Money Money Money Update
This is what I’m saving for 
Yesterday I talked about how I was going to post an updated net worth. I haven’t done this in forever. The last time I did this was in October (click here to see it). And it wasn’t really a net worth update, because I didn’t talk about assets at all. I also have my finance updates on this page, but I don’t always update it. So today, I’m going to do this correctly.
In October, my debt was:
- Student Loan Debt: $28,773.65
- Car Loan: $6,600
- Mortgage: $115,238
- Credit Card: $0, never had any credit card debt, so I like to emphasize that
Total Debt: $150,611.65
As of January 1, 2012, my debt is now:
- Student Loan Debt: $27,147.76
- Car Loan: $2,200
- Mortgage: $114,136 (this is an estimate)
- Credit Card: $0
Total Debt: $143,483.76
It’s so depressing that because of interest, my mortgage amount is hardly going down. I’m hoping that we can start paying this off a lot quicker soon. We paid approximately $7,127 in debt in the past 2.5 months. I would say that’s pretty good! I used a lot of my Christmas bonus from last month to pay off a lot of my car loan.
My goal was to have my car paid off by December of 2011, which would be around 1.5 years earlier than the expected payoff date, but this obviously isn’t going to happen since it is now January of 2012. I’m hoping to have it paid off in a month or two. We will probably use some of the savings from last month to pay it off completely, because such a little amount is left.
I also received a lot of e-mails and comments on my post yesterday about how I was able to save $7,000 in the month of December. As I wrote in my other post last week, I received a $6,100 bonus from my work for Christmas. But I was wrong, I actually received around $6,750. I didn’t realize that I didn’t read a page that came in my bonus letter.
I guess I was so excited that I forgot to actually read everything.
Our expenses for December were approximately $4,000, which includes our mortgage, utilities, cell phones, cars, insurance, some presents, etc. Our expenses were a little higher than usual for December, mainly because we did a lot of mindless shopping.
So as you can see, most of my savings came from the $6,750 bonus. We also brought it a lot more income in December. The BF made around $2,000 extra in December due to the holiday rush at his work. We brought in around $15,000 after taxes, dues, and charitable giving for the month of December.
I believe I have talked about this before, but the BF has charitable giving withheld out of his check, so as he makes more, more gets taken out. And he also has dues taken out of his check. I haven’t looked at exactly how much was taken out, but I’m assuming it was at least a couple hundred for charity and dues.
We brought in $15,000, had expenses of $4,000 (mostly not including Christmas presents, because we had some of our Christmas budget saved) and paid off around $4,000 in debt. This left us with $7,000 saved for the month.
My estimate of value of our assets:
- House: $150,000
- Car: $13,000
- Cash/stocks: $21,000
Total Assets (before debts): $184,000
Assets of $184,000 minus debt of $143,000 equals a net worth of:
My net worth is positive! Is it sad to sad that I didn’t even realize that until now? I’ve been so afraid of how everything’s been going that I have been hiding it from myself. I’m not sure if this is a good amount for my age (22), but I’m pretty proud.
I remember some of you asking this before, yes my house is cheap, I know. I live in a city where housing is just really cheap (somewhere in the midwest). I promise my house isn’t a pile of bricks on the ground. You can get a pretty nice house where we live for around $100,000, cheap living! And I know that a lot of you live in areas where housing is super high, crazy!
My car hasn’t depreciated as much as most, thankfully. I estimated $13,000 because dealerships are currently selling it for around $16,000, so I thought that was a nice low number compared to the dealership (since I know you don’t always get that amount).
I don’t have a lot invested in the stock market, as I’m mainly just trying to pay off debt. I know most of you would say that I probably have too much in cash and that I should pay off more debt, but I like a nice big cushion and a nice emergency fund. When my checking/savings account dips too low, I tend to get really stressed, so I like a lot in there.
How is your net worth going? Any questions? Sorry if there are any miscalculations, it all seemed to work in my head.
Just realized that I forgot to add in the truck to our net worth. I’ve talked about it before, it’s a classic truck that we bought for either $4K or $4.5K (can’t remember) and now it’s worth around $18 to $20K, so in total our net worth is actually around:
$60,000
