Monthly Net Worth Update #3

I may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

Hey guys, welcome to my monthly net worth update. For those of you new to the blog, I provide updates every month on how my net worth is progressing. I personally always love it when I see other bloggers either post updates on their net worth, monthly income from their blogs or both.

Without it, I probably wouldn't have had the confidence or motivation to give this whole blog thing a try. The other personal finance blogs really motivated me to give this a shot and see what happens regardless of the end result. What's the worst that could really happen? Get published? Find a job at a media company doing something I actually enjoy for once? Sounds good to me.

I ultimately wanted a platform where I could share what I’ve learned over the past few years and track my net worth to make sure I’m always going in the right direction, sticking with my principles. And who knows, maybe along the way one of you guys will teach me a better way to approach investing. But for now, this is the best way I know, and I wanted to provide updates in hopes of motivating you to start investing and even create a side hustle of your own.

It's only been a short while since I started the blog, but I've come a long way from where I began. I literally knew nothing about blogging. I remember the first time I found out you could make money from blogging I didn’t even understand what that meant.

Like blogging and making money separately on their own, yea okay I got it. But putting the two together made absolutely no sense to me. I didn’t even know what affiliate marketing was.

But since then, I’ve been busting my ass on the weekends, during lunch breaks and after work either learning as much as I could, or outlining blog posts. The best course I took hands down was Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I saved myself months of frustration. I highly recommend it if you haven't already checked it out.

On my commutes to and from work, I take out my phone and use the notes app to write down blog topics as they come to me. I started with zero less than a year ago and have over 700 so far.

So take notes guys! Whenever ideas pop into your head, find something to write it down on. My iPhone always works for me.

If you’re thinking about making a blog for a side hustle, you should do it. I’ll warn you though you’ll need lots of patience. Everyone wasn’t kidding when they said there’s a steep learning curve if you haven’t blogged before. But once you get over the hump, you learn what to spend most of your time on and figure out what works best for you.

Even Michelle at Making Sense of Cents didn't begin making money or even realize she could make money from her blog until months into it. A friend she met through blogging connected her with an advertiser who paid her $100 for a deal. Since then, she's been wildly successful, quitting her day job and living off her blogging income.

Getting back to my finances, I've certainly made significant strides with my net worth from when I just started reading about investing and prioritized saving back at the beginning of 2015. For me, it always feels great to look back at what I've accomplished financially, relatively speaking since then. I literally started with $7k when I first got serious about this.

Side note: The $7k was leftover from the savings my parents had for my college tuition. They opened a brokerage account in my name during my freshman year in college. They were generous enough to let me keep the remaining amount as long as I moved it to a Roth IRA for retirement.

Okay so, that was back in October of 2014 when I first started paying attention to my net worth. This was when I finally got my first salaried job, literally 2 years and 5 months after I graduated from school!

I want these updates to show you that you don't have to have everything immediately figured out. I literally went almost 2 and a half years without saving anything or having a clue what I was going to do with my life (I still don’t have a clue by the way). And now, I'm working in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

So it's definitely possible to save enough even if you start a little later from loans or whatever your situation might be. There's always a way to figure it out if you want it badly enough.

 

Related posts:

• Create a Blog
• 10 Ways to Make Money From the Comfort of Your Home
• 5 Ways to Make Extra Money This Week
• The Money is in Your Email List

 

March 22nd, 2018

Previous Net Worth: $115,786.69 Current Net Worth: $115,058.76

Here's a monthly breakdown of what I have to date in my Roth 401k at work, my Roth IRA and in my traditional brokerage account which both this and my Roth IRA are together with the same firm:

• Roth 401k:
  Previous: $35,734.38 Current:$35,616.04 Percent Change: -.33%

• Roth IRA: 
  Previous: $28,583.63  Current: $27,594.72  Percent Change: -3.45%

• Brokerage Account:
  Previous: $51,121.51  Current: $51,848.00  Percent Change: +1.42%

• Total Dollar/Percentage Change:
  Previous: $115,439.52 Current: $115,058.76 Percent Change: -.32%

 

So as you can see, my total net worth dropped by only $380.76 even though the S&P 500 has dropped 4.89% from February 26th to March 22nd.  Not too bad! My spending did go up more this month, so I'm not proud of that, but I went to hang out with some friends I haven't seen in a while so it was definitely well worth it.  But what helped me was setting up a direct deposit for my tax refund to go straight to my brokerage account. It was a little under $2,000 so that was pretty nice.

 

Unrealized Gains:

• Roth 401k: N/A (data isn't provided from my current job and from the two job switches transferring what I had in my previous two 401k accounts)

• Roth IRA:
  • Previous:$6,423.63   Current: $5,434.72   Percentage Change: -15.39%

• Brokerage Account:
  • Previous: $10,904.28  Current: $8,645.43 Percentage Change: -20.7

• Total Dollar/Percentage Change:
  • Previous: $115,439.52 Current: $115,058.76 Percent Change: -.32%

 

So at the very least, if I hadn't invested and only saved, I would've had $14,080.15 (and some extra from my job 401k) less than I do now. That's 12% of my total net worth! Save and invest guys! I promise, future you will thank younger you that you didn't always go to happy hour.

