Poorer Than You

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Net Worth Update: August 2019

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Last month was busy, and this month really didn’t let up… at all. It’s all been a big lead up to this coming week: back to school for my kiddo and FinCon for me! FinCon, the financial media conference, is now an annual thing for me (or at least it will be, after this coming week). Last year I had the pleasure of attending during my birthday, but the dates move around a little every year, so I’m not the birthday girl this time. But, it is happening in my area (Washington, DC!), so at least I don’t have to fly in!

We’ll see how FinCon affects my numbers next month (mostly, the effect will be from missed work at my day job), but for this month, let’s see how things turned out:

Change: ($3,893) | -3.18%

August Net Worth TOTAL: $118,700

August 2019 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than You Net Worth by Categories, August 2019 | Poorer Than You

If you’re new to my net worth updates, here’s what you need to know (returning readers may choose to skip on down to the new stuff by clicking here):

Net worth is assets (what I own, on the left of the green chart) minus liabilities (what I owe, on the right of the green chart).

The net worth is for me alone, though I am married. My husband and I maintain “separate but combined” finances, especially for the purposes of what’s shared on the internets. What you see here are the totals of all of the accounts that are in my name only, plus one half of joint accounts. (Debts are all in my name because my husband would rather eat his socks than take on debt. Not anymore! The credit card for his dental work is in his name and I’m counting them toward his net worth. But also, the savings to eventually pay the card off is all in his name now. More on this below in “Cash”) This does occasionally cause some wonkiness in the numbers, but I will always call that out and explain it (look for me talking about “the marriage bonus” or “the marriage penalty” from time to time). Also, it tends to even out in terms of helping my net worth about half the time, and hurting the other half.

If you’re interested in looking at my past numbers, there’s a handy “Time Travel” navigation section at the bottom!

Now, on to what’s happened this month:

Cash: -$1,694

Oof, that stings a little. Not that I’m opposed to keeping less in cash (I’m always looking for ways to offload cash into investments or otherwise earn more on it, when I can).

And actually, this isn’t as bad as it seems. This is an example of “the marriage penalty” (see above) because what really happened is I sent money off to my husband’s savings account for his braces. The good news? We filled that fund up! Yes!

So finally, next month, we can get back to aggressively investing in retirement accounts and then maybe, just maybe, after that we’ll tackle my last remaining student loan.

The other reason cash was down? I had another busy month and I did almost nothing extra in terms of credit card opening bonuses, or bank account bonuses, or anything at all really outside of my day job (and my volunteering, which was super heavy this month, but obviously doesn’t help with cash!). No regrets, it was a month well-spent, but that’s the reason.

Retirement: -$2,459

Okay, this is the bad one (sorta). The only way I ever know that the stock market is heading down before I do these net worth posts is the rumblings I hear in Facebook groups and on Twitter. That’s because I don’t look at my investments outside of writing these posts monthly! It’s a lot better for my psyche.

Anyway, stocks are down it would seem, since my accounts are down 2% (2.00% exactly, how nice!) despite my usual Health Savings Account contributions in this category. Ah well, as usual I’m not too broken up about it. In fact, if it stays “down” like this, it’s actually good timing for me, since we will be contributing to retirement accounts again come this month. Buying on sale!

Cars: -$14

Though honestly I think Kelley Blue Book is wrong about this one. I took my old sun-burned-on Ghostbusters sticker off and added some fresh Pokémon stickers for my anniversary the other day, so my car is worth far more now, I think.

Other Assets: -$16

I wrangled another bit of cash out of my Lending Club account and we’re really into the home stretch now of clearing it out! There was actually a defaulted loan recovered this month, so I got a bit more than $16 out of it. Yay!

Student Loans: -$74

Minimum payment, same-old same-old. Though as I noted above in cash, if we can get my Traditional IRA maxed out, the student loan should be next on the chopping block, so maybe we’ll see some movement on this one toward the end of the year!

Credit Card: -$52

This is actually a little less than the minimum payment because I put some charges on the card (at 0%). There was a Shutterfly promo to get cash back on this card, so I ordered anniversary presents using a gift card from rewards from a different credit card and a combo of online discounts, I only put $20 on this card, and got $5 cash back, plus $0.71 from Rakuten. I also used the rewards on this card to place an Amazon order for my new phone, which required that I put another $5 or so on this card, too (I know, big spender this month!). So yes, there were like $20 in new charges on the card. Somehow, I’ll live!

