June 2019 Update

Unlike the last couple of updates, I'm pretty much on time with this one. Good thing I realized yesterday was the first of July too, or I would've missed getting my screenshot on time. With the holiday this week, creating this update post was probably the furthest thing from my mind. Also, just a note: Regardless of whether my update is late or not, the screenshots are as close as I can get them to the first of every month. I want to report with as much accuracy as I possibly can. Now that all that's out of the way, let's get down to business. At the end of June, my net worth was...

$193,363

May's net worth was $180,775; a difference of....$12,588! Oh. My. God. That's probably the largest swing I've seen in quite a while. Woo hoo! Obviously, that's mostly from market movement and not my contributions. As a matter of fact, aside from my employer-sponsored retirement contributions, I didn't go above and beyond as far as any of my contributions go.

Actually, I only contributed a thousand dollars after retirement contributions and that was into my brokerage account.

Other than retirement savings, I did pay down my credit card balance that I ran up during our trip to Scotland. Namely, the two largest purchases (aside from sporadic pub charges -- and A LOT of them) were a new wedding band for me, which was approx. $1,980 and two authentic Scottish wool sweaters that were approx. $180 and they were on sale!! Like I said, these were the two largest charges I put on my credit card. There were plenty of other charges, like pub meals and drinks. Believe me when I tell you, there were a lot of those! And then a couple of trips to the local grocery store to buy beer, coffee, sweets, munchies, etc while we chilled in our rented flat during the evenings. I'm proud to say they're all paid off.

I also finished paying off a furniture loan I had been whittling down. The original balance was around $1,550 for a large dining room table my wife wanted. If I'm going to buy furniture, I don't mind spending more to buy a quality product, so we got this large table that seats eight comfortably and I financed it for zero interest for 12 months. It's been about eight or nine months now, so I figured I might as well pay off the $450 balance and be done with it. They won't be getting any interest from me.

Now that our big annual vacation is over and my HYSAs are up to my expectations, I can focus on shoveling more money into my brokerage account. Oh, and I enrolled in my ESPP at work. I haven't seen the first paycheck reflecting that deduction, but I expect it won't be too much of a decline. Besides, it should be for a good cause. Now I just have to go through the motions of figuring out the details of when I can sell the stock to reap the gain from my discount and figure out how it will impact my budget and savings. I hope to have a good report next month, but I'm also a realist and understand the gains from this month were due to a great market surge just before my report.

I know I was optimistic in my last report and said I'd like to at least cross the 200k milestone by the end of the year. I'm less than 7k from that goal and we've just hit July. With my prior savings track record indicates I will easily do that if the market holds steady. But I remain a realist and believe we could possibly see more declines before the end of the year. Best prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. Until next time.

June 2019 net worth