In June, my net worth dropped 2.75%. Not a surprise, to be honest. My retirement accounts tanked. I spent some money. Same old, same old.
I’ve decided from now on, I want to track the value of my car in my net worth update. Why? Well, at some point in the distant future, I may want to buy a different car, and this car will be used as trade-in, I’m sure. Not that I’m thinking about buying a new car. I’ve had this car for 6 years this month, it runs wonderfully, rarely gets driven now that I live in an area with good public transportation (though I won’t give it up – I do need it at least once a week), and most importantly, I own it free and clear.
I don’t plan on tracking other possessions, because the resale value of those is so hard to calculate, and really, it doesn’t make as much sense. If I ever buy a house, I will want to track the value of that (also hard to calculate) because it will make that huge mortgage debt seem less painful.
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
congratulations on trakcing your car! I always think a glaring problem with the way most people monitor their finances is failing to account for vehicle depreciation. Depreciation can be a huge cost that most people don’t factor in when doing their budget, they only think of petrol and insurance.