As soon as one starts looking into popular FIRE blogs, it become apparent that many folks within this community enthusiastically share their net worth. So much so that rockstarfinance.com maintains an active list of all FIRE bloggers who have made their net-worth public.

I have spend some time pondering over the question of whether I should make our net worth numbers public? One particular incidence at work has further prompted me to seriously think about this question.

I have a Russian colleague at work with whom I was discussing this very topic. He was some what surprised when I showed him the list of bloggers who have made their net worth public. As it turns out there is quite a rationale reason for his surprise and dismay.

He goes, (not necessarily verbatim), “I have my family in Russia and if my net worth numbers become public, there is a significant chance that I may endanger my family members in Russia”. Now this is a powerful argument against announcing to the world how “rich”.

To be fair, as far as I am aware no individual who aspires to be FIRE is ultra-wealthy. Infact I would argue, ultra-networth, i.e., rich to the extent that one requires 24 hr body guard, is not in the spirit of FIRE. The net worth numbers quoted on the public list, to the extent that they are accurate and updated on regular basis, while large, are still ways off from the 1 % crowd.

While I do not foresee the possibility for our net worth numbers posing a risk to our family members back home in India, I have a rather mundane reason for not making our absolute net worth numbers public,  Mrs AVI.  It suffices to say that Mrs AVI is some what conservative and is not in favor of exposing our networth numbers to the world.

At the risk of not jeopardizing our relationship, and in the spirit of tracking progress towards FI,  I have decided to talk in relatives. Specifically, hence forth I will talk about net worth numbers in terms of percentages, with 100 % representing our FI number.

Table below offers a snap-shot of networth portfolio as it stands on July 27th 2019.

Pi-Chart of our networth distribution is shown below

Coincidently, my very first net worth update marks  an important milestone in our FI journey. We have crossed the 50 % mark towards FI.

While to the best of my knowledge there are no studies on optimal networth allocation, Sam from financialsamurai.com has written two articles (see here and here) on net worth allocation and his recommendation, (base case framework) for individual of my age bracket are: 60 % in markets (40 % stocks, 20 % bonds), 25 % in real estate and 15 % in cash assets (including CDs and money-market).

Our networth distribution clearly does not conform to Sam’s recommendation.

11.8 % of our net worth is currently stashed away in cash assets, of which 1.4 % in zero interest bearing checking account and about 7.4 % is in high-yield savings account. Mortgage is our biggest liability at 23.59 % of FI.

Both the net cash and the mortgage numbers are some what large for my comfort and are a direct consequence of current low-interest macro environment. Mortgage rates are still quite low while markets are reaching new highs by every passing day. As a result, we do not see a strong incentive to pay down our mortgage. At the same time there seems to be a paucity of attractive investing ideas.

Still, market investments account for a bulk of our networth assets. About 40% in non-retirement brokerage accounts and about 34 % in retirement brokerage accounts. These comprise a mix of individual stock investments and a diversified portfolio of index-fund assets. I have touched upon some aspects of my investments in previous blog articles, (see here and here).

Given my core interests in value investing and my belief that it is futile to bet against America, investments will continue to remain significant contributors of our net worth.

At the same time, increasing sources of passive income streams remains a key objective for me achieve FI.  Moving forward, I would therefore like to see an increase in income generating real-estate investments.

Well thats all about my first post on our net worth. For next article I want to revisit our retirement portfolio and discuss some recent changes I have made.