Stephanie, Author at Poorer Than You

Net Worth Update: April 2011

By Stephanie, updated May 3, 2011 14 Comments
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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 %

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.

Savings Snowball Update: Back in Action

By Stephanie, updated April 27, 2011 10 Comments
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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!).

Net Worth Update: Quarter 1, 2011

By Stephanie, updated April 4, 2011 3 Comments
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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 %

Yeeeee-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.

Net Worth Update: Quarter 4, 2010

By Stephanie, updated January 3, 2011 23 Comments
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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 %

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.

Net Worth Update: September 2010

By Stephanie, updated October 5, 2010 12 Comments
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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 %

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.)

Net Worth Update: April 2011

Savings Snowball Update: Back in Action

Newest and Improviest Savings Snowball

Net Worth Update: Quarter 1, 2011

Net Worth Update: Quarter 4, 2010

Net Worth Update: September 2010

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