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Net Worth Update: December 2011

By Stephanie on January 23, 2012

Hey guys! So remember that time I stopped writing for more than six months?

That was funny, right? Hahahaha… ha… ha.

Sorry about that. Let’s get back to business.

Change (from the last update in April): +$2323 or +8.63 %

Net Worth Graph December 2011 That’s a pretty respectable climb (more than 1% per month!) in numbers, but the graph reveals that there was also a bit of a backslide in there. So what gives? Just what has happened these last 8 months?

Traveled the country as a NASA groupie. When we last left off, I had tried to go a NASA Tweetup for the STS-134 shuttle launch, but the launch was postponed. Following that, I ended up attending three more NASA Tweetups: one in Pasadena, California at the Jet Propulsion Lab just days after my brother’s wedding in Upstate New York; another launch Tweetup for the very last shuttle launch, STS-135 (which did go off on time – huzzah!); and finally another one right in my area at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC (which was actually the same day as a White House Tweetup… which I also attended). Yeaaaaaaah… all really awesome opportunities that were worth every penny I spent in travel and accommodations, but also a bit of a blow to the old wallet!

Transferred $750 into my Roth IRA. In August, some sort of craziness was happening in the stock market. Honestly, I don’t even remember which crisis it was, but stocks were dipping down pretty low, and I had money sitting in my savings account, already earmarked for retirement savings. So, I transferred it. No better time to buy stocks than when they’re on sale, which is usually when everyone else is freaking out and selling theirs.

My car went kablooey. Yeah, that’s the technical diagnosis. On Labor Day, it just decided not to start. Replacing the battery (which was leaking acid everywhere – fun!) didn’t fix it, and neither did replacing the dead starter. Once my friends and I covered everything we could replace ourselves in my parking lot, I took it into two separate shops for more help. Between the parts we replaced ourselves and the ensuing repairs, I spent just shy of $1500 to get my car back on the road.

Oh, and did I mention this was the month my inspection, registration, and car insurance were all due, as well? It was a really fun month for the Oldsmobile! Considering the entire car is worth about $1750 or so now, these will be the last major repairs I put into her. I’ve bought myself about six months (hopefully a tad more), but it’s getting to be about time to put her down.

Got a promotion! And a change of department, even! This was also in September, on my birthday, in fact. I turned 25 and started a new job at the same company, with a pay bump. I’m also salaried now, as opposed to hourly, so my paychecks have become clockwork-predictable.

Moved out on my own. I had moved down here to Northern Virginia in 2009 because the guy I was dating got a job here. Unfortunately, that relationship came to an end. So for the first time in my life I moved out on my own, got my own apartment, and am now fully supporting myself. I shopped around for apartments, and actually managed to score a great deal on a cozy one-bedroom with all the amenities I wanted and more (in-apartment washer/dryer was a sticking point for me!). Lucky? Yeah, a bit. But my housing/utilities costs more than doubled, so I’m stretching things a lot thinner nowadays.

Spent way too much on new furniture and Christmas presents. I’ll admit, I didn’t know I could be an emotional spender. Because of doing The Compact and not buying anything the last time I was in severe emotional stress (long-time readers will remember this as the time I dropped out of film school right before the economy tanked!), I didn’t really give myself a chance to be an emotional spender the last time around. This time? The end of a relationship plus living in an apartment alone meant I dropped a significant amount of money all at once on things that suddenly seemed so very important.

Sure, of course I needed to buy myself a bed – sleeping on a futon mattress piled with three sleeping bags on top of it was not ideal. But I went a little… uh… nuts. If you have a look at the graph above, that is exactly what the big drop around November was. I’m still in recovery from that, unfortunately.

In fact… I stopped keeping track of my finances altogether. I didn’t updated my spending tracker spreadsheet. I didn’t do my net worth updates. I barely glanced at my bank accounts for longer than it took to pay my bills. I didn’t contribute anything to savings aside from automatic transfers. In a lot of ways, I was a whole different person for a couple of months.

It took a really long time to straighten out the mess (and deal with the enormous pile of receipts) in order to get back on track, update the spreadsheets, and fill out my net worth tracker. But here I am – up to speed and finding that somehow, I’m alright. Not great, but recovering steadily and without any permanent damage.

