Another three months down, another Net Worth Update.
For the first time all year, I’ve had a drop in my net worth. This quarter, my net worth went down 4.35%. That’s a pretty substantial drop. So where did the money go?
The first check is the investments. That’s the obvious solution. And there it is. Every single one of my investment accounts, including my 401k and Roth IRA, has dropped this quarter. Not a surprise – the markets are down. But that’s not going to change anything for me. I’m going to continue to invest as I have been, continue to contribute to my retirement accounts, and continue to treat my investments as long term enterprises. I can’t do day trading, so all of my investments are longer term.
What about my cash accounts? My day-to-day accounts are only about $300 less than they were last quarter. I wish I were saving more, but I’m pretty pleased with that. I would like to increase those numbers, however.
Credit cards are around the same. But I pay those off monthly, so no concerns there.
I’m slowly whittling away at my mortgage and my car payment. Right now, I’m only paying the minimum on my mortgage, but I’m paying extra on my car payment. I’d like to get that paid off sooner rather than later, but I’m making sure to not throw too much money at it. But it’s pretty easy to round up to the nearest hundred and not notice the difference in my day-to-day.
I’ve got a few trips coming up in the next few months, so the goal is to try to keep those expenses as low as possible. I’ve also decided to make a bigger investment in my health, so my grocery expenses are significantly up this month. On the other hand, my restaurant expenses are way down, so on some level, it does balance out. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s much more expensive to eat healthy. So I’m just going to continue to keep my eyes on the numbers and make smart spending choices.
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.
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