Welcome to our 2025 financial wrap up blog. What a year!
2025 was a year of adjustments, challenges and getting acquainted with our new normal. It hasn’t been all roses, but we are very happy. Scratch that. We are happy and we working on some things that will make us more happy.
The transition from living in an RV to moving back into a house has been a bumpy ride. From a financial standpoint it has been very expensive. Trying to furnish an entire home is not cheap. It’s also not as fun as it used to be when we were younger. Getting reacquainted with the number of bills that come with home ownership is even less enjoyable. Water, trash, electric, tv, internet, POA, insurance and worst of all property taxes. BLAH!!
On the personal side it has been a lot of work just to get our property in order somewhat. It’s even more work to keep it that way. Everything is bigger in Texas, even the weeds! These are responsibilities that come with ownership so there are no complaints. This is just the new normal of life off the road.
With all of this we still did some traveling in 2025. We flew to Washington to visit our son, we went to Vegas for my 50th birthday and we did a rental car road trip to Utah for Christmas. It turned into a disaster, but we did it. Mrs. RVF even took a trip back behind the iron curtain to California for a family visit. Unfortunately, I planted a garden that needed water so I had to stay home for that one. Oh, darn!
After a year at home we have no regrets about getting off the road full-time. Despite the challenges and expense of it we made the right decision. Long term this is a better way to have some stability and still do what we love.
So now is a good time to reveal something to our readers.
For the last year something deep down has been calling us. It started as a whisper. We tried to ignore it, but it just grew louder. Then we tried fighting it, but it smacked us around all the way to Utah and back. Now it just keeps calling us over and over and over again like a politician begging for money. The damn open road!! It just will not let us go!!
Ok, we have started looking at RV’s again. Nothing crazy like the 40 foot diesel pusher we lived in. We are just interested in a small RV that can get us back on the road again.
As much as we love our house, we are most happy when we are traveling. Now that we are pretty much settled we hope to execute the next phase of our plan and get back to doing what we love. We still have 20 states to check off our list after all.
We love the idea of going on the road for however long we want and then coming home. It’s a happy medium between the full-time RV life we left last year and when we would go on vacation and come back home for work like the old days. Instead of full-time we will be anytime. As in anytime we want to.
There is no hurry and no need to run out and immediately buy any old RV. For now we are just in the planning and figuring it out stage. A smaller RV will give us more flexibility to get to some places we couldn’t with our big rig. It will certainly be easier to boondock in remote areas which we always wanted to do. We just need to be patient and figure out what works for us practically and financially.
Thankfully, we have a lot of experience in this arena. In order for us to pull the trigger it will have to check all the boxes. So it could take awhile. But the thought of RV travel again really gets us excited!!
Ok, enough of that nonsense. Let’s get to the numbers!!
Our Portfolio Year Ending 2025:
Portfolio Value = $1,627,296
Portfolio Increased By $157,904 or 10.75% From The End of 2024
Net Worth = $1,856,995
Net Worth Increased By $157,892 or 9.29% From The End Of 2024
The first year of our new withdrawal plan worked out well. We had steady income all year long and our portfolio ended in the positive by very sweet $157k. And we are slowly working our way towards a milestone $2M net worth! Can’t ask for anything better than these results in my opinion.
In our previous update I mentioned what happened to us in 2022. Here is a brief summary: After hitting our FI number we retired, sold everything we owned, hit the road in a RV and then in 2022 the market crashed. GULP!!
The years leading up to that crash were a lot like today’s environment. Record highs in the markets and a lot of optimism. When the markets tanked I remember thinking “maybe I should have reallocated some funds?” But, it was too late by that time and I’m not selling into a panic. Plus I have a pretty high risk tolerance and had been through this several times before. I know the drill.
Over the last couple of months I recalled that moment a few times. So I decided to look up our current portfolio allocation. We were sitting at 95% Equities, 3% Bonds, 2% Cash. And those bonds are part of a balanced fund whose top holdings are almost all MAG7 stocks. As I said, I have a high risk tolerance.
After seeing this I decided it was probably time to do a little retooling. Sure I could let it ride and mentally I wouldn’t lose any sleep if the market dropped. However, this isn’t 2022 and the smart move is to adapt our plan to fit our current reality.
That reality is that we are drawing from funds we would have never touched in 2022. This means our sequence risk has increased and if the market tanks it would make it more difficult to recover. Taking this into account, and with the markets at all time highs once again, I have decided that now is the time to act.
In the interest of full disclosure this is an ongoing process. I would like to get us to an allocation somewhere between 80/15/5 or 70/25/5. I’m not set on exact numbers as of now. But working our way down to the old 60/40 portfolio over the next years of our life is where we will end up. Maybe a little more cash. We are still young so we need to continue having portfolio growth while trying to limit prolonged downside risk.
To start I took some profit for the first time ever in a few of our stock funds. With that I have increased our cash position a little. It’s a good idea for us to have an “oh shit” fund within our retirement accounts. This would cover at least a year worth of expenses in a down market so we don’t need to sell assets.
Remember we are using rule 72(t) so we are required to withdrawal equal amounts annually regardless of market conditions. In a down market we could choose this cash pool to draw from and leave our equity funds alone. In up years we can rebalance and replenish the cash. We could even build on it if that makes us more comfortable.
I have also increased our bond holdings by adding a couple of different bond funds. We will continue to increase these positions either by reinvesting dividends from other holdings into them or by doing more rebalancing. I would like to see how the markets go a little in 2026 before deciding.
With these adjustments we are currently sitting at an allocation of about 85/10/5. So we have made some progress and will continue to evolve as the months go by.
If we take a step back it is a little surreal to think about where we are in life. After decades of planning, pondering and accumulating we have entered a phase of life that was a distant dream not long ago.
A person I follow on X said it best when talking about his portfolio. “I already won the game, now I don’t want to fuck it up.” After I laughed out loud I thought about how right he is. And that sentiment pretty much sums up this phase of the financial freedom process. We have already accumulated the assets we need to enjoy life. The goal now is to do more to protect those assets while maintaining a decent level of growth.
As we age it becomes more important to evolve and adapt to the different stages of life. VTSAX and chill was a cool concept when we were accumulating. Now that we are in the planned withdrawal stage of the program it’s time to add some downside risk protection.
As we all know, the market will eventually remind us that it doesn’t always go in one direction. A lot of young investors have never experienced a hard downturn. When that time comes, and it will, how they react could make matters worse. As Mike Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
In this phase of life it’s best for us to be prepared for when the hard reality hits. We’ve been there a few times and the panic from people is real.
As always we look forward to so sharing our journey. Recently we have had some great feedback from some long time readers. We really appreciate hearing from people and that folks have stuck with us since the beginning.
Thank you so much for your continued support!
Happy Investing!
Joe
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