Only, it isn’t really a case of “somehow” – it was the systems I had put in place over the course of this blog. I had safeguards, fail safes, and finally an emergency fund to save myself from… well, in this case, myself. It wasn’t a good thing, by any measure – putting off saving for several months and having to borrow from my emergency fund to bridge the gap one month – but I didn’t go into any additional debt. In short, I dodged a bullet.

New for 2012

My employer has started offering a 401(K) match. Woot! I was already contributing a small amount to my company 401(K), but without a match, I had been mostly focusing on my Roth IRA for retirement savings. Now that there’s a match, I bumped up my contributions to take advantage of the full match. Still, I’m going to increase my contributions to the IRA as well this year – I just don’t feel like I’m saving enough for my retirement yet. Sure, now I’m trying to support myself completely on my own, and socking even more away is just going to make things tighter, but…

If I don’t worry about my retirement savings now, who is going to? And when? This is all on me.

So we’ll just have to see how that goes!

If you have any questions about my net worth or how it is calculated, feel free to ask them in the comments.

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Rebuilding Your Credit

By Guest Author on May 16, 2011

Jim Wang writes about personal finance and other money issues at his personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Rebuild by jdn on Flickr Many of us have made money mistakes. Additionally, some of us have had financial disasters to contend with. In any case, once the debts start to pile up, and payments are missed, the damage to your credit can be substantial. If you have tried to get a credit loan recently, and you have poor credit, you probably know that your credit report can result in being turned down for a loan. Even if you aren’t denied, you will have to pay a higher interest rate in order to offset the risk you represent to the lender. Even applying for insurance with poor credit can mean higher premiums.

If you want to be considered for the best terms when it comes to loans, and if you want the best insurance rates, you need to consider repairing your credit. If you are serious about rebuilding your financial reputation, here are some steps you can take to make improved credit a reality:

1. Modify Your Habits

If you have made money mistakes, you need to acknowledge them, and then work to change your financial habits. If your poor credit is the result of an unforeseen disaster, you need to change your money habits so that you are building up a good emergency fund to serve as a safety net. You might also need to change your mindset to help you get out of your current funk. Begin practicing the basics of personal finance: spending less than you earn; setting aside money for emergencies and for the future; and paying down debt.

2. Start Small

Your next move is to try to obtain some small amount of credit. In some cases, you might be able to get approval for a credit card with a small credit limit of $250 or $500. In other cases, you might have no choice but to get a secured credit card. You have to be careful to ensure that your secured credit card is a true credit card, and that the issuer reports your regular payments to the credit bureaus. Be wary of fees, high interest rates and other costs. You should try to establish your credit so that you can move on from secured cards as soon as possible.

3. Show Responsibility

In order to rebuild your credit, you need to show that you can handle your obligations. If you get a credit card, use it once or twice a month to make small purchases. Then, pay off the balance. Make all of your payments, from utilities to rent on time and in full. If you can make regular payments, on time, this is the single most important factor in whether or not you have good credit.

Paying down debt is also an important part of showing your high level of fiscal responsibility. If you still have debt, figure out a payment plan to reduce what you owe, and get back on track with your finances. As you pay down debt, and make on time payments, your credit will improve.

These days, whether it’s fair or not, your ability to handle credit is considered one of the most important characteristics to have. If your credit is poor, you need to do everything in your power to improve it.

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Net Worth Update: April 2011

By Stephanie on May 3, 2011

I just flew in from Rochester, and boy, are my arms tired! Actually, my everything is tired. The NASA Tweetup for the shuttle launch finally happened, but the shuttle launch itself didn’t. And I jet-setted all around the East Coast to be there and get to a wedding back home… but I haven’t got a single regret in the whole thing.

Sure, I’ll tell you more about that. But first, the numbers!

Change: +$522 or +1.75 %

Net Worth Graph - April 2011

Whoa… not bad at all! Especially considering the crazy travels of the past week! I left for Orlando on Wednesday night, spent two and a half nights in a group rental house near Kennedy Space Center, caught a 6am flight up to Rochester, saw my parents briefly, attended a wedding, visited with local Geocachers for breakfast (tradition!) and then took a final flight back to DC to collapse into bed on Sunday.

