My Assets

My assets are pretty simple:

  • Emergency Fund – My goal is to keep an amount in cash that The Wife and I believe is needed for a real emergency amount rather than a specific amount linked to monthly expenditures.  At this point it is a quite a bit lower than I’d like it to be.  As we get closer and closer to contract on our new home, this is going likely going to diminish and be held in escrow at some point.
  • My Dividend Growth Account – I am finally back into undervalued dividend growth investingand I am very excited to share my screens and purchases!  Earlier this month, I was able to share how my undervalued dividend growth account performed in 1Q2019.
  • 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 went back to a long term allocation rather than trying to market time.  This is allocated at almost 100% equities and is by far my largest asset (outside of my home).
  • 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.  In January of 2019 I moved a good portion of this account to cash, not because of marketing timing but because we may have a liquidity need that I don’t want to be beholden to a time like 4Q2018 (see house above).
  • My House – I increased the value of my home starting in 2018 3%.  I have decided to leave it flat in 2019, if  when The Wife and I sell it it’ll just add a large jump in the net worth statement.
  • My Traditional IRA – Just a few stocks that have captured my attention.
  • Physical Gold – In 2018 I decided on buying 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.
  • Cryptocurrency Account – Earlier in 2018 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.
  • Cash Surrender Value Life Insurance – I am not a “buy term and invest the difference” kind of guy. Mainly because no one actually invests the difference! I have been building my Cash Surrender Value for a number of years, but I never captured it on these statements.  This year I’ll be adding/updating this line item.

This month I wrote a check from my current HELOC (doubling it in size) to put a 5% down payment on the new home.  It didn’t swing the net worth as I added a line item of “escrow” since that money is just sitting somewhere else for the time being.

My Liabilities

  • My Law School Loans – I still have a significant amount of law school loans but 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 $35,000 it would be a tremendous hit to liquidity.  I figured out last year that my student loan company, NELNET, was misapplying my extra payments but that is all fixed now.
  • 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.  I just chip away month after month, year after year.
  • Credit Cards – My favorite card is my American Express Premier Gold Card, whose fee I fight every year.  I open and close other cards to get ridiculous offers but right now I am rolling out of them with nothing on the horizon.
  • 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).  I am not exactly sure what I am going to do with this account once the home buy/sell happens.

Net Worth Increase/Decrease

  • From to June 1st to July 1st my net worth increased 6.49%
  • Year to date my net worth has increased 28.39%

I was able to make up from last month’s decrease and still be above where I was two months ago.  It is amazing to me just how correlated I am to the market.  Actually, it is a bit scary because a correction has to be coming, right?  As I liquidate assets to provide for the new home I guess I’ll be less correlated, but at what cost?

A lot going on in my end of the world, and next week I’ll provide an update.