This month’s net worth

Ah, the first of the month. Also know as Spreadsheet Day in the Fecundity household. You can see the results on my January NetworthIQ entry.

We were supposed to be having a party with all of my mom’s relatives today in celebration of my Gran’s 90th birthday; however the foot of snow we’ve been socked with put a damper on said family’s travelling plans. Downside: I’ll only get to see my almost 3-year-old Australian niece briefly for lunch tomorrow instead of for an entire evening and morning. Upside: We’ll save the $300+ that dinner, a hotel and a fancy brunch was going to cost. I’ll subtract what lunch tomorrow costs us from $300, and send it to the student loan.

The highlights...

Assets:

• The Emergency Fund is up significantly. We should be able to get this to $5000 by June without problems.
• Cash is up due to generous Christmas cheques from our families.
• Retirement funds are up slightly, mostly due to contributions rather than growth.
• Stocks slipped a bit further.
  

Debts:

• The credit card is up due to pre-Christmas spending. As always, the balance will be paid in full before the due date.
• Hubby’s remaining student loan is down significantly. We’re well on our way to paying it down by $5000 by Baby Day.

Current Net Worth:

$10,084.30

So, we made the goal of $10,000 by January 1st. Just. Yay!

Clearly the flaw in calculating net worth for short-term goals is that you can’t account for market fluctuations. But, since short-term goals are merely surrogates for desired long-term outcomes, and were're definitely moving in the right direction, I’ll live with it.

Happy New Year everyone. All the best for all of your goals of 2008!

This month’s net worth

Okay. Time to crack out the statements and spreadsheets and figure out where all our money is. You can see all the numerical figures on my NetworthIQ profile for December 2007.

As for the highlights and excuses...

Assets:

• The emergency fund is down, since I used much of it to get rid of Hubby’s obnoxious PSL.
• Cash on hand is up a bit since a couple of our utility bills didn’t clear until after month end.
• We contributed $300 to our RRSPs, though most of that was negated by the market downturn. It'll go back up eventually.
• My stocks are also down a bit for the same reason.
  

Debts:

• Hubby’s PSL is gone, finished, zip, nada, nothing. My student loan is down to $27.25. I still have to call them to see how to close it out properly. We sent $814 to Hubby’s CSL in November.
• Because we pay our mortgage biweekly, it received 3 payments last month, and so decreased by $841.
• The credit card spending is down. Note that we pay the full balance every month on this, so even though I’ve listed it as a debt (which it is), we’re not paying interest.

Current net worth:

$8,370.11

All in all it was a very productive month. Two student loans are (practically) gone. An extra payment went to the mortgage. We spent less. Not bad at all. Too bad I can’t get paid three time every month.

We're on track to reach my net worth goal of $10,000 by year-end.

An overview of our financial goals

The current situation: My husband and I are in our early thirties. We own a modest home with a fairly low interest rate mortgage (5.3%), which will need to be refinanced in about 3.5 years. We have no consumer debt, apart from two credit cards (one with each of us as the primary) which are fully paid off every month. I have a small student loan on which I’m currently paying the minimum. My husband has a larger student loan which is due to start being repaid this month. I have a small investment account. We both have RRSPs started, but there is plenty of unused contribution room. We have $5000 saved up in case of emergency in a high-yield savings account, along with $2000 in another account which was originally going to be spent on buying me a nice ring for our tenth anniversary, but which I think will be better spent getting ready for the baby. I’m ever the pragmatist.

(Let’s not discuss the TV for my husband which had already been paid for when the second line on the test turned pink, except to say that it’s big, it’s flat, it’s highly defined, and, yes, I’m enjoying watching it too. Hockey season has started. We’re suddenly very popular. Must be my glowing personality which has of course been enhanced by fatigue, morning sickness, and hormonal mood swings.)

Moving on...

Our combined gross income is just over $100,000 a year, though that's only been true for about 3 months. We’re in decent financial shape overall, but it could be better. We have the money to pay our bills, but I’ve occasionally forgotten to pay one for a month or two, which leads to embarrassing red letters in the mail, and no doubt a ding to the credit rating.

The desired future situation: We’ve paid off the student loans. We’ve maximized our RRSP contributions. We’ve increased our emergency funds to at least three months income. We’re paying off the mortgage early. We’re contributing $2000 a year to RESPs for our child(ren).

How do we get from here to there, you ask?

Excellent question.

Our net worth as of October 31st, 2007 is:

$2,996.00

Well, at least it’s positive. But I’d like it to get it much higher.

In order to do so, this month I’m making the following adjustments.
1) Learn to stay on top of the bills. No more forgetting to pay the hydro man. He gets cranky, charges insane ‘late payment’ fees, and threatens to make it very dark indeed.
2) $50 will automatically be sent to each of our RRSPs every two weeks. This won’t be enough to catch up, but it’ll get us started.
3) $100 will automatically be sent to the emergency fund (for the ole ‘my car and furnace broke down on the same day’ conundrums) once a month.
4) $100 will automatically be sent to the general savings account (for cribs and diapers and supplementing the parental leave) once a month.
5) I’ll increase payment on my student loan from $50 to $250 a month.
6) Payments will start on my husband’s student loan. Joy!

This will undoubtedly be a gradual process.

On a side note: I live in Canada. Most of the stuff I post on this blog will apply most directly to other Canadians, although people in other developed countries should find most things familiar.