Net Worth Review: April 2012

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It’s time for me to examine last month’s finances and see how it’s affected our net worth. 

The purpose of the net worth reviews is to give us a regular system to look at our accounts, see what’s changed, and analyze what went well and what we need to work on.

April was a big month – we bought a family car and we paid estimated taxes.

Our Biggest Expenses in April

Here are our 3 biggest family related expenses last month as calculated by Mint:

• Auto & Transport: $10,500
• Housing (Mortgage, Escrow, HOA, etc): $1,208.25
• Food (Groceries and Eating Out): $507.59

I mentioned earlier this week that we had been eating out a bit more earlier this month as we were car hunting and grabbed what was nearby.

Since that's done, we've cut back considerably. In addition we also took our friends out to dinner for their anniversary. Looking ahead at May, our expenses should significantly lower.

Checking & Savings

So I mentioned last month that I wanted to build a buffer with our account, but after buying a car that didn't. However we already start rebuilding the car fund and we cutting back on May's expenses.

Retirement Accounts

Things are still pretty quiet with these accounts, I was happy to see our balances growing. Pretty much everything is automated with our contributions.

I think once we finish some of our financial goals for this year, we'll reexamine our retirement accounts.

We’re focusing on long term goals with our investing, so I don’t track our accounts everyday. 

We’re not planning on making any changes to our retirement contributions right now – just continuing at the pace we’ve been going.

Cars and Auto Expenses

We got our car and we're happy. It's a well taken care of Honda Accord. It's already saving us a bit of money with gas mileage. With the Fuel Challenge this month, I'm excited to see the grand total.

We still haven't decided on which of the older cars to sell. My husband needs to take his car into the shop to get some repairs done, so having the Jetta around is pretty handy.

In case you’re wondering how I calculate the vehicles’ values, I used Kelly Blue Book. Every quarter I’ll update the values to account for depreciation.

Student Loans

We're chugging along with paying down the student loan. I'm looking at projects to take on and increase income a bit so we have more to contribute towards this goal.

Monthly Summary

Now that everything has been summarized, it’s time to look at the numbers. Here’s our net worth from the spreadsheet:

Net Worth (as of April 30, 2012): $59,271.47 (+$1,117.19)

We’re not where we were at a couple of months ago, but we’re happy to be increasing again. Hopefully the rest of the year will allow us to get back to January’s range.

Photo Credit: borman818