Other Debts: -$163

My biannual hosting bill for this website came due and I paid it! I account for 1/24th of the cost as a part of my business “debt” every month, and then it gets written off when the charge goes through and I reimburse myself from the business account. Might seem silly, but it means that I’m never caught off guard when the hosting bill comes every 2 years!

Milestone Progress

Debt Freedom: Undebt.it is still telling me that in order to stay on track and be debt free by May 2024 I need to put $55.55 extra toward my debt every month. I don’t really get it, as it also said that last month, and for the past 3 months I have not done that, but somehow I’m still on track? And even though I put that extra $20 of charges on the credit card? Ah, well, I assume it’s just going to be a little wonky until I get to the end of the year and start actually (hopefully) paying off extra from the student loan.

$200,000 in Retirement Accounts: Alright, we’re a bit further out from this one again. So, I now need $1,659 per month, minus HSA ($583) and IRA ($500) contributions, that’s $576 needed in stock market growth per month over the next 48 months. A lot of people “predicting” there will be a recession in that time, so… I guess we’ll just have to see!

Okay, so the numbers are down but there really isn’t anything all that “bad” going on this month. Mostly, it’s just annoying that I seem to be taking one step forward and then one step back all the time. Still, the overall trend is up! I’ll keep working it, as I always do.

I run these numbers by hand in a spreadsheet (though I’m in the process of switching to Tiller Money!), 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.

No matter what, let me know how you did this month! Did you weather this stock market “storm” alright, or are you a little worse for the wear on the rocky market seas?

Time Travel

 

 

Net Worth Update: July 2019

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I’ve been busy before at various times in my life. Like when I was in college full time and working 3 jobs and writing for someone else for free (somehow I didn’t die of exhaustion). But I swear, this month took the cake. Work’s been busy, my kid has been in swim classes and also sick this month, I have a non-optional volunteer position that requires most of my time and attention in July, I signed up for an online course and launched a new side hustle, and I hosted a sold-out film screening with a Q&A panel right in the middle of the month. I managed to get through the month without pulling any all-nighters (just several ill-advised late nights), somehow.

Oh, and the dental work! I knew this month would be a bit of a toss-up for the numbers: it was a three-paycheck month for husband and me (woo!) but husband also got his own $5,000 braces in July (eeeeee!). So, how did the numbers finally shake out? Here goes:

Change: + $4,610 | +3.91%

July Net Worth TOTAL: $122,594

July 2019 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than You Net Worth by Categories, July 2019 | Poorer Than YouIf you’re new to my net worth updates, here’s what you need to know (returning readers may choose to skip on down to the new stuff by clicking here):

Net worth is assets (what I own, on the left of the green chart) minus liabilities (what I owe, on the right of the green chart).

The net worth is for me alone, though I am married. My husband and I maintain “separate but combined” finances, especially for the purposes of what’s shared on the internets. What you see here are the totals of all of the accounts that are in my name only, plus one half of joint accounts. (Debts are all in my name because my husband would rather eat his socks than take on debt. Not anymore! The credit cards for his dental work are in his name and I’m counting them toward his net worth. But also, the savings to eventually pay them off are all in his name now. More on this below in “Cash”) This does occasionally cause some wonkiness in the numbers, but I will always call that out and explain it (look for me talking about “the marriage bonus” or “the marriage penalty” from time to time). Also, it tends to even out in terms of helping my net worth about half the time, and hurting the other half.

If you’re interested in looking at my past numbers, there’s a handy “Time Travel” navigation section at the bottom!

Now, on to what’s happened this month:

Cash: +$964

That three-paycheck month at work! Though if that were the only thing going on, then this number would surely be a lot higher. We had some missed work (from the dental work and doing too many dang things this month), we spent some money (bought one of those fancy robot vacuums on Amazon Prime Day, so now I have a second robot servant in my home, and I can tell my other robot servant, Alexa, to have the Deebot clean the floors because the future is now).

The rest of my cash this month, though, went to my husband, to start funding his account to pay off the $5,025 he put on two credit cards for his braces. Now, as I mentioned above, my husband and I keep separate finances, which when things like this happen (we’re working together to save for something in one person’s name only), it looks a little funky. Case in point, money disappearing from my Cash asset here because I gave it to him. But, you know, he’s got a $5,025 debt on his books now, so I think a little cash missing this month for me is the better end of the deal.

