Current Assets:
Cash $28,044
401k $154,207
IRA $27,230
Roth IRA $6,885
HSA $13,642
Home $70,000
Car $13,300
Current Debts:
Credit Card -$146
Prior Months Net Worth $307,105
Current Net Worth $313,162
Net Worth Increase of $6,057
Prior Months SWR 5.86%
Current SWR 5.75%
It was a good month but I was expecting so much more. It’s end of year so all my dividends with LT & ST Cap Gains were paid but didn’t really effect my NW as I would have hoped. I’ve worked tons of overtime in November & December and it looks like all the projects will be accomplished and that overtime will be minimized or completely ended in January. Seems like things always work out for me in the end because the company I had worked part time for a year back contacted me and said they need me to help out. Of course I accepted and now I can continue to stay busy earning money (and having no life) to reach my goal. I start with them on January 3rd and can’t wait to see two paychecks coming in again.
Other than that it’s been the same ol’ same ol’ over here. I paid my property taxes at the beginning of December and ate out a lot (fast food) due to working so much OT not having time to cook healthy cheap meals. Here’s to doing better in 2018
Goals for January:
-Keep working all overtime possible
-Find a way to fit exercise in
Things didn’t go as well as planned for 2017, my goal was 80k NW increase with a hope to hit 100k NW increase in the year. I fell very short of that and in fact didn’t even match the year priors NW increase. I did give 5k to my sister to help her pay for her new vehicle and I had a large tax bill as well, but those are just excuses.
My goal for 2018 will be 80k NW increase & to hopefully once and for all get the excess weight off of myself. I’ve been playing the “what if” game in my mind and had the thought what if my main job lays me off. I actually think the company that I work for part time would allow me to work remotely. The pay would probably suck but if I made $1,500 a month I’d do it in a heartbeat & sell all my shit and move to SE Asia. Hopefully this doesn’t happen but in all honesty if it does I wouldn’t mind. I’ve been feeling burned out lately and maybe I can cure that feeling with just a vacation. I’m not setting any other goals or resolutions for 2018 other than saving as much money as possible and losing some fat.
Current Assets:
Cash $34,596
401k $158,639
2nd 401k $406
IRA $27,691
Roth IRA $7,119
HSA $14,727
Home $70,000
Car $13,300
Current Debts:
Credit Card -$100
Prior Months Net Worth $313,162
Current Net Worth $326,378
Net Worth Increase of $13,216
Prior Months SWR 5.75%
Current SWR 5.52%
I’ve worked a ridiculous amount of hours between both jobs and I’ve also been very productive outside of work as well. I’m in a dilemma now. I took a state job exam couple months back which I passed; and in the first half of January I had two interviews which both went well and it looks like I may get this job. My dilemma is that I’m making more money the way things are now and I’m very familiar with the routine of both current jobs but these jobs are dead end with horrible benefits but the pay scale is good. The state job on the other hand has excellent benefits lower pay but the main kicker is the retirement. If I take the state job I’d stay at least 5 years to be vested in their pension system, if I stay doing what I’m doing now I could be FIRE in approximately 3 years but if any severe medical issue happens to me I’d much rather have the quality coverage with the state job. So many pros & cons to weight but I’m definitely leaning towards the state job. Plus it would be nice to know that in my older years I’d have my investments, Social Security, and a Pension to rely on.
Paid $280 for my Car Registration this month. I was rear ended by a Large pick up truck. No injuries and luckily my Prius was still drivable but the damage sustained to the Truck made it non operable. The guy just wasn’t paying any attention and plowed right into me at around 30-35 mph. His insurance company accepted liability immediately and now I have to go through the headache of going to the body shop, rental car agency, etc. The silver lining is that January was productive, I got a 5 figure net worth increase which I love seeing, a looming job offer from the state, and I lost 4 pounds! It’s a great start of 2018!!
Goals for February:
-Keep working all overtime possible
-Find a way to fit exercise in
Hey Thrifty! Yea NW was on a roll but this market downturn really put a dent on the progress from last month. Oh well just keep on trucking.
