I’ve seen on a few other blogs people tracking their finances chronologically. I like the idea.
I was once told that in most cases, people are more comfortable talking openly about their sex lives than about their finances. I’m really not sure why that is.
My experiences have shown me that people who talk about their finances aren’t conceited or showing off; they generally seem to do it to help. Otherwise, I’ve found that most people who are financially set tend not to talk about their finances, because they really don’t feel the need to.
My wife and I are financially stable, but not at early retirement yet. We would like to grow our net worth to over $3 Million by the time I retire at 44. This is a lofty goal given our current progress. But in a short amount of time we grew our net worth from zero to almost $500,000, so with that in our rearview, I feel this is achievable.
Because of the time it takes to compile all these numbers from various accounts, they’re going to be ballparks until I develop a better system.
Starting Net Worth
We continue to max out my Roth IRA, contribute 10% to my TSP Retirement account, and an additional matched 6% to my wife’s 401K. We started 2018 with approximately the following assets and liabilities.
Assets:
- $130,000 Equity – California SFR
- Cashflow about $100 monthly, and earning approximately $9,000 additional in principle annually
- $44,000 Equity – North Carolina SFR Primary Residence
- Building slightly less than $5,000 in additional principle annually
- $8,500 – 2010 Toyota Prius
- $12,500 – 2013 Toyota Prius
- $140,000 – Retirement accounts / Roth IRA / TSP / 401K
- $190,000 – Investment Portfolios
- $22,000 – Cash
Total Assets: Approximately $547,000
Liabilities:
- $313,000 – California SFR
- $143,000 – North Carolina SFR
Total Liabilities: Approximately $456,000
Net Worth:
I enjoy the motivation of calculating our net worth without the mortgage liabilities, even though I know that can be counterproductive. Right now we have a guaranteed way of making payments on at least one of these homes so I fudge the numbers a little bit.
In other posts I’ve padded our net worth a little bit because of this. In reality, our unrealized net worth is $91,000. If both homes were paid off, their liability costs would not disappear, they’d be absorbed into our asset pool. So this is the reason I tend to not count them against our total net worth. They are appreciating assets.
Actual Net Worth: $91,000
With both homes paid off…
Unrealized Net worth: $1,003,000
Gross Monthly Income:
- $7,300 – Payroll
- $100 – Residential cash flow
- $60 – Side hustles
- $0 – Blog income
- $0 – Affiliate marketing income
Forward Looking 2018:
- $14,000 – Added principle on residences
- $5,500 – Roth IRA contribution
- $4,000 – TSP contribution
- $3,500 – 401K Contribution
- $10,500 – Investment portfolio contribution
Total predicted 2018 contributions: $37,500
These estimates don’t include income from side hustles, which I will begin tracking better at the end of this month. In 2018 I do not intend to spend as much time on side hustles as I did in 2017 or 2016, now that our debt is paid off.
Currently I don’t have any systems in place to monetize this blog, but I am considering several.
Thanks for reading!
Think any of my numbers are screwed up? Call me out on it… I’m always interested in learning how to better track and manage my finances.