Why two credit cards? Well, we were able to get the opening bonus on both cards with just his braces. That’s it – one purchase, and we got over $700 in cash back. Plus, one of the two cards has a 0% interest for 15 months offer, for both purchases and balance transfers (with $0 in balance transfer fees), so we’re able to get the entire braces purchase at 0% until we can pay it off. As always, I keep track of these offers (the ones that give the most cash back, not travel rewards) in a spreadsheet that you can check out. And it’s in need of some updating, but I have the backstory on all this dental work, as well.

Retirement: +$3,411

I can take credit for a very small chunk of this. Instead of ~$500 in contributions, it was ~$750 this month, due to the third paycheck.

The rest? Market growth, baby! At some point, this gravy train will have to pull into a station and we’ll have another recession, but until then, it’s making my net worth numbers look real good.

Cars: -$163

Darn you, car!

Other Assets: No Change

Honestly, this might be a mistake but I don’t care enough to look into it. It’s such a small amount of money, that even if it is wrong, it’s only off by about $20 or so. And it’s possibly not a mistake: I did see that Lending Club managed to recover some of my previously-written off money through a collections effort. So maybe they managed to collect the exact amount that I lost/withdrew from the account this month? Wild if true!

Student Loans: -$76

Minimum payment paid on time as usual. The plan is still to tackle these eventually, after the braces are paid for, and IRA contributions are maxed out. So in theory, I could start paying these down aggressively toward the end of the year. Maybe. We’ll see.

Credit Card: -$72

The minimum payment for the 0% interest credit card for my braces (not to be confused with the cash missing for my husband’s braces, yes, we both currently have braces and look even more like children). I have cash put aside to pay this off when the 0% rate is close to ending, but I’m riding the interest I earn on my savings until then. (Remember that I’m pretty good at getting up to 5% interest on a savings accounts.)

Other Debts: -$250

No, I didn’t pay a big tax bill or anything, I actually spent money and this went down. Because I spent money on my business! Money reinvested in the business removed a growing liability (I account each month for how much I need to put away for hosting and site security), and it lowers my estimated tax bill, as well.

On top of that spending, I also bought Julie & Cody’s VIP Etsy Printables online course. Launching an Etsy store with digital downloads and printables relating to Poorer Than You has been something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and I knew this course would save me hours of doing my own research and get me to just start. My Etsy store isn’t quite ready to show you (I need to launch a few more products in the shop before I start spreading the word about it), but I promise I’ll give it a proper debut here when it is ready. Along with some more posts about my budget wedding, because my first few products are all tools that I built to help me successfully plan that.

Milestone Progress

Debt Freedom: Undebt.it is still telling me that in order to stay on track and be debt free by May 2024 I need to put $55.55 extra toward my debt every month. Which means I didn’t get behind by not paying the extra $55.55 this month. But as I said above in “student loans,” it won’t be until the end of the year that I do put any extra there, if at all. So this date should creep further and further out, until I start focusing on debt freedom specifically.

$200,000 in Retirement Accounts: Another good month in the stock market brings this a bit closer! $77,188 left to go, 49 months remaining to get there “on time” (according to the arbitrary time frame I put on it). $1,575 per month, minus HSA ($583) and IRA ($500) contributions is just $492 in stock market growth needed. So, about that recession… think you could wait until after the next 49 months? Please?

Without much time to think this month, I wasn’t really expecting such a great outcome! It was a nice surprise to have the numbers turn out this way after a month of hard work. That may seem silly, but in the early days of my net worth tracking, I could work hard all month and have nothing to really show for it. Finally, those seeds planted are producing fruit!

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 you’re more in “seed planting” or “fruit harvesting” mode!

Time Travel

Net Worth Update: November 2018

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When we last left our hero, a slight market downturn had derailed her attempts to reach a $100,000 net worth, dental and vision expenses were starting to pile on, and she’d slightly accelerated her predicted debt freedom date to September 2022. How has she fared in the busy November days betwixt then and now? Let us find out, shall we…

Change: +$1,630 or +1.75%

November Net Worth TOTAL: $94,752

November 2018 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than You November 2018 Net Worth Breakdown | Poorer Than You

Ah, the hero’s journey! It’s a relief to see some growth after last month’s setback. It’s not enough to offset what happened in the markets last month, but things are moving in the right direction, despite everything. Onward!

