Net Worth Review: Looking Back At February
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Our mortgage payments are going up, how will this affect our finances? find out in February's net worth review!
Why We Do Monthly Net Worth Reviews
At the beginning of the
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.
This month's review will be a different as I'm trying to adjust the format. Please feel free to share your tips below on the comments!
Student Loan is Going Down!
As you can see above, our biggest expense by far was our payment was with our student loans.
When we sold the VW Jetta, we took a portion of that money and paid down our student loan. It was actually my first choice when we were talking about what to do with the cash.
The advantage with this choice is that we lowered our overall debt, but as far as our current cash flow goes, there is no change. Should we get tight on money, however, we can suspend our payments.
According to the site, our next payment on the loan isn't scheduled until 2015. It feels good to be ahead on the student loan.
The Debt Movement is still going strong with several online chats with Google Hangout.
It's been helping me to stay motivated, being in a community of like-minded people. With a minimum of $330/month going towards the loan, we're hoping to shrink the loan considerably this year.
Mortgage: There's No Place Like Home
It was pretty much business as usual with our housing expenses. starting this month, though, we'll have an increase with our mortgage payments since we need to put more money into escrow.
Right now our balance with the mortgage is $102,706. It's kind of exciting to see the balance getting closer to five figures 😉
Our long-term goal is to pay off our mortgage early and we've
While we still want to pay down our mortgage quicker we have other goals that we feel are more of a priority.
Food: Eat, Eat, Eat
As we've had for quite some time, our food expenses are a big chunk of our monthly expenses.
We have been cooking more at home, learning a few new recipes.
When we do eat out, we try to eat at spots that are highly recommended by our friends and are very reasonably priced. No need to spend a lot of money on so-so food.
Auto and Transport
Both cars did well last month – no maintenance or repairs needed. while gasoline prices have increased quite a bit, we're still doing well with our transportation budget.
We've set aside some money in the car fund for regular maintenance and services needed to keep them running for
I'm expecting to use some of it for a tune-up this month and for our
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.
Retirement Accounts
Our retirement contributions aren't included in our joint expenses above simply because they are taken out before the money hits our accounts.
Pretty much everything is automated, so we just check on a monthly basis that the accounts are alright.
We’re not planning on making any changes to our retirement contributions right now as we focused on paying down our debt. We'll keep up with our current contributions in 2013.
Thoughts on February's Finances
I shared our progress and bumps in February. Any tips? I'd love to hear from you about your family's own money review.
How was February for you?
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For those who have been following the net worth series for a bit, you may be wondering where the final tally is at.
As far as the actual numbers go, I'm going to share them on a quarterly basis.
For the most part, we've been having steady increases month to month, hardly anything exciting, but I do think that it's fun to drop the numbers every once in awhile. What do you think?
