Monday 3 August 2015

July 2015 Net Worth: $592,000 (+5.6%) and Goal Tracker

My net worth increased by ~$32,000 and although I'd love to say it was because of some incredible investing on my behalf the answer was actually far simpler than that.  I got married during the month and we asked for cash gifts to help fund our honeymoon and people were far more generous than we could have imagined.

There were other incremental positives as well.  The share market bounced back after it's atrocious month last month and I slowly started to pay off my credit card debt.  There were also other swings and roundabouts which I will go into further detail about later.

In this month's round up I also look at the goals we managed to tick off during the month and I start to track the goals that I set at last month's 2015 Annual Review.



Net Worth: $592,000 (+5.6%)



Value
% Change
Assets
$989,000
+3.4%
Liabilities
$398,000
+0.3%
Net worth
$592,000
+5.6%

Those are some pretty big moves and unlike last month where there was a lot going on, this month the result was impacted by some pretty big one off numbers:

We deposited the incredibly generous gifts people had given us for our wedding

  • Both my wife and I lived independently before getting together and so we already had 2 households worth of stuff before getting married.  We didn't really need more 'stuff' so we asked people for cash gifts
  • People were far more generous than we could have imagined and it actually funded a significant portion of the wedding
  • We actually haven't opened all of our gifts yet so this will continue to have an impact next month

My share portfolio had quite a strong month

  • When you look at my goal tracker below it will look like my share portfolio went backwards.  Actually this was just me taking cash out of share account (which was sitting there in cash) and moving it into my home offset account
  • I'm thinking about ditching Interactive Brokers (for reasons I will go through in a later post) and so I didn't need my cash sitting in that account
  • The value of my shares increased by ~5% over the month and while still not at May's level it is significantly stronger than last month (contributing $5,000 to my net worth increase)

Continued contributions to my employee share scheme and superannuation

  • You may wonder why I continue to call these out month after month when it so automated
  • The fact that these savings mechanisms are so automated are their beauty - I continue to save and I never see the money before it goes into the savings so I'm not tempted to 'wait for a better' moment
  • My employee share plan vests reasonably soon so this should provide a positive impact on next month's result

My credit card balance remains incredibly high

  • There are still wedding expenses coming through on my credit card balance.  In fact I hit my $12,000 limit both this month and last month and I had to pay down my credit card in the middle of the month which I don't normally do
  • Last month it was primarily wedding expenses and there were still $4,000 worth of expenses in this month's bill but moving expenses and renovations on our home is the majority of the increase (see my comments below about the renovations)

I added a new Future Liability

  • This month should have seen a huge decrease in my Future Liabilities balance as I finished paying off my wedding but I added a new Future Liability...a renovation / home improvement budget
  • The investment property my wife and I moved into needed some significant TLC and I hadn't really invested much into maintaining the property over the last 5 years
  • It needed a new coat of paint, new cupboards, a new fence and it was begging for a new laundry.  In addition we also needed to buy some new furniture as the house was significantly bigger than our old apartment
  • As a result we gave ourselves a $10,000 budget (from our honeymoon gifts) to do most of this work
  • I'm hoping this doesn't blow out but so far we have been pretty good and are doing most of the work ourselves.  I will do a post on this in the coming weeks

The coming month should be quite strong in terms of net worth performance and I'm hoping to break through the $600,000 net worth mark for the first time which will be incredibly exciting.  I'm also hoping to bust through that $1 million asset number (although that seems unlikely at the moment!)

July 2015 Goal Tracker


I don't think I've ever had to reset goals because I achieved them too fast before but I may just have to do that.  My share account has $25,000 sitting in cash on the sidelines (which I haven't included) so when that gets invested I will be well on my way to hitting my share portfolio target!

It's exciting being able to focus again on investments after being sidetracked by my wedding.  My honeymoon is also coming up but that is fun to plan and does not take up nearly as much time as the wedding planning.


GoalJul 152015 Total2015 TargetRemainingAchieved?
#1: Get Married+$0$5,000$5,000$0YES
#2: Honeymoon+$0$20,000$20,000$0YES
#3: Home Deposit+$19,000$19,000$40,000$21,000No
#4: Emergency Fund+$833$5,833$10,000$4,167No
#5: Share Portfolio-$4,336$241,328$276,000$34,672No



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    4 comments:

    1. Awesome, yes it's funny how generous people can be/are, although well deserved :)!

      Good luck with the renovations and looking forward to continuing to see you smash out goals, personal and financial

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. Hi Jef! Thanks heaps!

        Renovations always take so much longer than I expect. I'm hoping to not be living in a dust bowl within the next fortnight...I can only hope!

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    2. Great job increasing 32K of net worth regardless how that was achieved. You well deserve the generosity!

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. Thanks BSR! That was a super nice comment...I'm blushing a little

        Delete