…here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
This is my one hundredth monthly portfolio update. I complete this regular update to check progress against my goal.
Portfolio goal
My objective is to maintain a portfolio of at least $3,000,000. This should be capable of producing an annual income from total portfolio returns of about $103,500 (in 2025 dollars).
This portfolio objective is based on an assumed safe withdrawal rate of 3.45 per cent.
A secondary focus will be maintaining the minimum equity target of $2,400,000.
Portfolio summary
| Vanguard Lifestrategy High Growth Fund | $885,506 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund | $44,356 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Balanced Fund | $79,704 |
| Vanguard Diversified Bonds Fund | $91,944 |
| Vanguard Australian Shares ETF (VAS) | $564,260 |
| Vanguard International Shares ETF (VGS) | $775,332 |
| Betashares Australia 200 ETF (A200) | $307,684 |
| Telstra shares (TLS) | $2,259 |
| Insurance Australia Group shares (IAG) | $9,774 |
| NIB Holdings shares (NHF) | $8,226 |
| Gold ETF (GOLD.ASX) | $221,810 |
| Bitcoin | $1,448,642 |
| Raiz app (Aggressive portfolio) | $25,265 |
| Spaceship Voyager app (Index portfolio) | $4,321 |
| BrickX (P2P rental real estate) | $4,440 |
| Plenti Capital Note and Flex Market | $84,000 |
| Total portfolio value | $4,558,523 (-$74,101) |
Asset allocation
| Australian shares | 27.7% |
| Global shares | 26.1% |
| Emerging market shares | 1.1% |
| International small companies | 1.3% |
| Total international shares | 28.5% |
| Total shares | 56.2% (-23.8%) |
| Total property securities | 0.1% (+0.1%) |
| Australian bonds | 3.4% |
| International bonds | 3.6% |
| Total bonds | 7.0% (+2.0%) |
| Gold | 4.9% |
| Bitcoin | 31.8% |
| Gold and alternatives | 36.6% (+21.6%) |
Presented visually, the pie chart below is a high-level view of the current asset allocation of the portfolio.
Comments
The portfolio encountered further significant falls this month, with overall losses of just above $74,000 or 1.6 per cent of the portfolios value.
The relative movement of portfolio components within this negative result is quite notable, however. International shares fell around 4.9 per cent, and the value of Australian shares held also fell by around 3.0 per cent.
With increased economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and fears of US tariffs on gold imports, gold continued to extend recent gains, increasing in value by around 8 per cent over the last month alone.
Bitcoin remained at around the same level, appreciating by a modest 0.8 per cent over the period. By contrast, bond holdings contracted by about 0.3 per cent.
The small appreciation in Bitcoin and larger gains in gold partially offset falls in equity holdings, playing the traditional role of diversification in this month at least. This is also reflected in the fact that the headline portfolio result is more positive than if only the traditional financial assets (ex Bitcoin) are considered.
This month the portfolio saw its first substantive new investments in over a year.
The falling equity markets brought the portfolio close to the target minimum holding for Australian equities of $1.2 million. As a result, I purchased additional Australian equities (using the ETF VAS), to increase the ‘buffer’ to this minimum value, and incrementally shift the overall equity portfolio closer to the desired 50/50 domestic and international allocation.
In a pure sense, any move such as this can be viewed a potentially speculative one – as in future weeks, other movements could well still push the Australian equities held below that target.
There is a well established set of literature and findings around time and the disposition of excess cash into an equity holding. In this instance, however, I simply chose to effectively re-activate the cycle of investment I had previously used.
Nonetheless, outside of the portfolio there is a slowly growing pool of further excess cash, which is not strictly required to meet the portfolio target. There will need to be a decision in coming months about how to allocate this into the future, as leaving it in a high interest cash savings vehicle is an unsatisfactory guarantee of its erosion in purchasing power terms.
First quarter distributions – running faster to stay still?
With the end of March the first quarter portfolio distributions are being finalised.
These have grown from relative insignificance in the early part of the journey, to now an important source of income in their own right. This is because of the growth of the overall portfolio since 2017, and the movement of the Vanguard funds into a quarterly cadence, from a previous biannual distributions cycle.
The chart below sets out the level and composition of the expected distributions for the first quarter.
Overall, based on a mix of announced estimated ETF distributions and historical averages, payments of just under $24,000 are expected. This is above earlier estimates based just on average payouts, that had suggested first quarter distributions of around $17,000.
This quarter, the most distinctive feature is the unexpectedly high payout from the international shares ETF (VGS), at over seven times higher than the equivalent quarterly distributions (albeit from a holding around a third smaller) from the same fund in 2023.
The chart below sets out the overall levels and pattern of quarterly distribution payments through each quarter since 2017.
This highlights that as the portfolio moves into the second quarter, distributions of between $30,000 to $40,000 might be expected in coming months.
