Net Worth Update 2025 Year End

 I never did a year end recap of my net worth or expenses, but better late than never! Here's a quickie version:

My net worth as of 12/31/25 was $2,994,337, an increase of $459,534 since the prior year. (As of this writing, my net worth is now up to $3,281,000.)

I'm not making a ton of money these days, but my early efforts to save and invest are paying off, as my net worth keeps growing mainly from the snowball effect of investment gains over the past 25+ years.

My 2025 income was $67,528 in gross salary, plus $3,190 in employer 401k matching funds.

My total expenses including taxes (but not 401k contributions) were $72,912. I don't love the negative cash flow of $2,194 but you can see that it was not very significant in comparison to the growth of my investments. Of course the value of the investments could fall, and sometimes does, but at this point, it could probably go up or down more in a day than I make from working in a whole year. I have to start just accepting that it's okay to spend some of my savings. (And I WAS accepting that back when I wasn't working, but then when I got a job again I was so happy I was covering my expenses that it's now disappointing when I'm not!)

My expenses were pretty consistent year on year with a few exceptions: more gift giving, more charitable giving, and more spent on household and garden stuff. Lower health insurance costs because Sweetie switched from my plan to Medicare towards the end of 2024. We spent more on travel, in part due to a business class upgrade, but Sweetie paid for more of that than I did so my travel expenses actually went down vs. the prior year. 

Looking ahead to the rest of this year, I think most of our expenses will continue to be similar, but our travel budget will take another big jump. It's a little scary to be getting into that phase of life where you have to start scheduling in all the bucket list trips before your body can't handle them anymore. But lie-flat airplane seats help with some of that! And I feel so lucky we are able to afford them now. But psychologically, it's hard to adjust to spending money on something that always seemed like an out-of-reach extravagance-- a topic for another blog post one of these days.

Still Alive, Still Spending, Still Saving!

It's been almost a year... yikes. Where to begin?

I actually don't have any major news. I'm still kind of adjusting to my "new" life. That has involved some higher than usual expenses as we decided we wanted to do some work on our house after being there for a while. And we've continued to take a couple of trips per year, though nothing super-exotic. But we are basically settled into a new pattern of life where we don't eat out very often and are generally enjoying a much lower cost of living than we had in the city. I've been mostly getting books from the library, so haven't been spending much in that area. I've gotten a couple of tickets for local performances and even a couple of things back in the city-- this kind of reminds me how much I miss being able to go to BAM in Brooklyn and be home within half an hour. Now staying in the city means having to time things right with trains and we always end up getting home really late. Sometimes I tell myself we can afford to just splurge on a hotel room but we've yet to actually do that. Our semi-retirement budget left room for a lot of splurges that we haven't yet allowed ourselves, but we've ended up spending more than we thought on household stuff, so I guess it balances out.

So how about some actual numbers?

My net worth as of Jan. 1, 2020 was $1,563,067. The stock market has been so strong, I think I've gained about $200,000 since I stopped working, even though I've had very little income since then. My goal has been to basically break even, but even if the market wasn't as strong, I think I'd be able to manage to spend less than my likely gains most years.
In 2019, my total income was about $70,000-- this includes all dividends, interest, blog earnings, gifts, EBay selling, etc. (I would be more precise, but Quicken does this weird thing where it shows realized gains from selling an investment as the total proceeds of that sale, rather than subtracting the cost basis to truly show the investment gain, so I've estimated what the real gains were without going back to accurately check.) Lots of that income is from my 401k, so it doesn't show up as taxable income. When I break it down to the actual taxable income, it was just under $20,000.
My total expenses in 2019 were about $27,000, not counting some additional one-time stuff that went towards our home renovation projects, most of which was actually paid for by Sweetie. My largest expenses were about $11,000 for food/groceries/liquor/eating out, as I usually pay for most of that for both of us. This still seems high to me but we did eat out more than usual for about a month while our kitchen was under construction. My next biggest category was "Misc" at about $2,300, which included a new Apple Watch and a new hard drive and battery to keep my old laptop going for a few more years. Also some art supplies, tax prep fees, postage and other random stuff. I spent just under $2,000 on clothes, which included a few things for Sweetie, and about $1,900 on education for a couple of classes. I am very lucky to have only had to spend about $1,100 on medical stuff-- this included my very low premiums for New York State's "Essentials" health insurance-- $45 a month including vision benefits, since I knew I'd need new glasses. The glasses themselves ended up costing a total of $370 for two pairs-- a thick single vision pair that was basically free, and a 2nd, half-off thinner pair with -- gasp -- progressive lenses, since I'm getting to that age where I'm not only terribly near-sighted but also need reading glasses. I will write more about the health insurance stuff, but the thing that really sucks about not being in the city is that my insurance plan, which is through United Healthcare, barely has any providers in my area. Having to drive 18 miles to an urgent care center that takes my plan is a bummer. I'm currently procrastinating about making that drive even though I probably need a little something to get over a case of bronchitis. I'm assigned to a primary care doctor who's only about 12 miles away, but I keep assuming it will be a nightmare to get an appointment. We'll see!
A few other expense lines: Travel $1,300, State Taxes $1,021, Gifts $1,476, Entertainment $958. Someday I'll have to do a post with my combined budget with Sweetie to reflect things I don't directly pay for myself, like our combined gym membership, auto maintenance, and utilities. etc. Sweetie's share is a bit larger, in proportion to the difference in our incomes.

Anyway, thanks for still reading and sorry I am so delinquent about writing. I make lots of notes about things I want to write about, and then for some reason I never get around to it! Terminal procrastination... happy new year to all of you, and hope you are enjoying the roaring '20s so far!

Life Goes On...

I continue to enjoy my leisure as a "retiree." I'm healthy, I feel relaxed, I go to the gym a lot, I read a lot of books. I continue to feel incredibly lucky, especially when I hear about other people's struggles with money. Such as...

A friend who I don't think I have written about here before, so I'll call her Sally. She's been divorced for many years, and for almost that entire time, she's been chasing her ex-husband to try to get him to pay child support. She has often been working multiple jobs and is willing to do pretty much anything to make money, however menial or physically demanding. Her ex-husband works on and off, mostly for cash. He hides income via his girlfriend. He complains that it's "not worth it" to look for a job sometimes. He may or may not be using drugs at times. He owes her over $50,000. Meanwhile their two kids are in college and racking up huge student loans, even while attending state schools. Sally has a full time job with benefits now, which has helped her a lot, but they have crappy health insurance, so every time she or her kids have to go to the doctor, she is trying to get the doctors to not order too many tests, and questioning every prescription to see if they can stretch it out to a lower dosage. With regard to one medication, her doctor said "It costs you $900? I had no idea!" I guess it's a good thing to make sure doctors don't just over-prescribe and over-test, but I think it is better for medical decisions to be made on the basis of what a medical professional thinks is best, vs. what a consumer thinks they can afford. I just hope Sally will eventually get to a point where she doesn't have to worry so much about money.

