Click here to see all of my past Savings Reports and view my interactive net worth chart

Go to How To Track Your Savings  to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet.

There was a big recovery in March with my portfolio rising by 4.14%. This almost reversed the loss in January of negative 5.13%.

Since I began investing in 2018, I’m pretty sure that each time there was a huge loss, the most it has ever taken to reach that same net worth again has been 2 months. It’s the same now, January saw my net worth drop from £304k to £292k, and by the time March was finished I’d re-hit my previous net worth all time high. I believe this is because of the power of investing during a dip, it makes the recovery time less.

My net worth is now £308k, I’m UK-lean-FI again!

Packing Up Shop

It was only last month that I told you all that we will be relocating to the USA. It seems like it is now just around the corner, our visa appointment is booked for the 20th of April and we are going on a ‘pre-move trip’ for Easter to scout out some potential neighbourhoods.

From some comments in my last post, I realised that I hadn’t shared where we would be going in the US, I don’t know how I missed this crucial bit of info. We will be moving to the east-coast of the USA to Massachusetts.

My company is mainly located in New York and Boston so we are limited to the eastern time zone. My main work mode will still be remote working so we plan on initially moving to the Boston area and renting an apartment, then when we can buy a property (I’ve read we may not be able to for 1-2 years), we’ll move further out west to rural MA and start seeking our rural farm property, this has been our dream for a long time!

There’s also the option of rural Vermont which is only 1h away from most of the western-MA locations we are looking at, maybe the Frugalwoods will be our neighbours? A state-switch will probably have to wait until we have our green cards in 3-4 years.

Selling our Swedish Property

We’ve already sold our Swedish house to one of our neighbours, without even listing it on the market. After only having it for a year we thought that we may have lost money, but we actually made about £20k after the estate agent fees and tax (in Sweden they take 33% of your property profit even if it’s your main residence), so we actually made a pretty good decision to buy instead of rent for the last year. Previously we were paying £1500 per month in rent, so we’ve effectively saved £38k with buying, the risk was worth it!

Buying and selling property in Sweden is worlds apart from the UK, it’s so easy. All we had to do was sign one document that is managed by the real estate agent and it’s done. Next we’ll meet again with the buyer and estate agent on the hand over date, transfer the money, and hand over the keys. Why do the British make this process so difficult?

How Are We Feeling?

We are both really excited to move to Boston. We’re so excited that if the Visa appointment is completed earlier, we may just go early. I feel guilty for not thinking about missing Sweden, but right now the US just seems like such a better fit for us, maybe we’ll miss Sweden once we’ve left?

We’re excited about:

  • Being able to talk to people without saying “Sorry, I can’t speak Swedish” before every encounter.
  • Being able to find information online via Google about anything and everything.
  • Being able to book a doctors appointment and use a banking app on our own (Everything is in Swedish, we literally have to go to our Swedish friends to help us get past the doctors multiple-choice phone line).
  • Having better customer service on the phone and in person (they really treat you badly here, maybe partly because we can’t speak Swedish, but customer service is notoriously bad anyway.)
  • American food. We’re fed up of Swedish pizza and kebab - that’s all they have in our town.
  • American national parks.
  • Exploring America easily (north and south).
  • Being able to buy alcohol during our grocery shop and at the weekend.
  • Better value tech, we’ll be building gaming PCs at 1/4 of the price.
  • Going to Costco again, we love Costco!
  • Getting Amex cards again with free airport lounge access and points!
  • Being able to invest more than double as what we can now.
  • Being entrepreneurial (Sweden makes it impossible to earn any additional income as a ‘side-gig’).
  • Getting a cheap American truck.

Bring on America!!