July 2018 Net Worth Update

Thoughts before I calculate my net worth: I usually have a feeling as to how I did with regard to my net worth.  I think this month is going to be a down month.  It felt like the spending just did not stop, so combine that with a down month over month market and I should have a rare negative month.

My Net Worth Calculation

My Assets

My assets are pretty simple:

• Emergency Fund – It is a little less than where I would like it, but I don’t calculate it in terms of monthly expenditures.  Rather I think to myself how much cash would I really need if an emergency happens.
• My Dividend Growth Account – I am finally back into undervalued dividend growth investing and I am very excited to share my screens and purchases!
• My Wife’s Roth IRA – Nothing special – just a mixture of cheap index funds and individual companies that capture my attention.
• My 401(k) – I still have about 50% of my contributions going into cash.  I am not entirely convinced that this marketing timing is worthwhile given my age (36) and the fact that the account can’t be touched for 24 years at the minimum.  I think after this month I am going to slow down the cash contributions and get back to a balanced investment approach.
  
• Wife’s Mutual Funds – This was an amount that was given to my wife from her deceased grandparents.  They were horribly mismanaged until I stepped in, putting them in low expense vanguard mutual funds.  She and I both look at this account as a super emergency fund.
• My House – I increased the value of my home starting in 2018 3%.  This was the first time since I bought the home that I even bothered to increase the value.
• My Traditional IRA – Just a few stocks that have captured my attention.
• Wife’s Business – NEW IN 2018– Just going to value this at the cash that is on the books at the end of every month.  There won’t be a distribution for quite sometime, so hopefully, there is a nice trend upwards.
• Physical Gold – Earlier this year I decided that I would buy a small amount of physical gold every month or two.  After doing some quick math, I am getting killed in transaction costs.  I set up a capital one 360 account to save the amount I would be buying in gold and I will make a larger purchase less often.
• Crytocurrency Account – Earlier this year I bought a tiny amount of Bitcoin.  By the time my initial payment cleared bitcoin had dropped 40%.  I am not exactly sure what I am going to do with this account just yet.  Right now I am going to ignore it.

My Liabilities

• My Law School Loans – Despite being 36 years old I have a significant amount of law school loans left. They are locked in at 3.5%, so I have no real rush to pay them off.  I’d like to get the monthly cash flow back but at about the $40,000 it would be a tremendous hit to liquidity.
• My Mortgage – I live on Long Island (and it’s on, not in) so the odds of me ever prepaying this down, especially with a 3.375% 30yr fixed is unrealistic.
• Credit Cards – My favorite card was my American Express Premier Gold Card, whose fee I fight every year.  I also have some minor outstanding balances that I’ll just pay down slowly.  I just recently opened up an American Express Platinum Card for 60,000 points and a lot of benefits for the first year.
• My HELOC – A good portion of it was to capitalize The Wife’s Business.  I decided to keep the debt of the HELOC on the balance sheet, but ignore the corresponding asset (the removed checking account).

My Net Worth Increase/Decrease

• From May 1st to June 1st my net worth increased .07%
• Year to date my net worth has increased 5.4%

Wow my gut was correct! I’d consider a  .07% increase a down month.  It is going to be hard over the summer, but I need to get either spending in check or get refocused on earning money via my law practice and/or online income world.  I have always found that earning more money was easier than controlling my spending, so with that I am going to make a major push in July!

How’d you do this month?