And then there's Mortimer, who has appeared in my posts from time to time. Mortimer has been unemployed for almost 2 years now. His COBRA ran out and he's on Medicaid. He's kind of tapped out the friends who were able to help him find jobs in the past. I think he feels a bit paralyzed when it comes to next steps-- he's taken some classes to develop new skills, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to parlay them into a new career. Mortimer used to make around $75-100k, I think, and I think he is struggling with the idea of starting over at a much lower level in his late 50s.

Another friend, let's call her Tory, who has been dealing with the aftermath of divorce-- not her own, but her husband's, who she married relatively late in life. I'll call him Todd. He pays a large amount of alimony to his ex-wife, and unlike Sally's ex, he pays it regularly and on time. In his late 50s, his finances hadn't totally recovered from the divorce settlement, and then he lost his job. He set himself up to do some consulting but wasn't able to make much money. Then, fortunately, he got another job. But then Tory lost her job. And then Todd lost his new job. Todd is by now in his early 60s and Tory is in her late 50s. They have a 10 year old daughter. (Tory didn't mention it but I know it took her a long time to get pregnant so that was probably another big expense.) They lived in an upscale suburb of NYC, and after a couple of years with no success at finding new jobs, they realized they weren't going to be able to stretch out their assets long enough. So they sold their house and moved to the midwest to start a new, cheaper life. Just to kick them in the shins a little more, they ended up taking a loss on their house sale, since they'd bought it at the top of the market. Tory is happier now and seems optimistic, but I can't help feeling like there is an undercurrent of disappointment. For a few years, everything was falling into place for her, with a new husband, a new baby, a career and a nice lifestyle, and then she had to give it all up and move far away from family and friends. A tough choice.

I'm glad I have friends who are open about what is going on in their lives financially. I don't really know all the details of their savings and income and expenses, but they are honest about their difficulties and what they are doing to try to survive, rather than just pretending everything is fine. It's a good reality check.

My Early Retirement Calculations

A commenter on the previous post asked if I'd share the calculations that made me feel confident about retiring early. I'll give you a simplified version!

There are a few different ways that people tend to look at retirement readiness. One of the simplest is the 4% rule. The idea is that if you can live on spending only 4% of your savings each year, you don't need to add to those savings, as investment gains should generally outpace what you are withdrawing. This is also sometimes expressed as a 25X rule-- multiply your annual spending by 25 to see how it compares to your savings.

My total net worth at the point of deciding to quit my job was somewhere around $1.2 million. (It has since been between $1.3 and $1.4 million due to stock market gains.) 4% of $1.2 million is $48,000. My lifestyle while living in NYC was costing me more than that, but by leaving the city, it was possible to realistically budget for a lifestyle where my half would be less than $48,000. And that doesn't include Sweetie's net worth, which is a little over $2 million (not counting the equity in the house we just bought and paid for in cash, as well as some money set aside for renovations). When taking both of us into account, 4% of $3.2 million is $128,000 and our combined yearly budget is well under that. (My current calculations have it as around $92,000 a year, including a generous travel allowance. We'll see how it plays out in reality as we adjust to our new life in the country!)

This method of calculation doesn't factor in Social Security benefits or other retirement income. My Social Security will end up being less than what they project because they don't take into account that I won't continue to make what I was making last year. (It will be interesting to see if the projections will update in the next year or two when my income goes way down.) Sweetie will get Social Security, as well as a defined benefit pension starting in about 7 years. The pension, which appears to be well-funded and safely on track to be able to pay out in full, will be additional income of about $87,000 a year. That obviously makes a HUGE difference in our projections for the future.

I also used the retirement calculator that is part of the Fidelity website (not sure if it's publicly accessible or if you have to have an account)-- it is a fairly complex tool that allows you to input all sorts of info for yourself and a partner, including life expectancy, assets on hand, sources of income, one-time events, budgeted retirement spending, and other goals like paying for college. It then uses a Monte Carlo simulation to model how things will play out under different market conditions, and projects your savings and spending until your "end of plan," which is their delicate way of saying "when you drop dead." You can see 3 versions of the results-- one assuming a "significantly below average" market, one "below average," and one "average." I plugged all our numbers into this, assuming we'd both live til 95, inflating our expenses (by about 50% over what they currently are budgeted at) to allow for plenty of fun and expensive healthcare, and keeping expectations of any future inflow from earnings or inheritance to an absolute minimum. When really pushing this to the absolute worst case scenario, it says I might run out of money in my early 90s after Sweetie is dead. But even by just changing the parameters to "below average" market instead of "significantly below" brings us back to having over $2 million left over after both of us are dead.

No prediction is 100% confident, and a lot of things could happen that would change these calculations, so of course I still have my moments of worrying about whether it will all work out as planned. But we're also allowing for so much leeway in our budgeting that there will be room for us to cut back if needed. And we'll naturally cut back on some things like travel as we age. The biggest worry is that we'll decide we hate living in the country and want to go back to NYC-- we wouldn't be able to afford to live as we did before, but we could most likely make it work if we really wanted to. I feel incredibly fortunate to have this kind of freedom-- Sweetie and I have worked hard and made good decisions, but I also know that pure luck is a lot of what separates us from the half of all Americans who say they can't come up with $400 in an emergency, let alone retire early.

A Whirlwind of Volatility

I'm not just talking about the stock market these last few days-- I'm talking about the last few months of my life.
You would think I'd have spent more time blogging lately, given that I quit my job and at least in theory have plenty of time on my hands. But the end of 2017 got a little crazy as we had to do a lot of work to put our apartment on the market, and then we sold it so quickly, it was a hustle to get ourselves packed up and moved out by the beginning of January!
I think we had pretty great timing, actually. We hit the market at a point when there weren't a lot of comparable listings in our price range. Within days we had multiple offers and a bidding war, and ended up with an all-cash buyer at above our original asking price. Seeing what's been going on with the tax bill and now the gyrations in the stock market, I'm very glad we weren't trying to sell now or later this spring.
The buyers wanted to close fairly quickly, but luckily we had also managed to find a house in an area that we liked, so we knew we'd have someplace to go-- sort of, anyway. The timing didn't totally work out and we couldn't move in right away, so our stuff (what's left of it after purging and donating and selling a lot) had to go into storage for a little while, but beyond that, the closing on our house went pretty smoothly too, since we were also paying cash. We also had good timing in that during our storage limbo, we decided to get away for a little mini-vacation in January when it got so cold and nasty in the Northeast, and not move into our new house til later in the month when it was better weather. And now we (by which I really mean Sweetie, whose apartment it was) are sitting on a big chunk of cash that we luckily didn't invest right before this stock market correction.

