Poorer Than You

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Net Worth Update: November 2019

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This update isn’t coming out until nearly Christmas, and I’m totally okay with that. December is crazy enough for most people, but this is my eleventh consecutive December working in online retail, and I do thrive a bit (or a lot) on the chaos, and have also learned to accept and expect it. I told many people that I could not commit to helping with even relatively small things this month, and said often “To my family, I don’t exist until the evening of Christmas Eve. For everyone else, I don’t exist until after Christmas.”

So really, it’s a Christmas miracle that this is getting posted before Christmas at all. I exist! But only briefly, and only now that my work has passed all shipping cut-offs except “Priority Overnight.” Time for some Glühwein (mulled Christmas wine) and a net worth update! And actually, this may be the penultimate net worth update…

Change: +$4,054 | +3.18%

November Net Worth TOTAL: $131,400

November 2019 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than You Net Worth by Categories, November 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. 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: +$699

Not my usual cash-hoarding, but still an increase. We put down a retainer on an estate planning lawyer this month (that sounds so goddamn fancy I can’t even take it), but that didn’t come out of cash – we put it on a 0% interest credit card instead, and we’re working on building up the cash to pay that off starting now. So this increase goes almost exclusively to the fund to pay that off.

Retirement: +$4,914

The stock market had another good month, and nearly all of my retirement money is in total stock market index funds (except for a portion of my HSA equal to our family’s out-of-pocket maximum on our health insurance plan, which I keep in a bond fund). I only made my automatic HSA contributions last month, nothing more was added by me, so this is literally 88% attributed to growth and only 12% my own contributions to retirement (this month).

Car: -$84

Despite its “book value” decline, my car is doing quite well, and we are still a one-car family. We’ve been spending a bit more on Lyft rides lately, because we’re doing more things with our toddler out and about in the world, so the parent going to work rather than carting the toddler around often ends up taking a Lyft maybe once per week or so these days. That’s still very low cost versus getting and maintaining an entire second vehicle, though we’ll have to keep an eye on it.

Other Assets: -$203

I cashed some checks and I have no outstanding checks left to cash, so this is actually a good drop. I’m not sitting around on any checks this month!

Student Loans: -$75

Boring old regular minimum payment. Still not to the point of returning to repaying this faster (that will come after the Estate Plan Payoff Fund is full and we’ve both maxed out IRA contributions for 2019 & 2020).

Other Debts: +$23

An increase in tax & expense liability for the blog as a business. Nothing all that exciting. This may go down quite a bit in December or January when I make a Solo 401(k) contribution (I have until January 31st to make an “employee” contribution according to the rules of my Solo 401(k) provider, E*Trade). I’d like to do the contribution in December, but it may be better to wait until the books are closed on the year and I know the full and total income and expenses and then do it in January.

Milestone Progress

Debt Freedom: I entered the new debt (the retainer for the estate planning lawyer) in Undebt.it, and my debt freedom date went from July 2024 to February 2024. What, wait?!? Why did my debt freedom date move up sooner from entering a new debt?!?

But actually, after closer inspection, it makes sense, weirdly enough. The new debt comes with a new minimum payment ($35/month), which adds to the “snowball” of payments on the other debts once it’s paid off (in October 2020). That little extra $35/month starting in November 2020 will accelerate my debt freedom by five months! The power of saving small amounts is real.

$200,000 in Retirement Accounts: Thank you, stock market! I now need $1538 per month, minus HSA ($583) and IRA ($500) contributions, that’s $455 needed in stock market growth per month over the next 45 months. Barring a recession (which hey, that could happen), I may just hit this milestone early!

Wait a Second…

Stephonee, you say, weren’t you saying something (in the intro that I mostly skimmed past) about this being your LAST net worth update?!?

Actually, what I said was “penultimate,” meaning second-to-last, but yes, I did say that much.

But what? Why?

