April 2016 Update

April was kind of a shitty month, financially speaking. I was hoping to reach the 50k milestone by month's end. However, I found that I owed taxes and that offset the positive growth of my assets and I basically played catch up. So, my net worth is:

$49,501.

The amount of taxes I owed was $3,440. Plus, I had to pay for the online software. Also, this month, I bought a few things from Amazon that added up to a couple hundred dollars of needless expenses. Yes, I still wrestle with the urge to make an impulse purchase or two. I've gotten a lot better at resisting the temptations, but there are some occasions when I give in. In addition to the aforementioned expenses, I had to pay tag renewal fees for three vehicles that are in my name, which set me back about $184.

Looking forward, I don't foresee any bills from the tax man or local government offices. So, I hope to watch the numbers grow steadily.

I mentioned in another post that I keep several spreadsheets. One of these is my actual budget. Another is a copy of this budget, but with projected expenses/savings so I can gauge what my savings might look like down the road. I'm more interested in the amount of savings than I am in the expenses because I feel that I've got my spending more or less under control. Sure, there are rare events you can't predict, and that's the reason for having an emergency fund (it allowed me to pay my tax bill and not be in a bind). According to my projected net worth for this month, I should have reached $50,595. As you can see, I didn't reach that goal this month.

Also, since I used my emergency fund and brought down the balance, I will focus on building it back up before I start throwing money into my brokerage account. All of this is reflected in my "scratch" budget spreadsheet (Did I mention how addictive it is to play around with these numbers?)

Now, here is a screenshot of my net worth from Personal Capital, which, unlike Mint.com, reports only my savings and investment accounts with any interest/capital gains/losses.

As far as the outlook goes: I've plugged numbers into my "projection" spreadsheet for both of my high-yield savings accounts. I plan to put $500 into Ally and $1,600 in American Express each month until the end of the year, bringing Ally to a balance of $7,300 and Am Ex to $21,830 (not counting any interest). This should bring my emergency fund(s) to a nice healthy balance that will allow me to focus strictly on the investment accounts. If I can adhere to this strategy, according to my projection spreadsheet, my net worth should reach 77k by year's end. Of course, we'll see how that turns out when I post my annual net worth in January 2017.

Also, keep in mind that while I'm not putting money into my brokerage account, I still have money flowing into my 401k each pay period. Also, the numbers shown currently don't reflect my latest contribution because it has not yet posted to the website. So, technically, I probably did break the 50k mark, but I'm not concerned with technicalities, just hard numbers.