So we are just now settling down to the next phase of this new life, but still feeling a little at sea. Our expenses are going to be so much lower, it's kind of blowing my mind. Our HOA fee is a fraction of the maintenance on the apartment. The car insurance is cheaper, and parking is free. Even joining the local gym, which we did today, is going to be about half what we used to pay in NYC. The local grocery stores tend to have somewhat lower prices than in the city. Our utility bills may end up higher since we have electric baseboard heating. And at some point we may need to get a second car, depending on what we end up doing with ourselves in terms of jobs or other activities. So far, our main activities have been unpacking, exploring the area, and marveling at how beautiful and quiet it is here.
We'll see how it goes. I do miss the urban vibe of being in Brooklyn and going into Manhattan almost daily-- we drove back into the city for the first time the other day and ended up in a neighborhood I didn't know well and I kept thinking how nice it seemed and wondering what it would be like to live there if we someday decide we want and can afford a pied a terre. I kind of miss just watching people on the subway. It's weird to have to drive everywhere. But life also feels very peaceful now, and all the stresses of our former apartment, former jobs, and former expenses have just-- poof! -- gone away.

How Do I Want to Live?

This is always the key question in thinking about retirement. How do I want to live, where do I want to live, what will I be doing, and what's it all going to cost?
I'm still grinding away at my job, with some good days and some bad days. Still pretty stressed. Still spending a lot of time looking at retirement calculations, and also real estate sites. Because it's suddenly seeming like real estate is where the answer will be found.

Ever since I started writing this blog, one of my key assumptions has been that I will always want to live in NYC. I love it here. It has become home. It's where many of my friends are (though some of my best friends are elsewhere), it is where I have work connections and where most of the jobs in my industry are based. I love the wealth of cultural institutions, even if I don't always take advantage of them. I just like the vibe of the streets-- there is always someone or something interesting to look at. You can walk and take public transportation to do so many things. Although there is anonymity in the city, neighbors still look after each other, and in some ways, NYC is a great place to age-- you can get things delivered, take taxis, there are doctors and hospitals galore, lots of buildings with elevators and doormen-- all things that make life a little easier for elderly people.

The flip side is that it's freaking expensive! If you really want to enjoy the best of what NYC has to offer, it's going to cost you a lot. My lifestyle has always been kind of low-to-middle in terms of NYC standards-- I've mostly lived outside Manhattan, moving further and further as real estate prices increased. I've lived in tiny apartments with no services. I've tried to keep my expenses in check. In more recent years, that has changed a bit due to Sweetie, who already lived in a nicer doorman building and had a car and a cleaning lady coming in weekly. As my salary increased, I felt comfortable taking on my share of the cost for that lifestyle, even if it wasn't what I might have chosen on my own. The cleaning lady is now only every other week but we live quite luxuriously, I think. A lawyer or a hedge-funder might not be impressed, but my 10-years-ago self would be!

So now the question is "what are we willing to give up?" The more we talk about it, the more we realize we're willing to change things quite a bit. Though we love the city, we've started to feel a bit annoyed by all the noise and congestion from so much overdevelopment-- new buildings going up, creating more density, more crowds. Meanwhile our own apartment is kind of crumbling-- Sweetie's owned it for a long time and has done some renovations over the years but more are needed. Add in some new neighbors that are kind of obnoxious, and suddenly we're thinking maybe we should just move so we don't have to deal with all this crap. But to where?

We've started looking at some areas along the Metro-North train lines in NY state and Connecticut. We've looked a little in Hoboken and Jersey City. We've looked at far northern parts of Manhattan and even in the Bronx. Most of this has been idle on-line searching so far but we've seen a few places in person at open houses. It's hard not to pull up stakes immediately when you visit a beautiful newly-built house with twice as much square footage as your current apartment, a washer/dryer, garage, and a terrace with partial water views that we could own mortgage-free with lower monthly costs than the current apartment. The only downside would be my commute being close to 2 hours each way! If I wasn't working the commute wouldn't be an issue, of course, but there were some other issues we didn't love about the location. We've also discovered that property taxes can be surprising-- in NJ and CT, they are often really high vs. NYC, so something that looks like a bargain might not be.

So this question of how we want to live is yet to be answered, but we're looking at a lot more possibilities. We could come into NYC for day trips and still enjoy the culture. We could even stay in a hotel once in a while for far less than it costs us to live here. And if we manage our expenses well enough in the next decade or so, we'd probably be able to afford to move back into the city at some later time, even have a small pied-a-terre. But the bottom line is we're starting to figure out possible budgets that might really allow us not to work at all from now on. Living in NYC is the biggest expense we can cut... I never thought we'd be willing to do it, but it could make all the difference.

More Thinking About Early Retirement

On the last post, bethh commented:

"I'm curious how you decided to set whatever goal it is that you have for retirement - is it salary times x, or spending times 30 years, or what? I feel pretty sure that if I were in your shoes I'd be retired already!" 

