Investments down= a decrease in net worth. Hopefully we can get our savings rate up now that I have a full time job!
October 2021 Net Worth
September 2021 Net Worth
In August we relocated to the West coast and were compensated some for it. That compensation we moved to savings. I think we will probably invest it but as always I’m worried the market is at an all time high. I did invest the college 3 fund. It was previously in a 2.5% CD that expired last month so I decide to just throw it into an index fund. I am working on getting my income up and we are going to re-evaluate our budget sometime this month.
June 2021 Net Worth
The stock market has been very sluggish over the past month. Our increase in net worth is solely from CD interest and saving. We have a CD expiring this month $3,000 at 3.5% we will roll into a $3,000 at 3% CD. I was hoping there would be a CD rate special at Navy Federal but looks like they are running a new promotion (see below) we took advantage of this on both of our accounts so we should be getting an extra $60 back.
May 2021 Net Worth
We bought a new truck in April so that has impacted our net worth.
WE took $6,000 from the Boat fund and maxed out my husbands new Roth IRA out for the year.
April 2021 Net Worth
Corona Stocks a year later
The stocks have done very well a year out. I wish I would have purchased more though but I am glad I bought what I did! I went in the end of February with two $300 purchases and then the market continued to decline so I change the increments to $100 and just made them more often. Timing the market is pretty much all luck there is no way to really know where the bottom is or the top. I feel like this experience has better prepared me for the next drop in the market. There is a lot of emotions tied to purchases and/or sales during a down market and learning to ride the wave is important if you want to be a long term successful investor.
Random Ranting
People say it’s only a dollar or it’s only 5 dollars that’s nothing. Well, a dollar bill or a 5-dollar bill isn’t much but when you add them all together, they can equal hundreds of thousands of dollars. I find that mind set plays a huge roll in whether or not someone is a saver or a spender. I hold a high value on all money not just what most people consider a lot of money. I have always been pretty thrifty but I think the older I get the more creative ways I am finding to make a little money go a long way.
Recently we had visitors over and we were ordering pizza. I was trying to use a $5 promo code but it wasn’t working. I was a bit annoyed but my guest was like it’s only 5-dollars. I said 5-dollars takes me 30 minutes after taxes to make and I think it is a lot of money. My guest makes $8.75 an hour so how can $5 be nothing? I can’t even grasp this concept. I am some how the odd man out though always have been. If this subject interest you check out this blog post by Mr. Money Mustache https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/08/01/a-millionaire-is-made-ten-bucks-at-a-time/
The saver’s mind apparently strains relationships. My sister is complaining to my dad that I don’t even wash my hair because I’m too cheap to buy shampoo blah blah blah. I have like 6 bottles of shampoo and conditioner in my bathroom at this moment in time. I didn’t stop washing my hair with shampoo because I’m too cheap to purchase it. How close minded can people be especially when I explained why I was trying this no shampoo method. After my conversation with her about the shampoo she took me off her YouTubeTV account which of course didn’t cost her any extra but she just hated that she was helping my thrifty ways.
Wow I’m really on a roll…
Is anyone else concerned with how much money our country keeps printing? I had a customer this past Saturday stop in and we chatted about our concerns for our national debt. I’ve actually had this conversation with several customers and I never bring it up.
March 2021 Net Worth
Our net worth is up $9,535.98. We started budgeting in January 2021 and we had $546.78 rollover from February that we added to the House/Land Fund for a total of $1,957.95 saved in just that fund. Stock market went up overall this month but I am planning for a major correction coming this year. We will invest like we normally do but if a crash happens we will consider investing a chunk of money (max $10k). It’s very hard to invest when everybody is scared but that is usually the best time to get in the market.
February 2021
We saved about 39% of our take home income! Pretty good savings month but not a good stock market month. We started a strict budget in January and so for it is working out. The main thing we cut back on is eating out we use to spend several hundred a month and we now have a strict budget of $100.
I applied for the Fidelity rewards card back in Nov/Dec. I get 2% on all my purchases I auto redeemed it to my roth account but have decided to switch it to our regular (non-retirement) brokerage account which we haven’t invested in, in years. I am trying to switch gears some and start investing in our taxable account so we can have access to it before we are 59.5 years old.
