Yep, I’m FinCon bound, and trying to convince my wifey to join too! Look forward to meeting you, and everyone.

To be fair, the $50k increase came from assets that we already own outside of this personal NW report. Regardless, months (and years) of hard work and saving still needs to happen in order for us to FIRE :). It’s a long journey!

Congratulations. I can’t imagine what a $50k+ increase in net worth feels like in just a single month.. I hope to do that over months of hard work, let alone a singular month.

Maybe next month, we’ll see a $100k increase? ;)

Hey Shaun, this is awesome, thanks for sharing. I read your posts and will continue down the rabbit hole with ERN. (Even though my mind is already made up – I think I’m gonna dump $20k from our emergency fund into stocks, keeping 10k in cash.) Cheers for reading and the encouragement.

Really interested in how this all works out!

Here’s the response from Schwab:

“Thank you for reaching out to Charles Schwab. I’d be happy to assist you with your contribution inquiry!

Per the Retirement team, cash back is consider an award; therefore not viewed as contribution. If you have any questions about the cash back award and how it will affect your taxes, you will need to reach out to your tax advisor..”

I only just recently started after learning about this, but I do trust Schwab fully.

A friend of mine has the Fidelity card, but he says Fidelity counts the 2% as a contribution. Not sure why the 2 brokerages have different rules on this.

Drew

WHAT!!?? Are you kidding? I’ve never heard of that hack before!… Have you actually done this? I see Fidelity offer a similar deal with 2% cash back that can be put into your Roth. Are you 100% sure you won’t get screwed at tax time as a “contribution”? This would be amazing if it worked.

If you have a ROTH IRA with Schwab and you apply for the investor credit card through AMEX, they will deposit 1.5% cash back directly into your ROTH monthly. This is considered a bank bonus and does not count towards your contribution limits. I reached out to Schwab to verify this.

So the more you spend, the more they will contribute. 1.5% doesn’t equate to a lot of money, but it’s something. Cheers!

Glad you like these :). Hope you had a good month too!

Syndications are really cool too! I don’t have any REIT ETFs but love how diversified they are.