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. 🔥
It was a very quiet November for us this year.
I did manage to attend a conference as a sponsor for my data company, though, and it’s been such a different experience being on the other side of the table. After years of attending as a government delegate, stepping into the sponsor role has been a lot of fun and a real eye-opener.
Marketing and selling my business has been a journey of discovery. I used to think that selling was as simple as solving a problem—build it, and they will come. How could they not? But in reality, it’s been nothing like that.
Most clients don’t even know what they’re looking for until you show them something that just clicks. That’s when you’re in business. Over the past three years, I’ve worked hard to refine my presentations to get to that moment as quickly as possible. When I meet a potential buyer, I aim to capture their interest in under two minutes. If it takes longer to explain, I’ve usually lost them.
This whole process has also given me a deep appreciation for how polished other businesses’ marketing can be.
I love learning new skills, and selling has been one of the most challenging yet rewarding tasks I’ve undertaken. It is funny, frustrating, and always full of lessons!
Net Worth Update
Holy Bitcoin, Batman!
Our BTC holding shot up by a massive 38.6% in November, adding over $20K to the portfolio in just one month!
It’s been impossible to ignore what Bitcoin’s been doing lately—it’s all over FIRE blogs, subreddits, forums, and even my Facebook group. The surge has been wild, and now BTC makes up 6.7% of our FIRE portfolio. That’s no small chunk considering the size of our portfolio.
I stopped buying Bitcoin back in 2022 when it hit 2% of our allocation—that was the level I was comfortable with. But these gains have completely smashed that target. Now I’m in a bit of a bind:
Do I sell some BTC to bring it back to a reasonable weighting in the portfolio? Or do I hold on and ride the wave, even though it’s making me a bit nervous?
The other issue is, I want to actually use Bitcoin like it’s meant to be used—for buying goods and services directly. But let’s face it, hardly anyone accepts BTC as payment these days. And converting it back to fiat just to spend AUD defeats the whole purpose of decentralised currency.
I want to trade Bitcoin peer-to-peer, no middlemen, no fiat conversions. But honestly, that dream still feels a long way off. So, if I want to rebalance, I might have to sell back into fiat.
On the flip side, holding it makes me uneasy too. Right now, our BTC is worth $75,000—that’s a whole Tesla sitting in the portfolio! It doesn’t align with my investing philosophy to let a speculative asset take up such a big slice of the pie.
And then there’s the debate about Bitcoin being “digital gold” rather than a currency. That’s not why I got excited about it in the first place! I want BTC (or another crypto) to be a true medium of exchange.
Yes, the block size issue gets thrown around as a roadblock, but technical problems can be solved with time and consensus. Sure, people will point to the block size wars as proof it won’t change, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. Breakthroughs take time.
I’m still bullish on BTC—or another crypto—eventually replacing fiat as a currency. The idea of it being virtual gold feels like a distraction from what Bitcoin originally set out to achieve.
As always, time will tell… but for now, this wild ride continues!
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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 did not buy any shares in November.
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.
Networth
Love seeing your journey. Well done on the business too. You comments on Bitcoin are interesting. BlackRock recently advised a 2-3% portfolio allocation to Bitcoin. I’m sticking with that for a little bit of diversification and potentially capture a whole lot of upside.
When I read articles like this I wonder about its future…FARTCOIN has become one of the most talked-about tokens, with its recent 257% surge defying expectations. The rise was largely driven by meme coin mania, highlighting the absurdity of the crypto market.
In my opinion, comparing BTC to Fartcoin isn’t particularly useful…
Bitcoin is too far gone into digital gold territory. It’s chances of ever being used as a FIAT are slim to none from here.
I keep seeing comments like this, but what do you mean by “too far gone”?
Why do you think that? From my understanding, BTC can absolutely be developed to handle more transactions. It’s just that a group of developers vetoed those changes back in 2017, or whenever it was.
