INSIDE: Here’s a financial snapshot of a woman who shares some great graphs & spreadsheets on how she manages it all. Great thing to do early on!

[Morning! Here’s a financial snapshot of one of our readers of the blog, Corrine – who also fancies herself a good spreadsheet (or four) like any good finance nerd out there ;) What a beautiful thing to have your epiphany *early on* in life! Congrats Corrine!!]

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Hi J. Money!

I really enjoy seeing these financial snapshots… they are super inspiring!

I’d like to share a financial snapshot of my own. It’s my experience tracking money as a young person who is just obsessed with all things finance. I’m 24, and I graduated college somewhat recently (May 2017), but I did work part-time through most of college. I am extremely lucky that I graduated debt-free thanks to my scholarships combined with my part-time work and the generosity/financial planning of my wonderful parents.

I started officially working full time in May 2017 and have been tracking my net worth diligently since December 2017. I currently make $50,000 (up from $38,000 this time last year!) after a recent raise in August and this is the most I have ever made.

I am at a post-tax savings rate of about 27%, with 13% of my post-tax income currently going to my ROTH IRA and the rest going to my other savings goals (future house, travel fund, emergency fund). I also contribute 10% pretax to my company’s SIMPLE IRA with an additional 3% employer match, and I contribute $50 per month to my HSA.

Before tracking my net worth, I had been working part time for 4 years and had only ~$4,000 to show for it (I also had very few expenses in college — I have no idea where all my money went, lol). Once I started really looking at what I was doing with my money, I doubled my net worth in ~6 months. My current net worth is $35,000.

I currently live with my boyfriend of 3 years, and we share expenses such as groceries and rent 50-50. We are planning to rent until we get married and figure out exactly where we want to live long term (we plan to buy a house and settle into a permanent location within the next 2-3 years).

Financial Snapshot Spreadsheet

I am a huge fan of spreadsheets and wanted to provide a little explanation of the trackers I use:

(click to blow up bigger)

My “Financial Summary” is essentially where I track my net worth at any given time. It’s a true financial snapshot. Anything is green is an asset, and anything in red is a liability… and anything that is black is an account that fluctuates frequently (such as my primary checking) so I don’t include it in my overall calculations.

I keep a balance in my checking (“Spending”) that is always higher than my cumulative credit card balance, since I pay for everything on credit cards to collect rewards. I have never paid interest on any of my credit cards since I have all bills set to auto pay from my spending account.

My “Net Worth Over Time” tracker is really just so I can ensure that I am consistently moving up! I really enjoy looking back at it to see how far I’ve come. I received an inheritance of sorts ($10,000) in October 2018 which accounts for the big jump there which I threw into a 2 year CD for my future down payment on a house. I also got a bonus at work that month which accounts for the rest of the jump, and needless to say, that was a wonderful month!

The only dip in net worth I have had in my entire duration of tracking was when I bought Hamilton tickets for my boyfriend and I in June 2018… it was a pretty big splurge that I dipped into my travel account for, but I have absolutely no regrets since that is what it is there for. Why earn money if you can’t treat yourself sometimes? The other one was when I bought my new-to-me car in April 2019 (and subsequently forgot to add the car’s value to my net worth, lol – I fixed it the next month).

The “Wealth Ratio” came from you! I saw you do it in a blog post quite some time ago and loved the idea. I’ve been tracking it since and I find that it really helps hold me accountable.

[Editor’s Note: The Lifetime Wealth Ratio tells you how much money you’ve saved over your lifetime compared to how much you’ve *earned* ;) You can get a quick estimate of this by dividing your Net Worth by your Total Income found on your Social Security Statements. The closer to 100%, the better!]

I also recently started using EveryDollar to track my spending so I have a screenshot of my budget from there. The only thing that didn’t fit in the screenshot was the $30 (~1%) I donate to a rotation of my favorite charities each month.

I’m currently working on getting my emergency fund to 6 months of expenses and increasing my post-tax retirement contributions to 15%. I would also like to be able to max out my HSA in the next year or so.

That’s it for me, thanks for reading!

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Not too bad right? Especially at 24?! I had approximately $4.00 to my name at that stage and couldn’t care less about finances, haha… It wasn’t until 3 years later when it finally dawned on me that I should probably be paying attention ;)

So good job, Corrine! And thanks for sharing with us today!

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To share YOUR financial journey with us, pass me a note and we’ll try making you famous too ;) In the meantime, here are some other snapshots we’ve featured in recent months – hope they help!

• Jimmy’s History of Personal Finance
• Jana’s 10 Year Journey to Debt Freedom
• Miguel’s Multi-Millionaire Journey as an Immigrant