This kind of got me thinking about whether I could indeed be retired already. With about $1.2 million in assets and no debt, I already have a lot more money than many people do when they retire. But I'm still under 50, so I have a long window of time that money has to cover. At some point years ago, I had a somewhat arbitrary number of $2 million as my retirement savings goal, which I guess I had calculated would cover what I thought would be my desired retirement lifestyle. I can't remember exactly what math I did at the time-- maybe I should search my own blog archives to help my memory!
Some people use the rule of having at least 25x what your annual spending will be, on the theory that you can safely withdraw about 4% of your savings each year without eating into it too much, since it would hopefully have investment gains of more than 4% each year.
You also have to think about what "retirement" really means-- does it mean you don't work at all? Are you going to want to fill all that spare time with expensive hobbies and travel? Or are you willing to downshift to some other sort of work that will bring in some income, even if it's not much?
I've played around with lots of scenarios in a retirement calculator-- retiring now, retiring later, having a low income now and retiring in a few years, etc. I always felt like I was more or less on track but retiring early never seemed comfortably within reach based on my current lifestyle.
But here's something that I never added to the scenario: Sweetie.
One night when I was noodling around with all this, Sweetie said "does it let you input another person? You know, we're in this together..."
It's not that I didn't think we were in it together, but actually running the numbers this way made a huge difference. Sweetie owns real estate, and has savings, and a small mortgage. After being unemployed for a couple of years, Sweetie got a job that pays a low salary that covers some of our expenses. More importantly, at age 65, Sweetie will get a good old-fashioned defined benefit pension. And someday, Sweetie will most likely inherit a few hundred thousand dollars unless the family circumstances drastically change.
Plug all that in, and boom, we can both retire now.
Of course, this does not make me totally comfortable. We've talked about getting married at some point, but we aren't yet. Our finances are totally separate except for a token joint checking account with $2000 in it. And I just have this independence thing ingrained in me somehow-- the idea of being supported by someone else is just bizarre! But given how miserable I've been at my job, this is now making me think A LOT about quitting.  That may not be "retirement" just yet, but it's pretty amazing to realize that I may have the freedom to just walk away and not worry too much about what my next source of income is. I could try a new career, try doing consulting work, or just step back into a lower level job with way less responsibility. I haven't had more than a 2 week vacation since I was 22, and the idea of just having some time off is very appealing. Once you get this kind of thing in your head, it's hard to stop thinking about it...
So much in the world is uncertain right now-- would it be insane to just walk away from a secure six-figure job??

Catching up on 2016

A few notes as I do my year-end accounting for 2016. 

The first thing I dug into was the trusts I manage for my mom. Their return was about 9% last year and I was about to pay Mom about $8,000 in dividends. I feel pretty good about this, especially after a shaky start in the first few months I was managing her money when the market was down and I was afraid she wouldn’t understand that it wasn’t my fault! I am also a bit less nervous about my mom’s finances since my grandparents both died in 2016 and she does not have to contribute to their nursing home costs anymore, which was a big expense.

My own personal investment accounts are a bit more aggressive and using the way E*Trade calculates returns, I actually beat the S&P 500 in 2016— 11.4% returns in one account, 10.73% in the other, vs. 9.53% for S&P 500.

I earned more money this year as a result of my new job, and decent investment returns. My total income including salary, bonus, investment income and other odds and ends such as employer contributions to 401k was over $214,000, vs about $188,000 for 2015. I also spent more on various things— food, wine, clothes and a few other small pleasures, but also taxes, as those increased when my income went up. But my total spending only went up by about $6,500, so my net savings for the year ended up being almost $85,000, vs about $65k last year.

I am thinking more and more about how to retire early, or at least downshift to a less stressful job. I like making more money, but it has come with a TON of stress and I’m not sure it’s worth it. Maybe I’ll eventually feel more comfortable in this position, but for these first few months, I’ve been struggling and really not feeling confident that it will ever get better. I’d love to quit, but I’m not ready to admit failure, and I keep telling myself that the longer I stick it out, the earlier I can retire! 

My net worth was about $1.17 million at the end of 2016. I’m on the right track for my retirement goals, but not so much so that I can totally relax. I’ve played around with a lot of scenarios in a retirement calculator— the good news is that it does seem like I’d be able to retire at least a few years early, even if I go back to making somewhat less. If I was willing to move to a different part of the US with a lower cost of living and make some big changes to my lifestyle, I could probably retire tomorrow if I felt like it. But I’m not willing to do that just yet, and who knows what the next few years will bring, in terms of my own career, my family, and the political and economic uncertainty in our country.

2016 was a pretty shitty year. It was bad enough that David Bowie, Prince, and Sharon Jones died, not to mention various other iconic celebrities. I lost some dear friends and beloved family members, which of course was more important to me, and I lost a lot of faith in American democracy in seeing Donald Trump elected President. In most other ways, I am happy, pretty healthy, and generally feel incredibly lucky that I have the life I do. When I started this blog, I still thought of myself as “young”— now I’m middle-aged! It’s weird to feel like I’m shifting into a new attitude towards the future, at exactly the point when the future looks bleak in some ways. But I still keep thinking “onward and upward!” Wishing you all, dear loyal readers, the very very best and a happy New Year!

2015 Income and Expenses

I never recapped last year's income and expenses, so here's a very simplified version:

Salary and bonus and 401k match	$144,061
Investment income and interest	$42,515
Gift rec'd	$100
Blog income (net of expenses)	$1,018
Housing incl. utilities, phone, internet and other household expense	$26,465
Food and liquor	$14,881
Entertainment & subscriptions	$1,911
Charity	$707
Clothing	$2,802
Education	$1,347
Gifts given	$1,753
Gym	$2,389
Medical/dental	$5,679
Travel (incl vacation)	$5,244
Taxes (Payroll deductions and payment of 2014 taxes owed)	$55,482
Other misc	$4,441
Net Savings	$64,594

A few observations:
I continue to be amazed at how much income I get from my investments alone. It is more than Sweetie's salary at the moment! Every time I see that investment income, it is another reminder of how important it is to save money and invest it wisely.
Food and liquor is very high, but I cover all of that for both Sweetie and me. We eat dinner out from time to time, but not all that often. We've been using Blue Apron for a couple of years to encourage us to cook at home more. Blue Apron isn't super cheap, but it's cheaper than takeout or eat-in restaurant meals. Where I've been splurging a wee bit is on lunch, sometimes spending over $10 by going to a more upscale place and buying a drink instead of just having water from a cooler in the office.
Gym-- I pay in advance for 2 years at a time, so the true annual cost is only half this amount.
Medical/dental includes Sweetie's coverage, and an expensive crown.
Taxes-- I owed taxes in 2014 due to the extra income I had from selling my condo, so that was a hit this year.
Other miscellaneous includes things like haircuts, art supplies, postage, etc.

I saved 34% of my gross income, which is good, and I never particularly felt like I was having to make an effort to save-- if anything it's been the opposite, feeling like I could give myself permission to spend a little extra from time to time. But I try to keep that feeling in check! I am thinking a lot about early retirement and trying to balance that against enjoying life now. Always a tough question!

Happy New Year!

My, it's been a while, but I have been a busy girl and have lots to tell. I haven't wrapped up all my final numbers yet but I will give you a spoiler: my net worth is now over $900,000. I am wondering if I dare make my 2014 year-end goal the big One Million! Yikes. 

My income and spending haven't changed too drastically, or at least I don't think so. I was thinking about guessing which categories would be up or down, and predicted that my lunch spending would be up, just because I FEEL like I have been spending more on lunch... But a quick peek at Quicken told me I was wrong. So who knows what other surprises I will find. 

I need to spend more time analyzing those numbers, as there has been one major income/expense change that I have to account for-- I sold my apartment!

