Welcome to week #2 of the new year! Woop woop!
My apologies for being a bit late publishing this net worth here, but honestly I’ve been kinda nervous to share it, just because there really isn’t a good way of doing it without coming across as an asshat, haha… Who gets an increase of $90,000 in a month and then broadcasts it to the world??
But hopefully y’all know by now that boasting isn’t my style, and we share both the goods and the bads here no matter what goes down in my financial world as part of our super-transparency mission here at the site. So while I am proud of how far we’ve come over the 10 years doing this, please know this is all for informational purposes and to hopefully inspire others to keep on hustling their hearts out too as it really does pay off in the long run!
So with that, let’s get started! But first, a look at how the past 12 months have gone overall to put things in perspective more:
And then here’s a breakdown per month, along with links to each report if you want to dive into any further. All of which shows just how powerful consistency (and a great market run!) can be towards the growth of your wealth… And most of the returns come from your MONEY doing all the work for you as you go about your life! It’s a wonderful thing.
- Dec: $802,949.84 (+$93,000)
- Nov: $709,372.08 (+$21,000)
- Oct: $688,210.30 (+$12,000)
- Sep: $675,681.17 (+$16,000)
- Aug: $659,786.34 (-$600)
- July: $660,442.69 (+$12,000)
- June: $648,316.94 (+$5,000)
- May: $643,155.75 (+$6,000)
- Apr: $636,893.40 (+$4,000)
- Mar: $632,301.91 (+$700)
- Feb: $631,547.73 (+ $20,000)
- Jan: $610,770.25 (+ $10,000)
A total increase of $190,000, or 30%. Not too bad at all… And doing my best to soak it up as I know it’ll be one of the only times I’ll see something like this, haha… To think we had a total of $50,000 banked just 10 years ago is crazy! And really a testament to this *community* here as there’s no way I’d be close to any of this had I never stumbled across it.
Now to December’s Numbers!
(Net Worth Report #110)
CASH SAVINGS (+$61,908.38): This is the biggie right here – at least in terms of dollar amounts – and is where I parked a bulk of our profit from last month’s website sale just to enjoy it a little before we start spreading it around. Though as you’ll see in the areas below, I have already made a few moves just because I couldn’t help myself :) And keep in mind this is all profit after taxes and paying out my team @ Rockstar, etc too… If only you could keep 100% of your gains!
SPAVINGS FUND! (+$2,078.42): A record percentage increase right there! 1,619.21%!! Haha… Though this has nothing to do with the sale of the site or any hustling at all. In fact, it’s actually something pretty embarrassing!! I forgot about a $2,000 tax refund owed to me – FROM LAST YEAR! – and it magically appeared in my account last month??! Apparently one of my quarterly payments never made it over to the great state of Virginia, and therefore they held onto my refund until I guess they were tired of holding onto it and wanted to close up the books. So basically I completely forgot about TWO GRAND and woudn’t have ever missed it had they never sent it over – wow…
That being said, it was a pretty nice surprise to see when it hit my account, and of course the first thing I had to do was xfer it over into my Spavings Account to make sure it really counts as saved money :) Not the same as spaving a $0.50 coupon, but hey – this is my game and my rules! And now the shot at hitting $5,500 by the end of the year to max out next year’s IRA is looking even better – woohoo.
(Other spavings from the month totaled $5.39 – everything from discounts off at coffee shops to spare change found on the ground… Even found a quarter the other week! And had to be sly about it as it was laying in a pretty precarious position :)
THRIFT SAVINGS PLAN (TSP) (+$588.80): Another nice increase from my wife’s automated contributions every month… Nothing too special going on outside of that yet (one day we want to up her %, but not until she’s more settled with her career, as well as our living situation as we’ve decided to move this Summer but not quit sure *where* yet…. Turns out her gov’t job may not be as secure as we had thought with this administration!!)
ROTH IRAs (+$12,590.57): This one we DID add too, and a total of $11,000 at that ($5,500 into my Roth IRA, and then $5,500 into my wife’s IRA to max out the year for the both of us). Felt good to utilize some of the profit this way to get a quick rush :)
SEP IRA (+$6,318.56): Nothing new added in the SEP as yet, but once we settle up our taxes over the next month or so I’ll be taking a big chunk of the new money to max out this puppy as well… And initial estimations point it to being around $20,000’ish (SEPs are based on total profit from your business over the year, vs a flat maxing # like 401(k)s and the like).
