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Net Worth Update: April 2019

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This net worth update is coming in a bit late because last week was wack-a-doodle busy for me. As if things weren’t already busy-busy with work, a toddler, online businesses, and everything else I try to cram into my life… I finally got my braces put on last week! But, that happened just after the end of the month, so it won’t be covered in this update. Whomp whomp. Still, these are the final round of numbers in the lead-up to that big expense, so let’s dig in to what will probably be the peak of the net worth mountain (for a little while):

Change: +$8,513 or +7.40%

April Net Worth TOTAL: $123,576

April 2019 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than YouApril 2019 Net Worth Breakdown | Poorer Than YouHoly moly… was not expecting that! Okay, to be fair, I wasn’t really expecting anything. The busyness this month created a “just hang on and get through it all” mentality and I had exactly zero expectations of what the numbers were going to be. So, let’s dig into the categories and learn together just what happened this month… because I sincerely don’t even know.

Cash: +$3,121

This is where the meat of it happened this month, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. There wasn’t any one big thing that made up the greater-than-$3,000 cash increase this month. It was a lot of little things (or, medium things, I guess). Our tax refund from the Commonwealth of Virginia finally came in. I got a second $300 bonus from Chase for having opened new checking and savings accounts with them.

Counter-intuitively, we spent quite a bit of money this month. My yearly life insurance premium came due as it always does in April, and I paid for that and a few other expenses using Plastiq and a new credit card. I’ve been working on “churning” credit card bonuses as a tactic to drum up money for our dental work, and by doing this we cleared another $500 bonus this month.

There were some true “little” things, but even they added up pretty significantly. A lot of you seem to be excited about earning 5% interest on your savings and signed up for NetSpend accounts last month, so I got some bonus money from that. We sold more video games on eBay, and that’s easy money. I also cut off my hair and prepared the ponytail for eBay, though I haven’t listed it yet, so that doesn’t show up in this month’s total. (This is not at all the first time I’ve sold my hair on eBay.)

Put it together and what have you got? Bippity-boppity-three-thousand-one-hundred-twenty-one-dollars, believe it or not!

Retirement: +$4,843

More money than the first category! And way less exciting! Okay, not less exciting (woooooo money!), but less interesting to talk about. Everything in the cash category was active, and lifehacky, and “hey look I did things!” But here in retirement? It’s the same story. every. month.

There weren’t any unusual contributions this month, just the usual HSA contributions from my paychecks. That’s it, the rest was all growth.

Not that I mind growth, of course, not in the least. Especially after all those months at the end of last year, where the stock market was having a time of it and going down right when I was supposed to be crossing the $100k net worth milestone. No, I am thankful for the growth.

But it doesn’t leave me much to say here. I don’t ever even know the stock market is doing well until I run these numbers. Because that’s one of my secrets-to-success: I only look at my investments once a month, when I do my net worth report. It keeps me from poking at them, moving things around, making little “adjustments,” or just plain panicking and moving all my money into silver doubloons. That sort of meddling works really well with cash (see above) and is horrible for investments.

Cars: -$41

Okay, I’ve got even less to say here. My car depreciated a little and no one is surprised, since that’s what cars do. It did get an oil change this month, so it’s got that going for it.

Other Assets: +$53

These were purely some uncashed checks:

Credit card rewards from a card that I’m not using much these days, my Citi Doublecash, which is my “daily driver” when I’m not credit card bonus churning… but I am right now. So rather than get the rewards as a “statement credit” on a card I’m not using, I requested a check, and here that is.

A refund check for a late fee from Plastiq for a payment that got lost in the mail. So, I now know what happens if you pay a bill through Plastiq and the check doesn’t make it! Not the greatest thing that ever happened, of course, but I don’t blame Plastiq. (I interact with the postal service enough in my day job to be confident in saying THEY LOSE STUFF MORE THAN YOU THINK.) Plastiq was quick to help me fix the issue. After confirming that the check never made it, they refunded my money (so I could make an instant payment on the biller’s website to bring my account current), and I submitted a screenshot of the late fee, which they sent me a check for.

