April 2025 – Out of balance

April 2025

Overall, April was not too bad. We had pleasant weather and could spend time outside. We also could spend time with family and friends.

The main issue of the month was the total lack of balance (at least on my part). I usually juggle pretty well between family, my work, and the blog. But this month, this balance was broken. We had a legal issue with the blog at the beginning of the month that yielded a ton of work. When this work was added on top of other blog duties, it was already too much. But then, we had a small health emergency (turned out to be nothing) at the same time and a few days later, we had issues without our son.

This indicates that the balance was easier to break than I was thinking. I basically have no margin for when emergencies are piling one on top of another. In the end, it worked out okay, but I do not want to let it happen again. If this becomes a trend, I will have to give up either the blog or my job.

Fortunately, the second half of the month was much more balanced, and I could finish the important priority projects in time.

During the month, we spent a bit too much money. But since we do not pay much in taxes in April, we still managed to save 61% of our income.

The stock market turmoil

Since I have received many questions about, I thought I would talk a little about the current stock market.

If you are investing, you will have noticed that the stock market was really volatile in April. This was mostly due to the trade war that Donald Trump started on the second day of April. He started extensive policies on many countries. And a few countries reacted with tariffs of their own.

The magnitude of these tariffs was wildly unexpected and resulted in a significant selloff of most indexes. And then a week later, a pause in tariffs was announced. And the market reacted with a very nice improvement, but we are still below the peak.

Moreover, the dollar lost a lot of its value because of the uncertainties. So people (like us) who hold a lot of their stocks in USD lost even more value.

So, what should we do about it? Nothing. I believe this is normal trading conditions. Events like this will happen many times over the course of an investor’s life. I am not saying they are pleasant events, but they are normal events, each a little different from the previous.

If you do not feel comfortable with your portfolio in this turmoil, it is likely that your asset allocation is too aggressive and should be reduced. But I would be cautious about making any changes to a portfolio based on current events.

If I continue to receive questions and comments, I will write an entire article on the subject this month.

Expenses

Here are the details of our expenses in April 2025:

In total, we spent 6867 CHF. Without taxes, this amounts to 6147 CHF, much higher than our goal.

I bought another LEGO for my birthday, the Rivendell set from the Lord of the Rings. It was really fun to assemble. I have a slight preference for the Barad Dur set I did last month, but both sets are great. Now I have to wait until I get the next one because these sets are great but expensive.

Other than that, we also planned a trip to Europa Park for our son’s birthday later in the year. The hotel for one night plus two days entries for 3 people is costly at more than 700 CHF. I did not expect this high price, but our son (and me as well) is really looking forward to it.

We also had to replace the range hood on our stovetop. The old one was not always starting, and it was not venting properly. The new one makes a lot of difference, we really smell less of the odors in the kitchen.

The rest of the expenses are more standard with daycare, kindergarten and some small trips. We only pay the real estate contribution this month, no other taxes. We will start paying more taxes again next month.

Overall, we could probably have been more careful with our expenses this month, but I am fine with this state.

2025 Goals

Here is the status of our goals by the end of April 2025:

Overall, there is a lot of green in our goals.

It looks like our income and savings rate goals are through the roof. But this is only because of using an average. And the average is skewed at the beginning of the year because of low taxes and high income in March. So, both of these goals will go down significantly during the year, but I think we are doing well.

I have not yet optimized any bill this year. We did a second pillar contribution that will reduce the taxes next year, but I am not counting that one since we intend to do it every year.

On the other hand, our expense goal is doing poorly. We are already spending more on average than last year, which is not a great way to start.

My health goals are doing really well. I missed a few workouts this month, but I am still doing much better than last year.

Currently, our water consumption is down 25% compared to last year, this is a very nice start. Some of it is likely due to the new shower head. But it is difficult to quantify the entire effect. On the other hand, our power consumption is not going down.

Overall, I am fine with the state of our goals. I wish we could spend less, but I am less and less sure we are capable of doing that.

FI Ratio

Here is the progress of our FI ratio as of April 2025:

As you can imagine, our FI ratio was a bit hectic this month with the stock market drama. Overall, our FI ratio went slightly down. Some stock market returns came back, but we are still down on USD. Our overall net worth in CHF went down. However, a significant part of our net worth is not directly impacted.

The house value is not changing, same as my second pillar, and we still have too much cash in the LLC. I am not entirely sure how and when we will move the rest of our cash. But I prefer a larger cushion in the company than for our personal funds where we are almost 100% invested.

Except for the stock market turmoil, which I have already discussed above, nothing special happened to our net worth this month. Overall, I am happy it did not get down more than that.

The Blog

Working on the blog was not that great in April 2025, as can be guessed in the Introduction.

One fun thing was doing a small blog meetup in Fribourg with 4 other members of the community. We had really nice discussions on multiple subjects. It was very enjoyable. I will organize one more in a few months, again on the forum. Of course, people are welcome to organize other meetups through the forum.

On the other hand, the rest of the work was not so great. It started with a small legal issue that turned out to be a ton of work to resolve. This is the kind of thing that should be quick to resolve, but it uncovered issues that had been left unattended for a while (lack of time and motivation on my end).

In essence, this is not too bad, and it will happen to any business. But the problems uncovered last month were still not fixed (no proper monitoring and backup system lacking). So, I needed to shift my gears to something else while other urgent work was needed. And obviously, with a proper business, you get more time to work on these issues.

All that to say that the blog is close to reaching its tipping point with how much can be done on the side.

One positive side effect is that I now have much better monitoring of all my servers. Additionally, all our backups are now in a much better state than before. So this, should help in the future by not having to do these things in priority and having the data I need to react in case of an issue.

I have also realized there is a gap in our graphs. Many of the withdrawal rate simulation graphs are outdated and the design is all over the place. So, I have started to redo old graphs with my new system so that everything is easier to update in the future as well. This is something that will be slowly completed, probably by the end of next month. And with that, I also use the latest data for the historical simulations.

Other than that, I do not expect much to happen on the blog in May 2025. I simply hope to be able to publish my usual one article per week. As I write these lines, I do not have any article schedule for May, although several are started but blocked by external factors.

Next Month – May 2025

May 2025 should be fairly simple. We have a few events planned during the weekends, but not that many. I hope nothing special happens so that we have a quiet month to relax more and enjoy the (hopefully good) weather.

Financially, we will start paying taxes again, so it will be back to normal months.

What about you? How was April 2025?