Poorer Than You

Money: It's Not Just For Rich People

Net Worth Update: July 2018

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Well, it finally happened. The thing that I’ve been dreading for years (and had ample time to prepare for and totally didn’t). Yes, at last, NetWorthIQ, the service I was using to track my net worth and generate the graphs for these updates, has died. Time of Death? Sometime in the last month, I dunno. On July 23rd, I got this tweet from my fellow blogger/Stephanie:

And it was at that point that I knew I was probably in trouble. Sometime, years ago, I started making backups of my NetWorthIQ data, because the site was buggy af and I knew this day would come. But, I was lax in keeping up with those backups. After all, I technically have all the data from 2008 onward in a spreadsheet, anyway. I could always just recreate the numbers from scratch and do a whole new graph! Except that sounded like a lot of work, so I never got around to doing it while NetWorthIQ was still alive (when it would have been notably easier).

And now, finally, during one of the busiest months of my entire life… it died. Because of course.

RIP NetworthIQ: Mar 1, 2005 – July 22ish, 2018

So that’s why my net worth update is a week late this month. (I know, excuses, excuses.) Because I had to rebuild my graph from scratch from numbers that I (gasp!) didn’t have in a spreadsheet. I had to cobble the numbers all together from a combination of:

But in the end, I found or calculated all 140 monthly net worth updates (including this month’s!) going back to the very first one at the end of 2006, and now I can make pretty graphs. And so, without any further complaining about all the work I made for myself ado… here is my brand-spanking-new, much-beautified net worth graph!

(Right after the numbers, anyway…)

Change: +$4,161 or +4.65%

July Net Worth TOTAL: $93,688 (aw yeah, I’m never leaving you out again, you beautiful total net worth number you)

July 2018 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than You

July 2018 Net Worth Breakdown | Poorer Than You

Ahhhhh yes, that’s so much better, isn’t it? I cleaned out some of the garbage (there’s no way I was ever going to use the “Other Mortgage(s)” category), and customized this whole thing to my heart’s content.

But enough about the graph and chart… let’s discuss that $4,161 increase!!! What what?!?

Cash: -$1,306

For such a good month, not a great month for cash! This is the result of (surprise surprise) a clerical error on my part.

You see, I somehow ended up with 3 separate HSA accounts at some point. Each one with 2 sub accounts (a cash account and an investment account). So I was counting the cash accounts of each one as, well, Cash and the investment accounts as Retirement. Except that just like I’m a big loser who failed to back up her NetWorthIQ updates for the past 6 years, I actually failed to count the newest HSA’s investment account as Retirement. I didn’t forget about it entirely, I just had it under Cash for some dumb reason.

So I fixed that this month, and well, now it looks like Cash took a big hit and Retirement went gangbusters. And, on top of that, the last few months where I said that the gains in my Retirement accounts were due to me contributing to my HSA? No, silly Stephonee… those were actual investment gains because those contributions weren’t being counted as Retirement. Whoops! But again, now they are!

So while there was an on-paper loss, it was actually a really good month for cash. Work got crazy busy and I pulled a ton of overtime (and my husband, who works with me, lent a hand and managed to get overtime too, which is bananas when you remember that we work opposite schedules from one another and have no child care). Only one paycheck with overtime hit in July, but it was a nice bump. August should be even better, because it’s a 3-paycheck month for us, and that first paycheck was full of July’s overtimey goodness.

Of course, I say the above as I’m currently at home sick (whole family picked up some sort of bug) not earning any more overtime, so maybe August won’t be so hot in the end. Curses upon this illness!

Get Spendy With It (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)

We did get a little spendy in July too, though. I was totally not at all interested in Amazon’s Prime Day theatrics this year (or as I’ve renamed it, Instant Pot Day, which is a part of why I didn’t care because I’ve already got an Instant Pot from last year’s Prime Day, thank you). But once Amazon got their act together and stopped just giving us doggy error messages, my coworker pointed out a deal on Calphalon pans. And well, I had been not bothering to get a new skillet for literal years after our old Ikea one warped and cracked, and had to be thrown out.

Except now I see that they are offering that pan set for the same price I paid on Prime Day and I totally feel like a sucker. But a sucker who finally replaced her broken skillet, at least. And who now owns a saucier pan as well, which makes me fancy.

