March 2026 update ($1,254,764 -$98,905 or -7.3%)

↑ Additional investment savings $2,500

Total gains: $2,500

 

↓ Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund is down by $23,464 or -10.7%

↓ Eurozone Stock Index Fund is down by $20,506 or -8.2%

↓ Standard and Poor’s 500 Index Fund is down by $26,194 or -5.0%

↓ Global Small Cap is down by $16,483 or -7.5%

↓ Growth fund is up down $5,266 or -4.9%

↓ EUR is down to USD by 1.7% or $7,208 for my portfolio

↓ GBP is down to USD by 2.2% or $2,283 for my portfolio

Total loses: $101,405

 

 Observations:

 War on Iran led to many mortgage products have been withdrawn from the market in anticipation of persistent inflation and, possibly, crisis. Available mortgages in the UK went up by 1% (up to 5.9%), in the USA mortgages went up from under 6% to 6.5% in early April.  Expectation is that official inflation in the USA will be 4.4% in 2026 (it was 2.7% in 2025), the actual/ real inflation is much higher.  Entrenched inflation and higher prices on major necessities have pushed many families closer to the financial edge, or locked them out of homeownership.

 While most of the countries trying to smooth the hump by releasing emergency crude stock piles.  At the same time war and big oil companies’ stocks are all high, driven by need to produce billions of dollars of weapons systems and reaping billions of windfalls on high energy prices.  The examples are RTX (formerly Raytheon), Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, L3Harris Missile Solutions and Honeywell Aerospace, all of which are sitting on billions of dollars of order backlogs.

 ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies combined evaluation jumped by $130B based on expectation of their combined production of 14.0 million BOE. Crude price went up by $40 per bbl, meaning $560 million a day only for those 4 companies or $16 billion a month. Their combined dividends in 2025 were $70 billion.  In one month of war their investors could expect at least 20% more dividends.  They are rolling in money with every day going by.

 The economists considered a family earning between five times and 15 times the poverty guideline to be in the upper middle class ($133,000 to $400,000 for the US and between $213,000 to $640,000 USD for the UK). Pew classifies upper income as those earning more than twice the median household income, so more than roughly $240,000 or more for a family of four in 2026 in the USA and more than $260,000 USD in the UK.  Above that the people are considered to be rich.

Both metrics looks just at the current income, ignoring assets (stocks, real estate and other investments).  Time is also important element, as majority of the people in upper middle-class bracket enter it in their 50s. The other consideration is the housing cost. Family of four earning $133,000 who lives in a community where a started home runs at least $600,000 will unlikely feel that they belong in the ranks of upper middle class.

 The other issue that the homes are getting older. Average home in the US is 45 years old. This means a lot of costly maintenance.  The home I bought is 66 years old and requires money every year.  For new homes 1% of the home’s value a year is enough, for older homes more realistic quotation is 2% to 3%.   Essentially you are on a prescribed maintenance regime. Even if I don’t use budget one year, I will likely to exceed it next year. Windows replacement alone will cost $40,000 for the entire house.

 Fun fact:  On January 1, 1791, the U.S. national debt was $75 million. As of 2026, the official debt of the United States government was approximately $39 trillion. To pay this debt would require approximately $111,000 from every person living in the United States, and about $237,000 per taxpayer.