With all that going on, I really expected a “down” month, net worth wise, and was prepared to be okay with a down month! But my new pay rate kicked in and a three-week paycheck at the same time didn’t hurt at all, so things balanced out in my favor in the end.

Let’s take a moment to look at what else happened, besides my crazy long weekend at the end of the month:

Taxes: April the taxman cometh! Both my federal and state direct payments were scheduled for April, so my “Cash” assets dropped like a stone, by more than $3,100 this month. That’s okay! My tax liability dropped by more than $3,200 because of those payments, so I actually got another little tax refund of $100 or so there, didn’t I? Woot woot!

New Savings Snowball: Last month I implemented an updated version of my savings strategy, and after my end-of-month payments, you can already start to see progress over last month’s snowball:

Name Goal Total Progress Monthly Payment
Future Car Fund $10,000 $1096 $50 + All that I can
Travel Rolling $0 $90
Weddings Rolling $1140 $75
Retirement $5,000/year $3,714(total) $150
Charity Fund Rolling $95 $30
Occasionals Rolling $361 $110
Emergency Fund $3,000 $3,183 Achieved!

I was able to drop a whopping $500 extra into my Future Car Fund, despite all the craziness! So that goal is hopping right along – I can’t promise $550 jumps every month, but it was a real kickstart for the new plan, anyway! My travel fund dropped to $0 for very obvious reasons, and probably won’t recover at all next month due to the rescheduling of the shuttle launch.

If you’re not following me on Twitter, I should quickly explain that last bit. The NASA Tweetup was great: it was two days of tours and amazing speakers that was worth it all on its own. Four former astronauts, several amazing scientists, engineers, and support staff from NASA and other agencies took their time to talk to the 150 of us and show us, up close, things that the rest of the public never really gets to see.

It was very once-in-a-lifetimey, but at the last minute, literally as the shuttle astronauts were driving past us in the astrovan out to the launch pad, the launch had to be “scrubbed” due to a failed Auxiliary Power Unit. There was heartbreak, especially for the people who traveled in from places like the UK or Australia, but mostly, there was understanding. Understanding that NASA is not going to unnecessarily risk the astronauts’ lives. Understanding that they’re not going to fly any ship before she’s ready. And understanding that this launch isn’t for us; it’s for the good of science, the nation, and the world.

Plus, a lot of us are so totally planning to go back for the launch when it happens, anyway.

If you have any questions about my net worth or how it is calculated, feel free to ask them in the comments.

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Savings Snowball Update: Back in Action

By Stephanie on April 27, 2011

What with all the crazy change in my life, it’s got to be time to re-evaluate everything. Especially, I need to rethink my savings goals and how I’ll prioritize them. So it’s time to revisit the ol’ Savings Snowball.

For those of you not familiar with the concept, here’s the short version: much like a debt snowball, each goal has a minimum payment that gets paid every month, no matter what. Any extra money I can scrounge up goes to the goal on the top. When the goal on the top is met, everything that was getting sent to that goal “snowballs” down into the second goal, and the minimum payment for that goal continues. Therefore, the snowball gains momentum as it goes down the list.

The last time I updated my savings snowball was actually January of 2010. That snowball is so old that it’s almost irrelevant at this point, but for nostalgia’s sake, here’s what it looked like at that time:

Name Goal Total Progress Monthly Payment
Retirement $10,000 $102 All that I can
Emergency Fund $5,000 $646 $15
Future Car Fund $10,000 $188 $25
Charity Fund Rolling $177 $15
Weddings Rolling $226 $50

I did manage to save enough into my retirement fund to open a Roth IRA with Vanguard, and I also later adjusted my Emergency Fund down to a more reasonable $3,000 and maxed that one out, as well. So based on my old chart, that now leaves Future Car Fund as the top dog. Or, does it?

That retirement goal was a year ago, and you know what “they” say: Another year, another Roth IRA! (Or at least, they should.) Also, since I very recently got a new job, I now have access to a 401(K) for the first time in my life. So retirement is by no means struck off the savings snowball list. But should it be top dog again?