Along the same lines, I bought some $160 sheets this month. Mostly because they have a lifetime warranty, so just like the Calphalon pans, I’m hoping this is a “buy it for life” purchase. Except I personally think the claims that these are the “softest sheets ever” are totally overblown and that’s why I’m not linking to the sheets I bought. But if you listen to podcasts, you probably know the ones I’m talking about, because they love to sponsor podcasts with their ads (and yup, that’s totally how I ended up buying them).

And finally, we replaced my husband’s smart phone. We’ve both been happily chugging along with Republic Wireless phones (and paying less than $40/month total for service, noice), but his was an older model that lacked an expandable memory feature. He had reached the point of actually deleting photos of our child off of his phone (not to mention long ago deleting the Pokémon Go app, so he’s been missing out on the new “friends” feature in a big way) which led me to believe it might be time to shop for a new phone. Thankfully, Republic emailed me with a really sweet “Dorm Pack” deal they’re running: a brand new Moto G6 phone, a power bank, and 3 months of 3GB data, all for $199. (This deal is only going through August 10th, so if you want to be cool like my husband, you’ll have to scuttle right over to Republic’s website.)

So yes, pricey pans, pricey sheets, and a reasonably-priced smart phone on a discount plan… it was a bit of a spendy month. But other than rolling my eyes at the “softest sheets ever” and literally having not even washed the Calphalon pans yet—you know what? Let’s… let’s just move on.

Retirement: +$5,247

If you missed my explanation above, this is mostly the result of my “whoopsie!” And a bit of account growth, too. I think the most annoying part of this is how friggin close I was to $100,000 in retirement this month without actually getting there! $141 away, are you kidding me right now?

Obviously, I’ll probably hit the “$100k in Retirement” (and then some) milestone in August, unless the markets go whackadoodle. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing for me, since I’m in the “buying” phase, but ya know. It would be nice to hit it anyway. 3 paychecks in August (and thus 3 contributions to my HSA) should help that along nicely.

Car: -$210

Oh, Kelly Blue Book value. Sometimes, you’re my friend, and sometimes… you seem to remember that my car is a Toyota Camry with a dent in it. That’s fine. At least it’s fully paid for, hey-o!

Other: +$10

My LendingClub account appears to be gasping for air! Some loan that was behind on the payments probably paid up rather than going to collections. Still, I’m not impressed—there have been waaaay too many defaults on my loan notes over the years. I’m still pulling my money out of the account (slowly and lazily).

Student Loans: -$143

Still just chugging along with the minimum+3 cents (because rounding!) on this one. Things won’t get exciting here for another 10 months probably, so we’ll just stay patient.

Credit Card: -$125

A reminder that this is a 0% balance transfer from my student loan, and not a “real” credit card debt. I’ve almost got enough in cash savings to pay this off in full (should have 100% of it set aside in August!), I’m just letting it ride out the 0% promo rate.

You may notice that I haven’t fixed the minimum payment that I complained about last month… July was just not the month to be tweaking things. With all the overtime and craziness, it was more of a “survival mode” month. But I’ll eek out a few more pennies in interest later!

Other: -$152

I finally paid off that $152 loanshark loan! Just kidding. This is boring tax stuff from my bidness.

Milestone Progress

The Milestone: $100,000 net worth. Only 5 months left to get there on time! But with this month blowing up like gangbusters, I just need $1262.40 in net worth growth each month to get there by the end of the year. So, a quarter of what I pulled off this month, basically. Yup, that seems doable.

Other Milestone: $100,000 in retirement accounts. Uggggggggggggggggggh, the frustrating thing about the “gifs only when we hit the milestone” rule is that I can’t use a Get Smart “missed it by THAT much” gif right here. Just $141 short! Ah, well. In all likelihood, NEXT MONTH THERE WILL BE GIFS!!

BONUS: Zero2FIRE hit $100,000 Net Worth!

Gotta give a shoutout to my girl Zero, who was also working on a $100,000 net worth goal… and just got there!

https://twitter.com/zero2fire/status/1025124004150034432

Oh, and I’m totally going to join her in the #NetWorthStarJar movement (just as soon as I find some star-making paper that I’m happy with):

Congrats, Zero! (But also, dishonor upon your house, your family, and your cow for beating me there. Obviously.)

How about you, friend? Are you celebrating a net worth milestone that I should be jealous of? Share it in the comments below and maybe I’ll feature it next month (with the requisite dishonor upon you if you’re beating me)!

And if you’re not tracking your net worth, do eet! Do eet now! You can use a simple spreadsheet and an outdated tool that you forget to make backups of like me, or you could be smart and let Personal Capital do the tracking for you (but you should probably make backups), and get a $20 Amazon gift card in the process!