Yep, my tenants moved out and after doing a little research on the state of the real estate market, I decided to test the waters. The waters turned out to be steaming hot: I had multiple offers within days and ended up with a very quick sale  to an all-cash buyer for a little more than my asking price. Though of course there were a few more wrinkles to the story that made it somewhat more complicated! I will share the drama soon. 

The sale leaves me with some interesting decisions to make in the coming year-- how will I invest this cash? Sweetie may factor into this, in terms of some sort of joint property ownership. Oh, and Sweetie's unemployed now, just to toss in another financial bombshell. 

So stay tuned (those of you who are patient and loyal enough to still be tuned!) to see what 2014 will bring. 

Spring Update

What a busy few months it has been... for the first time in years, my job has been stressful enough that I started to question whether it was worth the money I make. Sweetie has been feeling the same way, and we often fantasize about ways we could escape the office grind and make a living in some other way... like winning the lottery! We are definitely prisoners of our lifestyle-- we enjoy having certain luxuries, but they have to be paid for, and it's not that easy to find jobs that would make us enough money to continue as we are. We know we could cut out some of those luxuries and still be happy, but they are things we enjoy. When we fantasize about quitting our jobs, it's so we'd have more time to do things like traveling and reading books-- but travel and books cost money. (Books might be obtainable for free at the library, but there is no travel library where you can borrow a plane ticket, unfortunately!) We're both grateful to have jobs in this economy, but when you go from being challenged and entertained by work to feeling like you're stuck in a Dilbert cartoon or just deluged with thankless tasks, it's hard not to question whether there's something better you could be doing.

This is all made more complicated by the fact that retirement seems to get closer and closer. Sweetie is older than me, and will have a nice pension, plus income from a 401k and other savings. I will have to rely on just a 401k and savings. Sweetie's retirement income will actually be pretty good unless the stock market totally tanks, but that would all change if there was less income in the in-between years. I'm still worried about whether my savings will be enough to live on by the time I retire, so the thought of early retirement doesn't seem very feasible. But we need to sit down and do some in-depth analysis and planning, which will be made easier by the fact that I finally got Sweetie set up with Quicken to track expenses.

In other news, one of the little luxuries we've currently been enjoying is a food delivery service. It's a weekly delivery in which you get all the ingredients for 3 meals, plus recipes. All you have to provide is your own pots and pans, salt, pepper, and olive oil. The cost works out to $10 per person per meal (including shipping), and you can pick a meat/fish plan or a vegetarian plan. We've been doing the vegetarian plan, and I love all the new ideas we've been getting for how to eat a well-balanced meal without meat. The portion control is helpful too. Sweetie is someone who can cook creatively and inventively, but I am not, so I love having someone else make all the decisions and just tell me what to do!

As for the cost, I've been thinking it would be interesting to do an analysis on whether this service is "expensive." A lot depends on the specific ingredients included each week, but even without getting too in depth, it's possible to draw some comparisons. Compared to a restaurant meal, $10 per person is definitely cheap. Compared to ordering takeout food, it could be about the same price per meal, depending on what sort of takeout-- it probably works out to be cheaper than most takeout in our area. Is it cheaper than buying our own groceries? Probably not, except in the cases where the recipe requires an unusual ingredient. If I had to buy a whole jar of a spice, it could easily cost $5 or more, so it's nice to get just the exact amount needed and not have to worry about waste. And occasionally the recipe and ingredients make enough food that we have enough leftover for a lunch the next day. When you factor in the convenience factor and the enjoyability of the meals, I would say it's a good value and certainly reasonable in relation to our current financial circumstances. But if we did lose our jobs and have to budget more carefully, I'd probably discontinue it and make more effort to cook at home with cheaper ingredients bought in bulk. (The service is called Blue Apron, if you're interested, and I have not been asked or paid to write about them.)

What else is new? Well, I think my mom is going broke, as predicted. She has had her cable TV service turned off to save money and occasionally says things about money being tight, but I haven't asked for details. It is just too upsetting to get into it with her. It really makes me ill that she couldn't listen to reason a few years ago-- she should have sold the house instead of pouring money into renovating it, and moved into an inexpensive condo. I think she still has a little money left in CDs that haven't matured yet, but I'm sure she'll cash them in soon if she hasn't already, and then she'll be stuck living on just Social Security and the continuing payments she gets from my dad's pension plan, which she'll find impossible to do without running up debt, so she'll end up having to sell the house anyway, and then she'll blow through that cash too. There is no satisfaction for me in being able to say "I told you so."

How about you? What are your financial plans and dreams and worries these days?

2012 Income and Expenses

2012 was a great year in terms of income-- I hit another new high:

Salary $106,244
Bonus $18,239
Employer contributions to my 401K $8,119
Dividends $15,977
Realized Gain (from a fund change made in 401k) $11,347
Blogging income $4,402
Gifts received $100
Interest $208
Tax refunds $2,516
Total Income $167,152

Almost all the dividends and realized gains were reinvested, and sometimes I don't really even consider these "real" income. But I love seeing my money work for me-- that is over $35,000 worth of income made not from labor but from my own savings and 401K participation.

The other income I had this year was $10,000 in rent from the tenants in my apartment, but for this year, I am kind of looking at it as a defrayal of my housing expenses. I'll start breaking this out differently next year, as I'll be reclassifying some of my expenses as business expenses for an investment property rather than personal household expenses.

Now for expenses:

Bank Charge	$77
Charity	$1,153
Clothing	$3,062
Dining / Groceries	$11,296
Education	$458
Entertainment	$1,364
Gifts Given	$2,266
Gym	$2,249
Household	$1,792
Housing (net)	$11,974
Income taxes	$34,639
Medical	$1,714
Miscellaneous	$3,434
Newspapers and Magazines	$404
Travel	$8,421
Utilities Internet Access	$360
Utilities Telephone	$953

A few notes:

• Charity refers to my personal contributions. I also plan to donate all the blogging income from this site.
• Dining-- about $8500 of this is for stuff shared with Sweetie. (I have to admit that we have been indulging in fancier wines than we used to! We buy it by the mixed case and usually 1 or 2 of the bottles is a special treat, i.e. something in the $16-35 range, compared to the $9-12 range for the rest. But at least in restaurants, we tend to stay with whatever's cheapest.) The rest is mostly for my own breakfasts and lunches.
• Entertainment was pretty high this year, due to buying more tickets for concerts and theater, including a rather expensive one to see Madonna at Yankee Stadium
• Gym-- this covers a membership renewal for 2 years
• Household is mainly laundry and dry-cleaning, plus a new armchair for the apartment Sweetie and I now share
• Housing-- as noted above, I pulled together my housing expenses such as condo charges, property tax, mortgage interest, rent I pay to Sweetie, and gas and electric charges for my condo, and then subtracted the rent I receive from tenants to arrive at a net housing cost for the year. This does not include about $10,000 in mortgage principal I've paid off, as I view that as a transfer from my cash net worth to home equity.
• Miscellaneous included a new iPhone and a lot of art supplies, plus haircuts and all the usual little personal items
• Travel includes daily commuting, some family visits, and a 2-week summer vacation in Europe.

