Starting in April (so, last month) I decided I was going to proactively do at least one thing to better my personal finance situation at the most basic of levels. In April, I priced out and switched up my home and auto policies saving $1,000 a year for literally 20 mins worth of work. That’s a win! Back to the point at hand though – At the beginning of each month I calculate the increase or decrease in my net worth month over month and year to date. I am not comfortable putting the actual number out on the internet for all to see, so what I did a few years ago was create my spreadsheet and zeroed out the net worth so that just the gain is being published.
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 number was where I wanted it for about 18 months, but in April I had my daughter‘s Christening so I ate into this amount. In the Greek culture a Christening is a pretty big deal, and to the dismay of The Wife, I had a pretty big party to match. I have to focus getting it back up as quickly as possible.
- My 401(k) – Just keep throwing part of my paycheck at my 401(k) even though I sort of hate my 401k. For the past few months I have been buying and selling within this account…I just posted my actual returns from this pure market timing technique.
- Random Non-Qualified Investment Accounts – This thing has TUMBLED but I am proud to announce I am DONE with gambling on penny stocks. My gambling will be kept to casinos (and some of my holdings in my investment club).
- Wife’s Non-Qualified Account – In this monthly post for the past few years I would lump this in with the random qualified accounts, but this is not how I kept my records. So I have partitioned it out for future posts, and recaptured some Disney stock which was in a UTMA account for The Wife despite her being 34 years old. The “recapture” created a noticeable big bump in November of last year. In addition to her $DIS stock she owns 2 broad based index funds.
- The Wife’s Roth IRA – This account only holds to 2 funds. An index fund of the market and a dividend paying fund.
- My Dividend Investment Portfolio – Easily my favorite part of my financial
empirehut. - 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 for at least the next year or two. 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. I am done with it – and will roll out when I can.
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%
My Net Worth Growth
- From April 2015 my net worth decreased 1.46%
- For 2015 my net worth has stayed relatively even at -.52%
