Poorer Than You

Money: It's Not Just For Rich People

Net Worth Update: September 2019

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When we last left our intrepid hero… I was coming down from two months of being extremely busy, and rushing off to #FinCon19 to hang out with money nerds, which is different from usual only in that I stayed in “the city” (Washington DC) for several days and a whole ton of money nerds flew out to join me. Well, not me specifically, but all of us. I drunkenly tried to order an $80 pie at 1:30 in the morning and Bank of America cut me off (the audacity!), so I went for chili cheese fries with people from the internet instead.

Good times! (I also made some business connections that I haven’t had time to follow up on, and came up with a crazy new idea for this site that will be launching next month, stay tuned!—but I figured you probably wanted to hear more about my tipsy shenanigans than my business dealings, at least in a net worth post intro.)

So, given my reckless money nerding, how’d my money do?

Change: +$3,840 | +3.24%

September Net Worth TOTAL: $122,541

September 2019 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than You Net Worth by Categories, September 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.) 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: $938

Okay, so… not so bad! I really would have thought me taking nearly a week off for #FinCon19 at the beginning of the month (which also meant my husband taking that time off as well, as he was doing 100% of the child care while I was money nerding) would have sapped off our earnings pretty badly this month. BUT, FinCon being over a weekend meant we were able to kind of front load the week before it, and back load the week after it, and not take that much of a hit on hours.

And with our dental work behind us now (at least, payment-wise—we’ve still each got orthodontist appointments every 8 weeks for the next 18 months or so, please send help and ice cream), money finally isn’t leaking out like a sieve. But of course, I’ve immediately found something new and expensive and responsible for us to pay for next: a complete will and estate plan package!

We are long-friggin-overdue for getting wills, a trust, medical directives, and powers of attorney set up. And that sentence makes me super grown-up now. Which reminds me, I turned 33 this month, too. I am super adult!

But that’s all going to be a $2,900 bill… next month. Yay? Obviously I’m pulling out my dental work credit card hacking spreadsheets and seeing if I can finagle one last big job out of my credit card skillz. See if I can knock $500 or more off that bill (I can).

Retirement: $2,393

I guess the stock markets calmed down from whatever spooked them last month. We hadn’t quite gotten to contributing to accounts once again (le sigh) other than the automatic HSA contributions. So this is all growth (or recovery, I guess).

We’ll go back to contributing to my IRA once the estate plan is paid for. (Okay, this might be the most grown-up sentence I have ever written. Thankfully it’s balanced by my attempts to order $80 pies while drinking.)

Cars: —

No change! I think Kelley Blue Book has just given up on me at this point.

Other Assets: $356

Big jump! This is: a surprise $220 check from the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Taxation (tax relief refund, they say!), and some work reimbursements that I haven’t submitted yet.

I’d like more surprise $220 checks in the mail, please!

Student Loans: —

Ugh, I hate when short months end near a weekend and my loan payment (due date: the 28th) doesn’t get applied before the end of the month. But, whatever. This would have bridged the gap to bring me back up to July’s net worth total but whatever. I’ll get there next month, when both payments will be applied and it will look awesome!

(Expect for the $2,900 estate plan bill damn, why you gotta waste my flavor?!?)

Credit Card: -$71

This will be more impressive next month—not because I am choosing to pay down my 0% credit card faster, but because American Express doubled my minimum payment on me. I’m not really sure what’s up with that, but apparently, it’s happening. So it’ll be like $140/month off this balance starting next month.

Other Debts: -$83

I renewed my PO box. That’s literally it. Now the “liability” I was accounting for it is gone… but will slowly build back up over the year. (P.S. personal finance authors: feel free to send me your books to read! That’s 80% of the reason I have a PO box!)

Milestone Progress

Debt Freedom: I adjusted the numbers for my new minimum payment on the Amex in Undebt.it, but now it’s telling me that I’ll reach debt freedom in July 2024, not May. Which means… I probably had some numbers keyed in there wrong. Ah, well. The estate plan bill is probably going to mean we don’t max out retirement before the end of the calendar year, and thus don’t throw anything extra at the student loan this year. Next year’s the year! Maybe!