Cash: -$824

This is very good, actually. I went on a trip (#CentsPositive) for the first 5 days of the month, but I spent very little (I had prepaid for the ticket and the airfare, and I split the hotel costs with 3 other women, and most meals were included).

But when I got back, the three members of my little family had eight appointments in the nine days after my return. It was exhausting, the appointments themselves cost money (but hey, now we have new glasses and new fillings!), and we missed a decent amount of work, to boot.

The appointments have continued at a rate of about 1 per week since then, with no end in sight yet. I got a permanent crown, another filling, and a wisdom tooth pulled last week, but I still have 3 wisdom teeth that need to be removed by an oral surgeon, then I’ll need to get my braces put on (and another 3 teeth removed by the orthodontist… wee!), and I may even need a root canal, because why not?

Last month I estimated that between vision and dental, we’ll be between $6,000 and $10,000 in the hole at the end of all this. With the addition of the surgical wisdom teeth extractions, the possible root canal(s), and the results of my ortho consult… not only is keeping it near $6,000 looking impossible, it actually looks like it will be about $12,000 all told. So you can see why I’m happy with only losing about $800 in cash this month despite getting a lot of the dental work (and all the vision stuff) done.

One more note in the spirit of full disclosure: upon hearing about how much work I was going to need to have done, a relative offered to help with some of the costs. Their gift is reflected in this month’s cash number.

Retirement: +$2,340

Nothing special here! (For my part, anyway.) My regular contributions to the HSA were made, of course. Other than that, it’s all the market rebounding from last month’s dip. Now, where’s the other $4,000, eh market? EH!?!

Cars: -$134

The hardest part of these net worth entries is coming up with something new and clever to say about the fact that a 14-year-old car loses a bit of value every month. I’ve got nothin’.

Other Assets: +$86

Hey, up nearly 100%! That’s impressive! Except it’s just a blip. A return to Amazon (winter shoes for my husband that didn’t fit) that has been approved but the money hasn’t gone back on my card yet. Blip!

Student Loans: -$170

Okay remember last month when I increased my student loan payment a bit and accelerated my debt payoff date from December 2022 to September 2022?

Uh, well… I did something again. It’s not reflected in these numbers because I did it right after pulling together all the numbers on Saturday night. But, it will very certainly show up next month.

When I ran my net worth numbers on Saturday, I noticed that my very recent student loan payment had put my unsubsidized federal loan just under $1000. $994.51, to be exact. It just looked so… small. My regular credit card spending for everything essential is greater than that each month. It’s dwarfed entirely by the numbers I’ve been wrestling with all month for this dental stuff. Couldn’t I just… pay that off right now?

So I did. I paid it off on Saturday night. Well, I scheduled a $1000 payment to my federal student loan servicer, anyway. And because they have a standing payment instruction from me to apply all extra payments to the unsubsidized loan first… that means that as soon as the payment is processed and applied correctly later this week, that loan will be gone.

Now, this is generally pretty uncharacteristic of me. Longtime readers know: I don’t prioritize debt payoff when the debts are less than 5%, and my student loans just love to mock that guideline, sitting pretty at 4.75% (like the “I’m not touching you!” of debts). But right now, to drum up an extra $12,000 out of pretty much nowhere without having spare time to just “work more,” I need to be as strategic as possible.

Paying off the loan now gets me roughly an extra $37 over leaving the money in savings and slowly paying it off over the year. But it frees up the $105.63 monthly payment for that whole time, too. Funnily enough, that amount is almost exactly half the monthly payment the orthodontist quoted me for the 0% financing on my braces. So with one little move (that took roughly 1 minute of my time, and yes, also $1000 of my savings), I’ve got the means to pay for half of the biggest chunk of my dental work.

Credit Card: -$125

Well nothing is going to be as exciting as the student loans this month, now is it? And the credit card payment is the same-old, same-old to boot. But, I’m thinking I may actually lower my credit card payment. I’m paying a flat $125 per month, while the minimum payment is actually decreasing each month. It’s down to $112 now, and will continue to fall.

Yes, $13/month isn’t a huge amount of extra cash flow. But since this is a 0% interest credit card, that $13/month is giving me 0% benefit. I can’t spare 0% benefit on anything when I’m trying to scrounge together $12,000. Every little bit counts and every dollar I have needs to be working as hard as I am. And I’m definitely working harder than 0%!

