With another month in the books it is time for me to calculate my net worth and share with anyone reading whether it has increased or decreased. Since I am not sharing actual numbers, I know this exercise is mainly done for my benefit, however, maybe it’ll inspire someone to start their own net worth spreadsheet.
My Gut Reaction to Net Worth Before Calculating
Every month I have a feeling of how I did the previous month. Some times I am way off and sometimes I am right on point. Usually, these are negative feelings, but not this month. I had a few things hit in the market and it feels like this will be a good month!
My Net Worth Calculation
Creating a net worth statement is pretty simple. All one has to do is honestly add up your assets and minus your liabilities. If you build your net worth calculation on lies, what’s the point of even doing the exercise. I know calculating my net worth helps me keep track of my decreasing liabilities while seeing if my investments are growing like they should be.
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 – It is small, but this is where I have really been focusing my efforts lately and I will writing a lot about it.
- My Wife’s Roth IRA – Nothing special – just a mixture of cheap index funds and individual companies that capture my attention.
- My 401(k) – My 401(k) is terrible with high fees for shit mutual funds, but where else am I getting a match on my money. I am not one to turn down free cash. I recently rebalanced the account.
- Wife’s Mutual Funds – This was an amount that was given to my wife from her now deceased grand parents. 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 – This is the first year after buying the house for 4 years where I increased the value of the home. I increased it an nominal 3% in 4 years. I don’t plan on reviewing this dead money asset for another year or two.
- My Traditional IRA – Just a few stocks that have captured my attention.
- Investment Account with my Brother – The Wife and my brother invested a nominal amount ($1,200 each) to try and give my brother confidence with his stock picking ability.
My Liabilities
- My Law School Loans – Despite being almost 35 years old I have a significant amount of law school loans left. They are locked in at 3.5%, so what’s the rush to pay them off?
- My Mortgage – I live on Long Island (and its 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 is 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.
My Net Worth Increase/Decrease
- From April 1, 2017 to May 1 my net worth increased 2.24%
- My net worth increase YTD has increased 11.54%
The entire gain was from stock market increases which isn’t as satisfying to me as debt repayment. The gains can be erased in a few days with a down market, but with debt repayment it is off the books (hopefully) forever. Either way not going to complain about this month’s change!
