2017: First Half of the Year

[scfr]

Anyone else run their 6/30/17 net worth numbers to see how they did the first half of the year?

Our overall net worth increased 5.0%.

Financial assets increased 5.7%. As mentioned in another thread, if we are able to maintain our current rate of savings we could IN THEORY retire in a couple years, at age 56. But we won't retire then. We'll continue to work and build an extra buffer for retirement and hopefully maintain health insurance. Also, there is a medium chance that we will relocate to a HCOLA, and if we are going to do that we'll need to hit a higher number before we can retire. Also, I want to set aside money for one big (to us) trip in retirement.

Non-financial assets (house & cars) increased 0.5%. Seeing an increase in our non-financial assets is rare. Typically the decrease in car values offsets any increase in house value. I think the reason our non-financial assets weren't flat may be because our 2 cars now have a combined value of less than $10K so they are depreciating more gradually and therefore are less of a drag on our net worth than they were when they were newer and depreciating more rapidly. We could be buying a new car at any time, and once we do that we'll see non-financial assets be a bigger drag on net worth.

We'll just keep chugging along.

[james.hendrickson]

Excellent idea - posting your net worth can lead to a valuable discussion of what is working in terms of building your wealth and what isn't working.

I used to follow my net worth very closely. In general, I found that investing in stocks and real estate did better than cash and bonds.

[disneysteve]

Anyone else run their 6/30/17 net worth numbers to see how they did the first half of the year?

I don't track net worth but I know that our finances improved dramatically in the first half of the year due to me cutting back to part time at my practice and increasing to part time at my urgent care job. That had a nice positive effect on my income. My expectation is that I'll earn about $40,000 more this year than last year.

[msomnipotent]

I was thinking about this just yesterday. I rearranged our investments about 6 months ago and raised our contributions. It looks like we have added about $100,000 to our net worth in the past 6 months, but $40,000 of that is earmarked towards a new house. Once we finally find a house and get settled, there will be a temporary dip to our net worth, but I'm expecting to really boost the numbers within 6 months of moving. Now that I think about it, I may have forgot about our equity in our cottage when I figured our net worth last time, so maybe about $80,000, but it is still good.

Since we are doing well, I went ahead and added another $100 per month added to my daughter's college savings. I'm toying with the idea of upping the 401k another 1%, but I really want more cash for a house right now.

We ran out of our FSA already and I didn't even get my wrist surgery yet (long story), so I'm adding it to our list of things for next year.

[disneysteve]

Since we are doing well, I went ahead and added another $100 per month added to my daughter's college savings. I'm toying with the idea of upping the 401k another 1%, but I really want more cash for a house right now.

Similar issue here. With my increased income, I've thought about upping the 401k. It's currently at 10% but we also max 2 Roths which brings the overall retirement savings to at least 17% plus other savings going into non-retirement accounts.

The biggest issue right now is one more year of college tuition and a nearly depleted 529 so we will need the extra cash for the last 2 semesters. After that, I should be able to up the 401k.

[corn18]

Added $184k to net worth, putting us just over $1M net worth. Also upped my mortgage payment by $500 / mo. 401k, IRA's and taxable are all running steady at max.

[Jluke]

Net worth increased by 67k since Dec 31, 2016. I could get used to this...

[Dahlia]

I just did this calculation this morning! I am up 6.62% since Jan 1. I attribute it primarily to real estate- one of my rental properties has shot up in value.

I'm really pleased- the 6% gain is more than 12 gross months my full time salary.

[disneysteve]

Okay. This thread made me curious. I just updated my spreadsheet.

Our financial assets increased 11.16% since 12/31/16. I must admit I was surprised it was that much but I'm certainly not complaining.

[kork13]

I normally don't bother checking my net worth at mid year... I've gotten away from the practice of tracking it regularly... Until I got married, I logged everything monthly. Now, I normally just do it once a year, at year's end.

But, as with others, this thread got me curious enough to check. Without going through a detailed analysis, looks like we're up about 15% of our total net worth YTD (~$85k). Stocks have been reasonably good to us thus far (who knows how long that will continue), and we're paying down mortgages on two houses (increasing equity while reducing debt), while funneling as much as we can into retirement and taxable accounts. In all, we're putting away about half of our income (we're living on one income, in prep for whenever my wife chooses to stop working outside the home), so most of that increase may well simply be new money.

[tripods68]

Half way there for 2017. We sock away with about 35K in retirement contributions with employer gives us another 15K so far, combined about 50K.

Networth up $75K so far for the year and continue to grow.

[disneysteve]

When figuring this out, I also discovered that our financial assets had topped $900,000 for the first time ever. Actually over 930K. That was neat to see.

[scfr]

I don't track net worth but I know that our finances improved dramatically in the first half of the year due to me cutting back to part time at my practice and increasing to part time at my urgent care job. That had a nice positive effect on my income. My expectation is that I'll earn about $40,000 more this year than last year.

disneysteve - This is off-topic from my original post, but with your new employment situation, have you checked your tax withholding and made any necessary adjustments such as increasing withholding or making estimated tax payments?

[disneysteve]

disneysteve - This is off-topic from my original post, but with your new employment situation, have you checked your tax withholding and made any necessary adjustments such as increasing withholding or making estimated tax payments?

Yep. I've been paying attention to that and staying in touch with our CPA.

[kork13]

Without going through a detailed analysis, looks like we're up about 15% of our total net worth YTD (~$85k). Stocks have been reasonably good to us thus far (who knows how long that will continue), and we're paying down mortgages on two houses (increasing equity while reducing debt), while funneling as much as we can into retirement and taxable accounts. In all, we're putting away about half of our income (we're living on one income, in prep for whenever my wife chooses to stop working outside the home), so most of that increase may well simply be new money.

So much for not being detailed.... lol

I looked into our investments, and they've earned about 10% for us YTD, which is roughly in line with the market as a whole (9.34%). As expected, new money is making up most of our increase in net worth... Roughly $50k to investments and $14k to home equity/debt reduction, with remainder ($20k) being from investment returns.