Portfolio Value and Net Worth - March 2016

Each month I publish the following regular progress updates toward achieving my second goal for 2016 which includes the pursuit of Financial Independence:
1. Portfolio Value and Net Worth as it stood at the end of the previous month
2. Income, Expenses and Savings achieved for the previous month
3. My Investing Choice for the previous month's savings

This post covers point 1 above: Portfolio Value and Net Worth at the end of March 2016.

Portfolio Value - end Mar 2016

My portfolio includes the savings and investments in my Freedom Kitty as well as my Personal Pension, the combination of which make up my "FI Before 50 Roadmap".

FREEDOM KITTY
Here is the end of month value of my Freedom Kitty:

As you can see the total amount I'd invested into my Freedom Kitty by the end of Feb was £1,200. In March with the ISA year end looming I managed to contribute a whopping £14,810.53 in order to max out my ISA allowance for the year.

The reason I was able to do this was because I sold my flat (which I had owned since 1999) earlier this year and I made some profit (after putting aside money to cover what I anticipate will be the capital gains tax liability). I have had the money from the flat sale sat in my current account while I decided whether I would likely need it for my upcoming house purchase with TheBF. As we progressed through March it became evident to me that I should be able to use some of the money to pump into my ISA without causing us any problems with the house purchase (mostly because we're using our mortgage to cover up-front costs).

I'd also not yet invested the money I'd saved for the Freedom Kitty in January and February so these contributed to the figure. So the money I was able to put into my ISA in March broke down as follows:

• Flat sale profit - £12,135.00
• Savings from January - £678.78
• Savings from February - £1,048.22
• Savings from March - £948.53
• TOTAL - £14,810.53

Within the 2015/2016 tax year I have paid a total of £16,010.53 into my St. James Place ISA. The ISA allowance for the year is £15,240, which means that the up-front fees for my ISA came to £770.53, which looks to be an initial fee of 5%. I don't yet have a benchmark to compare this up-front fee against, but I will certainly be paying a lot more attention to both up-front fees and ongoing fund fees from now on.

Due to the up-front fee, the current value of my ISA is less than the total amount I have invested by -£706.53, I'm hoping to see this deficit disappear over the course of the coming year, but who knows what may happen!

I have decided to consider an alternative ISA provider for the 2016/2017 tax year, so I've got some research to do in order to pick a good one!

Here's how the Freedom Kitty is tracking for the year - I've set myself a target of £23,000 for this calendar year (Jan-Dec 2016):

At 66.54%, I'm now about two thirds of the way to achieving my Freedom Kitty goal for 2016 with 9 months still to go. Though of course I have been helped along the way to this target by the money from my flat sale.

Here's how the Freedom Kitty is tracking against the overall target of £209,590:

It's particularly satisfying to see the percentage for my overall Freedom Kitty target shoot up from 0.54% to 7.3%. With 9 years 3 months to go until my desired FIRE date, I think this is a healthy percentage to be at. If I can manage 10% of the way to the £209,590 target by the end of the year I'll be very happy.


PERSONAL PENSION
Here is the end of month value of my Personal Pension:

In March the monthly pension contribution from my business account was £3,000 again. This is great because my monthly target is £2,000. As I mentioned last month, I'm not currently working on a contract so there's no income into my business account due in March. I've decided to postpone starting a new contract until after we've moved house, which means it's likely that my business account will not have any sales income until August. For this reason I have asked my financial advisor to reduce my company's pension contributions to £1,000 per month with this change taking effect in May. However, for now at least, I'm ahead of schedule for achieving my pension contributions target this year.

Here's how the Personal Pension is tracking for the year - I've set myself a target of £110,000 for this year:

I've got about 65% of the way still to go to hit my pension target for this year. My ability to achieve this target looks like it will really hinge on how soon I secure a work contract after our house move.

Here's how the Personal Pension is tracking against the overall target of £364,965:

I've achieved 24.59% of my overall target for my Personal Pension goal, next month I should hit a nice milestone of 25%, and that will feel good!

Net Worth - end Mar 2016

I don't include assets such as car, valuables or house sundries in this calculation - it's really only the big or purely savings items I choose to include. The credit card debt listed is my monthly spend which I always pay off in full each month by direct debit. This month sees an increase in my Net Worth of £4,007.66 since last month, a nice increase largely fuelled by my pension contribution I suspect.

Overall March was a very positive month for me in terms of my increasing Portfolio Value and Net Worth. The challenge now is to keep up the good work, which could be tricky with the big house move fast approaching and the uncertainty over when and what my next paying contract will be.


How's your net worth looking at the end of quarter 1? How are your portfolios fairing with the recent turbulent times in the markets? As always I'd love to hear from you and appreciate your comments...