Net Worth Update: February 2018

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Is it just me, or is February even shorter than it’s supposed to be? Like, missing 2-3 days compared to other months is one thing, but I’m having some serious “no really where did the time go?” feels right now. It hardly felt like enough time to do anything this month, let alone make any progress at all on my net worth. But I guess the numbers are telling a different story…

Change: +$3,284 or +4.00%

February Net Worth TOTAL: $85,393

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

It was a busy, busy month, so let’s dig down into the categories!

Cash: +$275

A few unusual things happened with my cash accounts this month:

New Recurring Expense: Pre-school!

Well, more like pre-pre-pre-pre-school in our child’s case. School doesn’t start until this autumn, but there was the application fee to pay this month, and then next month we’ll see the hit of the initial tuition deposit. The school isn’t too expensive, and we’ll spend the time working to more than make up the cost, and it qualifies us for the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (so we’ll get 20% of the costs back in our taxes). But it is a new recurring expense to manage, so I’m working it into our spending plan now.

SPLURGE ALERT:

The $300 Clek Fllo Convertible Car SeatI bought a pretty pricey car seat, the Clek Fllo ($299.99 on Amazon at the time of my purchase). I started writing all about this purchase, but the explanation got really long. It’s-own-post long. So I cut it out of here and we’ll just leave it for another time. But the TL;DR is that it fits with my values and my husband’s values, so of course we’re going to spend the money in that case. Why else do we do all this saving money and financial well-being stuff if not to be able to make meaningful purchases?

New HSA!

I now have an HSA through my employer at the day job, and so this means some additional savings in cash. I consider HSA funds that are invested in stocks or bonds in my “Retirement” category, but anything in an HSA in cash is, well, cash. Category-wise. This new HSA account requires the first $1000 be kept in cash before anything above that can be invested, so it will be another month or so before I can invest within the new account. Unless I transfer the balance from the old account into the new one, which I will probably do. But it’ll be a few weeks before I can invest, either way.

You may recall that I had managed to max out our HSA by March of last year, but that won’t be the case this year. Since I’m doing the contributions through an employer (having it taken straight out of my paycheck), the money comes out tax free (including no Social Security or Medicare taxes!). This is a part of the quadruple tax advantage of an employer-sponsored HSA:

  1. Exempt from federal and state income tax going in
  2. Exempt from Social Security and Medicare (FICA) taxes going in
  3. Tax-free growth and trades within the account
  4. Tax-free coming out if used to pay for qualified medical expenses

Retirement: -$3,147

Hey remember last month when I had big growth in my retirement accounts and referenced that early 2000s Shaggy hit, “It Wasn’t Me?” Same deal this month, but opposite effect. The markets have been “crashing” (hahaha whatever) or at least “correcting” this month. And I didn’t contribute anything this month (soooooon though… as in, within the first few days of March, actually), so naturally, the balance is down.

Though this hampers my milestone progress (see below) a bit, I really don’t care. In fact, as usual, I’m happy about a correction in the stock market. It’s called a “sale” and I’m in the buying phase of my life. Why wouldn’t I want stocks to be on sale? Again, I’m buying within the next few days!

Stocks are down? GOOD! Grumpy cat is buying.
Grumpy cat is also buying.

“Other” Assets (Tax Refund): +$6,341

I filed our taxes in February (finally, after waiting on a 1099-MISC form, which turned out to be wrong when it finally arrived, and then waiting on the corrected version), and whoa were we due a big refund!

Now, I’m gonna get this in before someone jumps out of the bushes and yells “YOU SHOULD ADJUST YOUR W-4 WITHHOLDING SO THAT YOU DON’T GET A REFUND BECAUSE THAT’S AN INTEREST-FREE LOAN TO THE GOVERNMENT, YO!”

W-4 Withholding Bear Doesn't Want You to Have a Tax Refund

 

  1. Calm down. Savings account interest rates still aren’t what they used to be so “interest-free loan to the government” is overblown. Last year, most high-yield savings accounts capped out at 1.05% APY (except my 5% NetSpend and Insight card accounts).
  2. My refund didn’t come from having too much withheld in our paychecks (the W-4 withholding form part). Gasp!
  3. Rather, it’s because of that huge friggin Obamacare subsidy that we got for 2017. But we were never sure up until the end of the year if we would qualify, so we chose not to have the subsidy applied to the health insurance premiums we paid, and chose to get it at tax time. Thanks Obama.
  4. Oh, and it also wasn’t interest free because we paid those health insurance premiums with rewards credit cards (and paid the credit card balances off in full each month – very important!). So we got at least 2% back on each payment (sometimes a lot more, thanks to credit card signup bonus).
  5. Stop hiding in bushes and jumping out and yelling at people about their tax withholding strategies. You don’t make friends that way.