Student Loans: No change

So now that my girl Elizabeth Warren (who I’ve been a fangirl of pretty much since the start of this blog) has announced that she’s running for President of the United States, and has announced her plan to cancel the student loan debt of 95% of Americans… I see no reason whatsoever to make any of my student loan payments anymore.

I’m kidding. Of course. Well, only about the last part where I stopped paying my student loans. (I am super pumped that EW is running for prez, as you might imagine.)

Rather, the reason there was no change in my student loan balance is super mundane: my due date was the last Sunday of the month and the payment didn’t hit my balance before it was time to run the numbers. That’s it.

Though, in the larger scheme of things, I have been thinking about how much it might not make sense for me to focus on paying off my student loan debt if there’s a chance that Senator Warren could win the presidency and cancel my remaining debt. There is an argument to be made for only paying my minimums until my debt gets canceled, or she gets knocked out of the election race.

It doesn’t matter as anything more than a thought experiment for me at the moment, since the dental work is taking up all extra money that would otherwise be available for paying off my student loans. I just love a good thought experiment!

Credit Card: -$107

Speaking of only paying the minimum on things, I did it again. As a quick refresher, this is a 0% interest credit card that I used to “refinance” some of my student loans. I actually did something very interesting with this the other day… but… that was in May and not April, so you’ll just have to wait until next month to find out what. 😉

Other Debts: -$430

What goes up must come down, which is actually a good thing when it comes to debts. Because I paid my life insurance bill in April, the liability I count for it went down! Now time for it to slowly start creeping up again for next year.

Milestone Progress

Debt Freedom: No progress again this month, so May 2024 is still the calculated date. And like I said in the Student Loans category above, it makes a lot of sense to wait on this and see. Not that I was ever super aggressive about becoming “debt free,” but now I have even more incentive to sit on my hands a bit with it. As crazy as that sounds!

$200,000 in Retirement Accounts: Currently $118,061, so just $81,939 remaining. The “goal” is to hit it 5 years after hitting $100k in retirement, which is 52 months from now. That will take growth/contributions of about $1,576/month. That seems all too doable given how things have been going. And considering HSA + IRA contribution limits add up to $1,083/month, to say nothing of my Solo 401(k). Is this even real life?

If you’ve never run net worth numbers before, you may question the nature of your reality too, the first time you do it!

I run these numbers by hand in a spreadsheet, and you could do the same, or you can check out Personal Capital for some automagical tracking. You and I each get a $20 Amazon gift card if you sign up through me and then link it up to at least one valid investment account.

Either way, add it up and let me know if it blows your mind, in the comments below!

Time Travel

Net Worth Update: April 2018

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I was gonna make an “It’s Gonna Be MAY” reference in this month’s intro, but…

  • We’re here to talk about April so maybe let’s not with the “May” stuff just yet.
  • Though I am a 90s kid who certainly remembers, I wasn’t that into *NSYNC at the time. Case in point: I had to look up the proper spelling and styling of “*NSYNC.” I was almost certainly listening to Eve 6’s Horrorscope instead at that time.

So, while it is going to be May, let’s slow it down a bit here and remember that if you don’t think to think, in the blink of an eye… you could end up screwed by the horse that you rode in on. And also something about a wedding and then getting caught in an affair with a cute Guatemalan? Perhaps I should not have been listening to Eve 6 at such an impressionable age…

Alright jet pack, get off my back, I’ll run the numbers:

Change: +$1,643 or +1.50%

April Net Worth TOTAL: $83,697

April 2018 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than You

April 2018 Net Worth Breakdown | Poorer Than You

Not a super exciting month, I’ll give you that. Well, except for whatever’s happening over on the debts side (which probably looks completely bananas if you haven’t been following my other recent net worth updates). Ah, well, either way, let’s dig in:

Cash: +$1,416

The hoarding of cash continues! You can see that I already have enough in cash to pay off my credit card balance in full, but because the credit card (which we’ll come back to in a minute, I promise) is at a 0% interest rate until June of 2019, I’m not going to do that. Paying it off now would defeat the purpose of having gotten it. Instead, I’m sacking away money into my 2nd 5%-APY Insight Card savings account until I hit the $5,000 limit, and then I’ll open another one.

