Net Worth Review: February 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.

Expect to see a huge drop in our net worth due to the new appraisal done on our townhouse.

Our Spending Habits in February

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

• Housing (Mortgage, Escrow, HOA, etc): $1,152.43
• Food (Groceries & Eating Out): $482.50
  
• Good Faith Deposit for Refinance: $475

I'm happy to see the food expenses drop a couple of hundred dollars from last month. My goals is to get it down further – hopefully around $350.

Checking & Savings

We have to rebuild our buffer for checking from paying the good faith deposit on the refinance that didn't happen.  I'm saving money up for the upcoming Financial Blogger Conference later this year. Hopefully we can fin a good deal on the plane tickets.

Retirement Accounts

Things are pretty quiet with these accounts, I was happy to see an uptick on our balances. Pretty much everything is automated with our contributions. We’re focusing on long term goals with our investing. 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

Our cars are still moving and no repairs this month (yay!).  For now we’re just contributing to the car replacement fund and we've spread the word with our family and friends that we're looking for a car. We gave them our price range and what features we're looking for. While we would love to have a roomier car sooner rather than later, we're taking our time to find a great deal.

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

Nothing exciting to report here. It’s the same old, same old. We have one student loan between us. Right now we’re continuing with the automatic monthly withdrawals for the student loan payments. This gives us a slight discount on the interest rate as an added bonus. It’s been relatively easy to keep up with them; we just confirm payments have been made each month from our joint checking.

Thanks to a bit of extra income, we sent in a bonus payment of $85. It's definitely a small start, but it's a start and I hope the extra payments will grow as the year progresses. You can help by spreading the word on My Financial Reviews and letting me know what you'd like to me to review over there next!

House and Mortgage

This month will reflect the lower appraised value of our home. Refinancing our home did not go as planned, but the numbers are the numbers and we'll be using this amount until the value changes again.

Here’s where we stand today with the mortgage:

• Total Loan Amount: $107,456.63
• Interest Rate: 5.00%
• Loan Term: 30 years, fixed rate

We feel good about the long term prospects of the townhouse. Hopefully we can refinance at a later time and the interest rates will still be favorable. If not, we’re alright. Our mortgage payment is within our budget and we’re happy that it’s not underwater.

This Month’s Goals

We're behind on the goals, but we are making progress. We've asked our friends if they'd be interested in being legal guardians for our little girl should something happen to both of us. We also got some quotes on term life insurance policies so we can increase our coverage.

We still have to update our will and we need to chat with a lawyer to make sure we have all the documents we need ready and properly completed.

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 February 29, 2012): $53,520.78 (-$18,891.52)

The decrease is completely expected. Hopefully once the last properties are sold we'll see the appraisal for our townhouse increase.

Photo Credit: borman818