So yeah, were it not for the Obamacare tax credit, our refund would have been a measly $10 or so for the federal return. Which is right where the bush-jumping Withholding Police want you to be. So there. (And we’re not on an Obamacare marketplace health plan this year, so it’s irrelevant going forward.)

Student Loans: $0 change

Just an annual reminder that February is a short month, so my payment never settles before the end of the month and it looks like I didn’t make a payment. It balances out with a seemingly “double” payment every March or April (depending on where the weekends fall), so whatever.

Milestone Progress

$100,000 Net Worth: Not there yet! (So no gifs.) Thanks a lot stock market sale! To get there by the end of 2018, I calculated last month that I need $1,626 in net worth growth each month. So this month, I made another 2 months of progress! Recalculating it now, I need just $1,461 of growth each month to get there by the end of the year. That number just keeps going down! 😀

That’s it for February! How are your numbers looking this month?

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!

Photo credits: Clek/Amazon, Grumpy Cat/ImgFlip, Richard Lee

What to Do If Your Obamacare 1095-A Column B is Zero

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Your tax forms are rolling in! Including one for the health insurance premiums from your Affordable Care Act marketplace plan: the 1095-A form. You look it over. Names and social security numbers for you and your dependents look good (hopefully). The amount you paid in premiums is correct. But – what’s this? Your 1095-A Column B is zero all the way down? It can’t be right that the Second Lowest Cost Silver Plan premium costs $0! The form is wrong! What now?

Obamacare 1095-A Part III Column B Zeros
My 1095-A (well, Part III of it anyway) with all zeros in Column B

Please note: I’m not a tax expert and this should not be taken as tax advice. I’m just a lovely lady on the internet, a citizen like you, who also had an Obamacare health insurance plan last year, and who also received a 1095-A where my column B was all zeros. This post is for educational purposes only, showing you what I learned and what I did to deal with this issue. If you are concerned about your tax situation, please consult with a real tax professional.

What Is Part III Column B of the 1095-A For, Anyway?

Part III Column B should show the cost of the “second lowest cost Silver plan” (SLCSP) premium. In other words, the not-quite-least-expensive Silver Plan that you could have signed up for. This number is used to calculate the health insurance premium tax credit (“Obamacare subsidy”) that you could receive, based on your income.

Tip: Even if your total income was too much for the premium tax credit, you may qualify for it anyway, because certain actions (such as contributing to a 401(k) or other employer retirement account, or contributing to a Health Savings Account) lower your income for the purposes of the tax credit calculation. Run your numbers through tax software to check – but you’ll need to make sure you have the right numbers on your 1095-A Column B, first!

The way that the subsidy is calculated is super confusing, but you don’t need to know the exact specifics. What matters is: if your income (minus those 401(k) and HSA contributions) is low enough, the subsidy consists of the difference between the second-lowest cost Silver plan premiums and a certain percentage of your income. So the cost of the second lowest cost Silver plan is absolutely necessary for the calculation.

What It Means to Have All Zeros in Column B

The instructions on the back of your form 1095-A are less than helpful:

See the instructions for Form 8962, Part II, on how to use the information in this column or how to complete Form 8962 if there is no information entered. If the policy was terminated by your insurance company due to nonpayment of premiums for one or more months, then a -0- will appear in this column for the months, regardless of whether advance credit payments were made for these months.

Well it says to see the instructions on Form 8962, Part II if there is no information entered, but it also says that zeros will appear in this column if you didn’t pay your premiums. If you’re like me and paid all your premiums in full and on time, this is confounding. And enraging.

So I put out the call to Twitter to help me figure out why Column B would be all zeros, and Harrison from Financially Awkward helpfully found an answer hidden in the H&R Block community forums:

When there is no amount in columns B and C of the Form 1095-A this means that you did not receive any advance payments of the premium tax credit (APTC). This generally occurs when the Marketplace determines you are ineligible for the premium tax credit at enrollment because your income was outside of the eligibility range or if you declined to receive APTC instead preferring to claim the credit on your return.