Retirement: +$252

The only “retirement” account I contributed to this month was my HSA (Health Savings Account). That one comes directly out of my paycheck (for that sweet, sweet quadruple tax advantage) so it happens no matter what. But otherwise, nothing else in the ol’ retirements. I’m still in the slow part of the year for self-employment (so no Solo 401(k) contributions this month), and I’ve decided to hold off on IRA contributions until I have a better handle on whether Traditional or Roth makes sense for us this year. I know, exciting stuff. (A whole lot o’ nothing going on.)

Student Loans: -$7,962 / Credit Card: +$7,924

These debts are one and the same this month because my “refinancing the Unsubsidized Stafford Loan to a 0% interest $0 fee credit card” plan is finally complete. Well, “complete” as in the balances have all been transferred and now the repayment part has started. There’s still about $1,800 left on my Unsubsidized loan because I couldn’t fit the whole thing on the credit card. If I have the extra money this year, I may just pay off that $1,800 early. If not, it will be paid off in 18 months, which is only a few months after the credit card will be paid off, and then I can “snowball” both the credit card payment and the Unsubsidized loan payment into my Subsidized Stafford Loan and show that sucker the door, too.

I put this little plan into the calculator at Undebt.it, and it says I’ll be completely debt free in December of 2022. And that’s just assuming that I snowball my payments into the next debt—it will be even sooner if I do more crazy refinancing tricks or find extra money to shove at the debt. Though, I’m never so keen on the latter, given the mild fixed interest rates on my debts. But hey, you never know.

(I promise I am still working on my posts about how I refinanced the student loan to a 0%-APR credit card. I’m just being my usual wordy, procrastinating self. But they’re coming!)

Other Debts: $-416

Don’t get too excited. This one was just me paying my annual life insurance premium. I save up for that one monthly in my “Occassionals” savings and that takes some of the sting away. Some.

Milestone Progress

The Milestone: $100,000 net worth. Last month, I had to adjust everything for the crazy drop, and needed $2044 each month to get there by December 31st. I did slightly better than that this month, so I now only need $2038 each month to get there by December 31st. Alrighty, getting a little easier (by $6/month). I’ll take it.

That’s it for this month, honestly. Here’s to “good-bye,” tomorrow’s gonna come too soon. Here’s a toast to all those who hear me all too well.

If you’d like to see how I stack up against other personal finance bloggers, be sure to check out The Ultimate List of Blogger Net Worths over on the Rockstar Finance directory!

Net Worth Update: April 2017

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*cricket chirp* *cricket chirp*

Yup, it’s been pretty quiet around here lately. The work available to me picked up a lot in the month of April, and so I scrambled to catch it all in my little hat. That meant putting writing blog posts on hold, and focusing deeply on things that would directly make money. How well did that pay off in my net worth at the end of the month? Here goes…

Change: +$1,633 or +3.51%

April Net Worth TOTAL: $48,215

April 2017 Net Worth Graph | Poorer Than You

A nice, healthy jump up! Not as impressive as last month’s jump, but still a climb of more than $1600 is nothing to sneeze at. Plus, in the future I can replicate what I did this month (worked a bunch), and I can’t easily replicate what happened last month (my husband and I saved too much for taxes as freelancers, and ended up with a self-funded “tax refund”). At least, not every month, anyway!

Paying Off the 0% Credit Card Early

This has been a topic of much discussion – especially in my home, where one member of my partnership is more debt-averse than the other. Because of the tasty 3-year 0% rate (which we used to basically refinance one of my student loans to that 0% interest rate), we’ve been in no hurry to pay it off early.

But now we’re into the home stretch: just 10 months left on the promotional offer. And we were set to have the debt paid off right on time. But, I’m a little paranoid about these types of offers; I don’t want any “gotchas” to spring up out of the ground and grab me.

Grave Popping, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Conversations With Dead People"
Credit card surprises be popping up like vampires on Buffy.

