SWB: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Coach - ECoaching - Email Coaching

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I'm going to be giving Yodlee a trial run to see how I like it.  It tracks your money and update charts, graphs, and your net worth for you. 

It's going to take a little while to get set up but it looks like it's going simplify things for me when I try to update all my information each week.  I should be able to do it from this one site instead of going around to all the different websites.

If you try it out, let me know what you think.

I haven't talked about my own finances for a while

I've been so caught up in the national economics that I haven't posted anything about our situation in quite some time.  Part of that is that much of it is business as usual.  I've gone over our plan enough that repeating much of it doesn't seem worthwhile.

Our net worth did flatten out a bit last month but it still went up.  I don't know how much it will go up in the next two months with the holidays headed our way.  We have several activities planned for the next couple of months that will cost us money.  We'll be using cash of course but that's cash that won't be put toward debt.

The van should be paid off this month.  That's pretty cool.  Once it is, we're going to take a break from the speedy payoff plan and enjoy December with the extra money.  January we are going to just be saving money because my wife is going to be quitting one of her jobs and we want to see how that will effect us.  In February we'll start paying off the car and should have it paid off within a few months.

That just leaves the house which we might sell before the market crashes out here.

Starting to look at August's Numbers

Well, I am mostly back among the living today.  I'm still restricted in how far I can stray from the bathroom but I can at least sit and type for a bit.  I did break the barrier briefly to make a run to get some of the pink stuff for me and some Pepperidge Farm Fish crackers for Trey.  Two things that we should just always have on hand.

It's the first of the month and that means that it's time to start looking at some numbers. 

The holiday weekend seems to have delayed the processing of all three of our payments on our debts.  Whose idea was it to have them all due on the 1st of the month, anyway?  Haven't these people every heard of spreading them out a bit over the month?

It caused a leveling off effect for our net worth.  It still went up which is nice but it should be up higher.  More importantly, our debt should be lower.  They probably will be tomorrow but it won't show up on the net worth until next month.

The biggest changes for the month:

We have 6.27% less cash than we had last month.

We paid off 4.88% of our car loans.  That's not great but that's not bad considering the car payments haven't been applied yet. 

We have also been putting money toward a new computer.  We are splitting money between paying off the car, paying college tuition, and buying a computer.  I am going to try to increase the amount going into saving this month too.

I wouldn't recommend diluting your money like this until you are getting close to debt free.  The more money that you can put toward debt, the better. 

Net Worth for July

My net worth shot up in July because I added my wife's 401k for the first time and because the car was an asset and we paid down the van as much as possible.  It will probably revert back to it's normal climb from here. 

As useless as I think net worth is, it has been fun to track.  Here's a couple of the numbers for July:

We paid off .22% of the mortgage.  Woo hoo!  At this rate, it will take about 28 years to pay that off.  =)

We paid off 21.93% of the car loans.  That's pretty good for one month on two cars.  I think this was our last month of making that much progress until next summer.  It was good though and I can't complain.

When the two cars are paid off, we'll only have the mortgage left. 

At that point, instead of paying more on the house, we'll probably just start saving money.  We're going to sell this house so we'll just start saving instead.  We'll pay off our next house though as quickly as we can.  We talked about it on Monday and decided that it would be so much nicer to have the money in our pocket than to pay interest.  It's kind of dream for now but it's one that we can make come true.

My Net Worth and My Self Esteem Both Went Up

I went through my numbers this morning finally and things were better than I thought they would be.  It has been a couple of weeks since I checked all my accounts just because it's been kind of crazy.  Not that it really takes that long to go through all the accounts.  It just takes a little bit of focus which I have been lacking.  I'm trying to get back in the groove today but it won't last because we're going to the city tomorrow and probably again the next day.  Anytime we go to the city, whole days are completely used up.

Anyway, let's talk about the money.

We paid off the student loan last month.  Woo hoo!  Sallie Mae can kiss my Nike Swoosh (only Chronicle readers will get that).

We bought a car last month as well.  That didn't effect my net worth because the debt is backed by an asset (even though I don't personally consider cars assets - networthiq does).

Tomorrow's numbers will paint a different picture.

