May 2020 Financial Update

Steve Cummings

Updated on:

May 2020 Net Worth update: 68,935.87

It is that time of the month, when you sit down and figure out the monthly expenditures, savings, and the increase in value of your portfolio. 

Interesting enough, we have had a pretty good month for our finances. Our stimulus check from the US came in giving us a $1200 boost to our Net Worth. Since Mrs. Frugal Expat is not an American she did not receive any stimulus. It would have been cool, but we will take our $1200.

Side Hustling Income

This month has been full of side hustling as well. Mrs. Frugal Expat did some presentations about teaching English, which she got some extra pay for. We did four weeks of tutoring, and I even started a Finance Class. The Finance class may not pay me until June, but side hustling to help with our savings. 

Unfortunately, we are still fighting to get some refunds for a flight of ours that was cancelled in March. The Credit card company put back the amount we tried to dispute. It has been a long and tiring process, but at least we have closed four to five cases with our Chase card. Chase has some great travel insurance on their card.

Net Worth Breakdown

Let me Break down this Net Worth for you all. We are sitting at $68,935.87. That is an increase of +$5,650 from last month. The stock market has gone up, and we are doing pretty well financially. 

Right now, we have about $58,000 in stocks, and $11,700 in cash. I would normally not hold this much cash, but like I said we are still fighting to try and get back some money from cancelled flights.

We had to hold onto some cash to pay off the credit card bill in case the flights do not get refunded.

Here is the breakdown of the month:

Cash Savings: (+$1,331.88)

We got that $1200 stimulus check from the CARES Act. Mrs. Frugal Expat got paid $100 for a presentation on teaching. We had earned $266 for tutoring. We got paid this month. Wohoo!! Plus we did not spend much money at all. Just on buying food and transportation to school and back.

Taxable Account: (+$4,741.66)

The market went up a bit this month. I had increased a few shares in VXUS and VTI. Plus got a few free shares from opening up Webull. Our portfolio increased in value by 8.5% this month, which helped add $4,740 to it.

Roth IRA: (+$148.84)

My Roth IRA increased a tiny bit. Since living abroad I do not make enough money to put into my Roth IRA. All of the income that I receive is Tax Free, so the Roth just increases as the market increases plus when dividends get deposited as well. It had a growth of $149. Every little bit counts.

Liabilities ($1197.59)

Capital One put back the credit they gave us for one of our flights being cancelled. Visa did not have enough information to do a chargeback. So we are fighting to get those flights refunded. It has been long and tedious, but we have been quite blessed this month with other refunds and credits.

Our Goals:

We are also having some pretty good  savings in our Taiwan bank accounts, and once that gets big enough we will do some transfers to our American account. 

Our goal by the end of 2020 is to have a net worth of $120,000. We are getting close. If we keep side hustling, spending less, and investing we will reach our goal and hopefully surpass it.

4 thoughts on “May 2020 Financial Update”

  1. Hi Steve,
    Tommy here. Rereading all of your previous articles today and a few questions arose.

    1. When you say you have $11,700 of your net worth in cash does it include assets like house, car…etc? What’s the definition of “cash” here ?
    2. Do you think it’s a need to have credit card even I’m not borrowing money?
    3. How far are you from your goal of 2020? Or have you reached it already?

    Again thank you for all the content you‘ve provided. I have tremendous respect for you not just for the level you are at but the determination to share all this to everyone out there who are in need of knowledge and motivation.

    Reply
    • Hi Tommy,

      I am glad to answer your questions. Thank you for your comment.

      1. When I am talking about cash it is just cash. It is the money sitting in our bank account or savings account. It does not include any other assets. It is like the money you use to buy things with. Just quite simply “cash”.

      2. As a U.S. citizen, I think holding a credit card is vital to creating a credit history and building credit in order to make it easier to get lower interest rates on loans from the bank if you are buying a car or a house. Every country is different in this regard. Credit cards in the U.S. also provide some great benefits if you know how to use them correctly, like gaining points to travel or even cash back. Each country has different views on credit cards.

      When I use a credit card, I have the money to pay it off every month. You never want to go in debt to credit card companies. They have high interest rates. I put the credit card statements as debt on my Net Worth just to show how much we still owe for the next the month. We are not in credit card debt and I advise people to not spend on credit cards if you do not have the money to pay them off at the time the payment is due.

      3. It seems like I adjust our goals for our Net Worth for 2020 every month. My goal was to invest around $30,000 in 2020. Mrs. FE and I have done that already. I think we wanted to have our Net Worth close to $120K at the end of 2020. We are close to $142K as of now. So new goal is $150K by the end of 2020.

      Thank you for your comments. I hope this answers your questions.

      Reply
  2. Hi Steve,
    Sorry for the late reply!
    Yes this is very clear to me, and great information to know about!
    I think in Taiwan we have similar benefits from using credit card as well. So I definitely need to check it out soon!
    I’m really glad to see you achieve your goal and are on the right track to a higher goal again and again.
    Your have no idea how much your content helped me and how much I got inspired by your success.

    Cheers:)

    Reply

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