While not everyone may not sure it on their personal finance blog, I think every adult should keep track of their net worth, and so every month I come on here and share whether my net worth increased/decreased and by how much. I am not comfortable sharing whole numbers, and I completely get this makes my posts not that transparent but such as life.
Calculating my Net Worth
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 say, the roof goes.
- 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 stocks 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.
- 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 – Despite being my largest asset I don’t particularly care how it is valued. I am not moving so it is more or less a dead asset. I don’t grow it and I don’t reduce it. Maybe at the end of the year I can do an annual review if there are any comparable homes sold.
- My Traditional IRA – Just a few stocks that have captured my attention.
- My Investment Account with my Brother – My 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. I don’t fret too much as 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 October 2016 to November 2016 my net worth decreased -.52%, and year to date I am positive 13.62%. This is my third down month this year. I am hoping to finish strong, but my net worth is highly correlated with the market so your guess is as good as mine where I end up! Notwithstanding the correlation tracking my net worth provides me an insight into my debt that I wouldn’t otherwise see and I can deduce this was a high spend month.
This is a good post because it highlights the honesty with which you treat your assets and expenses. MMoney has a mixture of income streams from real estate, stock investments, and online passive income though there are no graduate school loans. Thanks for this post that proves that honesty is always the best way to deal with anything in life.
If you can’t be honest on your own semi-anonymous blog then who can you be honest with?
My net worth is down too with the market :-). Don’t sweat it – it will come back sooner or later!
As an adult I survived watching the 2008/2009 meltdown this volatility is nothing!