September 2018 update ($496,946 -$4,717 or -0.9%)

↑ US 500 Stock Index Fund is up by $626 or 0.5%%

↑ Vanguard FTSE U.K. All Share Index is up by $70 or 0.5%

Grand total additions: $696

↓ Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund is down by $1,052 or 0.9%

↓ Eurozone Stock Index Fund is down by $509 or 0.4%

↓ Global Small Cap Index is up by $1,752 or 1.5%

↓ EUR is down to USD by 1.0% or $2,086

Grand total losses: $5,399

Observations:

    Last 12 month is illustration that “America First” is working. Vanguard S&P500 is up by 17%, Vanguard Global Small Cap is up by 10%. It is only called “Global”, as 58% of it are the USA stocks and 12% is Japan.

   These gains are while Eurozone and Emerging Markets are ZERO growth (dividends are re-invested).  Let them further drown in sanctions, local wars and politicking.  EU is Soviet style planned economy, thank you for the new influencers from the eastern european countries, which occupy majority of the Brussels bureaucratic machine.

     I continue to accumulate small amounts of money towards my pension account, this is roughly $11K a year at the moment. This is not a lot of money but I hope that any pay rises and bonuses will increase that amount, as well as the side income. Still every little helps. Over the next 25 years if my nest egg increases to $1 million through the growth + $300 K of additional contributions, that will allow me to have $50K a year as financial independence figure.  This is not a target in itself, more like 90/10 scenario.

Fun fact: EU regulators cleaning €1tn market for “contracts for difference” — derivatives that allow traders to track the price of an underlying asset such as gold, shares or a cryptocurrency. Data show that between 74 and 89 per cent of European retail accounts trading CFDs lose money, with losses ranging between €1,600 and €29,000.