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HomePersonal SituationSeptember 2013 Net Worth Update

September 2013 Net Worth Update

For the second time this year, and only a handful of times since I started tracking my net worth…my net worth is down.  But it is different than times in the past, because for some reason I am not bothered at all.  While I am not disillusioned to believe I am doing all I can be doing (spending has to be reigned in a bit in the upcoming quarter), I know I am laying a fantastic foundation so if the markets want to pull back in the short term LET THEM! I will just buy more.

My Short Term Financial Goals

I finished the last of my $5,000 goals in June and gave myself some new ones:

  1. Contribute $500 to my Traditional IRA – Went from 80% to 100%!
  2. Save $500 into my Son’s 529 – Went from 10% to 10%…ouch
  3. Save $1,000 in cash towards a future investment property purchase – 7% (the lowest on the priority list) – No gain.
  4. Invest $1,500 into my Dividend Portfolio –  Went from 53.33% to 70%.  Almost done with this goal!
  5. Save up $750 to allocate to my whole life insurance policies – Went from 13.87% to 17.21%
  6. Save $750 in the house repair fund – Went from 36.67% to 50%.

I thought I would close out some private clients in August bumping these numbers up a lot, however, due to scheduling it didn’t happen.  I am hoping that September is the month that I finish up with 2 or 3 clients providing a nice bump to these goals.

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.  For example, the above house improvement fund isn’t included. Last month, I mentioned that, “…I came up with a round number that I am going to use going forward.  It is sort of a multiple of my monthly nut.”
  • My 401(k) – Just keep throwing part of my paycheck at my 401(k) even though I sort of hate my 401k.
  • Random Non-Qualified Investment Accounts
  • 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.  I have started updating my dividend watch list every month since I am putting more and more money into it.
  • 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 think I am just going to use my purchase price for the year and look at comparable home sales next year.
  • My Traditional IRA – Have been trading using my covered call strategy, but I have waived the white flag on the strategy and just finished up betting against my first stock.  This account is going to be pure passive by the end of the year hopefully.

My Liabilities

  • My Mortgage – Every so often I think about putting money towards the mortgage but I always back off for a few reasons that I’ll highlight this month.
  • Law School debt – While I recently paid off the much smaller of the loans I have a while before this category makes any significant moves.  My first set of financial goals included an extra $500 payment (which I made) I left it off this time around.
  • Credit Card debt!

I haven’t had credit card debt in 3 or so years, but with the house purchase came a lot of fix it up purchases as well as furniture.  So as we were buying the house I called up all my dormant credit cards to see what they could do in terms of 0% on purchases until June 2014. It may be needless to say, but the card will be paid off prior to that date.  My emergency fund can pay it off but I respect liquidity way too much and the debt is at 0%.

My Net Worth Growth

  • From August 2013 to September 2013 my net worth decreased 1.94% 
  • Year to Date my net worth is still at negative 2.49%

How did you do this month? Share your links below!

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1 COMMENT

  1. I had an up month, just barely because my market losses were offset by the removal of an erroneous $750 charge, increase in cash accounts, and a nominally positive change in home valuation. Like you I was loading up on the market downturns. I bought some more MO and some very standard ETF’s.

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