February 2021 Monthly Report

February 2021 Monthly Report

February 2021 has been quite a month.

For the majority of the month I have mostly been working from home doing anesthesia pain consultations. It’s nice because I get to spend so much time with my wife and daughter.

My typical day looks something like this. I wake up early in the morning and exercise, usually pushups or other body weight exercises. Then I would call a few patients for morning consults. At around 11:30 am I would have lunch with the family. Afterwards I would call a few more patients for the afternoon schedule. Sometimes I would have time to work on some wellness projects before my daughter wakes up from her afternoon nap. When she does wake up, I try to take her out for a walk at the local park. Then we would come home, eat dinner, the get ready for bed. It’s been a nice routine.

Last month was very similar. Except instead of pushups I was doing morning gratitude runs. I had to take a break from running because I was starting to get blisters and bruises on my toes. So now I usually do push ups, sit ups, and other body weight exercises. I’ll get back to running when my feet heal.

Frugality and Minimalism

As many of you readers know, frugality and minimalism is a lifestyle we fully embrace that is aligned with our values.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought anything that was a non-consumable material item. We still don’t buy clothes since we have more than enough. I don’t even think we bought any clothes for my daughter the last few months. I’m not sure if it counts, but we did buy her a wide brim hat to protect her face from the sun since we spend quite a bit of time outdoors. Oh yeah, my wife did buy some skin care products that we are currently using. Other than that, we didn’t buy anything.

It’s great when our minimalist lifestyle spills over to others, especially our family and loved ones. My wife’s parents used to feel compelled to buy our daughter things. I can understand since grandparents always seem to want to spoil their grandchildren. My wife has been pretty firm with them about our minimalist values and they’ve done a great job of not buying anything too.

My parents have done a great job too. The last gift that they had given our daughter was some of my old books when I was a toddler. Those Sesame Street books from more than 30 years ago are some of her favorite books!

 

Credit Card Points And Miles

The past few months I have accumulated a lot of points and miles. This was achieved mostly by recent sign up bonuses, strategic big spending bonuses from paying taxes in January, a few referral bonuses from friends, and some manufactured spending.

I have in total about:

• 700,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points
• 675,000 Amex Membership Rewards points
• 175,000 Citi Thank You points
• 900,000 Hilton Honors points
• 176,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points
• 105,000 IHG Rewards points
• 75,000 Hyatt points

I have actually have a few hundred thousands points from various other loyalty program currencies, but I didn’t want to list them all. The point is, I have a lot of points. Hopefully I can use them to redeem for travel later in the year.

If not, I at least have the option of redeeming the bank points for more than $12,000 in cash. When you think about it, that’s pretty awesome considering the acquisition cost of earning all these points is probably a fraction of that.

We don’t overspend and buy excessive things just to earn credit card points. Quite the contrary. Most of the points I accrue are earned from paying taxes and lifestyle expenses I would have paid for anyway.

 

Finance and Investments

February has been quit a down month for my portfolio.

It started off okay, but then the last week saw a huge drop at the end of the month. This is because of the huge sell off in stocks, especially the technology sector which I am slightly overweight in. Tesla, Square, Peloton, and Apple are some of the individual stocks that I own that really saw a significant decline.

This year to date, though, I did outperformed the S&P 500.

Asset Allocation

It’s interesting because my asset allocation has totally changed from two and half years ago when I first published my investor policy statement.

• 50% US Stocks
  • ~20% Large Cap
  • ~15% Mid Cap
  • ~15% Small Cap
• 25% International Stocks
  • ~15% Developed markets
  • ~10% Emerging markets
• 15% Bonds
  • ~14% US Bonds
  • ~1% International Bonds
• 5% Other
  • ~3% REITs
  • ~1% metals
  • ~1% natural resources
• 5% Cash
  • ~4% high yield money market savings account
  • ~1% checking account

Fast forward to today and here is what my current asset allocation looks like (courtesy of Personal Capital).

The “Alternatives” is my allocation to real estate syndicated funds. The “unclassified” is my allocation to Bitcoin, and a small percentage of Ethereum and Gold.

My Bitcoin position has increased by 500%, which totally inflated my allocated percentage. I’m totally fine with this and I plan to HODL and possibly even buy more on a dip. I may only consider rebalancing to other assets if my Bitcoin goes over 15%. My investing risk profile is relatively aggressive. But I would probably be a bit uncomfortable if more than 15% of my portfolio was in a highly volatile and speculative asset like cryptocurrency. Just like I how I like to put my dollars to work, I would like my Bitcoin to earn money too. I am considering earning interest on my Bitcoin through BlockFi.

The allocation to bonds at 6% is relatively low compared to what Personal Capital recommends. But I’m okay with that. My bond position is all in a bond fund within my tax advantaged retirement account (where it should be). I don’t see a lot of upside to adding mover bonds at this point given that interest rates are almost at zero and will either be stable or go up. Plus I have long investing time horizon so I can afford more risk for potentially higher returns.

Maybe it’s time to modify and tweak my investor policy statement just a little bit…

 

Food

Earlier in February, we tried a free meal kit from Green Chef. The food was actually really good.

One of the meals that we cooked was a vegan pizza.

 

We cooked some German food too!

Since we aren’t traveling, we are being tourists in our own city.

We try to support our favorite local vegan restaurants. We usually order food for takeout and bring it to an outdoor picnic. While it was freezing cold in most of the country, it was really pleasant outside in San Diego.