Welcome to August! Winter Fall is coming – woo! The best season on the planet!
Speaking of Game of Thrones, Verizon is trying to get back on our good side by randomly offering us an entire month’s worth of HBO for free. It’s as if they knew the *exact* time to give us something we couldn’t resist before we kick them to the curb! And it’s working!! Haha…We’re now 5 episodes into this current season and enjoying every second of it (though WOW is it dark and gloomy so far??). My wife says I can’t call them back now until we’re finished with the season, d’oh… Those guys are good.
(Shout out to Goodnight Debt for this!)
Back to the fun stuff, though – net worth! Another month down and another month tracked, making this officially the 91st time we’ve done so! Pretty interesting to be able to look back through the years and see how far you’ve come… I’ve said it before (like a million times before) but it’s seriously the #1 thing you can do to see exactly where you stand and to motivate you to do even better. When you know you’ll be back in a month to check on things, you never want to let yourself down! It’s addicting!
You can see a summary of all 90 months recorded here: Net Worth Tracker. We started at $58,769.65 in January of 2008! And if you’re getting bored of my own net worths here, head over to my other site, Rockstar Finance, and check out the $$$ of 177 other bloggers @ The Ultimate Net Worth Tracker! Those range from (-)$123,446 to +$2,443,131 and everything in between. Pretty juicy.
As for my own wealth this month, well, we inched up by a thousand bones or so but don’t have anything too terribly interesting to report. We’ll probably be the only net worth post out there with a loss in investments this month, what with the market rallying compared to the end of last’s, but fortunately that’s only because of a technicality on my behalf when I decided to run our #’s a day early last month right before the $hit hit the fan :) So instead of “losing” $20,000 last month and then gaining it all back this month with a sexy increase, we’re left with a boring tiny loss instead. But I digress…
Here’s how July’s numbers break down:
CASH SAVINGS (+$1,457.91): The beauty of pulling our kids from daycare continues! And while it may be contributing to my lack of efficient hustling these days (today’s day #1 of copying Benjamin Franklin btw – pray for me!), it sure is paying dividends in the wallet. This marks the third month in a row of building back up our cash reserves :)
BROKERAGE (+$34.82): This category holds both the $$ from our Motif dividend stock test this year ($513.24), as well as my automatic micro-investments in Acorns ($235.83). Where most of the increase came from this month with another $30’ish dropped in. It’s awesome never having to lift a finger!
IRA: ROTH(s) (-$58.32): Nothing super fascinating going on with this guy. It’ll be a while until we max ‘er on out again this year as I don’t tend to do it until the end of the tax year to make sure I have the $$$ to do so (what with self-employment and all). I believe we’re going into the 8th year in a row of having maxed it out though, so I don’t intend on breaking that :)
IRA: SEP (-$678.54): Same here. Nothing new will be added until the end of the year. And all my $350,000+ sitting here is still invested into one Vanguard index fund: VTSAX. You can learn why here, if you’re interested: My Lazy One-Fund Investing Strategy
(Performance since moving over last year)
AUTOS WORTH (kbb) (-$175.00): Just the cars doing what they’re supposed to be doing over time – losing value! We came close to becoming a one car family this month when my car wouldn’t start (again), but fortunately it was a battery problem (again) as I got a dud the last time I replaced it (3 months ago). Every time I think it’s lights out for Frankencaddy, she rallies back and surprises me :) Though she has been slacking on her hustle too…
Here’s the value of our two cars based on Kelly Blue Book:
- Frankencaddy: $1,000.00
- Plain Jane Toyota: $4,658.00
HOME VALUE (Realtor) ($0.00): We’re still holding the value here at $300k (the value our realtor set for us) because nothing major has changed in the area it’s located. I checked Zillow out of curiosity the other day, even though I don’t trust their #’s, and it showed our house was hovering around the $315k zone. Then I checked what USAA thinks its worth as they have a “home monitoring” section in their site too when you log in, and they showed a number surprisingly close to ours!
I’ll have to give them more credit than I used to :) And look at that “tax value” there – good thing “market” value is a whole different thing! You actually want it to be down more so you don’t have to pay so much in taxes, haha…
MORTGAGES (-$707.43): $700 more chipped away! All due to rounding up each payment and never thinking twice… It’s amazing how it adds up over time :)
Here’s the break down of them:
- 1st Mortgage: $265,051.70 (30 year conventional @ 5.5%)
- 2nd Mortgage: $25,982.46 (HELOC @ variable 2.8%)
Here’s how the past 12 months have gone:
And here’s how our little nuggets are doing :) I xfered out $50.00 from each of their savings to go into their 529s, and they both got an amazing gift of $250 a piece too from one of our relatives out of the blue. In fact, the same one that had me value all her silver dimes the other month if you recall? She told me to cash them all in and use the proceeds for the kids’ education – isn’t that sweet? So I did! And their worths rose! :) Baby Penny also got a nice birthday gift of $50 too which also went in there… He turned freakin’ THREE the other week, and I about died from shock. THREE!