Here’s how our investments have fared though since going “all in” with Vanguard three years ago (It’s 100% invested in VTSAX – my favorite “lazy” portfolio!):
CAR VALUES (-$1,577.00): A big drop here, but mainly because I lowered the “condition” of our cars on KBB to get a little more conservative… And also because KBB changed the way they present their values now, so I just went with the *lowest* in the range they provided and called it a day ;)
Here are the present values of them now:
- Lexus RX350: $10,084.00
- Toyota Corolla: $3,493.00
CAR LOAN: (-$11,670.03): On the flip side of the equation, we’re now completely debt-free as I wiped it all away last month! Woo! The very FIRST thing I did with the site’s profit :) And still cracking myself up with what I was going to send over to those guys when asked “why” I wanted to get it all paid off, jeez… Is the only way to do it these days by picking up another loan??
(I didn’t send that, of course, as tempted as I was ;))
We’ll see what we end up doing when it’s Minivan time, but for the time being we’re 100% debt-free since being a teenager! Pretty wild to think about!
And that’s it for December! And the whole 2017 year, for that matter…
Here’s an even broader picture covering all 110 net worth reports since publicly publishing it in 2008:
Again, this stuff isn’t fast, but if you put in the time and hustle you do eventually get there! And now we move on to the ultimate milestone – the $1 Milly mark :) Though something tells me this is still quite far away as I’m running out of websites to sell, haha…
Oh, and then here are the kiddos’ updated net worths too. We threw in an extra $100/each into their 529 accounts that they got from grandma (God bless her soul), but looks like our $50 monthly deposits hadn’t hit yet. I don’t plan on jacking any of this up with our profits, but I have set aside $5,000 for Baby Dime when he/she finally comes… Gotta keep things fair, right?
Lastly, a Life Update!
This is the part where I usually sign off and ask you how YOUR month/year went financially, but last month I was asked if I could share some updates on our *lives* too to help balance out all the $$$$ talk with these reports, and I loved the idea so that’s what we’ll do here real quick :) After all, money is worthless if you’re miserable every single day, right? So this is for you, Lily!
- Baby Dime continues to bake nicely and is healthy all around, as well as mom!, and the due date is still set for May 3rd. Though we predict a 1-2 week early departure due to complications that came around with the last pregnancy.
- My other kids are doing great too and really loving school!! Baby Penny rides the bus all by himself and doesn’t even need me in the least (*tear*) and his younger brother, Baby Nickel (this is starting to get confusing – the coins are going in the opposite direction?!), is flourishing as well and getting more adult-like by the day. God help me though if I have another boy – they are such a handful together!
- Speaking of… my wife still very much knows the sex and I still very much don’t ;) Although it’s getting harder and harder to enjoy the days knowing she’s fully ready to start planning now and slowly losing patience with my antics, haha… I fear it’s either find out by my own accord, or “accidentally” find out when she slips by design – womp womp.
- In work/life balance news – so far so peaceful! It’s amazing what happens when you quit filling every nook and cranny of your time with something to do, haha… it’s like my brain can finally just “be.” And I’m finding I spend much more time looking for areas to *improve* upon in my life/work vs always just *adding to it*. It’s been pretty eerie seeing Rockstar Finance live on without me, but I can’t say I’m missing any of the thousands of decisions that came along with it!
- In hobby world, my love of coin collecting still roars on! In fact, I just published my first post in months over at CoinThrill.com and it felt great! I stumbled across this new “coin box” subscription where for $X/mo they’ll send you a new box of coins right to your door step and now I fear for my wallet, haha… Super clever though, and I even did some of those “unboxing” videos like the wannabe millennial that I am ;)
- Lastly, I’ve been building out JMoney.biz more. It’s really only a “portfolio” site right now, but I’m tinkering with the idea of sharing thoughts on life and blogging/entrepreneurship and such things over time… I’ve never really brain dumped all my thoughts/advice on blogging before, and thinking it may prove pretty helpful for others to just lay it all out there? The goods and the bads? I’ve never done it here because I don’t want to annoy anyone who couldn’t care less about blogging, but I am interested in hearing your thoughts on it if you have any :)
So that’s life! Should we make this a new section each month here, or are you already tired of hearing me talk??
Either way, we’re wrapping it up now and I turn it over to you to hear how your $$$ has been going :) Anyone else have a banner year? Anyone cross into that glorious Million Dollar Mark??
As always, you can catch all the net worth reports we’ve done over the years here, or you can continue your financial voyeurism and scan the reports of 300+ other bloggers who share here. Whether you have $10.00 banked or $10,000,000 though, I hope you are indeed tracking it as it’s one of the best moves you can make for your money! “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest!” (Benny Franklin)
See ya back in a couple days :)
Questions, comments, concerns – drop them in the comments and we shall chat!
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