6-Month Net Worth Update – October to April

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here about how we’re doing, so I figured it’s about time to deliver a net worth update! There hasn’t been too much excitement going on. In fact, April was quite the downer due to a nice little $850 car repair bill, $400 to register our cars in Texas (it was $60 in Arkansas…c’mon guys, not EVERYTHING has to be bigger here, jerks), and trying to figure stuff out in our new apartment. We basically had to restock the entire kitchen with food and we went a little overboard.

But overall, we’ve made some nice progress since we first started our journey of being adults. So instead of going through all the financial garbage we’ve had to deal with over the past month, here’s a run down of where we were six months ago compared to where we are right now. It makes me feel a little less depressed this way…

Assets

The cash is a little frustrating right now because we had so much more at the beginning of this month, but it’s good to know that we’re hoarding it for times like that. I’d love to see that number keep going up every month, and I’m actually really impatient about it, like anxiety impatient. But I’m learning to be work on that 🙂

As far as the emergency fund goes, I think I’m going to actually turn that into an income tax savings account. My brother works for an accounting firm and had his CPA friend run through the numbers with me, and I’m going to have a lot more tax liability this year than I thought with my new side hustle income. So I don’t want to be stuck owing the government a few grand that I don’t have. That happened a couple of years ago after my first experience as a 1099 employee and I’m pretty sure my wife was plotting my death.

The IRA has been performing alright, but not nearly as well as I want, but we haven’t been putting any money into it in the last 6 months, so I guess I can’t expect too much. The thing I am excited about, though, is the Roth 401(k) I have at my new job. The total contribution is 13.5%, but I’m only putting 6% in, so that’s pretty awesome! I expect that baby to keep growing fast, and hopefully once all the crazy stuff calms down, we can start contributing to the IRA again.

But an increase in $2,118.05, more than half of that in savings, has been nice, especially because we were basically living paycheck to paycheck before that.

Liabilities

Now for the lame part. Our debt! I hate debt. I hate it so much. So we’ve been trying to put as much toward our debt as we can without going overboard and leaving us with no safety net. We no longer owe my dad any money, and we are hoping to pay off my wife’s parents completely in the next few months. We also paid off the computer loan in full because once I left the bank I was working at, my 0% APR loan turned into a 10% APR loan. If I had just paid the regular payments, we would have only paid $15 total over the course of the rest of the loan, but I hated that bank, so I’ve done all I can to cut all ties.

As far as the credit cards go, I want to make clear again that we never hold a balance on our cards. That’s simply the balance at the end of the month. The GOOD news is that 6 months ago, I was having to time payments on our cards so that we didn’t go negative in our bank accounts (which is why the balance was so big at the end of October). Now I just make payments throughout the month, making it a lot easier on the soul.

So this is where it gets to the sexy part. In the last 6 months, we’ve gotten rid of $5,162.67 of debt! Now that’s nothing compared to some of those rockstars out there like Stephanie over at Six Figures Under, but with our income being so skiwampus over that time with me earning so little, then being without a job for a couple of weeks, then starting the new job and dealing with the move, then Kilee quitting her job to come down to Texas with me…needless to say we’re pleased with it 🙂

Thoughts

One difference to note is that in October, I originally had our two cars listed in the assets. Since then, I’ve decided that it’s useless to do that because I really have no idea what they’re actually worth if I were to try to sell them. So instead of wasting my time dealing with that, I just took them out.

As a whole, we could definitely be better, but we’ve tried to be extreme about saving and paying off debt in the past and it just hasn’t worked for us. We tend to just freak out and binge when we’re putting too much pressure on what we can and can’t do. We feel like we’ve found a nice balance and we’re constantly course-correcting each month when we go over budgets. My goal is still to be in the positive space by the end of the year, and I still think we can do that if we don’t go off the deep end.

How are you guys doing with paying off debt? Do you have a plan? Or are you just winging it?