May 2017 – $113,412.39 – Net Worth Update (+$13,485.08)6 min read

I know we are about halfway through the month, but here's my net worth update. Better late than never!

May marked a big turnaround for our net worth growth! We had some big things go on! Can't wait to share it with you! But first...

Fun things we did in May

May turned out to be a busy month. We got to see our nephew take his first communion and refinance our home to improve our mortgage. Evelyn was registered for school and both girls had their 5 and 3 year appointments where Evelyn ended up having to get 2 shots. We took a family vacation trip up to the Wisconsin Dells for a few days with another family (our cousins). We did a bit of hiking and even got to visit the Morton Arboretum for a special origami exhibit. All in all, it was a lot of traveling and we had a blast doing it all!

Why I post my net worth updates publicly

If this is the first time you've stumbled upon my monthly net worth reports, I would like to explain why I choose to write them.

First, I love the accountability they force on me about handling my finances. I'm posting to be transparent and to really try to explain what happened over the last month that moved the needle for our family.

Second, I'm hoping to inspire and motivate others to reach to make their financial future better. I wanted to show that our journey is not all straight up success with no bumps in the road. Everyone has setbacks, but we can't let that get us down! We have to keep pressing forward!

What Happened to Our Net Worth This Month?

Boom! Things seemed to nose dive this month, didn't they? Well, It's actually quite simple. We've been looking to replace our roof for the last three to four months and this is the month that it finally took it's hit on our net worth. We ended up paying $8,200 for the replacement and we're very happy with the results of the roof. If we hadn't done the roof, we would've ended up with about a $1,000 upwards tick, so we will have to see how it goes for the rest of the year.

Net Worth - May 2017

 Assets

• Home Value - $174,000 - Talking with the mortgage company through our refinance, they are saying that our home is now worth this amount and didn't require an appraisal to refinance our loan. I'm now going to be using this number to go forward. I know that it will fluctuate, but this is the most reliable number I've come to sine August 2014 when we had last refinanced.

The nice thing about this refinance was that we have actually shortened the term of our mortgage and lowered our interest rate. On top of that, we actually got to skip a payment for May, allowing us to put the entire payment into our emergency savings.

• Work Roth 403b -  The account continues to grow at a nice rate with. We put the most of our contributions in here and are enjoying the ride this year!
• Traditional and Roth IRA's - Nice bit of growth this month as we are letting the market do it's magic!
• Auto Value - It goes up, it goes down... just cars doing their normal thing here...
• Cash Money - Our cash was up quite a bit this month due to how our paychecks fell. Here's how our bigger expenses played out:
  • Sinking Funds took an $1,730 hit. We went on vacation (~$335) , bought running shoes ($160) and were over $500 in medical along with other things.
  • Groceries were pretty good this month. We spent $702 of which $124 was eating out. That's a nice decrease from last month. We ended up $77 over budget. 
  • Medical came in at $510 this month. We've started putting $50 a month into our sinking fund to help offset some of these costs. I think this should be the last of the bigger health bills this year. We were paying off a bigger surgery that my wife had earlier on. I'm hoping to get ahead and start building up a positive account to cushion these blows in the future so we don't have to keep pulling from our emergency fund to cover the costs. 
• Emergency Fund Savings - We added over $2,500 to this fund this month. The money was from extra money we have in the budget as well as not having to make a mortgage payment this month. We only made $9.26 in interest this month due to the lower balance. We will be working hard to start growing this account to replenish it.

Liabilities

Home Mortgage - We were able to get the refinance done and this is our transition month. We didn't have a payment this month and rolled all the closing costs into the new mortgage. So, we ended up losing over $5,600 on our balance for now. But, with the new mortgage, we will go from paying around $427 in principal per month to over $600! Our next payment will be the first time that we will pay more on principal than interest! Looking forward to getting it down a lot faster and building more equity as we move forward! Overall, our payment went up about $65 a month, but it gets the mortgage down to a 15 year mortgage, which was worth it for us. 

YTD Net Worth Growth

January 1st, 2017 : $102,049.03

June 1st, 2017 : $113,412.39

Total Growth YTD : $11,363.36 (11.16%)

Last Year's Growth: $18,336.16 (21.88%)

Take Away for the Month

May was an amazing month due to the new home value and market growth on our investments. We have a ways to go, but, I believe that we are making good decisions and are going to reap the benefits as we continue to play them out.

How did your May go?