April 2014 Early Retirement Progress

April saw a slight decrease in contributions because I didn’t get a bonus payment in March (which shows up in my account in April).  Next month will have more of an increase though as I upped my contributions to 8%, and $580 was taken out of my April paycheck.

The markets were flat, in our account that has more bonds than the others (about 25% of the account) lost money, and the others didn’t really increase that much either.  We gained $835.73 in investment gains/value, so pretty close to zero.  I have a feeling that this year won’t be near as nice to the investments as 2013 was.

Even if I don’t increase my contributions later this year, we’ll contribute more than $40,000 this year, so I’m going to be changing our contribution goals to reflect that 40k is the minimum we should be contributing.

2014 Totals

So far, for 2014, we’ve contributed $13,114.40 (37.47% of our planned total of 35k, and 32.79% of the new goal of 40k), and we’ve gained $8,005.37 in investment gains (39.51% of our planned total).

4 thoughts on “April 2014 Early Retirement Progress

  1. plantingourpennies

    Our contributions were the main drivers of our growth this month, too… Even starting to wonder if prices will drop over the summer. You know the saying – sell in May and go away!

    Reply
    1. Mom Post author

      I wouldn’t be surprised if they do go down, as folks who are emotional investors sell off and the rest of us go along for the ride.

      Reply
  2. Well Heeled Blog

    I enjoy reading your early retirement progress updates. My goal for 2014 is contribute $20K – $17.5K in 401K and $2.5K in Roth IRA. We plan to finish contributing to 2014 Roth IRA in early 2015. The progress feels so slow sometimes… I have to keep reminding myself to plug along.

    Reply
    1. Mom Post author

      We have no plans to contribute to a Roth this year (ironically, it’s also looking like the first year we’ll actually be able to contribute based on income limits). I’m still torn on the Roth as we’re likely to have much higher income taxes now than we will in the future.

      Reply

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