As far as medical goes I was paying for my own until I switched companies in late 2017. I liked the High Deductible Plan I was on and it allowed me to invest in a HSA, but unfortunately the new company forces us to use their Health Coverage unless we are covered by another company sponsored plan i.e. if I had a wife whose work plan I was on. To be honest I don’t know how legal it is to force your employees onto your plan when they don’t want it.
That’s just one of many reasons I really hope I get the State job.
Yeah I find doing net worth tally's depressing when the market turns down. At least you dont have another one until the end of the month and maybe the market will be back up again by then who knows.
Current Assets:
Cash $42,228
Former 401k $152,988
Current 401k $118
2nd Job 401k $265
IRA $26,618
Roth IRA $6,567
HSA $14,368
Home $70,000
Car $13,300
Current Debts:
Credit Card -$845
Prior Months Net Worth $326,378
Current Net Worth $325,607
Net Worth Decrease of $771
Prior Months SWR 5.52%
Current SWR 5.528%
This is the second month I’ve gone down in NetWorth since keeping track. I’ve had a lot of expenses and the market pulled back a bit. Here’s hoping next month has a good quarterly dividend payout with lots of overtime at work.
I paid my 6 Months car insurance of $612. Also paid off all 4 phones on our T-Mobile family plan promotion. We got a total of 4 iPhones with a buy one and get a $700 pre paid card for the second phone purchased, but that can take 8 weeks to process and get to you. Well I got both $700 pre paid cards and put them towards the $2,500 balance of equipment. And since I don’t like high monthly bills I just paid off the last $1,100 on my Visa. That’s probably not an ideal thing to do since paying monthly was a zero interest situation anyways but as I stated I really want monthly bills to be as small as possible.
On another note about my car, it’s still in the shop. The dealership is taking their sweet time with it, although to be fair there was a lot of damage found behind the visible bumper damage 8k to be specific. The rental car I had btw was a piece of junk. I’m positive they got the returned car and immediately rented it to me without washing or cleaning it in any sort of way. The car was filthy, still had the prior renters personal stuff in the glove box, and it smelled like weed inside. I made the rental agent write all that down because the car has no smoking stickers in it and I’ll be damned if they try to blame that shit on me! I’ll never rent a car from Enterprise again! Also the value I placed on my car all these months was incorrect since I was looking up Prius Model 1’s on kbb.com and I have a Model 2. The value is actually closer to $16,700 but I will not update the value on the car in these monthly reports until it dips below the $13,300.
I also purchased a Cuisinart Table Top Griller. It’s similar to a George Foreman grill but I had a Foreman grill years ago and remembered not liking it. It’s been really cold in Sacramento so I didn’t feel like using the BBQ Grill outside so I made burgers in a pan on the stove which left me a big mess to clean on the stove and counter tops, so at that point I decided to get the grill. I did bargain shopping online for a few days and found that Bed Bath & Beyond had the absolute best deal. I paid $79.99 plus tax which included the waffle grates which regularly you have to buy separately for $39.99. I basically got the waffle grates for free because even Walmart sells this griller for $79.99 without the grates. This will hopefully work out to making food at home easier and more fun especially now that I can make paninis on it.
I moved my savings from a 1.15% earning account to a 1.55% earning account and it just took a 3 minute phone call. Gotta stay on top of things like this.
Big pull back in the stock market. I hope it keeps going down! I always regretted not having the money to invest in the stock market/houses during the “Great Recession” Now that I have two fairly well paying stable jobs with very little chance of layoffs; I Hope the recession comes roaring in so I can get invested at low prices and ride the recovery wave up.
Still losing weight mainly because of portion control. I’ve really enjoyed Shopping at Trader Joe’s lately. Very tasty items especially those frozen meals which I usually take to work for lunch.
Goals for March:
-Keep working all overtime possible
-Find a way to fit exercise in
I recommend buying a crockpot and cooking your own meals. Forget about frozen meals if you want to loose weight in a healthy way. Check out the back of those frozen boxes and you will see they are crazy high in saturated fats and other stuff you can’t even pronounce.
Learning how to cook properly and healthy is the biggest blessing and one of the highest money saver habits. Chica likes this website: skinnytaste.com. Plenty of recipes and easy to make for the most part.
