Net Worth and Goals: January – Up 1.8% and on Track

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:

We’re up a whopping 1.8% this month. Not terribly exciting but building net worth is a marathon not a sprint and slow and steady wins the race. It’s worth noting that Mr. Frugal’s employer does not have a 401k contribution matching program. Instead they offer profit sharing which is paid out once a year in January and deposited into a 401K account. If it were not for that payout this month we would have been break even instead of positive.

Emergency Account: +1350.00

Brokerage Accounts: +364.98

401K: +1911.39

Boat loan: -209.36

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 3.7 months saved.

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.

– Done!!! As I reported here we were able to cut our expenses so we could increase our boat payment and speed the time to payoff the loan. We are now mulling the idea of scaling back our Emergency Fund to 8 months then putting all extra funds toward paying off the boat. If we do that we could pay off the boat in about 3 years. We’ll make that decision when we get our Emergency Fund up to 8 months.

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).

– Have started to research our options and will write about this soon.

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

- This is by far my most challenging goal. But I’m really enjoying this blog and it’s challenging me to think outside the box regarding our finances. I hope you’re finding it interesting and worth your time too!

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