Monday 1 June 2015

May 2015 Net Worth: $566,000 (+2.6%) and Goal Tracker

I just had one of my best months ever in terms of net worth performance and it was completely unexpected.

I'm actually also getting rather close to $1 million in assets which is exciting (although as it comes to crunch time for my wedding my cash balance is going to go significantly which will take me further away from this point).

Before I dive too deep into the detail let's look at how this month panned out for me in terms of my net worth and savings goals.



May 2015 Net Worth: $566,000 (+2.6%)


Value
% Change
Assets
$971,000
+0.7%
Liabilities
$406,000
-1.9%
Net worth
$566,000
+2.6%

The headline numbers actually don't do my performance justice this month because there were a large number of moving pieces which are hard to see without the granular details.  I have picked out some of the granular details below:

My share portfolio grew strongly during the month (~$250,000 to ~$258,00) 

  • Last month I talked about how I was lightening my share portfolio because I thought the market was getting ahead of itself.  
  • For a while I looked like I had timed it perfectly because for most of May the Australian share market did very little however towards the end of the month it rallied strongly (especially some of my larger holdings).
  • I was also much more active in my portfolio this than I have been in the past.  I found some ideas that I was happy to invest in and although none of these investments have come off yet I'm glad to be back finding things to invest in.

I paid down my credit card aggressively (~$8,300 to ~$2,200) 

  • Last month my credit card bill was over $8,000 due to wedding expenses.  This actually didn't have an impact on my net worth because I had accounted for it in my future liabilities account (for an explanation of that account have a look at this post...the balance of this account currently sits at $41,000 down from $43,000 last month).
  • I didn't expect any net worth impact of the pay-down of the credit card this month...after all it was already using cash on my balance sheet.  However several large dividend payments combined with my positively geared investment property meant that my cash position was much better at the end of the month than I expected it to be.
  • The net impact was that my credit card balance went down to ~$2,200 (a much more normal number for me) while my cash didn't decrease nearly as much as I expected it to.

I continued to invest in my employee share plan (+33%) and superannuation (~$92,000 to ~$94,000)

  • I continued to contribute 10% of my wage to my employee share plan and also ~9% of my wage to superannuation (note this is compulsory...I don't get a choice with the superannuation). 
  • This enforced savings has really paid dividends for me over the years that I have been doing it.  I will provide far more detail on these accounts at the end of next month when I do my annual review.
  • I am currently holding far too much of my employers shares.  I haven't sold them off as I had intended to.  The share price of my employer hasn't done a lot in a rising market so it probably wasn't the smartest choice but the fall in the A$ has helped.

Overall I was incredibly satisfied with my performance for the month.  In previous months I have noted that the market was doing it's thing and I was going along for the ride.  What was satisfying about this month was that I took hold of the reins and helped control the direction of this ride.

May 2015 Goal Tracker


This year I'm not tracking every dollar I spend and save.  Instead I'm tracking my progress towards a few very well defined goals.  I'm satisfied with my progress towards these goals to date however I really would like to accelerate these plans now that a lot of my big short term spending and savings goals have been done.  

Time to start planning for the future again!


GoalMay 152015 Total2015 TargetRemainingAchieved?
#1: Get Married+$0$5,000$5,000$0YES
#2: Honeymoon+$4,755$13,755$20,000$6,245No
#3: Home Deposit+$0$0$40,000$40,000No
#4: Emergency Fund+$833$4,167$10,000$5,833No
#5: Share Portfolio+$8,079$258,086$276,000$17,914No



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6 comments:

  1. Congrats 90M! I'm a long way behind you on the Net Worth side of things however the assets of mine have built up, unfortunately funded by debt mostly at the moment..

    Agree that super is great as well :)..

    Keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Jef! Thanks heaps.

      You're still super early on your wealth building journey and you have a good income so don't worry too much about the fact that your using debt to get yourself going...it's exactly what I did.

      Check out some of my earlier net worth posts. This was my first one:

      http://90million.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/net-worth-124000-0.html

      Almost all of my assets were debt funded. I only really had one big asset (my investment property), no real spare cash to talk of, a tiny share portfolio.

      Over time though the assets grow and the liabilities remain the same.

      Delete
  2. Hey 90M,

    You're welcome, I've been smashing through the 2Million blog as well, probably reading too much of it at work, although it's something that really interests me :)

    It's funny my assets look quite similar to your first net wealth post, although the liabilities now are also roughly the same..

    As you say it's all about a journey and there's plenty of things along the way, travel, wedding, kids that will pop up and that's all apart of life too!

    Grateful that I've found a few cool people to share the journey with too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's strange looking back on those first posts of mine. I was so scared to disclose anything and whilst I don't disclose nearly as much as some others out there it still feels weird publishing these numbers in such a public sense.

      I think seeing others do it gives me the courage to do it too!

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  3. It would, yeah it really does open you up to people commenting, having their opinions etc..

    It's something that when I start a blog I'm not sure if I'll do however it's something that I could even trial and keep at the high level view!

    Have you had much negative feedback/comments? I suppose that being anonomoys makes it easier too

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Honestly 99% of people have been incredibly supportive. If anything the only negative feedback I got was people telling me that my short term goals weren't aiming high enough :)

      I'm not brave enough to put my name and net worth out there though...that is a little further than I'm comfortable with. I've actually had one or two issues with that but nothing massive.

      Delete