$104,120
Last month, I was at $100,245. A difference of $3,875; all of it due to my contributions alone since the market was volatile. When I took the screenshot yesterday, the market was down and it's disheartening when that happens. But, hey, it's the nature of the beast.
Despite the loss(es), I still had a pretty good month. I received a bonus check for $1,490 that I wasn't sure I qualified for. I deposited every bit into my HYSA. I played with my spreadsheets during the last few days, making some new fields to track subtle aspects of where my money's going and to capture how much in post-tax contributions I'm making each month in contrast to my overall contributions. I also added a new Post-Tax Savings Rate field to show what that rate is in regard to my net income. So far, I've contributed $7,550 since January and that excludes my Roth IRA front loaded contribution since it was simply a matter of switching money from my HYSA to Vanguard. My Post-Tax Saving Rate up to now is 60.9%! That's what I'm talking about. I just have to keep it there since it's an average across all months from January.
I also tried to gauge how much money I should be able to realistically save this year based on my current performance. My Roth IRA is already maxed ($5,500) and my 403b is set to max (basically, at $18,430 with my current contribution rate), which makes $23,930 saved this year without any real effort on my part. However, I'm going to be as aggressive as possible, so I fiddled with the numbers and came up with a post-tax savings of $31,000. My number was actually slightly more than that, but I'm a realist, so I reduced it to account for whatever unexpected event might occur down the road. If I happen to hit that mark, though, it means I will have saved $54,930 during the course of the year. That's a significant chunk of my gross salary!
Currently, I'm concentrating on replenishing my HYSAs. I think I said last month that I wanted to bring each up to 6k, but, after tweaking my numbers and plan, I've decided to bring one up to 7.5k and the other to 13k. This way, I'll have a combined total of 15k for my emergency fund. The extra $5,500 is next year's Roth contribution. I hope to transfer that to my Roth, replenish it, which should be relatively quick so I can turn my attention to my brokerage account. I'm ready to start growing that account like nobody's business. I don't want to think about only being halfway to my goal for bringing my HYSAs up to where they need to be. I'm really hoping I can fulfill this goal by the end of April or, at least, May.
As far as expenses this past month, I didn't really have any major expenditures. I bought some shirts for work that set me back about $75-100. And then there were the occasional six-packs of cheap beer I picked up on my way home because I didn't feel like going to the grocery store once I was home. (This is Lazy Guy's FI, after all!) Oh, I just remembered one expense I didn't account for: I sent my son $160 cash to help with something. Aside from that, everything else had already been budgeted and accounted for. The usual suspects: gas, groceries, utilities, entertainment, insurance, etc.
I'm expecting this month to be just as good, if not better. I'll receive 3 paychecks in March. Also, there's supposed to be another bonus check that I'm looking forward to. I'm going to try to just keep my expenses low again so I can bank most of the money. Hopefully, the market will rebound and continue up and to the right instead of the silly roller coaster ride it has been, but I'm not holding my breath for that.
Here's the obligatory screenshot. One thing to note here: one of my 403b contributions is not reflected because I got paid the day before I took the screenshot and it takes a few days for my 403b contributions to show up. So, essentially, there's an additional $708.85 unaccounted for. I have not included it in any of my net worth reporting for this post. (That means it'll just be gravy for the next post!)
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| Net worth for February 2018 |
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