Tracking your financial progress month to month is a very important part of becoming financially independent. If you don’t know where your money is going or how you are making progress on your goals, you will never reach them. You can determine your net worth in just 10 minutes, so if you haven’t done it lately don’t put it off any longer.
It has been just over a month since our wedding and honeymoon, so it is nice to get our finances back in order and “assess the damage”. We have been able to re-coup some of the costs of the wedding by selling decorations on Craig’s List and returning things we didn’t use to stores. This helps gives us some extra cash for things we would possibly keep if we had the room in a house, but just don’t have the space or the need for it right now. On to the numbers!
The biggest change here is that I moved my company stock into the short-term savings category as an emergency/cushion for now. I didn’t cash out the stock, but I am viewing it more as an option to use it if we need to for travels, an investment in my wife and I’s new businesses, or to pay off my wife’s student loans.
Another piece that might look alarming is the credit card balance. While it looks like we only paid it down $1,500 this month, we paid them all off in full and are just waiting to the next payment date to bring the balance down to zero again in September. The charges on it are the last few expenses from the wedding and honeymoon. It will be paid off by next month’s report.
Spending is Back to Realistic Levels
After all of the months leading up to the wedding and honeymoon being extremely expensive months that stagnated the progress on our net worth, we are back to reasonable levels of spending now. We did purchase a lot of things off our wedding registry, but that doesn’t show up in the expenses at all because we only used money and gift cards that were gifted to us and I did count the “presents” as income per say.
The only thing that hurt us financially this month was the 120,000 mile maintenance check-up on my 2004 Toyota Camry (albeit, 9,000 miles late). There were just minor issues with it, but after putting 60,000 miles on it since buying it 3.5 years ago and only ever changing the oil, it was time for some work to be done on it. Throw in a new set of tires and the final bill was over $1,400. Without the car work, we would have been at just over $2,000 for expenses in August. Our lowest month since we starting combining our finances.
Our Next Big Financial Steps
Finishing Merging All of Our Accounts Together
We are still going through the process of getting our names on all of the accounts we have to make them “joint”.
Student Loans
We need to decide whether to accelerate payments on these or continue to use the extra money each month as an investment in our businesses.
Total Change Since College Graduation
(Start) May 2008: –$28,120.00
(Today) September 2011: $54,678.35
Total Net Worth Increase in 40 Months: $82,798.35
Previous Net Worth Reports
August 2011: $52.270.29
July 2011: $53,244.08
June 2011: $53,583.20
May 2011: $60,268.74
(Learn more about how to determine your net worth in just 10 minutes or how I use Mint.com to track my spending and net worth progress.)
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Caleb - This is the first time I’ve seen your transparency reports, and what progress you’ve made!!! It must feel great to be starting your married life off on more stable financial ground
But yeah, I hear you on the wedding expenses. You set out thinking you’re going to keep things in check, and then the week or so leading up to the big day, you walk around feeling like an ATM with all the bills that have to get paid
Worth it, though - and hopefully, it’s something you only ever do once!
It is great to have a positive month again after so much spending! It was a constant upward trend, but weddings will do that to you. :p
My heart sank for a second when I saw your credit card debt, but your explanation made me feel better
Very impressive that you’ve managed to stay well into the black/green even with the wedding expenses. I hope it’s all downhill from here for you!
Haha, yeah! It is crazy how I have gotten a bit numb to the fact that we have multiple thousands of dollars on our cards at times the past couple months, but we have had the benefit of being able to pay them off each month in full and not carry a balance over.
With all of the major expenses complete I expect some big progress in the next few months.
Ah, so you graduated in May 2008. Why did I get the idea you got an MBA?
I got 2 undergrad degrees (one in 2007 & one in 2008) and then finished my MBA in 2010.