Sunday, October 14, 2012

Net worth update - 3rd Quarter 2012

It's hard to believe it is already the forth quarter of 2012! It's time to check in with my net worth.

Assets:
Approximate value of our house: $171,906* (Down $14,794)
Roth IRA: $25,258 (Up $1,348)
Simple IRA: $5,327 (Up $278)
Regular IRA: $974 (new account)
Lending Club: $102 (new account)
Savings (including emergency fund): $15,076 (Down $4,086)

Total assets: $218,643 (Down $16,178)

Liabilities:
Mortgage: $179,430 (Down $1,473)

Total net worth: $39,213
Difference since last quarter: -$14,705

*Estimation from Zillow

I figured the main cause of my net worth dropping significantly would be due to buying a new car, but the Zillow value of our house dropped nearly $15K. As a matter of fact, if the house "value" had stayed the same, the purchase of our car would have really not made much of an over all effect on our net worth since I last checked it in July. If the house value was the same, my net worth difference would have only been $89. I still don't know how to best handle figuring the net worth and including our house, but I don't think Zillow is the most accurate.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Extra cash challenge - September's results

Here are September's earnings outside of my full time job.

Advertising: $116.08
Amazon: $24.63
Part time job: $7.43
Lending Club: $0.32
ING Savings: $11.69

Total: $160.15

Difference from last month: +$29.24

I'm not sure why it appears I made less money on Lending Club this month than last month. It said my total interest earnings was $0.92 which is only $0.32 than it was last month.

I have been selling some stuff on Ebay for my aunt, but I didn't actually come to an agreement about what percentage I would be getting for doing the work. Sadly it probably wasn't worth my time because most of her items did not sell. But I'll keep re-listing them and hope to get more things sold. So I did make a little more money this month, I just don't know exactly how much yet.

So overall not a bad month, but I'd still like to increase these earnings so I can accomplish more financial goals faster!


Monday, October 1, 2012

We bought a new(er) car for cash

We ended up buying a new car last week. I have mixed emotions about it because it is a nice car, and it has a basic warranty until 100,000 miles, but I know it probably wasn't the best financial decision. I think we could have got a few more years with probably only minor repairs with our old car. But at least now it's done with and we're on to our next financial goal which is probably to replace our other vehicle (a 2001 Ford Ranger). Our new car is a 2011 Chevy Impala with about 30,000 miles on it. We did pay cash and I'm quite proud of that since most people don't. The sales guy even tried to tempt us by saying "money is cheap - interest rates are only in the 2% range. But why do that if I can pay for it today? With all the taxes and fees it ended up being about $18,500. I sold our old car to a co-worker so we'll be getting back $3,200, so it is costing us about $15,300 to upgrade our car to one that is 7 year newer. Hopefully this car will last a long time!