With that in mind, we’re going to start sending just a little bit more money in with our monthly credit card payment to that card. It just so happened that the amount we still owe now is equally divisible by 9 – so we can pay off the card with 9 equal payments instead of 10, just by adding $7.61 to the automatic payment. Paying the card off an entire month early should save us from any surprise interest charges, and $7.61/month isn’t really an amount that we’ll miss.

We’ll probably still end up paying off the credit card another month early… because paranoid. So that will be paid off 2 months early, 8 months from now… the end of the year!

New Apartment Fund = FULL

One of the things my husband and I do is make sure that we’re always prepared to move. It’s like an “emergency fund” for any situation where we’d have to move quickly, including a job change, a big hike in our rent at lease renewal time (this one actually happened), getting pregnant and needing additional space/toilets (also happened). As renters, this includes enough to put down a security deposit and first month’s rent, as well as hiring movers and cleaners if we need/want to.

When we moved into our current apartment last year, we took a big ol’ chunk out of the existing fund to, well, pay for all those things. So we’ve been rebuilding that fund since July, with the goal of having it completely replenished by the end of June, when our lease is up. Not that we have any plans to move as of yet… but it gives us a powerful negotiation tool against rent hikes: the ability to turn down a lease renewal with a significant rent hike, if we need to do that.

$38,901 Net Worth Achieved!

$38,901 is a significant number for me, because the negative of that (-$38,901) was my all-time net worth low, back in September of 2009. So hitting positive $38,901 was something I was really, really looking forward to. And now, I’ve done it!

Technically, I hit that number last month, but I didn’t crow about it because it really didn’t feel “earned.” Even though it was through careful saving and money management that I hit that number… some of that came from what I called the “marriage bonus,” where some money we had saved up moved from my husband’s name to mine.

But after a month of working as much as I could and pushing the needle even further above $38,901? I think I’ve earned the happy dance!

No one happy dances like Carlton

Wahoo!

What’s Next?

At the risk of over-abusing animated gifs…

What's Next - West Wing President Bartlet gif
Always choose “The West Wing” gifs over not using “The West Wing” gifs

The next goal on my agenda, as set when I did the 30-Day Money Cleanse, is to max out all of our retirement accounts (Traditional IRAs and an HSA) for 2017. Technically I have until April 15th, 2018 to do this. And we’ve already maxed out the HSA for the year, and moved on to the IRAs, so that’s progressing along nicely.

But that goal is really more of a strategy (max out contributions to the accounts for the year) – I’d also like to have a net worth milestone goal. Because those are fun, honestly. Like those “thermometer” graphs at a charity fundraiser, I like to have a $ total to aim for.

$61,099 is the next milestone! It’s -$38,901 (that all-time low of mine), plus $100,000. It will mark $100,000 of positive progress since I started the blog more than 10 years ago. It would be nice to hit that number before 10 years turns into 11, so let’s aim to get there by January, 2018.

That might be a stretch of what I can actually do, and I’ll be subject to the whims of the market since my investments are all in stocks… but hey! Gotta shoot for the moon so that if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

Let's do this. - Liz Lemon gif

If you’d like to see how I stack up against other personal finance bloggers, be sure to check out The Ultimate List of Blogger Net Worths over on the Rockstar Finance directory!

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Net Worth Update: March 2017

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Happy April! Hope you enjoyed my big, wonderful April Fools’ Day joke on Saturday. Oh, and if you thought you were a smarty pants and didn’t download the ebook because you picked up on the fact that it was an April Fools’ prank? Then you got pranked as much as anyone else! Because there is some glorious actual content in that ebook for those who downloaded it and read past the “April Fools'” portion. If you love this blog, you’ll love what’s in that ebook, so check it out if you haven’t already!

And now, time for the March recap numbers:

Change: $8,433 or +22.11%

March Net Worth TOTAL: $46,582

Net Worth Graph, March 2017 - Poorer Than You

Money Money Money Money… MONEY!

Okay, so, a big jump like that? Definitely requires some explaining. (Didn’t I say in my April Fools’ post that I couldn’t post this net worth update without a serious explanation? YES AND I WAS NOT KIDDING.)