No. Retirement savings are a long, gradual process, and now that I’ve overcome the first hurdle (opening a Roth IRA and paying the $3,000 minimum fund buy-in required by Vanguard), it’s time to focus life on the nearer goals. Retirement savings will always be on the snowball, but low on the list. Constant. Like a river.

Emergency Fund is off the list, however. Sitting pretty at a little over $3,100 right now, it’s time to let it just earn interest and be there if I need it. Someday down the line, when my expenses increase, and/or I have dependents, I’ll worry about it again.

New Fund: Travel I’ve been “allocating” money to travel for a few years now, ever since I moved down to Virginia. But I’ve never done it properly, and it’s never been a part of the snowball. But the recent news that I’ll be attending a VIP viewing of the next NASA shuttle launch brings to the forefront the fact that I really should organize myself. So, a travel fund! Because I’m young and I do that sort of thing. Note: Spending from this fund will not include travel for attending weddings. That will come from the aptly named Weddings fund.

Not-really New Fund: Occasionals It’s not in the old savings snowball, but I have been contributing to this fund monthly for quite a while now. It’s a catch-all fund for things that happen regularly, but not often. Car insurance bills, my cell phone bill (I pay my share of a family plan, but not monthly), property tax on my car, things of that nature. Altogether, the little “occasionals” add up to $110/month right now. This goes toward the bottom of the snowball, since it never needs to be the one at the top where it gets the brunt of the savings. It’s a fixed amount monthly.

Newest and Improviest Savings Snowball

Name Goal Total Progress Monthly Payment
Future Car Fund $10,000 $546 $50 + All that I can
Travel Rolling $250 $90
Weddings Rolling $1064 $75
Retirement $5,000/year $3,478(total) $150
Charity Fund Rolling $65 $30
Occasionals Rolling $250 $110
Emergency Fund $3,000 $3,181 Achieved!

So this is the new plan. Everything that I’ve kept on the list, I’ve also raised the monthly payment on, in light of my raise. I agonized a bit about what to put as the new top priority, of course. It could change, but the thinking for now is that my car is a 1996 Oldsmobile. It’s just not going to hang on for that much longer, no matter how well I take care of it.

The interesting thing about this is that nearly none of my savings goals have set targets anymore. Nearly all of them are things I plan to be withdrawing from on a regular basis, as things come up, so they’re “rolling” targets. For example, “Weddings” can be expected to grow fat during the winter months, and then go low at the peak of wedding season, in late spring, and cycle back around each year for quite a while.

But that’s okay! New goals will come up. Life will change. The snowball will have to change with it. But for now, as things are, this is the plan. And I’m plowing forward with it (if that’s not a mixed snow metaphor, I don’t know what is!).

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Net Worth Update: Quarter 1, 2011

By Stephanie on April 4, 2011

Welcome back, for another quarterly update on my financial situation! I’m your host, Can’t-Manage-to-Post-Monthly Stephanie! Boy, do I have a lot in store for you this time – but first, the numbers!

January: $617 or +2.28 %

February: ($3,104) or -11.74 %

March: ($211) or -0.71 %

Net Worth Graph - March 2011Yeeeee-ouch! What happened here, young lady?

No worries! (Yep, I said “No worries!”) Both of the drops this quarter were completely expected and planned for. There is nothing fishy going on here – I didn’t gamble away my hard-earned money or blow it all on Collector’s Edition X-Men figurines (although I may have considered that second one). The February drop is the biggon that I warned about back in July, when I mentioned that the growth on this chart is a lie, but it was too late to go back and correct it, so there would just be a giant drop come tax time.

Well, I filed my taxes in February, found out what the tax damage was going to be, and adjusted my net worth accordingly. (I have added a new Liability for my tax obligation to prevent this in the future, thanks to commenter Giorgio Sironi for the suggestion!) But all is not lost – I had actually put $800 more into savings to cover my taxes than the ultimate bill, so I earned myself a $800 “tax refund” in the end – which I dumped straight into my emergency fund. Which brings us to…

Good News Article #1: I hit my emergency fund goal! With my $800 tax refund, I pushed my e-fund above $3,000, and am now sitting pretty on what I consider to be enough for this stage in my life. Since I have no dependents, a family to lean on, and a good amount of available credit, I’ve decided $3,000 is more than enough for an emergency fund right now. Life will change and I will need to grow it more later, but now I can finally cross that off the top of my to-do list and move on!