Ultimately you can use a chain that has big blocks; its called bitcoin cash. You should have some if you had btc before the split. Bitcoin cash increased the blocksize to 32 megs which means every ~10 minutes the block chain grows by 32 megs if the the block is full. At 32mb * 144 blocks equals a daily growth of 4.5 gb per day, 138 gb per month or 1.68 tb per year. I dont know if you have ever actually used a real btc node, but its already tedious downloading the btc chain which is only 500gb at the moment. You really need SSD drives and a fast internet connection, otherwise its painfully slow.
What do you get for this increased size? 100 transactions per second vs 7 transactions per second (TPS). I don’t know how accurate this information is, but from what I read visa handles about 1700 TPS (up to a theoretical maximum of 65k TPS). To support 1700 TPS, you would need a block size of about 255 megs, which means a yearly growth of ~12TB per year. After a few years its going to become extremely difficult, if not impossible for anybody other than a company to run a node in a data center due to hardware costs and bandwidth requirements.
This goes completely against what BTC stood for, at least what it used to stand for. It was supposed to be for anybody. That is why they chose to introduce segwit etc, and layer 2 technologies like lightning, which aren’t without their compromises, but at least it keeps running a node within the reach of the general public.
Now however, from reading online, most of this sentiment is gone. Its no longer about having the freedom to truly own a digital asset, or having the ability to pay somebody directly without a trusted third party, or having a system ‘outside’ the current system as a hedge or a failsafe or fallback; its simply a vehicle to make more fiat. ETF’s are in some ways the logical conclusion of all of this.
So maybe the big blockers were right, or maybe I’m wrong, or maybe it doesn’t matter; who knows how it will all turn out.
Great comment, BB—very informative!
I wonder if, as computing power continues to get faster and cheaper over time, increasing the block size might eventually make sense while still allowing consumer hardware to run nodes.
Like you said, who knows how it will all play out!
Bitcoin’s currently a terrible cryptocurrency for medium of exchange and given there are now much better options for that, I’d be surprised if Bitcoin Core devs are working much on scalability.
Big upside from here might depend on whether Trump announces a BTC strategic reserve for the US.
That’s the next big step for BTC to become mainstream – Governments and more so Institutions and superfunds globally could take BTC to the moon, then people can then withdraw and convert at will to use as FIAT when you want. There should be no difference when you take your AUD to any other country you need to convert to Fiat and spend locally.
Unless you think down the track it will be like the EU with countries adopting BTC as their main currency, now that’s a long way off but who knows?
How does Bitcoin compare to the rest of your portfolio in terms of performance?
It’s been on an absolute tear lately.
Tesla take bitcoin as payment in the USA. Not sure about Oz… You could directly send half of your position to them for a good deposit and get your new Tesla for Xmas?
Don’t forget about CGT implications on selling BTC
What if you never convert BTC back to fiat and instead use it to trade with someone else for something? Still get slugged with the CGT?
You should check with Accountant. Think this is still a CGT event as trigger is that you have disposed of asset. What you get for it doesn’t matter i.e. Fiat, Labor, Goods etc, guys let me know if this is not correct but I think the ATO would use the value of goods etc to calculate CGT.
It (CGT) only doesn’t apply if you buy BTC then use it as payment for goods. But time period needs to be short, which i don’t believe applies to you as purpose was to invest even though it was speculative, on the counter side if you lost then you can claim as tax deduction.
I don’t think they accept BTC anymore.
Do you take bitcoin or similar as payment for your own business or other currency dealings?
It’s always hard to know when to liquidate an asset, whether it be a great performer or an absolute stinker (I’m looking at you Platinum Asset Management with your 84% down in 17 years and you too Gowings 25% down. You should be raking in money).
I sold $11k of Fortesque Metals this week at a small CG. It was a good dividend player but I’m slowly tidying the portfolio and that $11k pays for 1 of the Powerwalls I installed last month. Payback/ROI on batteries is measured in decades but there is a guaranteed return every year and I like not ever having to pay a power bill ever again.
They say the best portfolio is the one you stick with ..
Sell BTC and sleep happily at night, you have already hit financial success without it, for fill your dream and buy the Tesla
Yo, lots of BTC haters in comments.