Undebt.it is going a little haywire trying to understand what I’m doing with all these changing payments and extra payments, but we’ll see what my new debt-freedom date will be when the dust settles at the end of the month.

Other Debts: +$133

Just another month of my car insurance, life insurance, and blog costs accumulating. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Phew! That was a lot of explanation for a seemingly-innocuous month. Silly November! Alright, let’s deal with the elephant in this room: milestones.

Milestone Progress

The Milestone: $100,000 net worth. Somehow, last month, I thought I had 3 months to get there by the end of the year. Whoops. That’s not how November works! The truth is, it is now looking like it pretty much will not happen, since there’s only one month left, and net worth would need to go up by $5,248 to get me there. Sure, the markets could do crazy good and prove me wrong (like they did in August), but in all likelihood, any market gains will be offset by my continued dental appointments.

I will get there eventually, and probably during 2019. And, we can all celebrate the fact that I got so close in August that it looks like I made it when you look at the graph. And that’s what really matters, right?

The Milestone: Paid off Unsubsidized Stafford student loan. Technically didn’t get there this month, since the payment was scheduled on the night of December 1st. But can say with EXTREME CONFIDENCE that I’ll get there in December… since the payment is already scheduled and pending. 😀 I guess I have the rest of the month to think of a new milestone to replace this one! (Uh, I think “pay that $12,000 in dental/vision expenses” is probably gonna be it, but who knows?)

How’s your net worth doing? You can run the numbers by hand with a spreadsheet like I do, or you can check out Personal Capital for some automagical tracking. You and I each get a $20 gift card if you sign up through me and then link at least one valid investment account. (I’d use my $20 gift card for some toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash, because I buy boring things from Amazon and also I clearly need more of those things.)

Time Travel

Net Worth Update: October 2018

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This update is several days behind because I literally jetted out of town for several days the morning of the 1st (to attend Cents Positive, the first ever women’s financial independence retreat!). Then I came back to a busy work schedule that someone (read: me) also tried to pack with doctor and dentist appointments for myself and my fam. And I’ve been working on my brand-spanking-new website, The Middletons, the whole time. Oh, and my favorite yearly round-the-clock week-long charity fundraiser, Desert Bus for Hope, started the other day, too.

So lest you thought I had up and disappeared because I didn’t want to write a definitely bad news bears net worth update, nope, that’s not it at all. (I’m just way overbooked this month.) But, you would have been right about the bad news. Because people, it is baaaad:

Change: -$6,155 or -6.20%

October Net Worth TOTAL: $93,122

October 2018 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than YouOctober 2018 Net Worth Breakdown | Poorer Than You

Oh how the mildly mighty have fallen!! From a high of $99,824 just two months ago, down to $93,122 now. Alright, let’s talk this through:

Cash: +$353

Not amazing, but at least it wasn’t down again this month. Medical costs have continued to pile on, because of my brilliant idea of “schedule ALL the doctors’ appointments now that we’ve hit our deductible!” Not that I was wrong to do that, mind you, it’s just that hitting our deductible doesn’t mean everything is free now. We’ve still got copays on the medical stuff, and the dental and vision stuff is unaffected by the medical deductible.

Schedule all the doctors' appointments! Original meme image from Hyperbole and a Half
Me last month
All the doctors' appointments? Original meme image from Hyperbole and a Half
Me last month but like 10 minutes later

Now, this warrants a bit of an aside to talk about, because going to all these appointments has already shown that it will have far-reaching effects on my net worth updates. My husband and I both got prescriptions for glasses (my first! I’ll have glasses now! this is a new thing for me!), and both were told by the dentist that we’ll need braces. In my case, I need them very badly, very urgently, and I won’t be able to do Invisalign or anything, I need the funtimes metal ones. The good news is that our trips to the dermatologist revealed no issues, so we’ve got that going for us.

All told, the estimates for everything that’s coming out of these visits will be… somewhere in the region of $6,000 – $10,000 worth of work we need (not including the copays!). That number will ultimately depend on whether we can use something like Invisalign for my husband’s needs and whether we can negotiate down the costs of my dental work. It’s still a lot of money even if we can keep it down on the $6,000 end, though.

Now, perhaps “Cash” is not the right place to talk about this. Yes, for now we’re cash-flowing (paying out of pocket) the expenses as they come. But in reality, these are more like debts that we’ve been carrying around and not acknowledging here. Especially my dental work: it’s like a debt that I’ve been carrying around in my mouth knowingly, and yet ostriching my head in the sand about it at the same time.