The March drop? Bah – that happens every March/September. I have several “Occasionals” that come due every six months, conveniently all in March and September. My car insurance is a big one of those. So I always expect my net worth to take a mini hit during those months, which it predictably did this time.

So, what else is new?

Good News Article #2: I got a job! Wait…. what? Weren’t you telling us before that you have a wonderful job that you love? Yep, I’m pretty sure I did indeed say that. But the problem with wonderful-job-that-I-loved: it was a seasonal temporary job. However, I successfully kicked enough booty at that job to convince them to hire me full time! So now I’m a real girl with benefits and a pay bump to boot, as of April 1st. Woot! I suppose I have to start acting like a real adult now, right? (No. Definitely not.)

Anything else…?

Good New Article #3: I’m going to see the shuttle launch! And that has what, exactly, to do with personal finance? Ha! It’s a big expenditure, that’s what. I’ve been selected as one of 150 “tweeps” to get a swanky tour of NASA down at Kennedy Space Center, and then the next day watch the space shuttle Endeavour launch for the last time, from the press site at Kennedy (closer by far than the general public can get). But I have to provide my own food, lodging, and transportation… and take time off work, of course. And shuttle launches are notoriously fickle things – so after making all these plans, the launch may be pushed back – by days, weeks, or even months.

But-and I can’t emphasis this point strongly enough-there’s a point to personal finance. Things like this, once in a lifetime things, are why I track every penny I spend, and sock money into savings accounts, and worry about how much is going into my Roth IRA. It’s not to be miser, a penny-pincher, or just plain obsessive. It’s so that when NASA randomly picks my Twitter account and says “Hey, want to come see what could be the last ever shuttle launch?” I can say “YES!” without a moment’s hesitation. That’s why I do it. It might be a different sort of thing altogether for you, but in the end, the point of personal financial management should be so that you can live the life you’ve always dreamed of living.

Please, feel free to follow my upcoming NASA adventure on my Twitter account (that’s the whole point!), @Stephonee. The “Tweetup” is now only two weeks away! Please excuse me for now, while I go off and *happy dance*

If you have any questions about my net worth or how it is calculated, feel free to ask them in the comments.

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Net Worth Update: Quarter 4, 2010

By Stephanie on January 3, 2011

Erm, oh, hi there! I could have sworn I was better about updating than this. I can’t believe you’re still around, reading this at all! (And believe me, I am truly grateful that you are!) I could make a bizillion million excuses for why I haven’t been around. But the truth is, things have been busy, in a good way. My previous post on here marks the start of my new wonderful job. And since then, money problems have just not been on the forefront of my mind. Sure, I’m not making the big bucks (by any standard), but… well, let’s get to the numbers first, then we’ll talk details.

October: $1,313 or +4.52 %

November: ($235) or -0.85 %

December: $904 or +3.23 %

Net Worth Graph - December 2010

Up, down, up! And all three months, higher than any net worth posted on this blog before that. Slowly, I work my way up from the deep valley of student loan debt – constantly reminded that my highest net worth was at age 17, when I hadn’t taken on any loans at all yet! And I also need to bear in mind that my tax bill this year will drop my net worth down to a more realistic level.

But my savings are growing, slowly yet steadily. I haven’t been able to contribute any more to a retirement fund yet, since my job situation was so shaky for part of the year, I have been much more focused on more liquid savings (like my emergency fund). I hope I can scrape up some money to throw into my Roth IRA before the April deadline, but I won’t cry a river if I can’t.

I don’t want to develop a lackadaisical attitude toward my money, but I can certainly see that the days of micromanaging are, at least for now, behind me. I used to have to watch every penny to make sure that my bills were paid. Some months I had to rely on my emergency fund, rather than adding to it. I’m not saying that I’m set for life now, but years of foundation-laying work might actually be paying off and allowing me to relax a bit. (Just a bit, though.)