$200,000 in Retirement Accounts: Slight progress this month. I now need $1,643 per month, minus HSA ($583) and IRA ($500) contributions, that’s $560 needed in stock market growth per month over the next 47 months. The goal, of course, would be to get this to the point where the “growth needed” number is zero, and it’s all contributions-based. That would put me in total control of the goal, and you all know how I like total control!

To sum up: I’m almost back to July’s number, though still about $1,000 shy of April’s all-time high. That’s pretty good, considering the dental work (the expensive bulk of which started in May!). But it would have been nice to hit a new all-time high this month, if for no other reason than it’s exactly 10 years since my all-time low in September 2009!

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.

How are your numbers doing? Are you reaching new all-time highs, or have big bills been taking a chunk out of your results? (You know I can relate either way, so tell me in the comments below!)

Time Travel

 

Net Worth Update: September 2018 (#FinCon18 Edition)

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I just got back from FinCon (the financial media conference, where money nerds like myself go to meet up with fellow bloggers, podcasters, vloggers, freelancers, companies, and—most importantly—old friends). And I do mean just—I’m writing this paragraph on the Metro platform, navigating my way home from the airport.

I wanted to write an intro before I got home and ran my numbers for the net worth entry below. Because one of my key takeaways from #FinCon18 (which was my first FinCon ever, believe it or not) was that there is something way more important than numbers: the amazing community of people who support each other in building financially healthy lives.

Check out the picture below. It’s blurry and dark, which is honestly not a bad thing, considering several of the people are anonymous bloggers that would have needed to have been blurred out anyway. Here are a bunch of us that went out on the very first night of FinCon, to celebrate my 32nd birthday. Of the 23 people here, 16 had never met me before in person, though they’ve all known me on the internet for varying lengths of time (from a few months to more than ten years, in the case of the two bloggers from “the before times” that were in the bunch).

#FinCon18 - Crowd gathered around the table for Stephonee's birthday
That’s me, in blue at the head of the table, getting ready to take down a chocolate piñata with 22 of my friends from the internet!

I mention this because it was abundantly clear, even at this conference dedicated to talking about finances, that money takes a big ol’ backseat to community and relationships. That can be hard to remember when running the numbers for say… a net worth update blog post where I may or may not hit the $100,000 milestone. But it’s always there, and nothing brings that to the forefront quite like connecting with old friends and new ones over smashed bits of piñata and churro.

But on the other hand… LET’S SEE THOSE NUMBERS!

Change: -$547 or -0.55%

September Net Worth TOTAL: $99,277

September 2018 Net Worth Chart | Poorer Than You September 2018 Net Worth Breakdown | Poorer Than YouWhomp whomp whomp whhhhhhhhhaaaamp.

Okay, okay, it’s not that bad. It’s basically flat. But I did not, as I had hoped I would, hit the coveted “$100k in net worth” milestone this month. And here’s why:

Cash: -$2,117

Ugh. You might be tempted to think that I spent all of that cash on the chocolate piñatas at FinCon, but no, those were only $20 each and I did not buy 100 of them. In fact, FinCon really had a negligible effect on the cash flow this month (though the missed hours of work will be showing up in October’s first paycheck).

The explanation here is actually pretty simple. Over the course of September:

  • We received a pile of medical bills. Having a toddler means going to the emergency room. Yay?
  • We fought off illness brought on by an active, socializing toddler. We missed some work because of sick days.

That’s it, really. We were sick or had doctor-y things to do, and it cost us a lot of cash this month. Discouraging, but not the end of the world. In fact, we hit our health insurance deductible this month, so now it’s time to SCHEDULE ALL THE DOCTORS’ APPOINTMENTS!