When I started doing these net worth updates a million years ago, I was (as the title of the blog states) feeling poorer than anyone else. I believed that my net worth would eventually climb, and that I could show the journey along the way. I wanted to show that journey, to keep myself accountable for making it happen, but also to help anyone else feeling like they were at the base of a tall mountain to climb… to have them see someone who was also making that journey, maybe someone who was a little bit ahead saying “hey, this is the path I took to get to this ledge, wanna come up with me?”

But now… I’m rich. $131,400 net worth isn’t enough to make me financially independent, but it is enough to make me rich. According to this New York Times “Are You Rich?” calculator, anyway:

Results from putting my net worth and age bracket into the New York Times' "Are You Rich?" calculator: The net worth you entered is higher than more than 85 percent of families your age group, and also higher than the threshold you set for what constitutes a high net worth. In other words, Yes, you might be rich. Here’s the wealth distribution among households around your age, with your bracket highlighted: Wealth rank among households age 18 to 34

My net worth alone (say nothing of the net worth of my husband, which I don’t publish here, but is a positive number that pushes our household even higher) puts me in the top 15% of households for my age group.

But now that I’m here… it feels like the net worth updates don’t serve their function anymore. To someone just starting at the bottom of the mountain, it looks like I’m way up at a summit that may feel unreachable. (And sitting on top of a dragon’s hoard of gold on top of that.) The early updates still exist, but I do feel like the newer updates aren’t really adding much to the story.

It’s become clear over the last few years that, with the busy life that I lead (and happily so!), I’m only going to get 12-14 blog posts written and posted per year. But when 12 of those are net worth updates, that means 0-2 other blogs posts about anything else per year. And while the net worth updates have helped keep me more consistent, they’ve also created an obligation in my mind that has prevented me from posting other blog posts. For example, I’ve had a post about 401(k)s and IRAs mostly written since early November, but then I felt like I shouldn’t finish it until October’s net worth update was posted. Then I didn’t have time to finish it before December came ’round and it felt like I should get this net worth update posted. And that could go on for a while, and it has with past posts.

I’ve thought a lot over the past year about the direction I want to take with a blog called “Poorer Than You.” Since the very early days of the blog, people have made jokes about how I’d someday have to change the name of the blog to “Richer Than You.” (Apologies to everyone who made that joke this year, someone else beat you to it by 12 years!) But rather than change the name, I’d like to refocus. Rather than keeping it always on my current situation, there is a lot I can talk about (and bring in others to talk about!) that fits the title and helps people who feel like they’re starting from well below zero.

So… I feel like it’s just about time to give up posting the net worth updates. But, I didn’t want to do so suddenly and without warning, because there may be some of you who get a lot out of these, and don’t want me to stop. There may be reasons that I should keep going with them, that I’m not thinking of. So I’m opening the floor (well, the comments below) to hear your thoughts. I may just end up doing what I want in the end, but I’m open to hearing your feedback on this.

So maybe next month will be the final Net Worth Update, capping off 13 years of net worth posts with one final update. We’ll see. I welcome your thoughts!

I used to run these numbers by hand in a spreadsheet, but recently I’ve hooked up my spreadsheet to Tiller and now my balances are imported automagically. It’s saving me hours per month of digging numbers out of various accounts! Try Tiller for free for 30 days and see how automatically-updating financial spreadsheets can save you time and money.

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: November 2017

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The fourth quarter of every year has been a crazy time for me since… oh… ever? Since 2009 when I first got a job in online retail, certainly. This year is shaping up to be a little less insane, but still busy-busy and keeping me on my toes. One nice thing about being on the retail side of things during the holidays? I hardly ever spend anything on Black Friday. I’m always working, instead of shopping! Gotta make that money. Speaking of that money…

Change: +$5,490 or  +9.19%

November Net Worth TOTAL: $65,212

Net Worth Graph November 2017 | PoorerThanYou Net Worth Breakdown November 2017 | PoorerThanYou Say What? (Moss is impressed with my accomplishment)

Is this… my best month ever? Nope, unfortunately not. That title is still held by February 2014, when I was laid off. Being laid off is strangely lucrative, at least in the short term. I can’t say that it’s a great long-term plan, though. This month’s accomplishment feels a lot better, even if it was less in terms of dollars and cents.