We love Aldi, cheap and straight forward. No need of decor or BS when grocery shopping.
I recommend buying a crockpot and cooking your own meals. Forget about frozen meals if you want to loose weight in a healthy way.
I have a CrockPot and was thinking of buying one of the electric pressure cookers like the Instant Pot. I’ve heard great things. Yes I think I may start to cook meals again. My hesitation is that when using the crock pot I make too much food and it’s only me. I’m sure I could just freeze the stuff, I’ll give it a shot.
I heard about Aldis couple years ago and I checked to see if any of the stores were located in the Sacramento area but none were, I’ll look into it again. We’ve got Winco here as well which is no frill low cost and open 24 Hours so it’s pretty convenient.
The electric pressure cookers are cool but will get the same results than with a crock pot, just much faster (30mns max for any recipe).
Did you get to try a Latino supermarket? They usually have great product and pretty cheap. I bet you have plenty of them in Sacramento
Current Assets:
Cash $46,204
Former 401k $151,295
Current 401k $150
2nd Job 401k $805
IRA $26,943
Roth IRA $6,714
HSA $14,016
Home $70,000
Car $13,300
Current Debts:
Credit Card -$112
Prior Months Net Worth $325,607
Current Net Worth $329,315
Net Worth Increase of $3,708
Prior Months SWR 5.528%
Current SWR 5.465%
Let me start by saying that at the end of February I was well below my spending in regards to my grocery budget. So I had the bright idea of “Sand Bagging” basically spending what was left of my February grocery budget and filling up the fridge/freezer so I could attempt to have as close to a zero grocery budget as possible for March. As karma has always done to me ended up my fridge completely died on me. I tried to find a fix but the computer board which is what went bad isn’t produced by LG any longer and I couldn’t even find a used one. I guess I should be happy the fridge lasted 10.5 years. I went straight to Costco and got my Membership and I was able to purchase a GE fridge for $1130 after tax and it included delivery, install, and removal of my old fridge. That’s over $300 cheaper than the competition for the exact same model not to mention the other guys charge for haul away. I was able to salvage a lot of the items in my freezer by basically taking a lot of the items and putting them in my work refrigerators for several days. I just had to toss everything in the fridge side.
Stocks slid a bit for me. I’ve pretty much made up my mind that if my shares make it back up anywhere close to where they were at last month I will sell and just stay in cash until the economy crashes. I can’t stand by and watch my money dwindle away and the crash will be upon us soon. (In my opinion)
Goals for April:
-Do my Income Taxes & Pay the IRS
-Do my parents Taxes
-Pay my Property Taxes
-Put in a request for a Long Overdue Vacation
The quarterly progress is lower than what I wanted but keeping in mind my 401k has lost 10k in value and I had to buy a new fridge etc I guess it’s not bad. April will not be a good month either due to income taxes (State & Fed) & property taxes both being due. I predict the best NW increase months will be May to November as all the major bills are taken care of outside of these months.
I started this ERE journal in March of 2014. It’s hard to pin point exactly what my Net Worth was at that time because for the first few months I kept adjusting it. It’s safe to say I was below 100k Net Worth and in 4 years time I was able to get my Net Worth up to 329k and be completely Debt Free. Here’s hoping the journey will be complete within 2 more years because I’m getting burned out.
Wow thats a cracker of a net worth and amazing what happens over time.
If you are feeling burnt out have you thought about using the leverage of your FU money to take a sabattical? Like even 3 months to do a little bit of travelling and some R&R - maybe just one place and hang out there for a while. Ask your work for the time off?
We are super close in terms of progress/net worth and more importantly goals (ie travel the world on a low <$1500/month budget).
Trying to time the market like that is a fools game. It should be obvious if you analyze the statement itself.
If you had real conviction that the stock market was going to crash, you should sell now and eat the loss. Read into anchoring, as well as sunken cost fallacy.
Aside from the many many reasons investment psychology has shown that we are our own worst enemies when it comes to investing, and make mostly highly irrational decisions at precisely the wrong time.......
