August 2018 Update

Hope you're having a restful Labor Day weekend. I know I am and, boy, do I need it! Work's been a bit hectic lately, which has been causing me to have daydreams of just throwing in the towel and walking away. Of course, these thoughts usually occur in quick succession in the morning when my alarm is blaring and I stand groggily from my comfy bed to shuffle into the shower. What makes me feel good is knowing that, eventually, I will be able to give notice for the final time and spend my days the way I want. Perpetual weekends! That's the dream, man. All right, so let's see how much closer to realizing this dream I am. On this first day of August, my net worth is...

$139,260

Last month, my net worth was $132,873. A difference of $6,387. As Larry David says: Pretty, pretty, pretty...good. This was a fantastic month actually.

The market had its ups and downs as usual, but it ended up higher than usual. But that's not really very significant at this stage. Instead, what makes this month fantastic is that I received 3 paychecks. So, out of that $6,387, I personally diverted $4,650 into my brokerage account.

(Note: although I initiated a transfer today of $1,750, it is not reflected in these amounts. I never report what isn't currently reflected in my screenshot (below), but still, it's worth mentioning. So, of the $6,387 reported above, what I actually saved of that is $2,900. That leaves $3,487. This breaks down as follows: $1,706 was 401k contributions and the remaining $1,781 was market gains and interest.)

As far as expenses, I splurged only slightly on a couple of things. My daughter visited us for 2 days and I paid for one of our nice dinners: $161. My wife and I took an overnight trip to a mountain cabin and I bought some nice craft beers to share with some friends we stayed with ~$170 (this involved buying a $26 cooler, so...lot's off wine and beer). I also withdrew $150 to pay for a traffic ticket I got. Wife and I also went to have lunch at a nice brewery pub in VT: $65. Moral of the story: I went a little over budget in the food/restaurant category, according to Mint.

My credit scores went up this month. Transunion is 784 and Equifax is 760, both considered excellent. My FICO is 767; I'm trying to get this into the excellent range instead of "very good". I'm debt free; no credit card debt whatsoever, the way I like it.

Bonus fun facts

*   does not include employer-sponsored retirement accounts

** includes bonuses

According to my contributions-only spreadsheet (This tracks my contributions only. No market gains/interest/dividends):

Annual savings rate YTD: 62.9% *

Annual savings in dollars (YTD): $29,182 *

Employer-sponsored retirement savings YTD: $10,948.55

Total savings YTD: $40,130.55

Net pay received YTD: $46,391.99 **

That pretty much wraps up the month of August. Despite there not being any more 3-paycheck months left in this year, I hope the remaining 4 months are just as prosperous.

At the beginning of the year, I create a yearly projection file showing net worth goals for each month based on previous data and I projected to have a net worth of $120,364 by the end of August. I'm happy to say that I've exceeded that prediction by $18,896. Granted, I use somewhat conservative numbers when creating this monthly forecast, because no one knows what emergencies might occur in the future and I try to account for this. Not having emergencies pays off! As of today, I've already exceeded my end-of-year prediction by $8,425. It would be nice to hit $150k. With 4 months left, we'll see if I can do it.

Net worth for August 2018

My credit scores reported by Credit Karma