Schedule all the doctors' appointments! Original meme image from Hyperbole and a Half

Everything Else

Normally I’d break out the rest of the net worth update by category, but there’s barely anything of interest going on there. I think we can do a few quick bullet points and then just move on:

  • Retirement: normal contributions to HSA and a little bit of growth
  • Car: I have no idea why this keeps going up in value. Camrys be hot right now?
  • Other Assets: I got a birthday check that I haven’t deposited yet
  • Student Loans: regular minimum payment + 3¢
  • Credit Card: (refinanced student loan) regular minimum payment
  • Other Debts: my tax liability for my business actually went down thanks to FinCon spending

Milestone Progress

The Milestone: $100,000 net worth. We already know I didn’t hit it this month. A few hundred per month until the end of the year would get me there, but I’m kinda hoping to knock it out in one fell swoop in October, even with the lower paycheck from FinCon. LET’S DO THIS.

The Milestone: Paid off Unsubsidized Stafford student loan. I’ve got $1,217.78 left on this bad boy. And I even have my student loan payments set up so that any extra I pay automatically goes toward paying this one off. But, I’m not really sending any extra to it right now (well, $0.03/month extra, because rounding). Besides focusing on the above milestone more than this one, I’m also big on maxing out all of my available retirement contribution “space” before tackling my student loans. Still, I’m tempted to throw a little extra at it next month, just to speed things up. Maybe instead of $0.03 extra (what I’m doing every month now, yay rounding!) I’ll do $1.03 extra next month? Whoa, look out debt, I’m coming for you!

Bonus: Carmen from Make Real Cents is DEBT FREE!

I had the pleasure and the privilege of spending my first afternoon at #FinCon18 with Carmen from Make Real Cents during the FinX event we both participated in. (An eye-opening experience that I am definitely preparing a blog post all about.) At that time, Carmen was only two days away from sending in her very last debt payment. And so now, as of the end of September, she is officially DEBT FREE!

Her “back to school” debt freedom photo shoot is even more adorable than I imagined! Look at that happy debt-free face and that shiny sign!

Congrats Carmen! It’ll be a while before I join you in debt freedom, but I’m so glad to see that you got there. 😀

And you, dear reader? Have you paid off debt or celebrated another net worth milestone recently? Leave a comment below to let me know, and you could be featured next month!

Don’t know where you’re at with your money to be able to celebrate? 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

Net Worth Update: September 2017

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I had one job to do this last month: open a Solo 401(k) for my retirement savings from self-employment and freelance income. Okay, really, I had like four jobs to do: mommy stuff, my job-job, my freelance job, and opening a Solo 401(k). But those first three were pretty much a given. A collective given? What’s the plural of a given – givens? A murder of givens?

The following post is mostly about the reasons I did or did not accomplish my “one job” this month. But there are gifs and I use funny words, so stick around, because it’s about to get all retirementy up in here:

Change: +$3,689 or +6.75%

September Net Worth TOTAL: $58,339

Net Worth Graph September 2017 - Poorer Than You

Net Worth Breakdown September 2017 - Poorer Than You

Cash & Retirement

Despite my best efforts to hold less cash, it’s up again this month. Why? Because I still haven’t started that Solo 401(k) yet.

Oh, I know. What’s up with that? Wasn’t I supposed to do that this month? Wasn’t I supposed to do that last month?

You’re not wrong. But I started the paperwork late in the month, and boy howdy is a Solo 401(k) a lot of paperwork. 19 pages of glorious IRS gibberish and they just expect any yahoo with a sole proprietorship (aka. one-dude-or-dudette business) to figure this stuff out? This isn’t even my first rodeo with this stuff – I spent all that time studying to get my FINRA Series 65 license*, which covered a lot of this exact 401(k) gobbledygook, and this form is still intimidating to me.

Intimidating, but not impossible. One phone call to E*TRADE (where I’ve decided to open my Solo 401(k)) and I should be able to get through the parts I’m not sure on with their help. Of course, we all know how much I love making phone calls.

