Friday, January 05, 2007

Year End Net Worth Update

I finally have all my numbers together, so here's the dirt:

12/31/05 Net Worth: $256,340.14
12/31/06 Net Worth: $312,771.78
Gain: $56,431.64, or +22%

Where did these gains come from?

My total inflows for 2006 came to $123,038.24. That includes salary, bonus, employer's contributions to my 401K, tax refund, gifts, realized gains from selling some investments, and other interest/investment income.

My total outflows for 2006 were $118,386.19. I'll go into more detail about all my expenses in my next post, but it's worth pointing out that more than half of that outflow related to my condo purchase, a lot of which went straight back into my net worth as home equity, rather than actually being an expense.

So the $56,431.64 increase comes from, mainly:

  • $15,000 401k contribution
  • about $20,000 investment gains/income
  • about $5,000 cash savings from paycheck UPDATED: that was an error. If all the condo costs are factored in, I did not save any cash. So I think the investment gains must have been higher. Like I said, buying a home makes this all much more confusing! But I think if I hadn't bought the condo, I would have saved almost $12000 out of my paychecks. I think.
  • the rest is home equity.
Of course the home equity included is a guess. The actual amount could be lower, or maybe slightly higher, as I wrote in this post. I do kind of miss knowing for sure exactly what my net worth REALLY is... but not enough that I want to go back to renting!

Stay tuned for more details about expenses, budgeting, and a 2007 to-do list.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice work, a +22% gain is a nice number for '06. I am guessing you'll be shooting to surpass that figure in '07.

Best of luck in '07

Tiredbuthappy said...

Wow, you beat your goal by $37,000! Go, you.

EasyChange said...

fantastic! I was so happy to hear that you'd bought that condo. It's great finally owning where you live. Totally worth the offset of not knowing the 'exact' value. Having an asset that you can touch beats keeping all your net worth in little pieces of paper, IMO.
great job!

Anonymous said...

Good for you. I will stay tuned, as I am really excited to see your thoughts about budgeting and the 2007 to-do list...I am just starting to create financial success in my life (using only cash, payin off cc, purchased my first home, etc) so I am trying to stay motivated. You're blog is right on target with that!

Anonymous said...

Neat! I am particularly impressed by the $20,000 investment gains/income. I have a lot to learn in that area! Good luck for 2007.

mapgirl said...

Well done!

The real estate valuation factor drives me nuts too. I think the safest thing is to leave it valued at the original purchase price, or what the government is going to assess it for your property taxes. (At least that's what I'm doing right now.)

The Financista said...

Kudos! That's a great improvement. I am jealous that you are out of the rent rat race! I would love to own in the DC area, but the housing market has definitely not cooled anywhere close to enough here for me to be able to even think about it. Congrats!

Anonymous said...

Wow! What an increase! I am impressed and inspired!

Single Ma said...

Even with all the outfow, you still exceeded your original goal.

Nice, very nice...

makingourway said...

Great year end summary.
Do you think you could put in a bar chart from excel or something like that?
To capture pictures from excel, just hold down the alt-print scrn buttons and the picture will be in the clip board, you can then paste it into a picture viewer like irfanview, crop it and upload it.

Regarding your 2006 gains. I'm quite impressed. Moving has always been a very tedious and expensive endeavor for me - adding the miriad costs of a new home - I'm impressed you didn't have a negative savings amount!!

Here's a link of our 2007 plan, which includes selling our house and buying a new one. Check out the financial differentials - pretty painful. I'm expecting the new home and move to eat about 1/3 of our networth gain (if we stayed put).

Would you mind submitting your summary to the new Networth Carnival of Personal Finances? We have a 2006 end of year and january edition going up end of next week. Here's the link announcing it and the form to submit.