Aug-Oct 2019:: savings rate achieved

It’s been more than 2 months since our last blog post. Apart from laziness, the major contributor to this delay was uncertainty about what topic(s) to write about. 

Posting about our monthly progress may not be an interesting topic for most of the readers. Hence, we’ve decided to write about it every 3 months. Apart from the progress, we will write more on

general financial topics which adds value for the readers. 

Healthy savings rate

In August, our savings rate was 84% which further increased to 85% in September(the best for 2019). However, savings in October dropped sharply to 71%(the worst for 2019) as we spent on Diwali gifts for our parents and a cousin who is getting married soon. No regrets!! 🙂

Recovery in equity investments

On September 20th, the Finance Minister announced major cuts in corporate tax to boost the slowing economic growth. The news was well received by the stock markets and we saw a major recovery in our equity portfolio(both stocks and mutal funds). More details about the tax cuts – https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/the-hindu-explains-what-corporate-tax-cut-means-for-the-indian-economy/article29470498.ece

Other highlights

• Rent and utility bills contributed 50% of expenses.
• We traveled to our hometowns and also took a vacation. Prior bookings ensured that travel expenses were limited.
• No medical expenses which is a good sign.
• No unplanned expenses apart from the Diwali gifts.

Below is the pie-chart depicting category wise expenses:

Investments

We opened new FDs in all three months and contributed to existing RD. In addition, we bought Mutual Funds and stocks whenever there was a dip in price.

Passive Income

Dividends from various stocks and interest from few FDs added around Rs. 18k to our existing corpus. 

Forecast for Nov-Dec

The stock markets are showing signs of recovery due to corporate tax cuts, inflow of FII and DII(Foreign and Domestic Institutional Investors), easing global trade conflicts and good Q2 results from Indian companies. If the momentum continues, it will help us to surpass our monthly as well as yearly target. We are also planning a domestic vacation at the end of year but would avoid costly and crowded destinations.  

Retirement corpus as on Nov 1st, 2019 – Rs. 1,43,40,687

Net assets growth from Sep 2018 – Sep 2019

Its time to look back at our first blog post about the monthly progress – https://finfreefamily.blogspot.com/2018/10/sept-2018-equity-markets-disappoint.html

We added Rs. ~32.74L to our corpus in the last 12 months with an average monthly saving of Rs. 2.73L. This was slightly better than our savings target.