April 2016 Net Worth: $754,400 (+2.0%)

I was surprised how well I performed this month.  I actually spent a fair amount of time this month working on our personal finances and sorting out some admin problems we had (including spending about 2 hours speaking to my superannuation fund to make sure that there weren't any admin errors).

This month we focused a lot on trading and not a lot on investing.  I'm hoping to get back into investing more aggressively over the next few months.

Let's have a look at the breakdown in performance this month:

Direct Share Investments: +$700 

My share investments went all over the place this month.  At one point during the month they were up significantly and then the market took a dive and then recovered again.  At the end of everything I ended up virtually flat which was a little disappointing.

I saw some opportunities this month but I didn't have the available cash in my share investment account to take advantage of these opportunities.  I am kicking myself for not taking a risk and taking money out of my home loan account but things can move in any direction so I decided to play it safe instead.

Other Investment Assets: +5,400

My superannuation balance increased by $3,900 this month through both valuation increases and through my regular monthly contribution.  I'm starting to see the benefit of my allocation switch earlier in the year.  Also within this category was my regular monthly contribution to my employee share plan.

Other Assets: +$7,600

My wife and I managed to save a significant amount to our offset account towards our next home.  We are currently sitting a little below the $300,000 mark in this account which has 2 benefits...not only are we that little bit closer to our next home but it also means that we are paying very little in interest each month which allows us to save cumulatively faster (the power of compounding in reverse)

Liabilities: -$800

The only change this month was a lower credit card bill and if I'm going to be honest it was artificially low. I have a bunch of large expenses waiting to come through (including some car maintenance expenses) so this should reverse next month.

Outlook

The coming month could be a large one in terms of bills with several large maintenance expenses coming up as well as a large renovation bill as we are building a new laundry.  We are going to be doing a lot of the work ourselves to keep the cost down however we are still likely to face quite a large bill by the end of the month.  

This renovation will also take up all the renovation budget we have left in our future liabilities fund so I'm probably going to look at topping this up after I do the annual mid year review in July.