I always look forward to the first financial meeting of the month

I really do.  I get excited when it draws close.  What will the numbers show this time?  How much progress did we make in the month?  Can we do better next month?  I track our numbers on a spreadsheet and use networthIQ to see what's happening.

You can see the sharp decline at the end of last month and how sharp the decline was this last week.  The reason that it tends to dip sharper at the end of the month is because that's when we pay the car and house payments.  We pay Sallie Mae every week because it's like pouring salt on a leech.  The more the better to see we can stop her from sucking money from our life.

We have just about killed off the Sallie Mae bill and when the leech has been pulled from our banking account, we'll turn our attention to the car payment. 

There is no animosity toward the car payment other than somehow we ended up paying loan insurance for a while.  I believe we did that as a barter to get half the interest rate that we would have gotten if we had used the bank the car dealership steered us toward.  There's a definite lesson there.

May Went Pretty Much As Planned - Numbers

We always hope for more but this month just didn't go that way.  It doesn't hurt to hope but it went pretty much the way we thought it would.  Fixing up the yard, paying the taxes on the car, and Trey's birthday took some money away from our debt paying.

One thing that we have to take time to realize is that we do everything with cash so we really can't complain too much, especially when we paid off 61% of the student loan.  We are getting so close to having that dang thing paid off, we can taste it. 

In fact, we are going to have a bit of a celebratory dinner when it's paid off so we really can taste it.  I'm going to barbeque up some rib eyes and crab and we shall feast.  On cash, of course. 

Back to Net Worth and a Better Measure

We were talking about the value of net worth before we were so rudely interupted by the revelation that we will probably have to start paying tolls on roads soon.  It's seriously time that people start looking at alternatives to driving for hours to get to work. 

One thing that I liked when I lived in London (I didn't drive so it didn't really affect me) was that there was a part of the city where cars weren't allowed to go.  You had to take a bus, taxi, subway, or walk.  The sidewalks were wide.  Wide enough to make a two lane road for SMART cars. 

Erik, Jason, and I used to take the tube (subway) down into this area where there was a great comic book store.  We'd walk around and then take the tube home.  We never felt like we were being put out.  We went everywhere in London by tube and bus.  We went to school on the tube.  (My apologies if Bond Street isn't in that area.  It was over 20 years ago.)

When we took Trey on the light rail in Salt Lake City, it was free.  They have a section downtown where it doesn't cost anything to ride the train.  I had originally planned on parking downtown but the free train made is so we could park away a bit and ride in.  That was nice.  I don't know if it has cut down on traffic at all.  Probably not.  It's going to be hard to get Americans to part with their obsession with cars.

Like it's hard to get them to part with their obsession with debt.  =)

Moving Forward Even If It's In Little Bits

I started keeping track of our net worth at the beginning of the year but I felt that there was something missing.  I was trying to see the point of knowing my net worth.  I still do it because the website that I use does a graph and tells me the percentage change I made on everything.  You could just as easily do the same thing in a spreadsheet but since they have already set it up, I just keep using it.

The only reason that I have found for net worth is bragging rights.  There are very few people with public access to their net worth that are as low as mine.  Everyone else is worth hundreds of thousands or more.

What I found lacking was that my net worth didn't really mean a whole lot.  Most people are probaby in the hole as far as net worth goes.  We have made it to the positive side and that means what?  If I sold my car and house, I'd have a little bit of money left over.  Then where would I live and what would I drive?

So I started tracking something similar but with a twist.  I compare my debts versus my money assets.  I figure that when this number gets to zero, I could in theory cash out all my money resources and pay off all my debts.  I have a long way to go before that happens but we are making progress. 

For some reason, my computer does not want to upload the chart today.  I'll try again tomorrow and talk about how things are going for this month.

I just wanted to throw this idea out in case anyone else might find it curious or interesting for their own finances.

***

My computer did allow me to upload pictures of Trey's birthday.  Check out today's Chronicles post.

How about some more numbers?

Well, why not?

Last night I pulled all the numbers that we compile each week for our weekly meeting.  What do we have?  What do we owe?  How much progress did we make this week?  All that good stuff.

And then I plugged those numbers into networthiq for February since nothing is going to change between now and the first.  I was curious to see how we had done for the month.  Looking at the graph, we didn't do as well as we did in January.  I'm not sure why.  My wife and I are going to look at the two months tonight and see what we did differently.  Hopefully March will see us making more progress.