Ah, there it is. Personally, I wasn’t sure whether I’d qualify for the subsidies. I declined to receive them as discounts on my insurance premium (APTC), just in case. But the Health Insurance Marketplace decided to not include the information needed on my 1095-A because… reasons? Alrighty.

What To Do If Your Obamacare 1095-A Column B Is All Zeros

How to Get the Correct Numbers for Column B

To even see if you could possibly get the tax credit, you need the right information for Column B. Most tax software won’t let you enter all zeros for Column B anyway. Thankfully, it’s rather easy. No need to file a request for a “corrected” form or fill out any complicated paperwork (thank goodness).

Forget about “Form 8962, Part II” from the 1095-A instructions, and instead hop on over to this helpful page of Healthcare.gov (why they don’t just say this in those instructions, I’ll never know): Healthcare.gov Health Coverage Tax Tool

Here you’ll find a tool to “Figure out your premium tax credit: Get your ‘second lowest cost Silver plan’ (SLCSP) amount. You’ll use it to fill out IRS form 8962, Premium Tax Credit.” YES! Okay. Awesome.

To use the tool, you’ll just need some very basic information:

Answer questions about who in your household qualifies for a premium tax credit and information on each person, including date of birth, location(s) they lived in for the year, and months of marketplace coverage.

It took me about 2 minutes to fill in the information and get the real numbers for my Column B. And you can scroll to the bottom to print, email, or save a PDF of your numbers. I highly recommend you do at least one of those, and keep a copy of it with your 1095-A.

Results from using the Healthcare.gov Health Coverage Tax Tool
Finally! The real numbers that should have shown up in my 1095-A Column B!

What Difference Does It Make On Your Taxes?

If the second lowest cost Silver plan premiums really were $0.00 (ha!) or the $0.01 that H&R Block’s forums suggest you use instead, then you would get no subsidy at all, even if you qualified for one. It’s better to use the real numbers, because you could be in for a big fat tax break!

Using TurboTax, you can do your entire tax return online without giving any payment information. Which makes it great for seeing how much of a difference the tax credit can make:

1095-A in Turbo Tax Before
My TurboTax screen right before entering in the 1095-A information. TurboTax has imported the 1095-A at this point, but not done any calculations with it. Note my federal refund at this point is a whopping $10.

TurboTax was able to import my 1095-A from the PDF I got from my Healthcare.gov account. But when it did, Column B ended up a little wonky:

1095-A in Turbo Tax During
Where did it get $458.97 from? That number didn’t appear anywhere on my form. But even with that (incorrect) number, my refund estimate jumped up to $2315!

To TurboTax’s credit, their Help section refers you to the Healthcare.gov Health Coverage Tax Tool. I keyed in my correct numbers, and submitted the information to see what my tax credit would be:

1095-A Tax Credit in Turbo Tax After Correcting Information
$5,702 tax credit! Woohoo! (And I got an additional bump in federal and state, but that’s because the premiums are tied to my businessing.)

So what difference does it make? Potentially thousands of dollars of difference. I don’t know about you, but there are a lot of things I can do with that extra $5,702. Like, funding an entire IRA for the year with money left over. Or taking another Disney World vacation. Or 23 year-long-subscriptions to the Oreo of the Month subscription box (er… for 23 friends. yes. for friends.). (In reality, it’s already earmarked for the IRA.)

Oreo of the Month Subscription Box
But come on, there could be Oreo-inspired hats, games or mugs in there!

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner?

Not everyone who got all zeros on their 1095-A Column B is entitled to a $5,702 tax credit. No siree! This is just an example. Your income has to be high enough to qualify for a Marketplace plan (versus Medicaid in some states). But your income also has to be low enough to qualify for the subsidy, after deductions like 401(k)s and HSAs. And the amount of the tax credit will depend on the premiums you paid, and the SLCSP for your situation.

Still, the Healthcare.gov Health Coverage Tax Tool takes less than 2 minutes, and tax software like TurboTax can do all the calculations for you in just a few minutes. So the whole process to check takes what, 5 minutes? That’s like earning $68,424 per hour in my example. And if you don’t qualify? You only wasted 5 minutes and you have the peace of mind of having accurate information.

Key Takeaways

  • If you got a 1095-A where Column B is all zeros, don’t panic.
  • But do get the right numbers, because it could mean big money.
  • Use the Healthcare.gov Health Coverage Tax Tool to get the correct numbers.
  • Use tax software like TurboTax to quickly see what a difference the right information could make.

Happy tax season, everyone!

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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