For that reason I would wager your risk tolerance is not what you thought it was before you accumulated a small fortune.
Why not keep 25% in CD's earning 2%, 25% in a very broad stock ETF, 25% in Medium term bonds, and 25% in commodities/reits etc?
That way you capture growth if this crash never materializes, and if it does you can over-re-balance.
Usually the handful of worst days in a year, and handful of best will make up the bulk of the market moves for the year. If you cash out, knowing precisely when to get back in will be another chance to screw things up.
Just some friendly advice from a stranger on the internet, take it with a grain of salt.
Missed the mention of a George Foreman and making paninis a month back - now my mouth is watering! I used to have one of those and would slap a couple pieces of bread, slice of cheese, some lunch meat and let it go = delicious!
As for the freezer, feels bad. I wonder if stocking it full gave it that jolt it needed to up and die as it kicked on to accommodate the increase in air temperature. It sucks that that carried such a high price tag to replace. Whenever stuff like that happens here, there's some guy down the block that will come in, take away the broken piece for a night, and come back the next day to get it all working. We had something go out in the furnished TV for our apartment, and that cost <$30 to fix. Hopefully you've front loaded all your bad luck for April now and the rest of the month goes smoothly.
Wow thats a cracker of a net worth and amazing what happens over time.
If you are feeling burnt out have you thought about using the leverage of your FU money to take a sabattical? Like even 3 months to do a little bit of travelling and some R&R - maybe just one place and hang out there for a while. Ask your work for the time off?
Hey Thrifty, I’m putting in for a vacation request this week. Hope they let me go 2-3 weeks would be the max. I would love a long sabbatical but I gotta keep the momentum going. I think it will be Thailand again! Love the place and the people it’s very budget friendly as well. One day I will visit Japan but from my research it’s a bit pricey.
We are super close in terms of progress/net worth and more importantly goals (ie travel the world on a low <$1500/month budget).
Trying to time the market like that is a fools game. It should be obvious if you analyze the statement itself.
If you had real conviction that the stock market was going to crash, you should sell now and eat the loss. Read into anchoring, as well as sunken cost fallacy.
Aside from the many many reasons investment psychology has shown that we are our own worst enemies when it comes to investing, and make mostly highly irrational decisions at precisely the wrong time.......
For that reason I would wager your risk tolerance is not what you thought it was before you accumulated a small fortune.
Why not keep 25% in CD's earning 2%, 25% in a very broad stock ETF, 25% in Medium term bonds, and 25% in commodities/reits etc?
That way you capture growth if this crash never materializes, and if it does you can over-re-balance.
Usually the handful of worst days in a year, and handful of best will make up the bulk of the market moves for the year. If you cash out, knowing precisely when to get back in will be another chance to screw things up.
Just some friendly advice from a stranger on the internet, take it with a grain of salt.
I feel like JL Collins himself wrote this comment to me It’s very good information you point out and I’m fighting with myself as well, but I truly feel there will be a big tank soon. You see I have an emergency fund that would last me over two years which is overkill in my opinion but everything is over valued and I am happy just leaving it in an online bank account which is federally insured and earning 1.55% interest. I was considering selling off and rolling everything over into something FDIC insured and earning 1.55% (or more) and just wait.
I’d like to reiterate that your comment was 100% factually correct and great advice even for a stranger on the net. I just have a feeling and I don’t want to hate myself by not acting upon it. That being said my decision is not made up yet. We will see how things go over the next few weeks
I feel like JL Collins himself wrote this comment to me It’s very good information you point out and I’m fighting with myself as well, but I truly feel there will be a big tank soon. You see I have an emergency fund that would last me over two years which is overkill in my opinion but everything is over valued and I am happy just leaving it in an online bank account which is federally insured and earning 1.55% interest. I was considering selling off and rolling everything over into something FDIC insured and earning 1.55% (or more) and just wait.
I’d like to reiterate that your comment was 100% factually correct and great advice even for a stranger on the net. I just have a feeling and I don’t want to hate myself by not acting upon it. That being said my decision is not made up yet. We will see how things go over the next few weeks
That's exactly why it's so important to spread your risk.