And that’s July! How did you guys do? Wealth continuing to rise because you’re a rock star and you read this blog?? Find any good secrets that we should know about? Pay off all $50,000 of your debt like Even Steven and now living the good life?
Share your wins (and losses) with us below… You know we love this stuff :)
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PS: For those new on the scene, here are a few great ways to track your wealth:
- Mint.com (free) – a lazy automated way ;)
- PersonalCapital.com (free) – another lazy automated way, only with cooler tools and more focused on investments. See our review: Why I Use Personal Capital Almost Every Single Day
- The “Money Snapshot” spreadsheet – a simple Excel template I created for my clients
- The “Budget/Net Worth” spreadsheet – the Excel template I use
It doesn’t matter how you do it though, just that you’re tracking it!
PS: If you’re just getting started in your journey, here are a few good resources to help track your money. Doesn’t matter which route you go, just that it ends up sticking!
- The "Budget/Net Worth" spreadsheet - the colorful Excel template I personally use.
- The "Money Snapshot" spreadsheet - a simple Excel template I created for my former $$$ clients
If you're not a spreadsheet guy like me and prefer something more automated (which is fine, whatever gets you to take action!), you can try your hand with a free Empower account instead (formerly Personal Capital)
Empower is a cool tool that connects with your bank & investment accounts to give you an automated way to track your net worth. You'll get a crystal clear picture of how your spending and investments affect your financial goals (early retirement?), and it's super easy to use.
It only takes a couple minutes to set up and you can grab your free account here. They also do a lot of other cool stuff as well which my early retired friend Justin covers in our full review of Empower - check it out here: Why I Use Empower Almost Every Single Day.
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Love reading these updates. July wasn’t as kind to me… we bought a couple of bikes then ran into some unexpected expenses. We did, however, manage to score a couple hundred bucks from a garage sale! Here’s to a better August! Keep it up my friend!
Nice job on the yard sale! I keep shopping at them instead of selling haha…
On Game of Thrones, if you were like me and have been waiting for “white-walkers” to appear, the second to last episode of this season (#5) will NOT disappoint!
AWESOME!!! BRING IT ON!!
I swear I am the only person around that hasn’t seen a single episode of Game of Thrones. I think I live a sheltered life :)
Nice job on July! Always nice to see the cash reserves start moving in the up direction. July was pretty good to us because we finally got rid of our student loans that frees up over $1,500 a month since we were attacking them pretty aggressively. Here’s hoping to another good August!
holy $hit – congrats! what are you going to be doing with the $1,500 extra now? Such a nice chunk of money!
Up 1k is a win in my book! I was lucky enough to be up 11k for my July Net Worth Update but that was a fluke because I got lucky with a particular stock that I have.
Ill take it though!
“A Lannister always pays their debts”
haha….
I didn’t check net worth last month but I did hit an lifelong goal of being able to take a month off work and travel with my family. Since my husband works in education, I’ve always been jealous of his summer time off. We also had one of our best rental income months ever, all while out of the country. Hopefully it’s a small taste of what the future will be like!
That’s incredible on all fronts, wow. Way to set yourself up like that!
Oh shoot J. Money! You have a Franken-Caddy! I am absolutely enthralled. I had a gorgeous (Mr. Crackin’s not here to dispute this) 1992 Silver Cadillac Seville from 2000-2013 before she went to her final resting place. There may have been a funeral involved and many pictures to document the occasion. It was one sad day.
Haha.. you did her proud! :)
We are up $22K here. As you said, we registered the market decline last month, but to make ourselves feel better about it, we added in our HSA account – which holds about $10K — to our net worth calculation. (I hadn’t included it before because I wanted us to be able to spend it on medical bills without feeling bad about it — now we’ve decided we have enough cash flow to save our HSA for medical bills in our retirement.) So last month we were up by $5K and this month we are registering the market recovery, plus receiving a $5K check owed to us. ONward and upward!
Hot dogs! I don’t care how you get $22k – it’s always a nice # to see :)
PS: You are closing in on $500K now for sure! So exciting!