And Also, SEP-IRAs Are a Thing

I found out that once you open a Solo 401(k), you can’t easily open a SEP-IRA (because of the way most SEP-IRAs are set up). But you can easily open a Solo 401(k) if you already have a SEP-IRA, no problemo. So if I ever want to contribute to a SEP-IRA, I should open one before I open the Solo 401(k). It seems like a SEP-IRA would only be better than a Solo 401(k) for my situation if my business made a whole lot of money, and if I added employees later on. Not sure if that will ever happen, but opening a SEP-IRA is simple enough that I might just do it just in case, because I’m experiencing some FOMO.

(Yes, my version of “fear of missing out” is that I might miss out on the opportunity to open a different kind of self-employment retirement account. My life is exciting.)

If you read all the above (or skimmed it) and said a lot of “I don’t even know what a Solo 401(k) or a SEP-IRA are!” – don’t worry. Unless you have a side hustle or small business or get paid as a 1099-MISC contractor… in which case, welcome to my boat! These are retirement accounts and they’ll basically save me a boatload on taxes, including possibly reducing my income enough to qualify for tasty tax credits or Obamacare subsidies (which contributing to a regular IRA would not do for me). So if you are in this boat with me, you too should probably be looking into either a Solo 401(k) or a SEP-IRA, or something similar. The Oblivious Investor has a great, simple breakdown of the self-employment retirement accounts.

So Will You Ever Open a Solo 401(k), Stephonee?

Yes. I’ll get there. Hopefully before the end of this month (October). But definitely before December 31st, because that’s the real deadline. I don’t have to make my entire year’s contribution before then (I have until the April 15th tax deadline to do that), but I do have to open the account before the end of the calendar year for it to count. So, I’ll get there. I’m just one SEP-IRA and a 19 page form away!

Okay, moving on!

So, the increase in “Retirement” on my balance sheet was, once again, not from me making any actual contributions this month, but just from market growth. I hate that. My contributions are waiting in cash for this whole Solo 401(k) quagmire to be resolved. Bah!

Milestone Progress

$58,339 out of $61,099 by January 2018 – only $2,760 to go! That’s $690 needed per month to get there. SO CLOSE NOW. LOOKING VERY REAL.

Nyan cat real.

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!


*I should point out I do not currently have the FINRA Series 65 license any more, so I’m not claiming to be licensed right now, that was from a previous employer and now I’m a rogue blogger again. Let no one claim that I claimed to be carrying a license right now.

Net Worth Update: February – September 2015

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Hello chilllllllllllldren! It’s Three Dog- wait, no, that’s not right. This is Stephonee, not Three Dog. Sorry, I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout 3 recently. But let’s talk about my collection of real-world money, not bottle caps:

February: $15,334 (-$640 or —4.01%)
March: $15,870 (+$535 or +3.49%)
April: $17,841 (+$1,971 or + 12.42%)
May: $23,478 (+$5,637 or +31.60%)
June: $23,298 (-$180 or —0.77%)
July: $23,651 (+$353 or +1.52%)
August: $24,247 (+$596 or +2.52%)

And currently…
September: $22,838 (-$1,409 or —5.81%)

Net Worth Graph - September 2015

Credit Card Debt?!?

Those of you paying close attention and digging deep into the numbers (so, uh, probably no one) would have noticed that starting in February, I had a sudden addition to my Debts: $3148 in credit card debt that totally wasn’t there before.

Before anyone flips their shit on me — here’s the deal:

  1. My husband and I bought a couch, after saving up for it. Obviously, it was a ridiculously expensive couch ($3148!), but it’s a really friggin sweet couch and like I said, we saved up for it. (It’s a Sactional from LoveSac — it comes apart for easy reconfiguration and moving, which fits our renting and having-people-over-lots lifestyle.)
  2. Toward the end of saving up for the couch, I laid in wait. Stalking LoveSac’s website, I waited for the best deal to come up. And then suddenly, a post-holiday sale appeared! 20% off the couch covers and 36-month 0% interest financing. BINGO!
  3. I pounced on that offer like angry Lion King Simba (adult Simba, not JTT-baby Simba). The idea was that I’d get the credit card they were offering (in both my name and my husband’s), improve everyone’s credit scores, and make the monthly payment out of the very savings account where we’d saved up, earning interest on the balance the whole while.
  4. That worked like a charm, but something about only earning 0.75% interest on the money sitting in the savings account bothered me. Probably the “earning less than inflation” thing. So I took all the money out of the couch savings account, and threw it at my highest interest rate (5%) student loan. A month later, I was able to pull together the remaining $635.73 owed on that loan, and knocked it right out.
  5. So now I have one less student loan payment ($79.55/month at 5% interest) and a credit card payment in its place ($88/month at 0% interest).

On the surface, it looks like voodoo trickery: I traded a student loan payment at 5% interest for a credit card payment at 0% interest, and got a free couch out of the deal! Except, no. That’s not what happened at all. That line of thinking completely ignores the months beforehand, when my husband and I spent time and money saving up for the couch/loan payoff. Don’t ever make the mistake of ignoring the hard work part of how these things work.

I’ve Gone Rogue

Wesley: I’m a Rogue Demon Hunter now.
Cordelia: Wow. What’s a rogue demon?

– “Parting Gifts” Angel

Much like Wesley Wyndam-Pryce after his unceremonious firing from the Watcher’s Council (clueless gits!), I’ve left the corporate world once again to go it on my own as an independent contractor. Though there are obvious drawbacks (paying for my own health insurance, pay inconsistency, quarterly estimated taxes), it’s the right course of action for me because of all the tasty benefits:

  • Paying less for my health insurance because I’m not locked into the one-and-only option my previous employer offered
  • Jeans and hoodies all-day erry-day
  • Completely setting my own schedule and changing it on a whim
  • Working with some of my very favorite past coworkers on their current projects
  • Having the amount of money I bring in explicitly tied to the work I produce
  • Pay security: rather than one stream of income, I have multiple now. If one ends, I can just ramp up the others the very next day and see no dip in income.

That last one is probably the biggest, for me. During an email exchange with a high school friend, he told me that he’d never be able to do the “gig economy” thing because he needs that sense of security about where he’ll be in 2-3 years. Fair enough, but for me, I like the sense of security I have about right now and knowing that should a client decide to dump me, or go bankrupt, or even if I just decide I don’t want to work on a certain project anymore, I’m not going to have to scramble to look for work or go on Unemployment. That’s what security means to me.

Heck, it’s why I can write this post in the middle of the day on a Thursday in my pajamas. Because I love being a stereotypical millennial blogger, and also because I can get more writing done if I just tell myself not to shower until I’ve finished a friggin post.

Gooooooooooals!

September 14th, 2014 was my goal date for a positive net worth, and I nailed it. I haven’t set any additional goals since then, but considering it’s been one year since that date, it’s a good time to do a check-in:

+$18,895 year-over-year (September 2014 — September 2015)

Yeah, I’ll take it. That’s some good growth.

It’s not a hugely ambitious goal considering what I’ve already achieved, but I’d like to see my net worth hit $38,901 by September 2016. That’s exactly 7 years after my all-time net worth low of negative $38,901 in September of 2009, so it would be some nice symmetry. Even better if I can manage it in 6 months (by the end of March 2016) instead of a year from now.

Got any other ideas for goals I should set right now? Throw those in the comments — I’d love to know what goals other people come up with for me!

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

Net Worth Update: March – December 2014

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Hello boys.... I'M BACK

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

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

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

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

December 2014 Net Worth Graph

A few goals hit their deadlines…

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

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

Achievement unlocked: Positive Net Worth

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

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

Achievement unlocked: $30,000 Retirement Savings

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

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

What else happened?

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

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

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

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

And I still got my ‘cheevos.

To combine or not to combine…

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

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

The short answer: no.

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

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

Dance party time!

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

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

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