This entry marks 4 solid years of updating this graph monthly. (Even if I haven’t managed to do so well at blogging about it during the last six months, I have updated the graph consistently!) The overall picture (something like a jack-o-lantern grin) is starting to become clear. I’m excited to see where it will go from here. And I hope, since you’ve come this far with me, you’ll stick around to see where it goes, too.

If you have any questions about my net worth or how it is calculated, feel free to ask them in the comments.

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Net Worth Update: September 2010

By Stephanie on October 5, 2010

Last month, I predicted that September’s net worth chart had nowhere to go but down. How did that pan out?

Change: -$523 or -1.83 %

Net Worth Graph - September 2010

Down she goes! It’s not really surprising, although I wasn’t quite prepared for the extent to which it went down. Here are the factors that played into this (temporary!) downfall:

Income: My previous job ended at the very end of August, and I went into job hunting mode. Which was also vacation mode – I decided to do my job hunt during the day while visiting family in Upstate New York. My previous job was understaffed and I was not able to take much time off, so it was my first extended visit up there since I moved down to Virginia a year ago. While I did manage to get the job I really wanted (huzzah!), I didn’t start that one until the 22nd, and so, no paycheck yet.

I did go and conduct a training seminar for my previous job, which brought in something to cushion this month, but not enough to offset the fact that…

My car is expensive: And not in a cool way, but more of a “1996 Oldsmobile granny-car needs repairs” way. First, September is the month my insurance comes due. No biggie, because I put aside money for it monthly in my “Occasionals” savings account and then pay it every six months. But that does eat a chunk out of my net worth every six months, regardless. Of course, my car wasn’t happy with just that: aside from also needing its yearly inspection, it decided it deserved new tires and new turn signal bulbs. And an air freshener. (Oh, and now? Water is leaking into the backseat when it rains.) Apparently, my car is a gold digger.

All the usual expenses still apply: Okay, technically, I could have applied for a forbearance on my student loans while I was looking for a job. But it probably would have taken me about as much time to fill out that paperwork as it did to find a new job. In general, the world doesn’t stop turning just because you don’t have a job any more – and that means everyone still wants money from you. I know I was very lucky that my “unemployment” was extremely short-lived…

But also, a big part of why I was able to handle not having a job is that I prepared for it. I knew it was coming and stocked up my emergency fund for months ahead of time. Again, I know that I’m lucky that I didn’t have to dip into it. But it was there, just in case. So this temporary slide down on the net worth graph? It really doesn’t bother me one bit.

Next month? WIll be up.

If you have any questions about my net worth or how it is calculated, feel free to ask them in the comments. Also, if you’d like to see how I stack up against other personal finance bloggers, be sure to check out The Wealthy Blogger List. (Spoiler alert: the name of my site is highly accurate.)

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Net Worth Update: August 2010

By Stephanie on September 10, 2010

August has been hot, hot, hot! Weather wise, certainly, but I also made it worse by making a (work-related) trip to Miami in the middle! Let’s see if my finances  had a similar toasty trend:

Change: $2,070 or +6.77 %

August 2010 Net Worth GraphIndeed, it was a good month! However, it also represents my last month of steady employment. (My employer moved out of state and I remain in Virginia.) The money I made in all those nice upward-sloping months on this graph needs to last me through my job search. Which means that September will almost certainly be a “down” month, as little income comes in, and I still pay bills including my student loans, car insurance, etc..

Still, I’m quite optimistic – although September will be a “down” month on the graph, it’s not a surprise and it’s something I planned for. Just like when I graduated and knew I’d have to draw on my Getting Established fund for a while.

Everyone think good thoughts for me while I do interviews for new jobs! :)

If you have any questions about my net worth or how it is calculated, feel free to ask them in the comments. Also, if you’d like to see how I stack up against other personal finance bloggers, be sure to check out The Wealthy Blogger List. (Spoiler alert: the name of my site is highly accurate.)

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Net Worth Update: July 2010

By Stephanie on August 9, 2010

Back for another check-in on my finances! Prepare yourself – this entry comes with a startling revelation! (Dun, dun, DUN!)