Our small house project began, so July has been a great month! With some of the new house expenses, we had to hold on to some $–not big projects but enough that we couldn’t divert as much to debt as we usually do. Slowly but surely, we’re chipping away and should have no debt within a year. *fingers crossed*
Oh man! “Small house” like “tiny house?” Like “those sexy tiny homes which I want to live in so bad??” Haha… I want pics if so :)
Looking good J$! As expected we bled some cash in July, but hitting the job search hard this month.
Good luck with it man! I hate job searching stuff…. unless it’s like blog or money-type jobs :)
With the rebound in the market, our net worth came back a bit too for July. Still working on hitting our goal for the end of the year. It looks like we should be able to hit it, unless there is a big drop in the market between now and then!
Good job on growing things even a bit this month. And kudos on tracking for 90+ months. Strong dedication.
Cool how you track the savings accounts & 529s for your kiddos too. Good idea. And congratulations on the 3rd bday! We’re on a similar kid-track as you…a couple of months behind. In the middle of a stomach bug for our 2.5 yo; sleep is for next week I guess.
Ouch – I hope that bug goes away fast! that’s the worst with kids :(
It is amazing the difference 1 day can make to your net worth calculation. It is also amazing that there are over 177 people on your list now. My net worth posts almost always receive the most traffic – inquiring minds want to know. Thank you for tracking them J.
Thanks for always linking back to it, May! So sweet of you :)
Happy Birthday Baby Penny!!
July was a good net worth month for 2 major reasons. One- I clocked the losses from June. Two- It was a 3 paycheck month! Woot! A win for the desk jockey!
Funny thing about the meme: I’ve never seen Game of Thrones! lol
What??? But YOU sent me that meme! Haha… that is too funny… Just like your “desk jockey” term – can’t say I’ve heard of that one before (but I like it :))
Awesome job! I got a little behind in tracking our net worth the last few months. Bit I finally got around to updating the spreadsheet last night…up $6k from May…boom. It’s amazing how much better you feel when you see those numbers go up :)
Agreed! Not so much when it goes the other way, but at least it pushes you to work harder :)
Way to go on your values being spot on! We just had competitive market analyses done on both of our properties since I had a meeting with the appraisal district, and I had estimated too low overall by about $16k on our home. So our overall net worth jumped up $18k this past month due to that, extra cash on hand, and a drop of $3k in value on our rental home.
As for Game of Thrones, gloomy is the word for the season in my opinion. :-)
Anytime you want to switch homes you just let me know okay? :)
Hey J, (made a rhyme – lol)…. so, are we taking “bets” when you break a half-mil? Freebie contest could be in the making. I’m in for Jan 2016!
Haha… you’re on, son.
Strange that VTSAX went down for you… Ours went up? Must be grabbing our numbers just a little bit off.
We had a great month because we put an extra 2k towards our mortgage and we had 3 paychecks (that’s 3 deposits into my 401k). I wish every month was this high!
I’ll be opening a Maryland 529 after baby #2 comes around. Right now we put in $100 per month into kid #1’s, but we don’t know if we’ll double that (most likely not) or split it in half (most likely) for #2.
I keep hearing about this wonderful 3 paycheck month! We don’t get those in self-employment, booooooo
Nice steady increase on the net worth front. We calculate our net worth every quarter so the next one will be in Oct. Should be interesting to see our progress then.
I always enjoy these updates, thanks for posting those! Daycare and all the other kids’ stuff are always expensive. I have been trying to focus on increasing our net worth as well and it is always encouraging to see how others are doing as well.
Thanks Reelika :) I always love seeing your name pop up here! I tell you like every time, but I freakin’ love it.
Happy Birthday to baby Penny!!! People say all the time that time flies with your kids and the days certainly seem long, especially when they are not on their best behavior, but the years absolutely fly. I can’t believe my son will be starting 4th grade in a month. Craziness!!
You are so close to crossing the $500K mark.
I love reading financial reports and net worth updated. They inspire me and give me benchmarks to aim for.
That is why I do my on detailed financial report and net worth update. Because of all the inspiring bloggers like you that share real numbers :)
Cheers!
Glad you’re enjoying them, man!
This month, our net worth would have kicked butt, except we decided to spend all our money :) We’re up $1K as well.
I like tracking our net worth even though we’re not in the “taking names” stage of wealth accumulation, it’s sort of a fun exercise.
Just chipping away at our debt, same ol’ stuff, different day. We thought we were going to be down a car as well. I drove our 1995 Honda into the garage and the next morning there was a large puddle of oil under it. We have a friend that works on cars, so he was going to look at it when he had the time, but he was pretty busy, so it didn’t get looked at for a few weeks. In the meantime, my parents dropped by and my dad looked at it. It turns out, we had a quart of oil in the trunk and it had slid down where the spare tire is supposed to be clicked in, punctured a hole and completely drained the bottle…..