So let’s break it, break it, break it down! (And yes, there will be more gifs. So many more. We hit the milestone, you guys!)

Kathy Najimy breaks it down, because she is also super stoked for me

Retirement

Retirement accounts, you da real MVP of this net worth update. Specifically, the Solo 401(k).

Is there really any other gif to use in this context? I think not.

Yes, dear readers, I finally got my Solo 401(k) opened with E*TRADE. It took two phone calls to their Retirement Specialist (HALP) line, but what finally got the job done was using their online file upload. Which is, apparently, a thing they have. But not a thing they tell you about on the application. Possibly because you have to already be an E*TRADE customer in order to use it, which thankfully, I was. [Shout out to their Complete Savings Account, which I opened to get a bonus like 10 years ago!]

Once I submitted my paperwork electronically, the account was opened for me, no joke, the very next day. And I was able to make my first contribution immediately, especially since all of my banking info was already set up from the aforementioned Complete Savings Account. And someone on the internet once said I shouldn’t keep random fee-free savings accounts open with just $5 in them! HA! I sure showed that guy-or-gal-but-let’s-face-it-that-was-probably-a-dude!

And with that (with minutes left on the November clock, because that’s how I roll), I transferred in all the cash I’ve been sitting on since I started dragging my feet on this Solo 401(k) thing (*cough*August*cough*), driving my retirement balance up, and simultaneously driving my tax liability (which I track under “Other Liabilities”) down, because traditional 401(k) contributions lower that tax burden, folks.

Okay, now we're starting to develop a certain drinking theme in this post. And I'm okay with that.

Milestone Progress – Goooooooooaaaaaaaaallllllllllll!

So needless to say, I hit my goal this month – a whole two months early!

As a refresher, the goal was a total net worth of $61,099 by January 2018. That number comes from adding $100,000 to my lowest-ever net worth number of -$38,901 in September 2009. So in just a little over 8 years, I’ve made $100,000 in progress.

Tom knows what's up.

They say the first $100,000 is the hardest, so… hard part over! Phew. All done. Smooth sailing from here on out, right? Right…?

Hey, can we break out the West Wing gif now?

We can always break out the West WIng gif

That’s right, what’s next?

  • $100,000 in straight up assets. This one isn’t far off – less than $1600 away. Hardly counts as a milestone, but we can give it a gif next month or so when we hit it, all the same.
  • $70,635 net worth. Also not too far off, and sort of arbitrary – this represents $100,000 in progress since the start of this blog in January 2007. Yes, I backtracked for 2 years (student loooooans, my friends). But anyway, not a huge milestone, but possibly gif-able.
  • $100,000 net worth. Oooo now that’s a nice round number. If I could maintain this year’s rate of growth (which doesn’t seem remotely possible, but hey, you never know), I’d hit it sometime in early 2019. Supremely gif-able.

So let’s go all ahead full (that’s a thing people say, right? I got it from Titanic so it must be a real thing, because that movie is super legit), and charge at these milestones like… oh, right, the Titanic going all ahead full towards an iceberg is maybe not the metaphor I want here. You know what? Patton, why don’t you play us out here, cause this goose is cooked.

Let's rock and roll.

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: November 2016

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IT’S BABY TIME! This November saw the birth of my first child (and of course, only child at this point!), and during the whole pregnancy I’ve been anxiously wondering what would happen – with the baby, and with my finances. Between being self-employed (so no paid maternity leave), being on “Obamacare” health insurance, and knowing that kids cost an average of $13,000 per year on top of such things… it’s been a bit daunting just to get to this point. But, here we are, and we can now mark the official beginning of the kid’s effects on my net worth.

