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Net Worth Update: March – December 2014

By Stephanie, updated January 4, 2015 9 Comments
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Hello boys.... I'M BACK

The conflict of interest that put this site on hiatus is over. The future holds a lot of updates and changes to the blog, but before we get into any of that, let’s do a post just on what happened in my personal net worth while I wasn’t writing:

March: $842 (-$1,145 or -57.62%)
April: $133 (-$709 or —84.20%)
May: $2,818 (+$2,685 or +2018.80%)
June: $3,842 (+$1,024 or +36.34%)
July: $3,117 (-$725 or -18.87%)
August: $5,933 (+$2,816 or +90.34%)
September: $3,943 (-$1,990 or -33.54%)
October: $10,272 (+$6,329 or 160.51%)
November: $10,707 (+$435 or 4.23%)

And currently…
December: $11,681 (+$974 or 9.10%)

Total change, from the last update to now: +$9,694 or +487.87%

A few goals hit their deadlines…

You may recall the main goal I was working toward: getting to a positive net worth by September 16th, 2014 (10 years from the date I took out my first student loan and my net worth slid into the negative). And I did tentatively call that goal “achieved” back in February, when my net worth rose into the positive numbers for the first time in my adult life.

Now that September 16th, 2014 has passed, we can look back and see that, yes, I did it! Though my net worth did wobble dangerously close to the negative line again, it stayed positive right through September and for all the months since then.

Achievement unlocked: Positive Net Worth

Just having achieved that goal will make me pretty unbearable to deal with for a while. But I also had another, lesser-discussed goal on the table. In November of 2013, I declared a new goal to see my retirement accounts hit a total of $30,000 within a year.

I managed to slide in right under the wire on that one: by the end of the month of November, my retirement funds totaled $30,689!

Achievement unlocked: $30,000 Retirement Savings

Two ‘cheevos unlocked? That calls for a celebratory “The West Wing” gif set:

Victory is mine, victory is mine! I drink from the keg of glory, Donna. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land.
It's gonna be an unbearable day. *Josh celebrates*
gif set by kinneys on tumblr

What else happened?

The line graph for these months is awfully squiggley. Ups and downs were had, to be sure.

But that was expected. I started a new job, which paid less than my previous position, but had better benefits. My commute changed, and suddenly I was leaving my car at home for days at a time and reading the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series on bus and train rides.

I got married, and went on a honeymoon. My now-husband (!) and I saved up; paid for most of it ourselves, but also received generous help from friends and family for both events. We set up a “honeymoon registry” so that most of the wedding gifts we received were contributions to our honeymoon fund.

So we saved, and received some gifts. And all of that went right back out the door as we spent on the wedding and splurged on the honeymoon. It could have turned out to be a flat year — and I wouldn’t have been surprised, really. But the overall trend was, despite it all, upward.

And I still got my ‘cheevos.

To combine or not to combine…

While I was tabulating all of these net worth numbers, my husband walked up behind me to ask a question that had been rolling around in my own head as well:

Should we be including all of my husband’s information in these net worth updates?

The short answer: no.

I don’t keep an eye on my husband’s account balances day-to-day, so I’m not going to do it for the monthly net worth update, either. We have a few joint savings accounts (one for each common goal that we are both working toward), but have otherwise decided to maintain our separate accounts. He sends me a monthly Person2Person payment between our Capital One 360 checking accounts to cover his share of the monthly household expenses.

Besides, this blog is my financial journey. Though his help and income certainly play into that, his accounts (that I don’t touch) do not.

Dance party time!

Two ‘cheevos and a wedding this update? I’m feelin’ that it’s time for a dance party. Join me in the comments for some untz untz (animated dancing gifs, YouTube embeds — pick your poison).

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!

Net Worth Update: December 2013

By Stephanie, updated January 2, 2014 1 Comment
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HERPY DEW BEER! (Translation: Happy New Year!) It’s been a whirlwind December (as it usually is), so I can hardly believe that it’s time for this month end/year end update already! You might remember from November’s update that I was worried about December possibly (probably!) being a down month. Let’s check in and see if that’s what happened:

Change: +$2,142 or +24.54%

December Net Worth: -$6,586

That’s pretty far from a “down month,” wouldn’t you say? Woohoo! Much of that gain comes from a bump in the value of my retirement accounts, but I’ll take it!

Also in December, the video game fundraising group (yes, that’s a thing) that I founded and organize raised $4134 for the organization charity: water, to provide clean water to people who need it in Cambodia and Ethiopia. So I’m feeling pretty good about that! I spent all the money in my “Charity” savings account on the fundraiser (mostly on supplies and food for the volunteers), and I still came out with a positive increase to my net worth? WIN WIN WIN!

