Better late than never! Here's what October looked like in terms of expenses and income:
My income from salary and interest was about $8,512.
Expenses were as follows:
| Taxes | $2,740 |
| Clothing | $1,959 |
| Housing | $1,716 |
| Gym & Fitness | $1,339 |
| Total Dining | $701 |
| Home Insurance | $335 |
| Misc | $207 |
| Utilities | $199 |
| Medical | $153 |
| Travel | $76 |
| Gifts Given | $74 |
| Charity | $52 |
| Education | $44 |
| Subscriptions | $37 |
| Entertainment | $24 |
| Household | $13 |
| Business expense | -$709 |
Clothing looks outrageously high because I ordered a few pairs of boots from Zappos that I ended up returning, with the credit showing up in November. Gym & Fitness is high because I renewed my gym membership for a full year. With several free months tacked on, I now won't need to pay for this again until sometime in 2012. Home insurance is another yearly bill that happened to come due this month. Business expense is a reimbursement of things I paid for over the course of several months.
The net effect of these odd expenses, plus routine things being slightly higher than usual, was that I saved no money this month! I was in the red by about $448.
As for my net worth:
It's approximately $458,780, up $10,718 / 2.39% from last month. One major change is that I moved some money from a savings account into my E*Trade investment account. You can see the higher credit card balance here too, which should correct itself next month (and of course, as always, I pay it in full every month anyway). I haven't made any more adjustments to my home equity, but I feel pretty good about where it's at based on some recent sales data I've seen in my neighborhood. Of course, there aren't tons of sales to base things on lately, so I continue to think of that number as being a rough ballpark estimate.
| Sept. | Oct. | |
| Cash and Bank Accounts | $ 69,355 | $ 45,665 |
| Retirement Accounts | $ 272,805 | $ 282,052 |
| Stocks & Mutual Funds | $ 22,236 | $ 49,780 |
| Bonds | $ 5,091 | $ 5,091 |
| Credit Cards | $ (2,915) | $ (5,664) |
| Home Equity | $ 81,490 | $ 81,856 |
| TOTAL | $ 448,062 | $ 458,780 |
So the good news is that I've surpassed my net worth goal for the end of the year already. In November, I'll also add $15,000 I inherited from Great Aunt Minnie, so I'm hoping that even if the market is down somewhat, I can still beat my net worth goal. Onward and upward!
6 comments:
I like this article. This was my 1st time to your website. Thanks for sharing . I must revisit this blog.
It's my first time to your site too! Thanks for sharing your financial techniques. This seems like a smart way to keep track of your spending, and really analyze what you're spending on.
-------------------------------------
Rachel
Cash Advance Blogger
How has having your open wallet to the world help you save more? Does it leave you with a greater desire to meet the goals that you set? What made you decide to do this as an experiment?
Interesting. I see you have included home equity. How can you get a reasonable estimate of this, give how turbulent the markets have been recently? Wouldn't it make more sense to simply state the mortgage as a decreasing liability? I've never been comfortable with listing home equity (not liquid) against liquid assets such as stock bonds and cash.
After all, when everything goes wrong you don't want to sell you home to survive.
incredible how much money goes toward taxes and interest paid to someone else. I am a big fan of increasing net worth by becoming your own bank and paying yourself the interest you normally pay to someone else.
thanks for sharing your personal finances. It can be very motivating when you see someone's financial information, you want to follow in their foot steps. So thanks again for posting this.
Post a Comment