We’ll see how it goes, but really… chickens have just come home to roost, and it is what it is. Hopefully taking care of all this ASAP will save us money on health care over the long run, so maybe this actually belongs in “Retirement,” where the bulk of our Health Savings Account savings are.

No matter where in this update I should have talked about it, it’s happening. Yay? At least glasses will help me to further look like a total nerd, so that people will stop mistaking me for anything but. (Seriously, that’s a real problem I have in my life. Perhaps this way, no one will ever ask me about a sportball again.)

Retirement: -$6,692

It’s the markets. I made my regular contributions, and the markets just went nuts. It doesn’t bother me—other than in the AW DANG YOU COULDN’T HAVE WAITED UNTIL *AFTER* I HIT $100K?!? sense.

As always, the markets taking a little dip actually works in my favor, since I’m buying stocks right now and this just means they are on sale. It’s annoying when tallying up the numbers, but it’s ultimately better than paying the peak price. *shrug*

Cars: -$107

Aw, come on car, why couldn’t you have an up month with your nonsensical value changes? Why you gotta pile on with the downward trend? If all the other categories jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? Actually, don’t answer that, car. You’re the only car we’ve got, please don’t get any bridge jumping ideas.

Other Assets: -$44

I cashed a $50 birthday check, and then my Lending Club balance… went up by $6? Alright. Cool.

Student Loans: -$150

Oh! Here’s a thing I did. I was playing around with my debt payoff table on Undebt.it, and I noticed that there was an extra $170.59 payment to be made to my unsubsidized student loan after my 0% credit card is paid off. You can see it in this screenshot that I shared in the August net worth update:

Debt Snowball Master Payoff Plan from Undebt.it | PoorerThanYou
What my debt payoff plan looked like before I started messing with it last month.

See how there’s a weird extra payment on the unsubsidized (middle) loan after the credit card (first) is paid off? The asymmetry of that was bothering me. So, I divided that $170.59 by the remaining months (result: $21.16), and upped my student loan payment by that amount. Because I know I can probably come up with another ~$20/month, and the awesomeness of paying off the entire unsubsidized student loan in one month (because remember, that’s where the credit card debt came from!) is going to feel amazing. I’m not going to want to wait an extra month to really pay that sucker off, so… I won’t.

Bonus: by adding that $21.16/month to my debt payoff plan, my ultimate debt free date moved up by 3 months—it’s now predicted for September 2022. Which I think is super fitting, since September is the anniversary month of when I got into debt (wee student loans!), and September 2009 was my lowest net worth ever, and generally, stuff tends to just happen in September. So why not get debt free in a September?

Credit Card: -$125

Nothing new to report.

Other Debts: -$60

So, the good news about spending a bunch of money on attending conferences and launching a new website is… your business tax burden goes down!

That’s it for the category-by-category breakdown. TL;DR – the markets were bad and I need thousands of dollars of dental work. Yay!

Milestone Progress

The Milestone: $100,000 net worth. Only 3 months left to get there by the end of the year, but I’m further away from it now than I was last month or the month before. If I can manage $2292.67 of growth each month, I can get there… which isn’t impossible. But it may largely depend on what the markets do, which is entirely out of my control. Oh well. I will get there eventually.

The Milestone: Paid off Unsubsidized Stafford student loan. I talked about this above in the “student loan” section, but in case you skipped past that, I’m sending an extra $21.16/month to this as of this month, and that will accelerate my payoff of this loan by one month, and my eventual total debt freedom by three months. Wee!

No bonus celebrating someone else’s net worth milestone this month… I honestly didn’t see anyone celebrating, since the markets hit everyone pretty hard, and I was traveling. If you did celebrate a milestone this month or last, let me know in the comments below!

Don’t know where you’re at with your money to be able to tell me? Tracking your net worth month to month is the best way to find out! You can do it by hand with a spreadsheet like I do, or you can check out Personal Capital for some automagical tracking. You and I each get a $20 gift card if you sign up through me and then link at least one valid investment account.

Time Travel

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This page may contain affiliate links. You may read my full affiliate linking policy, but the TL;DR is that I may receive compensation when you click on certain links, I only recommend products or services if I have personally used them, or would use them personally if my own life situation were different.

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