I was recently asked by CFO Dad in a comment: Wondering if you have ever graphed/tracked your monthly % change in assets over time. What is a “good” month? What does this average to annually, and how does this change over time? (Obviously harder to maintain a high % increase when you have a very large base). What are your thoughts on this? Although I do track my monthly net worth change, it isn't something I have graphed out or really analyzed. I figured it would be a fun practice, and here's wh...

  September was a good month.  In fact, the increase of $3,846.66 is actually our second highest increase ever, just beating January 2006's gain of $3,842.11 by a couple of dollars.  Most of the gains came in our investment accounts as the market picked up this month.  But, our home equity also saw a large jump as we are on the 26 payment mortgage plan and September is one of the months where an extra payment goes directly to principal. It's starting to get exciting.  We are now less than ...

During the month of August, we improved our net worth by 3% with an increase of $1,813.81.   This month, we celebrated our anniversary with a small weekend vacation, and my wife started another semester of college, which meant another round of tuition and books.  It'll be nice when she graduates, but currently she's still looking at another two years. The market has been choppy for a while now, so we're happy to see gains in all of our asset classes, even if they are small.   Our goal at ...

What would have been a pretty disappointing month was saved by my 401k. It was the only asset that had any significant gains, and without it, it looks like my net worth would have suffered about a $2 drop for the month. The large increase in the 401k was due to my employer match being deposited this month. My Roth IRA balance decreased for the second month in a row, and for the 3rd time in 2007. In all the previous years of 2004, 2005, and 2006 there was only one single month in which...

June had its ups and downs and the market didn't perform so well, but we managed to pull out a 2.3% net worth increase of $1,355.06 bringing out total net worth up to $59,331.16 (more…)

May was a super expensive month for us, but our net worth was bailed out by another strong month for the stock market which keeps setting new records.   (more…)

April was another good month where we saw progress in all categories. All of our stock investments saw positive gains thanks to the strong market performance in April. Again, because I was hesitant to include home equity in the calculation, it is an ultra-conservative number.  It is more accurately the amount of our mortgage that we have paid off.  If does not include the down-payment we made, nor do I consider any appreciation in the value of our home. The business equity is an inv...

After last month's disappointing results, we were able to get things back on track this month.  Our net worth passed the fairly significant mark of $50,000, which we had expected to do  last month.   That puts us 1/20th of the way to a million dollars. The home equity total increased more that usual because we pay on the bi-weekly schedule and this month included one of those extra payments that went directly to principal. I have also added a new row to this month's snapshot.  The "Bus...

I worked too hard in February to move backwards, but that's exactly what happened. It was a pretty brutal month for us. There were tons of irregular expenses like the flat tire that couldn't be fixed and had to be replaced, the 6 month car insurance payment, and my wife going get new contacts only to find that although she had been added to all my other insurance plans, she somehow got missed on the vision insurance and wasn't covered. Then, of course, the thing that really hurt was the b...

The year has started out well for us, thanks in part to some extra money I received for some overtime work I had done in December. As I had mentioned in the Year End Review, one of the first things we wanted to do this year was get our "emergency savings" in Emigrant Direct account up to $1,000. As you can see, we were able to complete that. The next thing we wanted to do was to accelerate the payment of my wife's car loan. Again, we were able to make some good progress there by paying...