Total expenses for the year came to $85,616. This is also an all-time high. I think the new iPhone, big vacation, 2-year gym expense and new chair account for a lot of that, plus trying to take better advantage of all the culture NYC has to offer.

Net savings were $81,536, of which $10,125 is the transfer to home equity for paying off mortgage principal. This is NOT an all-time high, but it's second only to the year when I received a $25,000 inheritance, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I saved about $5000 more than I did last year,
and about $9000 more than I did in 2010 if you back out the inheritance.

As always, I could easily have cut back on expenses and saved more, and I always have these thoughts about how much sooner I could retire if I did, and whether I'll wish I had saved more when there's another economic crisis... but at the end of the day, I am comfortable enough with my savings and net worth so far to allow myself some luxuries. I feel very, very lucky and thankful for the good fortune that has come my way.

Now I'm Really a Landlady

The latest news: I am officially a landlady now. I have rented out my apartment, furnished, and my lovely tenants have already set up an automatic payment so the rent goes straight into my bank account every month. It exceeds my monthly costs by a couple hundred dollars right now, not counting tax deductions, though that will fluctuate depending on the utility bills. For better or for worse, I decided it would be simpler to keep the gas, electric, and internet in my name and just build those costs into the rent. I did write it into the lease that the tenants would have to pay for usage over a certain level upon my providing them with a copy of the bill. Even when heat and AC are higher, I think I'll still end up with positive cash flow almost every month, and on average for the whole year.
So having given up my apartment, I have officially moved in with Sweetie. Sweetie never asked me for any contribution to the household expenses, though I've tended to buy all the groceries and about half the meals out, but on my insistence, we figured out a fair amount for me to contribute, and I've set that up as a monthly outgoing auto-payment. My net housing costs are now going to be about half what they were, maybe less.

All this is good news in terms of my being able to save more money. I'm not sure what I'll do about my apartment long term-- I'm hoping I can rent it for a year or two and then maybe sell it, as real estate prices seem to be turning around a wee bit. I've actually already had an offer from a potential buyer-- someone who owns one of the other units in my building said he'd be interested in buying it, though he didn't say at what price. But if he's serious, that could be an interesting possibility, as I wouldn't have to pay a real estate agent's commission. But for now, I'm just glad to have that rent money coming in, and it was convenient to be able to leave most of my furniture there too. Since it would be a nuisance to deal with selling or storing the furniture, I may also consider shorter term AirBnB type rentals-- I'd make more money, potentially, if I could keep the place booked. And it would also allow me to block out time for when my family and friends might want to stay there. Sweetie's apartment is bigger than mine was, but we're a bit tight for storage space for all our stuff, and if my sister and her husband and kids come to visit, there will be quite a line for the one tiny bathroom!

It will be interesting to talk all this property rental stuff through with my accountant in the spring. She had suggested that I might need to increase my witholding, as I'll have a lot more income when you include the rent, and my deductions will now include depreciation on an investment property instead of mortgage interest on a primary residence. I'll fill you in in a few months!

Negotiation for a New Car

How do you feel about negotiating prices? I know there must be some people who enjoy haggling, but I am among the many who find it stressful. This applies to all sorts of situations, from buying a cheap bracelet in an Istanbul bazaar to buying an apartment to certain business deals. Now I have discovered that I hate it even when I am not directly involved!

Let me explain. A friend, who I will call Consuelo, is buying a car and I have inadvertently turned into her coach. When she started telling me about her last car purchase, which was her first, we both had to laugh about all the things she'd obviously done wrong. And this was over 10 years ago, when the online resources we have now weren't as extensive. She did research car models via Consumer Reports, and went shopping at a time when dealers would be trying to clear the previous year's models off the lot, but then when she was first offered a price and it seemed kind of low enough, she didn't even try to negotiate further, and then she got bamboozled into paying for some additional options and an extended warranty she didn't need.

I have never bought a car myself-- and as a New York City resident, I probably never will-- but of course I got interested in the topic and offered to use my online Consumer Reports access to help her figure things out better this time around. She already had a specific car in mind so I pulled the pricing info that helps you calculate a reasonable target price to bargain towards. It's not just the dealer invoice price-- you have to factor in incentives and dealer holdbacks to calculate how low the dealer can really go and still make a profit of 1-5%. It's great to have this information, but then you can't help worrying that paying anything over that amount means you are being ripped off.

I gave Consuelo all the numbers and talked through all the sorts of approaches that are recommended when dealing with car sales people. Basically, you want to do all your research in advance, know what you want and what you can be flexible about, and have a target price in mind for the car you want. You should make this clear up front and try to set up a bidding war between multiple dealers who have your desired car on the lot and want to unload it. You want to do as much negotiating as possible over the phone, not in the showroom. You have to go to the showroom to test drive the car, but you should make clear that you are still at the stage of testing different models and aren't there to buy right away. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, it's a lot easier in theory than it is in reality!

I went with Consuelo to a dealership to test drive the car she wanted. We walked in without an appointment and were helped by a nice female salesperson who I'll call Debbie. Debbie sat us down while she made a copy of Consuelo's license and got the car ready. (Meanwhile, who knows what else was going on while we waited those few minutes. They might have pulled a credit report on Consuelo, though they aren't supposed to do that.) Then we went out for a drive. Debbie pointed out some nice things about the car but without any sort of hard sell. Somehow we ended up talking about how female car sales people are becoming more common, and how some female customers prefer to deal with women and some men refuse to. She told us she'd only been selling cars for a few months. When we got back to the showroom, Debbie sat us down and showed us a brochure about the latest model of the car, asked what color Consuelo wanted, etc. She wasn't pushy or high pressure, but she gently drew Consuelo into revealing more about her preferences than she should have. Consuelo said she wanted the previous year's model, in a certain configuration, and Debbie started looking in the inventory system for it. She didn't have the exact one in stock but said she could order it easily, with only a $500 deposit. Consuelo was sitting there biting her lip as if she might just do it, and was only reluctant because she hadn't seen the color she liked best in person. I was the one who had to interject that she could just look around a bit more to see if she could see the car elsewhere, and take Debbie's business card and come back later. In my head I was saying "Snap out of it, Consuelo! You're supposed to be playing hardball here!"

