Tuesday 1 September 2015

August 2015 Net Worth: $639,000 (+8.0%) and Goal Tracker

This month was massive for me.  I crossed the $1 million mark in terms of assets and my net worth crossed the $600,000 mark for the first time.

One of the interesting things about updating my net worth every month is that I totally ignore the larger numbers...I'm far more interested in how I'm performing month to month...but occasionally when I cross a bit milestone like $1 million in assets...that's pretty exciting!

So how did I do it and what changed?  Well read on below for details.

Net Worth: $639,000 (+8.0%)


Value
% Change
Assets
$1,052,000
+6.3%
Liabilities
$412,000
+3.8%
Net worth
$639,000
+8.0%

This month was absolutely crazy for me.  I took a massive hit in my share portfolio as global share markets sank to their lowest levels in 4 years.  However offsetting that was a large increase in the value of my property.  I will go through this and more in my detailed explanations below.

I refinanced my property loan and the bank increased the valuation of my property substantially

  • I bought my investment property in late 2010 and since then I have been recording the value of my property at it's initial purchase cost ($440,000).  I was never tempted to update the value of the property because in all honest property is such an illiquid asset that you can never know the true value.  I thought the best way to be conservative was to keep the value as it was.
  • I still believe that is the best option when it comes to illiquid assets however this month I refinanced my loan (after moving into the property and seeing the savings that I could have from it).  The bank revalued the property at $480,000 (a $40,000 increase in the valuation) and allowed me to leverage up my property once again to 80%.

My share portfolio took a MASSIVE hit over the month


  • The last month was not pretty if you were a share market investor.  The market fell significantly and the value of my shares fell by approximately $15,000.  I took this as a buying opportunity.  I had been selling out of shares in the last few months and this month I got back in in a big way.
  • I probably went a bit early and didn't get the absolute bottom but I'm well ahead on the prices I purchased at.  
  • The problem I face, however is that I am so heavily invested in the market that even investing a significant amount of cash at low prices doesn't make up for the pain I feel in the fall.  
  • I'm not disenchanted though and if more buying opportunities arise I am going to take them

Additional cash received from wedding gifts


I mentioned that last month we received significant gifts for our wedding.  This month I banked some more cash from our wedding.  We can't believe how generous our friends and family were and this has really given us a leg up financially.

Having gone through the experience I would highly recommend asking for cash gifts for your wedding especially if you have already lived out of home and don't actually need all that much to set up a house!

Renovating and my honeymoon have increased my credit card balance and reduced my cash...but that's what my future liabilities balance was for!

  • My credit card balance at the end of the month was close to $11,000 which is higher than it has ever been before.  This was entirely driven by spending on the renovations my wife and I are doing on our home.  
  • Additionally I transferred an additional $10,000 to our travel visa debit card for use on our honeymoon
  • I had provided for both of these expenses in my future liabilities balance and over the month this reduced from $29,000 to $8,000

In addition to all of these there were a bunch of small moving parts including my wife's birthday which cost me far more than I first imagined, investment in my employee share plan and superannuation as well as a host of other things which pale in comparison to the factors mentioned above.

In the coming month I have no idea what is going to happen.  I'm going to be away on my honeymoon and who knows what markets are going to do!  I am going to hopefully build some cash as I have used quite a bit over the past few months.  If I can get to a net worth of $645,000 over the month I would consider that a great outcome!

August 2015 Goal Tracker


Last month I was bemoaning the amount of cash I had sitting on the sidelines waiting to be invested in shares...well it's not sitting there any more! It's fully invested now.  

In addition it is actually getting quite a bit harder to track how much I am actually saving for my home deposit given it is both my wife and I depositing and withdrawing from this account.  I'll work out a new system soon enough!


GoalAug 152015 Total2015 TargetRemainingAchieved?
#1: Get Married+$0$5,000$5,000$0YES
#2: Honeymoon+$0$20,000$20,000$0YES
#3: Home Deposit+$15,147$34,147$40,000$5,853No
#4: Emergency Fund+$833$6,667$10,000$3,333No
#5: Share Portfolio-$2,618$238,710$276,000$37,290No



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1 comment:

  1. Awesome to hear from you 90M, it's been too long between drinks! What's been happening?

    Congrats on the re-finance, the markets are pretty volatile however not necessarily a bad thing..

    Interested to hear how the renovations go/went as well :), maybe these have already been posted about :O ha

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