8.5 months to go to get to my “Positive Net Worth” goal, and now $6,586 is the amount I need (or, I suppose, $6,586 + $1!). That’s about $775/month that I need in net worth increases to get there. Not too bad, I’d say — so long as this pesky wedding thing doesn’t cost me too much along the way.

Speaking of the wedding, based on our total budget and what we’ve spent so far, and what’s in our Wedding saving account as of now, we need to put aside another $1452.99 at this point (yeah, the 99 cents is really how the numbers came out!), and the goal is to have that money all set aside by April, so that’s $363.25/month between the two of us — totally do-able, I think.

$775.00/month in general net worth increase + $363.25/month in wedding savings (at least until April) = $1138.25/month that I need to squirrel away. I only averaged $1021.42/month in net worth increases in the months of 2013, so it might be a little tough to do… but then again, the wedding savings is between two of us, and only until April. So I’m optimistic that I’ll get it done.

Stay tuned, because I’ll do a Savings Snowball update soon, as well!

Questions? Critiques? Words of encouragement? Leave them in the comments!

Net Worth Update: December 2012 – February 2013

By Stephanie, updated March 4, 2013 2 Comments
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The world didn’t end and I somehow entered my 27th year more-or-less unscathed. So how did the financials stack up, when 2012 was all said and done? (And 2013 is already 1/6th of the way done! Egads!)

December: +$832 +3.94%
January: +$1,462 +7.20%
February: +$2,072 +11.00%

That, my friends, is what I call three productive months! I’m not ashamed to say I’m proud of the numbers in this update. Those increases put my net worth up to -$16,771 (yeah, negative sixteen grand).

Positive Net Worth Quest

Back in November, I laid out a plan to raise my net worth into the positive numbers by mid-September, 2014. At that time, I calculated it would take net worth increases at an average of $978/month to reach that goal. How’s that been going?

$4,745 increase over 4 months = $1,186.25/month

Woot! I beat the plan by over $100/month! Which means from this point forward, I only need to hit an average of $932/month in net worth increase over the next 18 months to reach my goal.

These over-achieving months early on are really vital to me. First of all, they give me confidence in the idea that this plan is totally do-able. More importantly, they will help pad any slow months later on, so that I don’t have to play catch-up if I can’t quite maintain this super-charged pace.

So how did I manage that nice growth these past few months? Well, I’m glad you asked!

December

Honestly, it surprised me that there was any increase in this month at all! Between Christmas presents (I’m a gifter. Like, a hello-my-name-is-Stephanie-and-I’m-a-giftaholic level gifter.) and cleaning out everything remained in my charity savings account for my video game marathon fundraiser, I was expecting a net worth decrease for December, actually.

So what saved December?

I have a roommate now! Sharing the cost of my apartment has freed up some of the money that I was paying in rent to go to net-worth-increasing projects, instead. Even though I still pay the majority of the rent (we split the bill based on our respective income levels), every dollar freed up by sharing the load can be put to more productive use.
My retirement accounts saw some really healthy growth. $429 in those, and $23 (almost 10%!) gained from having decided to put more investment into my Lending Club account the month before.
Continued effort on my car loan and student loan repayments. I’m only paying the minimums (because the interest rates are fixed low rates), but still made $335 in progress on all of my debts.

January

The gains in this month were a little easier to understand right off the bat. My retirement funds exploded by more than $1,000 in January — nearly 10%! Part of that can be attributed to the dividends that my funds paid out, all of which were automatically reinvested into the same funds. All very nice to see — I just hope things keep up (or at least, steady) during these very uncertain times in the market.

Despite some unexpected travel (for a funeral, unfortunately), January rocked it. Not as much as February, though!

February

Tax refunds! Woooooo! Okay, not really something to get that excited about. Honestly, a tax refund is often just referred to as the government repaying its interest-free loan to you. And I actually did everything I could to avoid a big tax refund: adjusted my paycheck withholdings to try to get to that “sweet spot” of a very small tax refund. But, for whatever reason, it didn’t really work and I got a big fat direct deposit in February, anyway (and a small one from the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well).

Retirement funds grew a bit again, my car actually increased a bit in value (giving credence to my friend’s theory that Kelly Blue Book values have seasonality), and everything else continued on its usual path (debts down, assets up).

March Forth*

What’s next? Not much specific, I’m afraid! Aside from some small things (there are two weddings this year that will draw some cash out of my “Weddings” savings fund, for example), I will mostly be focused on packing away that $932/month to hit my net worth goal.

Questions? Comments? There’s a comment section below for that! 🙂

*Get it? This blog post was put online on March fourth, which is the only day on the calendar that is a complete sentence (albeit, a misspelled one), and this section is about looking into the future, the month of March specifically. I hope you’re half as amused by this as I am, cause I’m dying over here!

Net Worth Update: December 2011

By Stephanie, updated January 23, 2012 13 Comments
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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 %

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.

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.