Net Worth Review: June 2011

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It’s the beginning of the month, which means it’s time to examine last month’s finances and see how it's affected our net worth. It's a great exercise to help us see where we're doing well and what we can improve on.

Our Spending Habits in June

So happy to see that our expenses went down a tad in June. Here are our 3 biggest expenses last month:

• Home (Mortgages, Extra Payments, HOA Fees, etc): $1,140.75
• Food (Groceries, Restaurants, Etc): $392.98
• Bills/Utilities: $216.58

I’m happy that our food bill decreased again this month as we're trying to limit how many times we eat out and try to have more meals at home.

Checking & Savings

Big news this past month was getting our tax return (finally) and having that automatically deposited into savings. It's a nice bump and it helped us reach our baby fund goal for the year. We want to increase savings to cover baby expenses that we expect to incur during the rest of the year.

One expected expense is the hospital bill for when the baby arrives. We received an estimate from the OB/GYN for their costs and we got an estimate for the hospital portion. Supposedly we'll pay the hospital and doctor and my husband will get a large portion of that reimbursed.

Retirement Accounts

We’re still not planning on making any changes to our retirement contributions this year. We really want to focus on more immediate goals of getting ready for the baby. I can’t anticipate the future, but I believe once we have some idea of how we’re going to handle our finances as parents, we’ll look at our retirement accounts and contributions.

My husband’s 401(k) has steadily been going up and it’s bumped up our assets a bit this month. We need to consolidate his accounts, though, and move over some money into a Roth IRA for him some time in the next couple of months.

Our Cars

Both cars seem to be doing well. We’ve had no repairs to do this month, which is nice. We're still working on building our car replacement fund for the next vehicle. We hope to get a car sometime next year. I believe the VW can handle until then, so we can sell it for additional funds.

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 or new, we’re just chugging along with the student loan payments. Payments have been automated so it’s been relatively easy to keep up with them; we just confirm payments have been made each month. We switched the payments from the end of the month to the middle of the month to break the expenses between our deposits.

House and Mortgage

The mortgage payments are chugging along. As part of our usual routine, our automated extra principal payment (now $175) was sent in on the 15th of the month. When deciding on how much we were going to send in to our lender, our main focus was creating something sustainable and had some impact with the mortgage.

Here’s where we stand today with the mortgage:

• Total Loan Amount: $110,515.51
• Interest Rate: 5.00%
• Loan Term: 30 years, fixed rate

Our goal is to pay off our mortgage way before we retire.  Right now our timeline is about 15 years, instead of 30 years. Once accomplished, we’d love to be able to direct that money into other interests and goals of ours down the road.

Monthly Summary

So glad that we improved and we're working closer to becoming debt free. Here’s our net worth from the spreadsheet:

Net Worth (as of June 30, 2011): $56,630.81 (+$4,241.37)

Your Net Worth Update

How are you doing with your finances? How are you doing in 2011 so far?

Photo Credit: sushi♥ina