Change: $1,561 or +4.86%

Net Worth Chart July 2010

 

A nice continuous climb for that little line! If you look at the chart, you may notice that it’s up into the area that was the first “fall” in the chart back in 2007, when I went back to school and started taking out student loans again. But, this is where the “startling revelation” comes in…

The growth on this chart is a lie. Or, an exaggeration, anyway. And I call this a startling revelation because it really did take me by surprise, as well. It’s something I knew about, but completely underestimated until I looked at the numbers this month.

You see, I’ve been counting in my net worth the money I’ve been putting aside for taxes. As a freelancer and independent contractor, my taxes and Social Security tax payments are not withheld by an employer – I have to put them aside myself and pay it at tax time. I do pay “estimated quarterly taxes,” each quarter, but by my calculations, that amount is much lower than what I’ll really owe come tax day. I won’t be penalized because I’ve been making my quarterly payments, but… I will have to hand over a significant chunk of change.

So this chart’s growth is inflated because of the savings account I have specifically for tax savings. Which leads us to an excellent question: why did I ever include that savings account in these monthly calculations at all?

Good question. I don’t really know. I guess I thought that it wouldn’t be as big of an impact as it was. I didn’t expect to be working as a freelancer and independent contractor for so long. It was really just an oversight. However, it’s not completely wrong – after all, once I make the big payment in March or so, my net worth will drop down to what it’s supposed to be. It will all adjust at that time.

And as soon as it does adjust? At that time, if I’m still getting income from a non-W2-source, I’ll cut that savings account out of the calculation entirely.

Just be prepared for the big drop in six months or so. Believe me, I’m getting prepared for that, myself.

If you have any questions about my net worth or how it is calculated, feel free to ask them in the comments. Also, if you’d like to see how I stack up against other personal finance bloggers, be sure to check out The Wealthy Blogger List. (Spoiler alert: the name of my site is highly accurate.)

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Net Worth Update: June 2010

By Stephanie on July 2, 2010

I’m back again for another spin ‘round the ol’ Net Worth calculation! It’s time to see what happened in June and how some big changes (relatively speaking) to my student loans affected the bottom line. Here’s the sitch:

Change: $1,220 or +3.66 %

Net Worth Graph June 2010

Yep, I still go it! (“It” being that awesome knack I have for making my net worth climb upward these days.) I managed to sock a good amount away into my savings, while weathering a few tiny storms that threatened to pull my net worth back in the downward direction. It’s all about the savings, my friends.

Student Loans: You may note, if you click the graph above and visit my detailed net worth chart for June, you’ll note that my student loan balance increased a bit, by $44, instead of it’s usual downward direction. This is mainly because I didn’t have a payment due in June for two of my loans.

Why? Because I consolidated my student loans this month! Well, two out of the three, anyway. See, the benefit of consolidating student loans is getting a fixed interest rate instead of a variable one. I won’t get into too many details here – consolidating student loans is a thing that deserves a post all to itself.

By the way, even though I didn’t have a payment due for those student loans (due to the transition period), I just scheduled an extra payment for today (huzzah for extra payments!). My new payment amount, which starts at the end of July, is higher than what I was paying on those loans before. But I’ll pay way less in interest in the long run, so it’s all good.

Retirement Account: My Roth IRA? It could be doing better. I’m really trying not to care too much about the month-to-month rises and falls, but it taunts me! Just gotta keep this in mind: the fact that the value is down means I can buy more shares for my money when I make my next investment. The stocks are on sale! I haven’t lost any money unless I cash out, which I am so not doing right now.

Emergency Fund: My big behemoth savings goal at the moment. I have to adjust my savings snowball to reflect that this is the new top goal in my life. But right now, I’m looking at a short term goal of getting it up to $3,000 by October. It’s on a rockstar pace – it’s up to $1638 at the moment. Hot!

For July, I’ll be focused on socking away money and job searching. Hopefully I can transition gracefully when my job ends in September, but if the cards don’t fall that way, that emergency fund will come in mighty handy.

If you have any questions about my net worth or how it is calculated, feel free to ask them in the comments. Also, if you’d like to see how I stack up against other personal finance bloggers, be sure to check out The Wealthy Blogger List. (Spoiler alert: the name of my site is highly accurate.)

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