Afterwards, we discussed how things had gone. Consuelo liked Debbie and because the dealership was convenient, she wanted to buy the car there.  No discussion of price had occurred. I felt like she'd gotten off on the wrong foot-- she'd let Debbie establish a feeling of trust, and she was allowing herself to be influenced by factors less important than getting a good price, although I could understand that there might be enough value to those other factors that she'd compromise on price a little for them. So the next step was searching other nearby dealers' websites to see if we could look at the right car in person, and start getting some price quotes. I already figured that if Debbie had to order the car from another dealer, the price would probably include two dealers' profit instead of just one, and that a dealer with the car in stock would be much more incentivized to make a good deal. Consuelo emailed Debbie and asked what her price for the car would be-- pretty much just like that: "Hi Debbie, what would your price be for the car we discussed?" To me, this was her next mistake-- she should have put it all in context, saying that based on her research, she was looking for a price of $X, and if Debbie could give her a good price, she was ready to buy. But having left it open-ended, of course Debbie came back to her offering a price of only a few hundred dollars under the MSRP. Consuelo forwarded the email to me and said, "This seems high."

I decided to help her a bit more proactively, thinking it might also be a good idea if some searching was done under my name rather than hers. I found the car at another dealer not far away and submitted a request for a quote, and also sent Consuelo a link to yet another dealer who had the car so she could request a quote herself. The dealer she contacted gave her a very good price, only a little bit more than the target price from Consumer Reports, and specified that it included the destination charge, which was around $800. I told Consuelo to verify that they would not be tacking on a bunch of other fees CR warns you about, and meanwhile, she went back to Debbie with the lower quote, adn asked if her price had included the destination charge.  Debbie replied that it had-- though I am sure if Consuelo had accepted that price without questioning fees, she would have been told that the destination charge was additional. Debbie did not offer to match the other price, but instead said something cryptic about how she understood that price was important. We weren't sure if she was just saying she couldn't negotiate further or what-- I suspected that she sensed Consuelo wanted to buy the car from her and was not going to give an inch unless she had to. This time, I had to say it out loud: "Consuelo, Debbie is very nice, but she is playing you like a violin. Don't take it personally-- it's her job."

Meanwhile, the other dealership replied that there were no additional fees. It was all sounding good, so Consuelo made an appointment to go in and see the car without asking if any further price reduction was available. The earliest she could get to that dealer was a few days later, and by that time, it turned out the exact car she wanted had been sold and they didn't have another one like it. So much for leverage (especially since Consuelo forgot to ask if that dealer would honor the same price when they offered to order her the same car from somewhere else). Another dealer had a price a little closer to Debbie's, but we were starting to worry that since there had been some big sales over Memorial Day, fewer and fewer examples of the model Consuelo wanted were showing up in the inventory at local dealers. I figured Debbie would be well aware of this, so Consuelo had less and less negotiating power.
Finally, after a couple of phone calls with someone at another dealership who sounded like the stereotypical sleazy car salesman, Consuelo just decided she was sick of the whole thing, and by that point, I really was too! I'd been thinking so much about all these negotiating strategies and trying to help Consuelo get the best possible price, but that seemed to be less and less possible, and the idea that her desired car model would sell out in the meantime was adding a lot of pressure. By this point, we knew she wasn't going to be all that close to the target price CR had fixated us on, so we felt like we were somehow failing at the whole thing and getting screwed. I was trying to be a good adviser and coach, but ended up taking it so personally that I got really anxious on Consuelo's behalf and was having nightmares about car negotiations! Ultimately, Consuelo told me she was just going to write back to Debbie and say she wanted a price $1,000 lower than Debbie's original offer and could she do it or not. I told her to ask for $1,500 lower and that Debbie would then come back to her with the $1,000 lower price-- which was exactly what happened, so Consuelo thanked me for reminding her not to negotiate against herself. The price did end up being a few hundred dollars below invoice, so it wasn't a terrible deal-- it was an average deal, an acceptable deal-- but it was disappointing not to get the very good deal I thought she should aim for. To put this all in perspective, the price range we're talking about between best feasible price and MSRP was about $32,000-$36,000, and Consuelo's paying $34,000-- but even when you're buying a $34,000 car, it's painful to think someone might be cheating you out of $1,000!

Of course agreeing on a price isn't really the end of a car purchase negotiation-- it's just a step along the way. But this post is getting long, so I'll write a sequel soon covering the rest of the process, including negotiating a trade-in allowance and financing. Consuelo hasn't actually gotten the car just yet, so there's plenty that can still go wrong!! And I'm learning a lot from her experiences along the way.

I'd love to learn more from all of you too-- have you bought many cars in your life? what price range? How did you negotiate? Did you find helpful information online? How good a deal did you get?

The Latest News

Yes, it's been too long since I've posted a net worth update or any other juicy details. And it's not just because I'm in love! I've been really, really busy at work, far more stressed out than I've been in years. One night I came home from work almost feeling like I was having an anxiety attack-- it's times like this that I start to wonder how else I could earn a paycheck...

So with all that going on, I haven't wanted to be on the computer all that much in my downtime. I haven't been blogging much, and hadn't even updated all my financial data in a while. But I did just catch up on some of that a few days ago-- I reconciled all my investment accounts through the end of March and the good news is that after some nice 1st quarter mutual fund results, plus a better than expected bonus, my net worth is currently somewhere around $620,000.

I will post more detail about my spending and account balances soon. I actually pulled together some comparisons of my spending by category from 2003 to the present. It was interesting to see that a lot of my expenses haven't increased that much (and those that have increased did not increase as much as my income has, so the net result is that I've been saving more). It gave me an idea for a future post about a financial tipping point-- in other words, if your current lifestyle, or what you consider a minimum acceptable lifestyle, costs X, at what point in your life did you start making enough to pay for X without going into debt? For me, at least so far, I'm pretty far past that tipping point, but for a lot of people it's not a one-way journey-- losing a job could mean you go back and forth across that line of being able to afford certain things you consider "normal."

Another tidbit of recent news-- this is the first time I've not been able to contribute the maximum to my Roth IRA because my income was too high. I guess that is a milestone to celebrate, in a way, but I couldn't help feeling disappointed!

And I will have to write more about it soon, but I highly recommend the book Thinking, Fast and Slow. There is a lot of interesting stuff in there about financial decision-making, as well as actionable tips that will help you check yourself from making errors of judgment.

