Net Worth and Goals: February 2010 – Up 2.8% and Revising Goals

Each month I provide an update on how we’re tracking toward our goals. I break it down between Net Worth and Goals for the year.

Net Worth:

The market cooperated with us this month and we saw a nice boost to our 401K. That combined with Mr. Frugal’s yearly bonus gave us a 2.8% increase to our overall Net Worth. Here’s the breakdown:

Emergency Account: +1800.00

Brokerage Accounts: +44.76

401K: +2458.94

Boat loan: -522.61 ( I have been making extra payments for a couple months now that weren’t being applied properly by the bank. This was fixed this month resulting in a much higher reduction in principal over last month.)

Note: Although I include our vehicles and boat in our net worth, I don’t reassess their value each month. I value them conservatively using Kelley Blue Book and update once or twice a year.

For a more detail you can check out our Net Worth report here.

2010 Goals:

Emergency Fund Set aside 9 months living expenses in Emergency Fund (roughly $30K)

- We’re on track here with about 4.3 months saved.

- Update: As noted last month we are thinking about scaling back our Emergency Fund goal to 8 months expenses (25K). After we hit that goal (on track for August) the plan is to throw EVERYTHING at our boat loan, our only remaining debt. The more we think about this the more convinced I am that we should do it. We could possibly be DEBT FREE in 2 ½ years.

Pay down debt Add $130 to boat payment. This alone will shave 5.5 years off the loan and save nearly $12,000 dollars in interest.

– Completed! After fixing a glitch with the bank where they were applying extra payments to future payments due instead of PRINCIPAL (seriously lame BofA!) we are starting to see the results. Woot! I love seeing our debt go down!

College Savings Fund We’re expecting our first baby in May. Although we won’t be able to contribute much this year, saving for college is extremely important to us and I don’t want to put it off. Establishing an account will also give our family the opportunity to contribute if they choose (I’ll elaborate on this in a later post).

– No progress this month. I was busy with taxes (eck!) in February but now that I’m done with that I’ll pick this up again and hopefully at least have our plan in place by the end of the month.

Personal Finance blog

• Post daily (except weekends)
• Develop readership of 1,000 subscribers and 10K visits per month (note: I have no idea if this goal is realistic. It may be shooting too high or too low, but I wanted to give myself some sort of target to push me forward.
• Generate additional income from the Personal Finance Blog to put towards paying down debt and savings

- I am learning so much about blogging right now. I’m also really enjoying interacting with my readers and the Personal Finance and Frugality blogging community. What a kind and generous group of people!

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