A small, but upward tick on the chart for this month! Got to keep that line moving!
Can you believe that nine months have already flown by this year? That's crazy! It's going by so fast! Well, September is the month of my birthday. We did a little partying as a family as we got to go to the Sandwich Fair over that weekend, as we normally do. All in all, it was a great weekend birthday that I got to relax and enjoy time with family.
This month was the first month that we actually had to live on my wife's income by itself since I quit my job to become a stay-at-home dad full time. We mainly took a hit on our vehicle value this month since I finally got around to updating the mileage on Mint.com. We didn't quite hit the $100,000 mark yet. We will try again next month!
I don't know that I've shared why I do these updates before. I share them for a couple of reasons.
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
September has been a slog of a month for us financially. We have seen modest growth, if any with our investments besides our contributions. Our biggest hit came when I finally updated our mileage on our car values, which cut our net worth growth almost in half (doh!). We saw cash grow a little this month and were able to inch a little closer to finishing up that emergency fund. My wife and I got a few date nights in this month and she took my older daughter on a trip to see her brother out in Virginia for a few days. So I got to hang with daughter #2 and get some great one on one time.
Net Worth - September 2016
This is the how our different financial instruments performed from August 2016 through September 2016.
Assets
- Home Value - $160,000 - Holding on to this number since our appraisal was done before our refinance (August 2014). Cleaning has been pretty consistent. Did one small repair this month, had four window screens redone. Set us back $112, but has been nice to open the windows without the bugs coming in.
- 401k - Contribution growth was the bulk of our growth here this month. Just gotta keep pluggin' away and will be upping our contribution rate another percent in January most likely.
- IRA - This account actually didn't grow this month when you factor the $100 contribution in. We started putting $100 a month into a DRIP plan to grow that account on the side. That's ok, we are in for the long haul.
- HSA - We no longer have the same insurance, so this account will be fizzling out as medical expenses come up. Insurance is all switched over. Daughter #2 has been seeing the chiropractor so that we can try to put off the ear infections and having to put tubes in ears. So far, it's been much cheaper and effective.
- Auto Value - UGH! Another $620+ chipped off our value here. I actually updated the mileage this month, so we are getting a big drop this month.
- Cash Money - Up just a little bit. We will probably be seeing a dip next month as our auto insurance sinking fund will be getting depleted as we make our yearly purchase for auto insurance. But, that's why we build it up all year.
- Savings - We chunked our extra money for the month at growing our savings up. We are now withing $250 of completing it. I'm hoping we will be able to finish it off in October.
Liabilities
Home Mortgage - We keep seeing small chunks eat into this mortgage. We continue to just make the minimum payments, but with only having a 20 year mortgage, this moves down pretty quickly. This past month, our principal just topped $415! When we started, this number was only about $380, so that's extra money going towards our mortgage each month! I love seeing the principle grow each month to take out bigger chunks or our mortgage. Looking forward to the day we get to start putting extra money away towards this paying it down even faster.
Take Away for the Month
This month showed us that we will be able to make it quite easily on my wife's income alone. It was nice seeing the numbers play out in a real month and see our planning pay off! If we could get the car to stop bleeding, we might be able to get over $100,000 next month, LOL!
How did your September pan out?
Here are some of our articles that we wrote throughout September in case you missed them.
- 7 Reasons You Shouldn't Loan Money To Friends & Family. Plus 3 Ways to Say No Without Ruining The Relationship
- Improve Your Finances With These 5 Actions
- Inspiring Your Kids To Be More Financially Responsible
- Losing Weight By Getting Healthy While Saving Money - Guest Post By Krista Barrack of FromFat2That
- Financial Tips For Young Money Managers
- Financial Goal Planning: 5 Ways To Stay Persistent - I got to guest post over at GetConnectDad, a great site where over 150 authors are writing on 52 traits we want to see in our kids.
- 5 Ways To Increase Financial Communication Between Spouses - My first guest post I got to do over at The Good Men Project.
Are you ready to finally take control of your finances? Let my budgeting spreadsheets help!
Just fill out the form below and I'll send you the link to get the same exact budgeting spreadsheets that I use each month!
Included in the workbook:
- Monthly budget form
- Breakdown of savings form (for your sinking funds)
- Overview of your financial plan
I've been using these same forms since August 2011 and have grown my family's net worth 500% tracking our money using these forms!
Steven Goodwin
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Thanks for sharing! I was just looking at my mint.com and was pretty disappointed. I forgot about a few purchases – mainly I bought a ticket to fincon next year since the rate was so low. I cancelled a vacation that I had been saving up for so it evens out.
Tia,
Happy to share! I love Mint.com! How often do you check your purchases and categorize everything? I, personally try to do it once a week to once every two weeks when we get paid. Glad to hear you bought your FinCon ticket! I bought mine too! The price goes up in a couple more days! Good for you for balancing your time out by cancelling the other vacation! What made you pull the trigger?
Steven Goodwin recently posted…Improve Your Finances With These 5 Actions
Great work Steve, pretty cool that your are able to be a stay at home dad and continue you build your wealth. I didn’t know you can enter vehicle specific info into mint.com. Going to have to check that out, I just put a guessed value in. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! Yeah, I think they brought that feature out a couple years ago. It uses kbb.com to give your value and you can track it based off your mileage you put in!
The stay at home bit is a lot of fun. Before taking the position, my wife actually got a nice bump in her pay so that we could get closer to our goal. With dropping daycare and the ability to cut a few other expenses because of working, we were able to make the jump without sacrificing our plans!
Steven Goodwin recently posted…Why You Shouldn’t Loan Money To Friends and Family
Thanks for being so open with your finances – it is really helpful to see a specific personal perspective. It looks like you’ve been doing really well to me – and congratulations on becoming a stay at home dad, you’re going to have a lot of fun 🙂
Francesca, thanks for coming by and taking the time to read and comment! Glad you found it helpful! I hope to have more good months than bad ;)! We have been working hard since late 2011 and it’s starting to pay off! I have been loving being a stay at home dad the past couple months and it’s really allowed me to focus on spending quality time with my kiddos plus focus my creative side on building more content here on my site!