While this is not the beginning of my financial journey, it is the first financial statement for this series, and thus will serve as a baseline.
My Net Worth has surpassed $200,000 for the first time in my life, so I’m pretty feeling good about that!
November 2017 Financial Statement
| Account Name | Balance |
|---|---|
| Cash | $1200.00 |
| Asset - Vehicle 1 | $15,219 |
| Asset - Vehicle 2 | $6,500.00 |
| Checking - Business | $2,365.65 |
| Retirement - Pension | $22,711.65 |
| Retirement - HSA (Investements) | $5,614.26 |
| Retirement - HSA (Cash) | $2,930.91 |
| Savings - Personal (CU) | $3,012.02 |
| Asset - Precious Metals | $400.00 |
| Auto Loan 1 | -$16,816.42 |
| Mortgage - Home | -$141,560.03 |
| Asset - Home | $141,815 |
| Retirement - 401k | $168,005.65 |
| Credit Cards | -$10,352.43 |
| Checking - Personal | $3,737.59 |
| Savings - Personal | $1000.94 |
| Net Worth | $204,054.55 |
A few things to note this month:
- The $1200 Cash is set aside for a December visit to Ukraine to visit my fiance
- I signed up for Personal Capital to help monitor and manage my overall financial picture
- I refinanced my auto loan with my credit union, taking a 3.84% interest rate down to 1.99%
- I did a balance transfer of my credit card debt to a 19 month 0% interest offer from one of my cars, paying a 4% fee
- My side business did only about 60% of the revenue we’ve done the last 4 months, and as such there was $0 profit from in in November.
- I setup a a direct deposit to take $500 out of each paycheck and put it in my credit union savings account
Side Business Income
January 2017, I launched a side business with $2200 capital. I’m happy to report that it’s profitable in the sense that I haven’t had to infuse more cash into the business, but it’s not profitable in the sense that I can put any of that money back into my pocket. I’ll make a another post with more details on that, but over the last 5 months, the business has “profited” about $400/month and that money has gone directly towards establishing an emergency fund of sorts within the business, and paying for advertising and other costs for the next month.
Retirement
I love my job, I really do, but if I could I would retire and just enjoy life and perhaps work small contracts on my schedule. The truth is that I have a really sweet gig, so it doens’t feel like I work too hard, I get paid well, I have great benefits, and I am setting myself up for a nice retirement. My only downfall is it wasn’t until 2012, when I was 31, that I really started saving for retirement. At 36 now, I feel I’m already behind the 8-ball and looking to catch up. The good news is my retirement has grown significantly month of month, and is up over $58,000 since this time last year.
With retirement accounts totaling $190,717.30 and using a 3.5% safe withdrawal rate (SWR), would allow me to take $556.26 as income per month. At this time, I have no other dependable asset streams to count on, and thus that’s my calculation for now.
Safe Withdrawal Rate (3.5%) monthly income: $556.26
With a project monthly need of $4,000 in retirement, it’s not enough. However, if I had to, I think could make it last in my fiance’s native Ukraine as a backup plan!
Luckily, I’m in good health, in a secure job, have growing investments, and have good projected growth of a side business. Barring any sort of freak accident or medical issue, I’m on a good path towards retirement by 55, though we’ll see what we can do to bring that in over the coming years!
Spendaholic Ways
I still spend too much money as a whole, mostly on eating out and buying stuff from Amazon and Costco. In November, I spent $663.29 on food, and only $118.82 of that was on groceries, and an additional $408.34 in the shopping category, and $256.79 on entertainment. To be honest, this is quite good compared to some of my pre-blog / pre-getting-my-shit-together days, but I need to do better!
Looking Ahead
Over the coming months, I will continue working on the personal finance aspects of my journey, but there are some key points I must consider going forward:
- Fiance and step-daughter will move to the USA in June 2018
- I project my side business to grow steadily throughout 2018 allowing me to take an income from it
- I have focused strategies to begin paying down my mortgage faster than normal
- March 31st, I should receive a bonus from work (fingers crossed!)
- My primary car is slightly underwater, I plan to catch up after the previously mentioned bonus
- I’m still cosigned on $29,000 debt from an ex’s student loans (not considered as part of my net worth)
- My employer is swapping the pension, for additional 401k deposits come 2019