Last month has been way more work than I’d imagine for I’m purchasing a new apartment. I almost forgot how much work it is to follow up with the builder, agent and, the bank. To be honest the process is yet to complete and I’m yet to get the handover. Least excited about the paperwork but I’m hopeful that I’ll get the handover by end of this month. I’m planning to treat myself to a small trip once everything is done. I’m thankful to get help from my family members during the entire process.
Anyhow, I’m getting back to monthly updates as I found it useful the last time I had debt. This will keep me accountable and also help me visualise my progress. I’d also like to document what I was going through emotionally when I am paying the debt. While maintaining spreadsheets is easier, it doesn’t really capture the details. I like reading through my past monthly savings update.
I’ll probably combine everything into one big update but if it starts becoming too much work, I’ll break it down into multiple blogpost. So there’s a chance I might start spamming on my own blog 😏 Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Goals
When I start with these updates, I want to be clear that just like last time, the goal is clear off the debt. This is a new debt on the apartment. This time I’ve taken even more debt than the last time although it’s a longer term debt. However, the goal of this blog is to achieve FIRE or financial freedom retire early. I feel that achieving Barista FI or CoastFI is the first step towards achieving Financial Independence. The last time updated on BaristaFI was back in August 2019. I haven’t made much of a progress since then because life happens. But what’s a goal if you can achieve it within a year!
BaristaFI
Continuing from the last time, funds required for BaristaFI as of Feb 2021:
June 2018: 17L
August 2018: 15.5L
September 2018: 15.4L
January 2019: 15L
March 2019: 14.8L
August 2019: 9.5L
December 2019: 5.1L
February 2021: 1.3L
I’m barely contributing 5,000-10,000 INR per month plus any additional amount in case of bonus. Hence the goal post seems to be way far away yet I’m fine with this moving slow as I’ve realized I do want to enjoy other aspects of life as well. With single mindedness of 2019, I wouldn’t have been able to move forward with any other goals than BaristaFI. A lot of finance bloggers in the west are calling it SlowFI.
Since I’ve spoken more of Stock updates and Crypto in the last couple of months, I should mention that this goal doesn’t include updates from Stock series and Crypto. They are part of my volatile portfolio. Considering that the Indian Government wants to ban Crypto I’m a bit conflicted about my crypto portfolio. I do not want to liquidate the portfolio since I did consider exactly this scenario when I started putting in money in $BTC, $ETH and $XRP. $XRP is already down and nobody can speak of its life going forward. I’ll keep my stock update and crypto series separate from my monthly updates for now.
Expenses
| Rent & Utilities | 0 |
| Transport | 1,000 |
| Bills | 3,000 |
| EMI & Maintenance | 59,000 |
| Food & other expenses | 7,000 |
| Total | 70,000 |
The expenses are low since I’m living with the family right now. I’m expecting this to go up another INR 20,000 per month once things go back to normal.
The EMI for my new house is exactly same as my last EMI. The only difference is tenure. For the last loan since it was a smaller loan I had taken a 15 year mortgage. This time I’ve taken a 20 year mortgage, which is quite significant. I have realized that it’s the only way to build wealth yet still not stress through financially.
Honestly, there has only been a brief one month period where I didn’t have an EMI to pay. This doesn’t feel more stressful. Anything extra that I’m able to save would be thrown in cutting down that debt. Once I rent out the apartment, I’ll most likely save 2-3 months of rent as sink fund for the property and throw rest of the months into the debt as well.
Mortgage
Starting off a new section in these updates to speak more of my mortgage as I’m sure to flip between paying down mortgage as soon as possible to only making necessary payments. I’ll be updating this section from April 2021 once I have a sense of the payments. I’ll break down the amount into Principle payment and interest payments. I’ll also be posting some exclusive content on Patreon on tips on how to get started with Real Estate+Stock portfolio for passive income. By April, I’ll also share the exact details of the deal, loan amount, and how I secured it. You can support me on Patreon.
Let me know if these updates are useful for you as well as they are for me. Do you think paying down the debt should be a priority or completing my goal of BaristaFI which I’ve neglected so far?