I’d say don’t rebalance, or at least not now, let the bull market play out first.
Warren Buffet and others teach to trim bad investments and lean into your best performers, not the other way around. Extra $50k in cash won’t make any difference to you now.
I was always skeptical about BTC but in taking the bet to DCA in to it now. I split 60% DCA to shares and 40% to bitcoin monthly.
Dam that’s aggressive!!
Well done on the gains so far 🙂
I would sell down BTC holding over the next 3 months to your original weighting. what is FIAT that you refer to?
If you don’t know what Fiat is, probably best not to suggest to sell BTC 🙂
I use Wayex (It’s Australian) as a way to spend crypto. It’s a card like any other credit / debit card that you can spend at any shop you want. you can choose which crypto to spend.
AMP just bought $27 million worth of BTC for Australian pension funds. BTC is now more valuable than silver and El Salvado accepts it as legal tender. That ‘s got to be saying something.
Also, your networth used to be way ahead of mine, now I’m closing the gap because of BTC. Not a competition, just a funny observation. I only started buying BTC a year ago and it’s gone up over 100%. I’m happy to keep holding.
Weren’t you planning on selling your VAS to buy A200 / debt recycle the remainder of your PPOR loan?
Did you decide not to go ahead with this – if so, do you mind me asking what reason?
Just curious whether wash- sale was a factor. You mentioned Accountant said it was ok and wouldn’t be a wash-sale, but wasn’t sure when push-came-to-shove they decided may have been “substantially similar assets” and that there was a tax advantage (even though wouldn’t have been a loss on sale).
Hi John,
I actually just did this! The details will be in the December update 🙂
Hi mate, thanks for the update – really enjoying reading these each month.
It’s great to hear more talk about Bitcoin too. I have been going down a rabbit hole the last few months with this, and the more I learn, the more conviction I have.
Obviously the first thing to do is separate Bitcoin from all other crypto. If you then consider approach Bitcoin from a monetary history perspective, I see no better store of value.
The inflation rate of Bitcoin is 0.8%, compared to Gold at ~1.5% and fiat currency at (arguably) 7-10% year – this is based on broad money growth since 1971.
Bitcoin is still in its’ very early stages, and new money tends to evolve from:
Collectable -> store of value -> medium of exchange -> unit of account.
People saying that it’s not a medium of exchange yet and that it serves no purpose, should not be so quick to write it off. I think its’ properties as a store of value is a reason to invest in and of itself.
Even if it never progresses past the store of value stage, there is still a 900 trillion addressable market if you look at the investable assets in the world. If some of the big institutional investors like Blackrock allocate 2% of their asset allocation to it, that still represents a huge upside.
I think as the Lindy effect further entrenches itself and people realize Bitcoin is not going away, it will become a more accepted investment class. Also, the inflation rate of Bitcoin will continue to fall:
from 0.8% currently,
to 0.4% in 2028,
to 0.2% in 2032
And so on as the 4 year halvings progress.
I see it as still in its’ very early stages and people will gradually recognize its’ legitimacy. But time will tell!
No worries, David.
I completely agree with you about being in the early stages. Anecdotally, around 95% of my friends and family don’t own any BTC. I doubt my Boomer parents could even buy some, even with step-by-step instructions—it’s just too complicated right now.
Honestly, if BTC is the cryptocurrency that ends up on top, it’s still going to take years, maybe decades, to become mainstream. So much needs to be improved and simplified for the average person to trust and use it effectively.
On the flip side, if Google perfects quantum computing, it could potentially break BTC’s encryption, crashing its value to $0 almost instantly 😅…
There are still so many variables at play.
Hi mate, FIRE newbie here. Great journey so far. I am inspired by your journey and have become addicted to your blogs and podcast. Just wanted to know if you had a financial planner when you started your journey, and do you have one now?
Thanks, Leesa.
Nope, never used a financial planner.
I did try to see one when I was 23, but I was basically turned away—probably because I didn’t have any assets at the time.
Honestly, educating yourself is the best way to go.