December 2017 – $129,092.91 – Net Worth Update (+$9,171.86)6 min read

December gave us a chance to really finish off the year strong. I hope you were able to really enjoy the holidays. Now that we've rung in the new year and have opened all the presents, it's time to look at how we finished 2017 and look forward to 2018!

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 really explain what happened over our month that helped move the needle for our family.

Second, I'm hoping to inspire and motivate others 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?

Wow, what a ride the past couple of months have been! Stocks grew, cash grew, even vehicle value grew for some odd reason. The only thing that declined was our emergency savings, but our cash should more than make up for that!

Net Worth - December 2017

 Assets

Home Value

$174,000 - This is the number that I'll most likely be sticking with for the short term future. It seems to be a solid number, although Zillow is throwing a bigger number out there currently. I know that many others have said that Zillow seems to move around too much to be so accurate, but I'm going to stay conservative for now! Zillow is now showing that my home is worth as $189,795, but it changes all the time, so I'm holding back on that.

Work Roth 403b

The account continues to grow at a nice rate. I love that in less than two years, we've already accumulated over $15,000 in this account, all because of payroll deductions! It's so powerful and we don't even really miss the money!

Traditional and Roth IRA's

It's crazy seeing our IRA's growing by about as much as our 403b here. Especially considering that we don't even contribute but $45 a month to it! Lots of growth here.

Kids Brokerage

This category is a newcomer to this issue of our net worth reports. We had been saving money that the girls have received into a basic savings account, but we finally pulled the trigger and closed those accounts and moved the money into a brokerage account through Stockpile. I met these guys at FinCon. With only $0.99 trades, we were easily able to put our full balances of the accounts to work in each of the girls accounts. I put it into VTI to diversify and just be the market. So far, since starting, the account is up over 4.00%, way better than the interest rate I was getting from the savings account. If you'd like to try them out, click the picture below and I can gift you $5 just for getting started!

Brokerage Account

Our only individual stocks have eeked out a small gain over the past couple months. That's ok, we are still long them and they've had a decent year, finishing up 14% for the year. Although, I'd have liked to see better gains for single stocks, I'll take the growth here.

Auto Value

It goes up, it goes down... just cars doing their normal thing here... I don't get the part where my used cars are worth more this month, but they even out over time.

Cash Money

We spent and spent this month, it looks like. Here's how our bigger expenses played out:

• Sinking Funds only took an $747 hit! Great month! The big things that happened were Christmas spending and medical bills.
• Groceries were a little high this month at $662 of our $625 budget. Of that, $195 of it was from fast food and eating out.
• Medical came in at $322 this month. Ouch! Currently, we put $50 a month away for this to help offset the costs.

Emergency Fund Savings

We haven't put the extra paycheck into our emergency fund yet due to the way that paychecks and bills have been hitting. We plan to get to it soon though, hopefully in January. Currently, we are just sitting one paycheck ahead in our main account. We are currently 57.1% funded back towards our 6 month emergency fund. Getting this funded in 2018 is going to be a big goal.

Liabilities

Our only liability that we have left is our home mortgage. All student loans, cars, and consumer debt have been paid off. Working to pay down the mortgage, we continue to refinance to shorten the term and lower the interest rate when possible to keep our payment the same. We are a little high on our monthly percentage for housing, roughly 33% of take home pay. This is one reason we're finding it harder to get to the 15% savings towards retirement. Through pay raises, we'll lower that percentage and build back up to get away from it being that high in the future. And, we always have the option to refinance back up to a longer term in the future if things get hairy as well.

Home Mortgage

Boom! Another couple payments down and we socked another $1,200+ away off our principal! We are paying off over $200 more than before we refinanced, although we won't break even until February 2018. However, we are less than 15 years away from paying off our mortgage now!

YTD Net Worth Growth

January 1st, 2017 : $102,049.03

January 1st, 2018 : $129,092.91

Total Growth YTD : $27,043.88 (26.50%)

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

Take Away for the Month

2017 shaped up to be an amazing year. We had a spectacular stock market ride that have completely inflated our portfolios. We have paid off more of our mortgage than ever before due to refinancing and being able to have more out of every payment go to principal. I wish we could have ended on a bit of a higher emergency fund balance, but we are still in a good place there. 2018 should bring much more growth and if it's anything like 2017, many more memories!