As we conclude and round off 2019, it safe to say that it was a year of two halves. The first half of the year we shifted our money from cash into global Vanguard funds whilst the global market was experiencing explosive growth. Our portfolio performance in the second half of the year was much more subdued and consequently our total portfolio value increased by ~£14.5k verses the ~£28k which it grew by in the first half of 2019.

In Q4 we continued the trend of further increasing our position in our Vanguard global fund which now accounts for 85% of our total portfolio. The performance of Mr. FIRE Bear’s company share scheme continued to underwhelm and under perform and we increasingly regret being blinded by greed and not selling our risky and volatile cryptocurrencies when they would have returned a significant profit – but lesson learnt!

As we highlighted in our Q3 update, young investors like ourselves would much rather see the stock market decline rather than ballooning to record highs and in Q4 we got our wish! Two of the three months saw negative growth and as a result our accumulated growth reduced from 8.17% to now just 3.6%. Let’s hope this trend continues for as long as possible!

For us the most visible impact of the decreased growth rate seen in Q4 is the impact it has had on our projected £1m date. At the end of Q3 we were projected to reach this milestone in September 2028, however in just 3 months the date in which we are predicted to hit £1m has slid back over 4 years to December 2032!

As shown by the example above, due to our still relatively small sample size of data, we are still experience big swings in our projected totals going forward. Overtime, as we get more data, the impact that a bad month or two will have on our long term projections will be decreased but until then we will just sit back and enjoy the ride! We are very much looking forward to comparing this 2019 Q4 update with the 2020 Q4 update to see how close to the ‘predicted wealth 2020 Q4’ figure of ~£153k we reach. Time will tell!

How is your journey towards financial independence going? Let us know in the comments below.