Importantly, these particular distributions graphs exclude the interest payments from the Plenti Capital note investment, of around $600 per month.
These are currently adding to the excess cash fund, for possible future reinvestment.
The gold shock – Goldmoney investment involuntarily withdrawn
The other investment portfolio development this month has been entirely involuntary.
Goldmoney, a niche international provider of virtually managed physical gold holdings has indicated that it is closing its offerings to customers, requiring customers to fully withdraw their holdings. This represented over 10 per cent of total gold holdings, with the remainder in the Gold.ASX ETF.
This forced redemption will mean some accrued capital gains will be realised this financial year. More importantly, it means that around $32,000 of capital has needed to be redeployed within the portfolio, if the financial independence portfolio is to be maintained at the same level. This led me to make a further purchase of Australian shares through the VAS exchange traded fund.
In retrospect, while an innovative and interesting way in which to hold gold, the product ended up having relatively high fees imposed later in its life, and using a simple ETF vehicle in the first instance would have been far preferable.
It is a reminder of an often obscured layer of risk embedded in many products – the risk of withdrawal of offerings, and of the host company finding different focus areas in the future.
Trends in average distributions and expenses
The chart below measures distributions against an estimate of total expenses.
The total expenses figure is based on actual credit card spending, with the addition of a notional monthly allowance for other fixed expenses.
This month average total expenses (red line) has continued to rise. These expenses currently are just above $8,500 per month.
The three year moving average of distributions (the blue line) has stabilised at around $7,500.
This leaves the deficit between expenses and average distributions of $1,072, the largest gap experienced to date.
Despite this small deterioration over last month, it remains the case that accrued distributions continue to be sufficient to have met around 99 per cent of all incurred credit card bills since late 2013.
Progress
| Measure | Progress |
| Portfolio objective – $3,000,000 | 152% |
| Financial portfolio income as % of total average expenses (3 yr average) – $99,600 | 108% |
| Target equity holding in portfolio – $2,400,000 | 107% |
| Financial portfolio income as % of target income – $103,500 pa | 104% |
Summary
Moving into a phase of potentially lower future income and savings, it has been interesting to observe whether this has shifted internal perspectives on the portfolio, its strength or vulnerability – particularly as expenditure continues to reflect the inflationary period experienced since 2021.
Seeing equity markets fall did not have any impact on my overall level of psychological comfort, but interestingly, the mental ‘habit’ of investing is a hard one to get out of.
As the market falls led to the Australian equity holdings move to within an error margin of their minimum targeted level, I actually found myself looking forward to investing event a relatively small new amount. An amount, it should be said, that could easily itself have been washed away in a days volatility – and indeed was, in its entirety later towards the end of the month.
There was a familiarity and positive mental associations that are hard to describe in repeating the steps that I effectively have been taking since around 2001, once more – even though in the scheme of the overall portfolio, one further investment is materially irrelevant to both security, and prospects for future portfolio returns.
This makes one suspicious of analysis which conveniently leads to the result of ‘keep investing’, as it might seem to be just reason in service of preference, rather than the optimum decision.
Yet the pressing issue of maintaining real purchasing power for unneeded capital over the long-term remains. Allotting those funds to be eroded through time purely for the principle of demonstrating that no further investments needed to be made to reliably produce the target income seems a high price to pay, to demonstrate a point.
Despite the considerations above, this month the focus has not been purely financial.
Rather, I have taken some concrete steps to start to ‘practice’ my post financial independence lifestyle, taking an interstate trip to follow some interests, and exercise the muscle of being open to the new experiences that brings out.
As this trip happened, the Federal election was called. Declines in disposable income, and the pressures on cost of living are both featuring prominently in campaigning. In a sense, these themes are manifestations of the same issues – the strong erosion of purchasing power in the post-2020 period, and the attendant hard choices facing those seeking to maintain a stable lifestyle benchmark amidst rising prices.
Like Alice, the underlying sense caused by this destruction of purchasing power is of running, only to find that one is staying still. Against these forces, running twice as fast, and allocating capital carefully, is seemingly the only way to hope to move forward.
Note for readers
Over the last few months, there has been a noticeable degradation in the useability of my standard blogging interface. As an alternative, and because I am not interested in becoming a coder, plug-in or website management expert, I have created a rough and ready backup Substack and imported past posts. The formatting of past posts may not be as tidy as here, but should the blog ever seem to ‘disappear’ or cease, it will likely just be a signal that I have switched entirely to Substack and started posting there.
Disclaimer
The specific portfolio allocation and approach described has been determined solely based on my personal circumstances, objectives, assessments and risk tolerances. It is not personal financial advice, or recommendation to invest in any particular investment product, security or asset, and investors considering these issues should undertake their own detailed research or seek professional advice.