But first, let’s just celebrate:

Any excuse to use Liz Lemon gifs is a good excuse.

Alright, now that we’ve got our dancin’ on, let’s talk about where these numbers came from.

Taxes

I swear, I’ve had increases every month this year that could be attributed to taxes. That seems impossible, but it’s really not. Here’s what happened:

In 2016, my husband and I were both freelancers, which meant that we (our businesses) were responsible for withholding and paying our own taxes. We saved waaaaay more than we ultimately needed for taxes in savings accounts for our businesses. And we paid our quarterly estimated taxes throughout the year, using the “100% of the previous year’s tax burden” method. Those quarterly estimated tax payments (federal and state) were sucked right out of my savings account where I was (over)saving for taxes.

Additionally, since we were basing everything on 2015 numbers (“2015 actuals” if you want to be fancy about it), I paid more of the 2016 estimated taxes than my husband did, because in 2015, I made more. However, because of numerous factors (including my 2-month unpaid maternity “leave”), I ended up making less than he did in 2016. So, basically, he owed me some money. 😛

Our tax burden was lower than planned for because of several reasons, including getting sweet new tax deductions for having a baby, making less money because of the maternity leave, and our decision to shove as much money as possible into my HSA (Health Savings Account) and our Traditional IRAs. The HSA/IRA contributions alone resulted in a federal tax bill that was $2177 less than if we didn’t max out those accounts, and a state return that was $680 less (which actually turned it from owing, into a small refund!). So yeah, a net gain of $2857 – just for taking the extra money we’d hoarded and putting into the right investment accounts.

(At 7% interest, that $2857 will turn into about $21,748 in 30 years!)

The Marriage Bonus

Now you may read the tax info above and astutely notice “Hey! Your net worth partially rose because you took money from your husband and put it into accounts that are in your name! (The HSA and one of the IRAs.)”

You would be 100% completely right about that. And as I said, a portion of that makes sense, since I paid a greater percentage of our estimated taxes throughout the year, even though I ended up making less. But still, there’s a big chunk of my nearly-$9,000 gain this month that is just… my husband’s money being put into my name.

This is because when we got married, we decided not to combine our net worth information for this blog. It’s my blog, not his. Technically, my net worth shot up the day we got married, and it’s never been properly reflected on this graph. But over time, it’s starting to show up in little bursts, like this one.

Besides, marriage provides other net worth increases besides straight assets: you end up adding another productive partner (hopefully) to the “business” that is your estate. You split costs, like roommates, but also work together on common goals in a way that you would never do with a roommate (or maybe some people would, but those are some seriously buddy-buddy roommates if that’s the case).

So it’s not really surprising to see my net worth shoot up as a result of my husband and I both oversaving for taxes. That is what I call the “marriage bonus.”

Back to Work!

I got back to work after my maternity leave in February, but work really picked up again in March. I’m not running at full speed like I was before the baby – that would be insane, considering I’m working from home with the baby here. But I did ramp up somewhat in March, and I’m working on building buffer time into my life so that I can take on even more work. Mostly so that I can be flexible for my clients and handle a large workload for them during any given week, if they require it. I don’t want to turn down any work (if I can help it), and I want to stay reliable in everyone’s eyes!

So far, so good!

Instant Pot Update

Last month, I asked you all if I should get an Instant Pot. Thanks to some feedback in the comments on last month’s update, and on the Facebook page, I decided to go ahead and buy one.

It hasn’t come yet, despite shipping forever ago. I picked a cheap third-party seller on Amazon to buy from, and this is what I get. I’ve filed for a refund from Amazon, since we’re now way past the time frame where it should have arrived. I’ll probably re-buy directly from Amazon once the refund is processed… but I might set up a price alert and wait for a sale. A post by Trent on the Simple Dollar about the Instant Pot from the other day reaffirmed my reasons for wanting to get one… but also confirmed that maybe I should hold out for a good deal on it.

That’s it for this month’s update! Have you filed your taxes yet, or are you waiting until the last minute? If you’ve done it, how did that affect your net worth?

