth in international or are you just trying to capture the franking credits on the AU portion?
Also why not just sell either A200 or VAS and roll into 1 instead of having the 2 AU ETF’s? tax concerns?
Cheers
Ant