March 2019 update ($495,329 +$944 or +%0.2)

↑ Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund is up by $1,761 or +1.4%

↑ Eurozone Stock Index Fund is up by $1,491 or +1.3%

↑ US 500 Stock Index Fund is up by $2,247 or +1.9%

↑ Vanguard FTSE U.K. All Share Index is up by $918 or +3.7%

Grand total additions: $6,417

↓ Global Small Cap Index is down by $728 or -0.7%

↓ EUR is slightly down to USD by $4,174  or 2%

↓ GBP to USD is down by $571 or -2.3%

Grand total losses: $5,473

 Observations:

I keep saving around $950 a month towards my savings pot. The savings are accumulating (~ $2.7K since February)  but not reflected in the summary. I expect that the company's together with mine share will have one off contribution $4,000 (most of it mine). This is done  to satisfy the pension legislation, followed by ongoing monthly combined contributions of $380 on top of above mentioned $950.  This should give my around $1.3K a month going forward from April and one off investment of ~$6.7K.

I used my annual bonus to pay down $7K  of the mortgage principal. As we are at the beginning of the mortgage journey is made the biggest difference on the future. My monthly payments reduced by $80 a month or the next 17 years (~ $16,3K total) as the result of the two payments. I elected to maintain the same monthly mortgage payments, which is effectively ~$1K a year overpayment.

Since I invested 100K  in Eurozone (almost two years ago), inclusive reinvesting all the dividends, it gained just over 1%.  EUR currency gained 2.7% against the USD in the same period.  Western Europe is the most struggling market our of the 5 investments.  There is too much politicking and power play in Western Europe, discrimination of the economic immigrants and bureaucracy inhibiting development and the growth.  S&P500 grew the most (21%), this is mainly driven by $1tn  stock buybacks in 2018.

 The healthy ones are the USA Small Caps and the Emerging markets, aka Brasil, Russia, India and China (BRIC).

Some good advice is simple but made complicated because professionals can’t charge fees for simple stuff.