May 2016 Update

I try to post monthly updates on the first day of the following month, but this one is being posted on the actual last day of May. Oh well, close enough, right? I was eager to post my progress report, so here we go. As of today, my net worth is:

$52,816.

I finally crossed the 50k threshold, which feels good. That's one milestone out of the way.

Overall, I think I did okay this month despite having to pay for repairs on my car. According to my spreadsheet, I've socked away $2,537.53. This doesn't take into account my 401k contribution from my latest paycheck, which was deposited last Thursday because we were off on Friday due to the coming holiday. With it being Memorial Day weekend, the contribution hasn't shown up yet. It usually takes about 3 days, so I expect to see it tomorrow. On 5/13, I bumped my contribution amount from 18% to 19%, so there should be a little bump in the numbers coming. Every little bit I can squirrel away feels good.

Aside from my 401k, I haven't put any money into my investment accounts. Instead, I've focused solely on building up my cash reserves after they took a hit last month from paying taxes. I'll continue to do that until close to the end of the year (according to what I've forecasted based on my projection spreadsheet).

I mentioned having repair work done on my car. It went to the mechanic twice, for a combined total of $245.69. Now that I've got my car taken care of, I have to take my son's and daughter's cars to the mechanic to have some work done. My son's car is there now and I expect to get it back tomorrow. Then I'll take my daughter's car. It'll be nice when they're both gainfully employed and can take over maintenance costs and insurance for themselves. That'll be more money I can put into my investments.

Hopefully, once the car maintenance is out of the way, I won't have any pricey expenses that I haven't accounted for. Whoops! Except for a bill for a plumber. I just remembered I need to have a rusty section of pipe replaced coming out of our water heater. I don't expect it'll be more than $150 or $200, so I need to bite the bullet and get it done.

Here's a screenshot of my net worth from Personal Capital.

Looking back through my (spotty) historical budgets, and my checkbook ledger, it seems like the first part of the year is the worst for me when it comes to bills and fees. Once I get past May things usually seem to level out for the most part. I don't know why that is, but that's just been the natural cycle from what I can tell.

I believe I'm still on track to reach mid-70k by the end of the year. We'll just have to take it one month at a time and see how the numbers shape up. So far, so good.