That said, the percentages on two of the debts were better than last month.  The car payment for the month doesn't show yet so that one looks worse.  In January we paid off 15.69% of the student.  In February we paid off 16.10%.  We actually paid a little less in actual money but it turns out to be a larger percentage.

Similarly with the house payment, the actual amount was exactly the same but in January we paid off .10% and in February we paid off .11%.  It's a miniscule difference but it is progress and it makes me wonder what we could do when the car and student loan are paid off.  How much can we raise that?  We'll find out within a year.  =)

Tomorrow: more on why I share the numbers.

I am almost worth something! =)

I figured up my networth again.  I can't believe a month has passed already.  I think this whole year is going to fly by for us.  A couple of our major goals are going to be achieved this year and each month brings us closer.

Anyway, I'm worth a -728 dollars.  I can see zero from here.  Next month we should be in the positive.  I don't know that it's such a great thing but I it is a step in the right direction.

Being debt free is far more important but this will be a milestone because it will probably be the first time in my life when I own more than I owe.  Not everyone can say that. 

We are slowly increasing what we have and rapidly decreasing what we owe.  The next milestone as far as comparing the two will be when we actually have enough that we could pay off all the debt if we wanted.  That's going to be a year or two down the road probably. 

After this year, the only thing we will owe on is the house and we have been talking about our game plan for paying that off.  We've decided to reward ourselves a little bit for how hard we've been working.

I'll explain that tomorrow.

What I track in addition to net worth

The net worth exercise was interesting and motivating and it's something that I'm going to update through the year out of curiosity.  I like exercises that build money awareness for people. 

All that being said, I don't know what tangible use the exercise had.  I don't know if net worth was created for bragging rights or if it had some other purpose but I do know that being worth zero isn't going to help me.  Supposedly at that point I could sell everything I own and pay off everything I owe.  That's not realistic though because then I wouldn't have a car or a house.  Having an adventurous 2 year old and living 120 miles from a hospital, you can understand why I'm reluctant to give up my car.

So I've been tracking my balancing point in a different way for the past little while.  I keep track of my assets minus my house and car and compare those to my debt.  This will show me when I'm in a position where I could liquidate my assets and pay off my debts and still have a house and a car.  This is more useful to me.  It's a far worse number.  Net worth: -$3,287.  Balancing point: -$148,354.95.

It's a worse number but is a more realistic reflection of what I need.

We are going to see how much we can change those numbers this year.  Our net worth should go above zero easily.  The balancing point will take longer to reach zero.  We are going to change it primarily by paying our debt down.  We'll continue to save and invest but most of the change will occur because of reduced debt.  By the time that number reaches zero, we'll probably be pretty close to debt free.

It will be a great financial step.

So how does it feel to be worth less than nothing?

I may not have been blogging here as much over the holidays but I was always looking into money matters.  I'll be sharing what I've been doing in the next few days.  At least the parts that I can remember.  The nice thing about this blog is that money is a daily part of life so there always seems to be something to say.

A few days ago I came across a site where you put in your assets and your debts and it tells you your net worth, http://www.networthiq.com/.  There is nothing very special about this since you could do the same thing on a spread sheet or with a pencil and paper.  The thing is, I hadn't done it so filling the information in on the site made me think about it.  The site will graph your progress each month.  Again, something that you could do with a spread sheet. 

I highly recommend that you do this whether you use the site or not.  The site does make it easy to share the information with others.  I'm not sure what the purpose of that would be.  I'll share mine to give you an idea of what the finished product looks like, http://www.networthiq.com/people/successwarrior/.

You can surf around to see how other people are doing.  I haven't done this much.  I surfed people in my pay range and found that most of them are in the positive, unlike me.  I think that's probably because people in the negative don't make their page public but that's just a guess.

One thing that I found out after checking the Blue Book on my car for this exercise was that I'm upside down on that loan.  I had that suspicion because our previous car broke down and we added that loan onto the loan for this car.  It's almost even though and this year we'll fix that little problem.  It really bites to owe more than something is worth.

I set my networth page to remind me to update each month and I'm going to track my progress for the year.  My goal is to be worth something.  =)