by Tricia
Wow! April has been an awesome month for us. If we had months like April every month, we’d be debt free in no time. In all, we were able to pay down our credit card debt by $2,300.
Some of you may be wondering how April ended up being such a great month. Here are the unusual things that happened in April:
- My husband sold an expensive piece of old business equipment.
- I sold a year’s worth of advertising on here and received an upfront payment.
- I worked overtime for extra money.
Combine the above with the normal money we have been contributing on a monthly basis and we paid off our debt by $2,300. I am still amazed how everything added up. I want every month to be April!!
With that, our net worth now stands at ($27,616). As always, you can see the whole picture at my NetWorthIQ profile.
May should be a great month too if we get our economic stimulus payment as scheduled. But I’m not holding out for it. If we manage to have the money to bring our credit card debt under the $10K amount, I am going to do it the first chance we get 🙂
Just a little extra note that wasn’t enough to write a whole post on. My savings account actually decreased this month. A referral bounty I received for someone using one of my ING referral links was reversed out of my account ($10). I earned $5 in interest, so I had a loss of $5 for April.
That is great! Good job! Great example of how all those “little efforts” (taking the trouble to sell something, accruing overtime, bookkeeping on the side with the blog) really add up to something! That is one of the biggest lessons I have learned while reading this blog.
Congrats on a great month for debt reduction! I checked out the history on your networth IQ profile, and you have increased your overall networth from when you started by over 50%! Starting out at -55696 and now at -27,616. Amazing!
Amazing!
What amazes me is that the value of your car and house never change and that the value of your retirement account doesn’t seem to fluctuate with the market. If you don’t mind my asking, what model and year car do you have? I’d love to buy a car that doesn’t depreciate for two years!
Law Student – here’s some answers. I know we’ve discussed some of this before in the comments, but I’ll put here for everyone’s benefit and I’ll probably include a note in future Net Worth updates.
Value of Home – it was underestimated from the beginning. That is purchase price, which was below appraised value and below asking price. I do watch real estate in the area. Our area was not really involved in the housing boom, and this housing bust has not affected our area as much as in large cities. I see similar houses for sale, and the price is still in the ball park. I have no doubt that we would get that value if we sold right now because we have made improvements since we bought it. Of course, I don’t know for sure unless i pay for a professional appraisal so I keep it steady for my net worth. Unfortunately, I cannot use sites like zillow.com since my area is not represented.
Car – I underestimated again when I first entered the car value. It was closer to $6,000 but I put it at $5,000 to keep it simple and so I didn’t have to check the value all of the time. I checked before posting this month, but I checked again right now to get the exact value. From kbb.com, the private party value of my car is $5,040. So, it did depreciate some over two years. But not much. It consistently gets over 30 mpg (closer to 40 hwy) so I’m pretty sure that has something to do with it.
Retirement – No, I don’t show fluctuations at all with my retirement account. I do get quarterly statements, but I do not look at them in great depth. Probably not the best thing to do, but I do not want to see that it is decreasing in value. I know it’s in the ballpark, but I do not want to see specifics. I will remove it from my Net Worth so it has no affect either way. Right now I’m not heavily saving anyways. When I shift more into retirement mode I will need to force myself to actively watch the balances. Right now I’m not sure I could stomach it.
Our net worth as a whole is understated. I chose to take out personal assets a while ago and of course there is some value there. But, I’d rather underestimate than overestimate since there is no way to have an exact figure.
You shouldn’t remove your retirement savings from your net worth. It’s a big accomplishment to be able to save something for retirement and it will be worth at least that by the time you withdraw it (probably much more). I really asked about the car because I just wanted to know. We have a gas-sipping car but even so, it has decreased in value tremendously over the past year, perhaps in part because a lot of desperate families are offloading second cars to try to preserve more cash for monthly living. I also wouldn’t obsess about your house month to month, unless you are planning to sell it.
Congrats on the big increase! What do you categorize as Other?
SavingDiva – The Other section is where I put my savings account. Normally, it would be with the rest of the cash, but I wanted to see it separately.
Great progress last month!!! I like that net worth site, too. I just started there. Like you, I’m mainly going to track debt reduction. I don’t think it’s that important to update car and retirement accounts all that often, either. I look at ours once or twice a year at most, but maybe I could start looking more frequently. Either way, the retirement money will not be touched for decades, but it still counts.
Congratulations on a great month Tricia!
You are an inspiration. I too am doing what I can to get out of debt(non-mortgage). The majority of mine resides in student loans ($25K) which I plan on paying off in 2 years.
Good luck in growing that net worth 🙂