So, lots of blogging ideas on my to-do list if I can get back into a rhythm of posting more frequently! Thanks for sticking with me and leaving comments that remind me to fill you in! I'd love to hear more from all of you about what's up in your financial lives lately-- what's on your to-do list? What's keeping you up at night? How are you personally weathering this economy?

2010 Year End Recap

Well the year came to a close in an interesting and good way.

First of all, let's look at my net worth as of 12/31/10:
Cash and Bank Accounts: $66,039
Retirement (401k and Roth IRA): $320, 626
Other Investments (mutual funds @ E*Trade): $51,294
Bonds $5,197
Home Equity $82,592
Credit Card Balance -$2,615
TOTAL: $523,133

Now you may be thinking, as I did, whoa! Her net worth as of a month before was only $479,273! Did her net worth really increase 9.15% in one month? Well, I did receive $9,000 more of my inheritance from Great Aunt Minnie, and the stock market did ok... but what I also discovered is that I had the wrong symbol in Quicken for one of my mutual funds and therefore the wrong price, so my net worth has been understated by several thousand dollars for I don't know how long. So I not only blew away my original year end goal of $450,000, I sailed past the half-million dollar mark, which was totally unexpected. Pretty cool.

As for my income and expenses, here's a look at the totals for 2010 vs. 2009:

	2009	2010	Var.	% Var.
Income
Bonus	$11,765	$17,288	$5,523	47%
Gift Received	$1,309	$24,200	$22,891	1749%
Interest Inc	$776	$502	-$274	-35%
Other Inc	$6,503	$6,386	-$117	-2%
Salary	$96,206	$99,373	$3,167	3%
Tax Refund	$4,211	$2,873	-$1,338	-32%
Total Income	$120,770	$150,623	$29,853	25%
Expenses
Bank Charge	$160	$97	-$64	-40%
Business expense	$0	-$7	-$7	N/A
Charity	$468	$1,055	$586	125%
Clothing	$1,639	$2,648	$1,009	62%
Dining	$7,895	$8,552	$656	8%
Education	$406	$455	$49	12%
Entertainment	$663	$448	-$214	-32%
Gifts Given	$962	$1,924	$963	100%
Gym & Fitness	$1,317	$1,361	$44	3%
Household	$1,337	$760	-$577	-43%
Home Insurance	$335	$335	$0	0%
Housing	$14,384	$14,171	-$213	-1%
Medical	$1,938	$4,556	$2,619	135%
Misc	$2,215	$3,412	$1,197	54%
Taxes	$30,325	$34,053	$3,728	12%
Subscriptions	$956	$743	-$213	-22%
Travel	$1,712	$4,803	$3,091	180%
Utilities	$1,936	$2,454	$518	27%
Total Expenses	$68,648	$81,819	$13,171	19%
Net Savings	$52,122	$68,804	$16,683	32%
% of Gross Income Saved	43.16%	45.68%

A few notes:

• As noted elsewhere, I received a $24,000 inheritance from a family member.
• Other Income is matching 401k contributions from my employer.
• Interest is down because I shifted quite a bit of money from bank accounts into investment accounts.
• Charity and Gifts Given are up for reasons explained in this post.
• Medical is way up because I had a crown and root canal and exceeded the annual cap on my dental insurance.
• Miscellaneous is up mainly because I bought an iPhone and some apps.
• Travel is up because I didn't do much of a vacation last year, but this year I went to Turkey and splurged a little on hotels even though my air ticket was purchased with frequent flyer miles.
• Utilities is up because of the higher monthly costs of the iPhone.
• Subscriptions is down because I canceled my NY Times delivery at home, since I spend so much time at Sweetie's place. Household is lower for the same reason
• I'm pretty consistent but I let a few categories creep up a bit without any real reason, particularly Dining. I still like eating out and drink too much-- everyone has to have a vice, right?
• Clothing was also higher but I really needed some new work clothes and shoes, so I'm not too concerned about that.

But the bottom line is that I continue to save a lot of my income. If not for the inheritance, I would have saved less than I did last year, but at least some of that was due to more giving, and higher taxes because I earned more. It's not like I went crazy buying tons of stuff, even if I did allow myself a few treats like an iPhone, some clothes and a vacation.

Now I have to look ahead at 2011... what should my next net worth goal be? Should I make any changes to my budget? This could be the year when I rent out my apartment and move in with Sweetie, which could change things a lot. And I need to take a close look at my investment allocations, which I haven't done in a while. So much to think about! And write about here... I'm going to try to post more frequently this year. So happy 2011! As always, onward and upward!

November 2010 Recap

It's a bit late for this, but I'll get it out of the way before I have to move on to December!

First of all, it was a big month for income: $23,536 in total. In addition to my salary, I received $15,000 as part (not all) of my inheritance from Great Aunt Minnie. (I had thought that would be the full amount, but I got another $9,000 in December. I continue to be bewildered, amazed and grateful whenever I see these numbers.)

Gift Received	$15,000
Interest Inc	$36
Salary	$8,500

As for expenses, nothing too dramatic to report. I returned a few pairs of boots I'd bought from Zappo's last month, so the clothing line is negative. Travel is high because Sweetie and I settled up what we'd spent on our vacation back in September and I owed about $800. And I started doing a wee bit of Christmas shopping.

Taxes	$2,830
Housing	$1,716
Travel	$1,066
Dining	$769
Utilities	$176
Medical	$113
Misc	$100
Gifts Given	$80
Subscriptions	$58
Household	$43
Entertainment	$26
Business expense	$9
Clothing	-$759

The net is that I saved $17,309 in November, which is pretty good even without the $15,000 inheritance.

As for my net worth, it increased $20,493 from last month (+4.47%) to $479,273.

	10/31/10	11/30/10	Var.	Var. %
Cash	$45,665	$59,662	$13,997.00	30.65%
Stocks	$49,780	$49,704	-$76.00	-0.15%
Bonds	$5,091	$5,197	$106.00	2.08%
Retirement	$282,052	$284,341	$2,289.00	0.81%
Home	$81,856	$82,223	$367.00	0.45%
Credit Card	-$5,664	-$1,854	$3,810.00	-67.27%
	$458,780	$479,273	$20,493

So far, the inheritance has just gone into cash savings, but I'll probably add some more to mutual investments soon. The only other change of note here is that I finally updated my savings bond values, which I don't do every month.

December will probably not be a big savings month, considering charitable donations and holiday gift-giving, but I think 2010 overall will look pretty good, and I should exceed my year end net worth goal even backing out the inheritance. But what's next for 2011? We'll see...
Onward and upward!