Thursday, March 01, 2007

Net Worth Update Feb. 07

No procrastinating this month, I'm going to get the net worth wrap-up out of the way early!
My net worth as of March 1 is about $315,740. For a little while during February it was over $320k, but the stock market didn't cooperate to keep it there. On Feb. 1st, my net worth was about $316,372, so given that my investments lost about $5000 just in the last couple of days, I actually didn't do too too badly in February in terms of expenses:

Charity $75
Clothing -$75 (I returned a pair of shoes)
Dining $507 (still doing well in this category, at least compared to my budget!)
Entertainment $5 (that is just Netflix. I guess painting my apartment has been my entertainment lately!)
Gifts Given $70
Gym $999 (annual membership renewed)
Home Improvement/Decor $585 (mostly $450 worth of framing)
Household $26
Miscellaneous $122 (this includes a haircut at $80, and a clock I bought, that I suppose could have been categorized as Home Improvement or Household)
Subscriptions $97 (incl newspaper, internet, magazines)
Travel $335 (commuting and one family visit)
Utilities $155 (that is all telephone, including the installation fee. I didn't pay gas or electric during this month.)
Then there were my housing costs, which totalled about $2510 this month. That is higher than the usual amount, because I paid for a couple months maintenance charges that hadn't been billed before. My mortgage payment is also still a little wacky, as they are still escrowing more than they should be for property taxes, which I'll need to get changed eventually once the tax abatements are all settled and I know what my actual tax bill is.

I still have a few major expenses to come, such as buying a bed. My bedroom is all painted and ready, but I haven't found a bed I like yet. I guess being picky can help you save money! Or at least postpone spending it. But other than that and a few other little things, I'm hoping that I can soon settle back into a pattern of relatively normal spending... and saving.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

bronx chica here...I like how you did your net worth...breaking it down...i need to do the same on a excel spreadsheet even though I'm unemployed at this time...love the blog!

Anonymous said...

Do you include the strict home equity in your net worth? Meaning, if your condo cost $400K and you've paid off $75K of the principle since the purchase, is that $75K in your net worth? I ask because I struggle with this when calculating my net worth, there's the strict home equity of what I've paid of the purchase price, but now after several years there's the market value of the apartment. I know I could add 100K to my net worth if I accounted for what the NYC market is for my place.

Madame X said...

I include my home equity calculated as the current market value minus what I still owe on the mortgage. This is slightly higher than the purchase price, but not much-- I wanted to be fairly conservative about estimating the value.