I haven’t posted up for awhile as my personal life has been pretty busy, but I wanted to make sure I posted this month. I did keep track of my numbers for July, but never got around to making a post. So, for June my net worth was $245,051.84 after losing a bit in the 401k and withdrawing a lot from the credit union savings for personal needs. Now, my net worth stands at $266,901.37 which is a nice increase of $21,849.53 in the 3 months since. I won’t complain if I can keep adding $7,000 to my net worth every month… eventually my retirement accounts will become large enough they should hopefully grow that much by themselves each month from investment growth alone.
I feel like my 401k has been going mostly sideways this year, but at least I keep contributing to it. I am contributing less than the max, and I do plan to rectify that in the coming months so that for 2019 I will hit the taxable limit again.
Some big news! I’ll be getting married in the next few months. Not only is this exciting from a personal aspect, which I won’t go too much into – it’s exciting from a financial aspect too! My fiance and her daughter are now in the US living with me, so I am no longer supporting two separate households. This means while while my expenses in this household go up, I am no longer sending $800.00 overseas each month, which should balance out and possible overtake any addition in spending here at home. Additional, there is a huge tax benefit to being married with 1 child, and I can apply that benefit to the entirety of 2018, which means I should get a very large refund next year that I plan to use to top off the emergency fund and put anything extra into our future house fund. More on that in a later post!
September 2018 Financial Statement
| Account Name | Previous Balance | Balance | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash | $100.00 | $2.00 | -$98.00 |
| Savings - Personal | $1,000.41 | $1,000.48 | $0.07 |
| Savings - Personal (CU) | $11,012.65 | $10,009.75 | -$1,002.90 |
| Checking - Personal | $2,130.36 | $2,940.95 | $810.59 |
| Checking - Business | $2,908.25 | $3,076.22 | $167.97 |
| Credit Card - Business | -$2,507.32 | -$2,222.73 | $284.59 |
| Credit Cards | -$12,313.01 | -$13,004.35 | -$691.34 |
| Retirement - 401k | $189,479.90 | $195,661.33 | $6,181.43 |
| IRA | $0.00 | $344.06 | $344.06 |
| Retirement - Pension | $27,434.14 | $29,047.74 | $1,613.60 |
| Retirement - HSA (Investements) | $8,009.11 | $8,237.10 | $227.99 |
| Retirement - HSA (Cash) | $3,246.39 | $3,732.62 | $486.23 |
| Asset - Vehicle 1 | $12,975.00 | $12,250.00 | -$725.00 |
| Auto Loan 1 | -$13,551.99 | -$12,820.90 | $731.09 |
| Asset - Vehicle 2 | $8,500.00 | $8,500.00 | $0.00 |
| Asset - Precious Metals | $500.00 | $500.00 | $0.00 |
| Asset - Home | $151,241.00 | $156,729.00 | $5,488.00 |
| Mortgage - Home | -$137,041.24 | -$136,181.92 | $859.32 |
| Net Worth | $253,123.65 | $266,901.37 | $13,777.72 |
A few things to note this month:
- The table above shows a difference since July, but I didn’t make a post since June… sorry about that.
- My emergency fund is $10,000 again, and I’m hopeful I will not need to pull more than $2,000 from it the remainder of the year, while adding $2,000 to it every month.
- I started contributing to an IRA again, $400 a month.
Side Business Income
The side business continues to move sideways, we’re in a range of $2,300 – $2,800 per month. It’s paying for itself, paying for a laptop that I purchased, and a little extra – but I’m still not putting any money in my pocket. I need a dedicated sales and marketing person, and am going to try to find some help on that front.
Retirement
My work announced they will be doing away with a company paid pension plan. We of course get to keep any previous contributions, but no further contributions will be made after 2018. However, all is not lost – they are going to be adding additional money into our 401ks on top of the match we already get, so it about evens out. Our risks increase as now our money can fluctuate with the market, but it also could earn more than it would have in the pension plan. Either way, it’s still free money!
I decided I should start contributing to my IRA, and have setup automatic deposits to the tune of $200 per pay period. I use this account to trade options in, which is probably not that smart… but I want to see how it goes for a few months.
With retirement accounts totaling $225,053.13 and using a 3.5% safe withdrawal rate (SWR), that would allow me to take $656.40 as income each month. It’s headed in the right direction at least, but will not really supporting a good life anywhere. Even in somewhere like my fiance’s native Ukraine, we’d need closer to $800 to get by on and closer to $1500.00 to live how I’d like. But – it’s good seeing the number increasing.
Safe Withdrawal Rate (3.5%) monthly income: $656.40
Spendaholic Ways
I’ve done personally better with my spendaholic ways the last couple of months, however, bringing my fiance and her daughter to the US has increased some costs, especially in the month of September when they arrived. They could only bring limited items to the US with them, so we’ve spent probably $1,500.00 on combined clothing and household needs for the two of them. We’ll also have a couple thousand dollars worth of governmental paperwork fees to attend to soon as well.
Emergency Fund
My personal and credit union savings is now at $10,009.75. Right at about 2.5 months worth. It pains me to know that had I not spent any of it and continued to add to it, I should have met my 6 months expenses goal this month. It not looks like I won’t hit that goal until either my tax refund or bonus from work comes next spring. Coupled with a credit card debt that’s currently larger than my emergency fund, I’m not very happy with my current financial situation, despite the rise in my overall net worth.
Looking Ahead
I think we have most of the large purchases out of the way for my fiance and her daughter to get settled in at home, we just need a bit more winter cloths / jackets and they’ll be set. We do have something like $2,500 in documentation fees coming up, but we’re planning a fairly low key wedding so those costs shouldn’t impact us as much. A family vacation / combined birthday weekend set for November will take somewhere about $600 out of the budget as well.
After we get married, I’ll adjust our insurance needs and tax information and we’ll see just how much my monthly take-home is affected. We’re also planning to start a couple savings accounts at that time as well, that will probably wipe out any additional take home.