I worked too hard in February to move backwards, but that's exactly what happened. It was a pretty brutal month for us. There were tons of irregular expenses like the flat tire that couldn't be fixed and had to be replaced, the 6 month car insurance payment, and my wife going get new contacts only to find that although she had been added to all my other insurance plans, she somehow got missed on the vision insurance and wasn't covered. Then, of course, the thing that really hurt was the b...

The year has started out well for us, thanks in part to some extra money I received for some overtime work I had done in December. As I had mentioned in the Year End Review, one of the first things we wanted to do this year was get our "emergency savings" in Emigrant Direct account up to $1,000. As you can see, we were able to complete that. The next thing we wanted to do was to accelerate the payment of my wife's car loan. Again, we were able to make some good progress there by paying...

We have had a very similar rate of growth over the last 4 months. The extra spending and tuition costs of December were made up for by a Christmas bonus that I received. If we continued to average a net worth increase of about $2500 a month, it would take nearly 32 years to reach a million dollars, so it's definitely something we want to increase, but with time and compounding, that shouldn't be a problem. As we had hoped, we were able to finish the year with a net worth of over $45k. ...

November was another positive month for us with our largest increase since March. We saw gains in every single category, which is always nice. The market's strong performance has provided a nice boost. We hope to hit a net worth of $45,000 by year's end, but that won't be easy with the increased expenses coming in December including Christmas and my wife's Spring semester tuition bill.

October was another good month similar to September with a 6% increase in net worth. We crossed a new milestone as our net worth passed $40k for the first time! It has been eight months since we passed the $30k mark back in February, and we also purchased a home in that time. Now it's on to $50K.

September turned out to be a pretty decent month with gains nearly across the board.

I'm a bit late in posting the numbers for August, but here they are. We managed a small gain for the month although as you can see we spent more of the money in our banks than we put in. Most of this was due to tuition and associated expenses ($225 for one book !?!). (more…)

Although I was worried for much of the month that we weren't going to, (more…)

Another way I like to keep track of my net worth growth is through the use of this asset chart (click the image to enlarge). It shows the progress of my assets since January of 2004. Each color represents a different asset, and it helps me visualize both the overall picture and the effect of individual months.