If you’d like to see how I stack up against other personal finance bloggers, be sure to check out The Ultimate List of Blogger Net Worths over on the Rockstar Finance directory!

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Net Worth Update: April 2016

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April showers bring May…. more showers. I’m pretty sure that’s how the saying goes, at least according to the weather in Northern Virginia so far. The constant rain has been sort of a doozy, which ties in nicely to this month’s net worth & financial update…

Change: ($1,372) or -4.76%

April Net Worth Total: $27,448

April 2016 Net Worth ChartAlright, so it’s down. Let’s dig a bit into what happened in April:

Taxes

April is tax month! Even though I completed our tax return back in, what, February? (I don’t even remember now, it’s been that long.) But we owed money, to the tune of over $6,000 (yay self-employment for two people!), and of course, I put off that withdrawal from our account pretty much as long as possible. So the IRS took their payment in early April. And then, we also paid estimated taxes for Quarter-1 2016, since those were due in April as well. Double whammy. But that lowered my “tax liability” in the liabilities column, so the whole thing was actually a wash. Neither up nor down in that category – as it should be.

My car lost $1,972 in value

For no reason! Well, not no reason, I suspect, but for no clear reason. My Toyota Camry passed 100,000 miles, but that was a few months ago and not in April, so it (probably) wasn’t that. As far as I can tell, the Camry just goes through seasons where Kelly Blue Book values it more or less than it did before. It may bounce back later in the year. Or it might not. I’m not really worried about it – after all, I’m about to pay off the car in a few months, so it having any amount of value left in it is just gravy. I’m not looking to sell the Camry anytime soon, so its value is more just a good way to keep track of value vs. loan, and that loan is almost gone!

If you were to ignore the car value change, I would actually be up $600 for the month, so… I’m not losing any sleep whatsoever on this month’s net worth loss. When it’s based on something completely out of my control, it’s not worth dwelling on.

Bun in the oven

Since it’s more than likely that this will have financial implications for the rest of my life, it’s hard to talk about any of my personal finances without making this announcement: I’m pregnant. Due in November. We won’t be finding out the sex of the baby beforehand. (There, I think I’ve covered the most Frequently Asked Questions.)

The long-term implications will of course unfold over time, but in the near-term, this has meant many more doctor visits than I was making previously, a lot of which has been (surprisingly) covered by my very-bottom-tier Obamacare insurance. I’ve had to shell some amount out-of-pocket, but it’s been fairly low amounts. I assume the bill for the delivery will quite large, but I’ve got several months and a Health Savings Account (HSA) to help with that.

The other effect is that we’ve started looking for a bigger apartment to rent. Running the New York Times Buy vs. Rent calculator (as I always do when the question of moving comes up) on some properties in our area that would fit our needs, it comes out that if we can “rent a similar home for less than $1614/month, then renting is better.” There are some 2-bedroom condos and townhouses in our area for that rate, so as usual, we’re leaning strongly toward continuing to rent. But for this round of rental hunting, time is on our side. We don’t need a bigger place until the baby is about 6 months old or so (it would be hard to feed a kid at a high chair in our current kitchen/dining room area), so we’ve got a full year to find a place and move. Plus, our current lease is now month-to-month, so we have the flexibility to jump on a place if it’s a great deal, and pass on anything that isn’t.

The bad news? Paying for a bigger place will probably knock out the extra $194/month that I’ll be freeing up when I pay off my car in July. As far as we can tell, that will go straight into the rent on the next place. So we’ll be able to pocket that money for a few months, and then it’ll be rolled into the new higher rent of a bigger place when, well, we find a bigger place.

Poll!

The poll for how I should divvy up my car payment money (once the car is paid off in July) is still open, though because of the above-mentioned larger apartment search, it seems less relevant now. But just for fun, here it is again:

And that’s all she wrote! We really need to get our super-patriotic decorations up on the Holiday Tree before Memorial Day, but as we haven’t done it yet, I haven’t got any photos to share with you. Next month!

Also, if you’d like to see how I stack up against other personal finance bloggers, be sure to check out The Ultimate List of Blogger Net Worths over on Rockstar Finance!

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