Take 50% of your position off the table.
Throw it into 2%+ yield CD's/Bonds/MM/savings etc.
Keep the other 50% in stocks, highly diversified.
I could be wrong, I could be right, but variety is the spice of life........
Current Assets:
Cash $41,403
Former 401k $151,735
Current 401k $152
2nd Job 401k $1,222
IRA $28,045
Roth IRA $7,272
HSA $14,073
Home $70,000
Car $13,300
Current Debts:
Credit Card -$168
Prior Months Net Worth $329,315
Current Net Worth $327,034
Net Worth Decrease of $2,281
Prior Months SWR 5.465%
Current SWR 5.5%
Really worked hard in April. I paid a total of $6,000 between the money I owed in State/Federal Income Taxes and my Property Taxes. FML! The one good thing I can say is that I used Credit Karma Tax service online which was 100% free and surprisingly good. I know they will try to market shit to me but that’s the way of the world nowadays.
I did my parents taxes as well using Credit Karma. It went smoothly but I found out my mother had nearly 5k in Credit Card debt. When I called my mom to tell her I finished with the taxes I asked what was up with the credit card debt and then came excuses of unforeseen expenses blah blah blah. I told her how important it was to not pay high ass interest on a credit card and I basically let her know how disappointed I was. I spent the next 10 minutes advising her how to reduce her spending but this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. Long story short I mailed my mother a 5k check to pay off that 9% interest credit card and she will pay me back $400 per month for 12 months starting June. My parents are living on Social Security only with a very small savings but their bills should be manageable, but my parents have never been good at managing/spending money. I hope for their own good they figure this shit out because I’m not planning on working forever and being their safety net.
I purchased a new bed from formerly SleepTrain now MattressFirm about 3 years ago. It was the worst 1k I’ve ever spent! The bed had a 5 year warranty on it (even though the salesman at the time said it had a 10 year warranty) and it started going down hill after year 1. I contacted them about the warranty and how the springs in the middle have absolutely given out and no matter where on the bed you lay you end up rolling to the middle. The hoops you gotta jump through for the warranty are just too much and besides the best outcome would be for them to replace it with a new bed of the same model which I absolutely do not want. I will be purchasing a new memory foam mattress from Costco which was one of the best rated beds by Consumer Reports and it’s only $800 with a great warranty. I wish I would have done better research a couple years back.
Year to date gross of both jobs combined is right at 40k. If this continues I will be at 120k gross earning for the year and that doesn’t include interest, dividends, or cash back rewards from my credit card. It’s looking to be that 2018 will be my most financially productive year. I’m just very scared of the taxes I will owe next year. Unfortunately I don’t have an option with either company I work for to contribute to a 401k. I will be over the threshold to be able to contribute to any IRA & my current company forced us into their healthcare plan so I no longer have a high deductible plan thus no HSA.
I logged into ssa.gov and found that they have my earnings from each year that I have worked. It’s real interesting to look at and I did some math and found out I made the same amount of money from 1994-2012 as I did from 2013-2017. To be exact there is less than a 5k difference in the earnings from my first 19 years combined to my last 5 years combined and that’s not counting a single cent of what I earned in 2018! Man I wish I could have focused more on this shit when I was younger or had a mentor who could have put me on the right path. The cool thing about ssa.gov is it gives you an estimated Social Security check payout assuming you make the same amount of money all the way til retirement age. I’m planning to not need Social Security but it will be great as a cherry on top. The one positive about working all these hours is that I have 2 employers paying into Social Security on my behalf which increases the benefit I will get down the line.
Goals for April were:
-Do my Income Taxes & Pay the IRS Done!
-Do my parents Taxes Done!
-Pay my Property Taxes Done!
-Put in a request for a Long Overdue Vacation Fail!
Goals for May are:
-Buy the new bed from Costco and toss the old POS mattress
The cool thing about ssa.gov is it gives you an estimated Social Security check payout assuming you make the same amount of money all the way til retirement age.
I haven't checked this year, but there should also be an estimate for "I quit working in year XXXX". As I recall, it's a button or menu option once you have the regular estimate.
