Stuck In Neutral
My wife Miel and I usually meet twice a week online. Among other things, we usually discuss our personal finance situation. When we talked yesterday both of us were feeling frustrated with our financial situation.
Our net worth hasn't grown much at all. When we measured it back in December we were worth $368,000. Last month it was $373,000. That's a modest increase of $5,000. We don't have monthly goals for our wealth growth, so we don't have clear expectations for what the numbers should be but still - we both would have liked to have done better.
Some things have been aggravating the situation:
1) Miel's student loans came due. Since February, the amount we're paying for her loans to Citigroup increased from $100 to $370. This puts a bit crimp in the rest of our budget and pressures our ability to achieve other goals.
2) The property tax bill arrived. We were not excited to receive the DC government's property tax bill in the mail. We'll need to come up with the $566.77 in the next couple of weeks to get this taken care of. Of course, we're happy to contribute our share to the well being of the district, but considering our net worth progress the timing could have been better.
3) Our Swiss vacation was expensive. If you've been following our blog, you'll know we just got back from Switzerland. The country is fantastic, but it was hard on our pocketbooks. We spent more than $3,500 on hotels, dinner, some modest shopping and plane tickets. While the trip was wonderful, next one we organize will probably be someplace significantly less expensive.
4) I've been wasting money. Specifically, I've been dropping a pretty good amount of cash on take out, lunches, movie rentals and stuff like that. Even a hundred dollars or so ads up to extra pressure on our budget and makes it harder to achieve our goals. So, basically my own spending habits have been contributing to this situation as well.
That said, we've been successful at building wealth in the past so I'm optimistic we'll be back on track soon. Stay tuned.
Best,
James
Stumble It!
5 comments:
I thought on of the stipulations of Miel's job was the company paid for your R&R meet-ups? $5,000 Net Worth increase in two months, with a TERRIBLE stock market, is doing pretty darn good. I've seen my portfolio drop over $60,000 in the same time period and I still dutifully put $1,000/month in savings.
Well, my work pays for three plane tickets to Dubai and the equivalent of one plane ticket to London per year. Aside from this nothing is paid for. Luckily we got James' ticket off of Miel's frequent flyer miles, so it could be worse.
Yes, it is true that an increase in $5k in two months isn't bad in many terms. Thanks for the reminder of that!
Best,
Miel
James had a good point in his post that you guys didn't have a net worth goal plan laid out to judge whether the $5,000 increase is good progress or not. For the average person $5,000 is a huge jump but you two are smart and trying to aggressively get ahead.
If you do set-up a net worth goal please post about it, I'd be interested to hear how you deciced. In the past I've tried to say I want mine to grow x% but that mentality lead to frustration, with an up and down stock market. Now I say I want to save x per year and while that should increase my networth I realize it may not with the market.
My husband and I make $30,000 a year combined, with rent, utilities, and my student loans every month of over $300...and you guys are whining after you took a vacation to Switzerland? WTF? Suck it up and save fools. I'm not saying you have to live off of Ramen and Pancakes for a year I'm just saying that you can easily save. What would happen if you got pregnant? Just imagine you were saving for a baby.
Anonymous - you are absolutely right that we don't have anything real to whine about.
At the same time, we generally are very good at saving and don't often splurge on vacations and the like. If I weren't living in Afghanistan we certainly wouldn't have had a trip to Switzerland. After five months apart I don't think it was a waste at all.
Besides, for the amount I save sitting in Afghanistan and not spending any money, the expense of Switzerland doesn't average out to more than general expenses would be back in the states.
We'll starting saving and stop whining.
Miel
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