Silly story, but at least I still have my fuel efficient car! Nearly 30 miles per gallon, woot woot!
Oh man, how random! Haha… that’s the best news you could quite possibly get – EVER with a puddle under your car haha… Love it.
Beware the Game Of Thrones–it will totally suck you in! In the best possible way :). And yes, it only gets gloomier and doomier as the seasons go on. July was a fine and frugal month for us–we were able to keep our non-mortgage spending under $1K, which never fails to make me happy. That’s awesome you’ve still got the kiddos out of daycare–that’s a huge amount saved!
That is just incredible with y’alls monthly spending. It still shocks me every time I see it even though I know y’all are bad asses with it!
July was the month I finally reported my net worth, because of a big personal milestone. Feel free to add me to your net worth tracker :)
You got it, brotha! Good job starting to track it and hitting your personal milestone!
Great job J$! Not paying for daycare is probably a HUGE money saver!!
177 and counting, well I am at 27 and counting for Financial Independence Day…..I’m going to catch you one day…..or retire early! I’m happy with either one;)
I like seeing reminders on the internet that I paid off all of my student loans :)
You’ll hit early retirement long before I do, so I say shoot for that goal :) A high net worth doesn’t mean as much as freedom!
J$,
Another stellar month, brother. Slow and steady wins the race!
That’s great you guys are saving some cash from the lack of daycare. Feels good to write yourself a check rather than the local daycare facility, I’m sure. :)
Cheers!
We seem to have mimicked your no-daycare move at the moment mostly due to circumstances. We lost our regular situation and have been struggling to get someone that works well since, but in the meantime, I’m saving all that beautiful cash that I budgeted for childcare spending. And it’s getting addictive so of course my brain wants to just keep saving that money instead of finding a way to spend it. I know we should be spending it on good care but it’s hard to convince myself! ;)
Even with some bumps in the stocks, we’re up about $5K, at least til next month’s accounting when I throw down a retainer for a lawyer!
Yikes! Hope all that stuff goes well – I hate legal situations :( Awesome about the childcare cash!!
Great to see the green highlighting!!! You’re always so on it with the net worth updates haha. And I always forget until I see yours! Thanks for the reminders every month. Mine probably won’t be a positive with my kitchen renovation going on though!
Thanks J Money – love the shared details. Started tracking my net worth in May thanks to you and your blog :-)
Became debt-free last Friday (yippee!) which brings my new net worth to $241,798.
From Jan to April my save rate was 50% – bumped that up to 68% at the end of April and that’s where I’ll stay for now.
Next goal? $15K emergency fund!
Holy $hit – you are on fire! Way to go!! You make me so proud!! :)
Congratulations J Money, you are almost a half millionaire!
I am curious, have you tried to “value” your internet website properties? I think that this is a more substantial portion of your net worth than index funds.
Keep up the good work!
Great question indeed!
I do have a ballpark idea of what they’re worth (skewed higher than it should be of course because us bloggers always think we have gold, haha…) but since none of it is a definite I just leave out of the tracking process. On the day/if I ever sell them, I’ll just have a nice bump that month and the cash will be recorded then :) So it’ll affect it, but for now I pretend it’s not there (and quite honestly I really just forget they count as assets!).
Well, for your April 1 2016 net worth update, you can put up your net worth and add something like a few million for the J Money name TM. :-)
In all seriousness, I think website valuations are really low relative to income – something like 24 times monthly revenues. So still, could be a nice “asset”.
Looking good bud. Your net worth chart looks great. Keep at it!
July was pretty good for us. Our expense was a higher than usual, but our income was really good too. So it all worked out.
GOT new season already started? It’s been so busy, I haven’t noticed.
I get almost as excited watching your mortgage go down as I do my own.
HAH! Well that’s cool :) I’m glad both of ours are going down and not the opposite!
Glad to see you’re a fellow GoT fan. I own stock in TWX (they own HBO). Keep up the good work!
Smart strategy :)
Nice work J$, any move in the black is a good one. July was another expensive month for me but thanks to some deposits and the market cooperating a bit I was up almost 4k. Back over 500k finally!
Congrats! I hope to be catching you soon :)
Holy moly, me and J.money are both now worth a million dollars because of the great websites we both own. I must say it feels great to get that boost in Net worth. (Now I need a secret to get those clicks up) HAHA. I knew you would hit a half a million in 2015. Good Job man.
Haha… thx man :)