This introductory paragraph was written before actually calculating my net worth change. A couple of weeks back, I proclaimed that I was going to kill off all my consumer debt. I failed in that regard, but that it isn’t my fault. When I met with my accountant I knew how much of a tax refund I was going to receive and I only sold enough of my perpetual income fund to cover the difference between the debt amount and my tax refund. Well, due to a couple of hiccups I still haven’t received my tax refund, and as such, I still have a few thousand sitting of credit card debt sitting on the books. Unless there are additional hiccups, it should all be gone by my next update. Also, during this month I bought a pretty big website – the money of which came directly from my emergency fund. It’ll be replaced but it is what it is for now, so I don’t expect this to be a good month.
Calculating my Net Worth
My Assets
- My Cash Savings Accounts – I only really count my emergency savings since everything else is ear marked to be spent elsewhere. This cash account is a bit under where The Wife and I would like, as such, we try to increase it a little every month.
- My 401(k) – Just keep throwing part of my paycheck at my 401(k) even though I sort of hate my 401k. I do not actively trade this account, but every time there is a sharp decline (like we had in January 2016) I will move whatever little cash that is in the account that has accumulated over to a fund. This is different then the pure market timing technique I took part in a little while ago.
- Wife’s Non-Qualified Account – This is money that The Wife had way before we were married. It was gifts from her parents and grandparents, and thus receives its own little partition. I like to think about it as a super emergency fund.
- The Wife’s Roth IRA – The Wife has zero appetite for risk, so this account hold 3 broad market etfs (DGRO, IJH and IVV) as well as a small position that I will trade when the mood should strike (this position is currently in $GT).
- My Dividend Investment Portfolio – Easily my favorite part of my financial
empirehut. This account is correlated to the broad market, so last month it took a nasty hit and came back a little. This was the primary account I used to get me back to zero in terms of debt. - Home Value – A lot of bloggers seem to stress over home value. In my old place I just rounded to a number that I thought I’d sell for (I was off by less than 1%). I am just going to keep using my purchase price through 2016 (like I did for 2015, 2014 and most of 2013 when I bought the place). No real reason to worry about it as I am not going anywhere any time soon.
- My Traditional IRA – I was actively trading this account also, but I made the financial confession that I was speculating in some really shitty stocks. For the past few months I have been transitioning the holds into long term holds that I felt were undervalued ($HOG, $GT, etc.)
My Liabilities
- My Mortgage – Every so often I think about putting money towards the mortgage but I always back off.
- Law School debt – A while back I paid off the much smaller of the loans I have a while before this category makes any significant moves.
- Credit Card debt – All at 0%. I wrote last time that it will be at zero next time I write one of these posts, and I just missed the mark.
My Net Worth Growth
- From March 2016 to April 2016 my net worth increased 4.1%
- Year to date I am finally positive, albeit only .57%
I am shocked I was positive this month, given my large purchase. But with the market up so is my net worth since my it is so heavily correlated.