 

Here's a snapshot of my brokerage account and Roth IRA portfolio value since the beginning of 2009:

 

You'll see there was a huge drop in my portfolio in the middle of 2011. This was because my parents used the money to pay off a portion of my college tuition at that time. Because of this, my portfolio dropped from $46,665 to $14,617 to $7,800. I was devastated. Just kidding. I didn't even know this existed. I had no idea what this even was.

So for the next almost 3 years while I had no job, the amount remained relatively flat. The net investment increased by almost $6k over two years, while the total portfolio value increased from $7,800 to a solid $17,357. The minor bump between Q1,14 and the next line was when I had a part-time job and my dad made me save some money, but I had no idea it was going there. Right before Q4,14 was when I started to get serious about saving, because October 2014 was when I started my first salaried job. It was $35k, I was so pumped you have no idea.

Granted, I know how fortunate I am to be put in that position before I even started saving and investing myself but to give myself credit if I hadn't started reading books on investing on my own time, there's no way I would've been able to be where I am now. I read Tony Robbins' Money Master the Game in two and a half weeks, spending almost 2 and a half hours each weeknight reading it. And it's a monster 689 pages and I'm a slow reader!

Because of this, I was able to educate myself and take my money into my own hands and grow it into the net worth it's at now.

 

 

 

 

Here are some stats of how it's doing right now as of March 22, 2018:

Last 3 Months:

Previous Beginning Value:$75,556.12 Current Beginning Value: $76,524.52
Previous Net Contribution: $1,500 Current Net Contribution: $4,476
Previous Change in Value: $3,360.34 Current Change in Value:  $63.44
Previous Ending Value: $80,416.46 Current Ending Value:  $81,063.96
Portfolio Return: 0.14%

 

Year to Date:

Previous Beginning Value: $75,676.84 Current Beginning Value:  $75,676.84
Previous Net Contribution: $1,500 Current Net Contribution: $4,476
Previous Change in Value: $3,239.62 Current Change in Value:  $911.11
Previous Ending Value: $80,416.46 Current Ending Value:  $81,083.96
Portfolio Return: 1.27%

 

One Year:

Previous Beginning Value: $53,762.29 Current Beginning Value: $55,187.62
Previous Net Contribution: $14,033 Current Net Contribution: $15,909
Previous Change in Value: $12,621.17 Current Change in Value:  $9,967.33
Previous Ending Value: $80,416.46 Current Ending Value: $81,063.96
Portfolio Return: 16.20%

 

Three Years:

Previous Beginning Value: $30,699.58 Current Beginning Value: $33,139.92
Previous Net Contribution: $26,264.98 Current Net Contribution: $27,240
Previous Change in Value: $23,451.90 Current Change in Value: $20,683.06
Previous Ending Value: $80,416.46 Current Ending Value:  $81.063.96
Portfolio Return:13.75%

 

Five Years:

Previous Beginning Value: $10,996.76 Current Beginning Value:  $11,154.71
Previous Net Contribution: $44,264.99 Current Net Contribution:  $27,240.98
Previous Change in Value: $25,154.71 Current Change in Value:  $22,668.27
Previous Ending Value: $80,416.46 Current Ending Value:  $81,063
Portfolio Return:11.21%

 

So as you can see, this is and will always be a work in progress. But I want to provide a monthly update to make myself stick with my values and make sure I don't stray off course. I think comparing my net contribution month to month will definitely motivate me to save as much as I can. It'll be like a little contest with myself.

And of course, most importantly, I want to show you all how insanely simple it is to do this. It's really not as complicated as it's made out to be. The hardest part is getting started. Once you begin to take your financial matters into your own hands and get the ball rolling, it gets much, much easier. Start small. Save $5 one day. Use my Coffee Habit Worksheet to help you find where you’re senselessly spending and take that money and invest it.

I’m telling you, it’s so insanely easy to save $5. The hard part is making yourself get into the habit to learn about investing, learn about blogging or whatever side hustle you wanna do, start saving more and investing more. That's a hell of a mouthful, but you know what I’m saying.

Just start small with whatever part you want to cover. Read 5 pages of an investment book. I read 20 pages a day of The Essays of Warren Buffett. I had no idea what the hell was going on. It took me an hour to read 10 pages one way on the train to work and 10 pages on the way back home. Every other sentence I was looking something up on my phone.

But I didn’t pressure myself to do more than I could. I stopped when I felt exhausted. The same thing goes with saving and investing. You don’t think you can invest $1,000 this year? Save and put away $20 each week. Do you really need that overpriced Chop’t salad? Uh, no. Do you really need to go to the bar and drop $100? You tell me. If you save $20 for 52 weeks, that gets you $1,040 ready to be put to work.

That $20 saved each week invested for 40 years at an annual average 7% rate turns into $237,727 without even considering dividends being reinvested.

How’s that for making huge strides with a small amount of money?

I hope this motivates you to start taking charge of your financials instead of leaving it to someone else.

Let me know your thoughts and what you're doing to improve your financial situation.

Peace out!