Change: -$2,058 or -6.03 %

November Net Worth TOTAL: $32,075

Net Worth Graph, November 2016 - Poorer Than You

You know what? That’s not too bad! Now, this is just the beginning – not all of the hospital/doctor bills came in by the end of November, and we’ve got years of diapering, feeding, schooling, and affected income to look forward to. But encouragingly, the biggest portion of the drop this month was due to me not working – meaning that even though my net worth went down, I didn’t have to dip into my savings (yet) or take on any new debt.

December will be a different story on that front – I’m still not able to work (as previously mentioned, because the newborn requires constant care, daycare prices in my area are sky-high, and I would not have a place to pump breast milk if I did work outside the home right now), so I’ll be tapping some savings (that were put aside specifically for this time period) to pay the bills. I’ll also be taking a big chunk of money out of my HSA to pay all the hospital/doctor bills from the birth, which have started to really pile up in December. All things that I knew were coming… but still, they’ll hit hard in December.

I was also buffeted somewhat by what appears to have been a rally in the stock market. This is actually the first time I’ll be recognizing such gains more than just on paper – by taking money out of my HSA to pay the hospital bills, I’m “selling high.” Though, it’s not intentional: the market just happens to be up at the very time I’m selling and taking the money out. But I won’t be taking everything out – I’m still leaving as much as possible in the HSA investments, and I’ll even be trying to contribute more when I get back to working.

Fittingly, that’s all there really is to say about this month: I had a baby. My net worth went down. Those two things are very much related.

And now, I think I hear a baby starting to wake up in the other room… so we’re out of time, anyways. 😉

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: November 2015 – January 2016

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New Year, new update! It’s a really exciting time here at Poorer Than You, and I can’t wait to- OMFG WHAT IS THAT GRAPH DOING?!?

Net Worth Graph January 2016 - Poorer Than You

So November was down, but by such a small amount that I can comfortably call it “flat.” And I anticipated a “down” month anyway: November has one of those pesky long holiday weekends in it (Thanksgiving), it’s a time where sickness generally strikes, and (let’s face it) Fallout 4 was released on November 10th.

Sure, you can tell me that the release of a hotly-anticipated video game is a lame reason for my income to decrease over the month… but keep in mind that gaming is my main hobby, and I do it for charity. I took several days off in November and December to play Fallout 4 in live game-a-thons and it was totally worth it, just to see $2,615 raised by the games for clean drinking water in the developing world.

December was basically flat as well, which is a feat unto itself, considering the time off for the game-a-thons and the holidays, and Christmas shopping. I always anticipate December being a “down” month, so seeing it actually tick up (even if only a little) is cause for celebration.

Until you get to January, that is.

Urgh, January. Such promise for recovery after December’s spending. But this particular January just didn’t cooperate. I lost a big chunk of cash-on-hand to the year-end quarterly estimated tax payment, for being a freelancer. That’s alright though, since it’s offset by a decrease in my tax liability, as well. But everything else about the month just sucked. The stock market took a beating, though that’s only a problem on paper. It can fall further for all I care, so long as I’m buying right now (which I am: a contribution every time I receive payment on an invoice!).  We also dropped a good chunk of change on travel expenses for a friend’s upcoming wedding across the country. (Continuing to put money into our Wedding savings account years after our own wedding doesn’t look silly at all right now, does it?)

The real problem with January is that toward the end, we got three feet of snow dumped on us over the course of 24 hours. Everything in the region shut down and, thanks to the timing, neither husband nor I were able to do any work projects while snowed in.

But hey, we made it out of the snow storm safe and sound, no worse for the wear (other than the loss of income). Obviously, we’re going to have to spend February hustling our asses off to make up for it. That’s just how it is.

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!

Bonus for February: For those of you following along on our “Holiday Tree” exploits, I have an update for you. Here’s the tree in all its Valentine’s Day glory:

Valentine's Day Tree - Poorer Than You

(Yeah, I missed getting a picture of it as an actual Christmas tree for you. I’m the worst. My apologies. Maybe next December!)

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