A new direction for myself and this blog...

Writing this post is actually reasonably challenging because what I am writing about is a work in progress and I have not actually completed yet but instead of going completely dark on the blog I thought I would let you guys know what I have been up to.

So let's deal with first things first...

Why haven't I been writing blog posts?

Not writing blog posts for a blogger is the best way you can think of to kill a blog and I had this experience a few years ago when I was going through a tough patch and blogging and finance were not the foremost thing going on in my life.  Thankfully this time that is not the reason I stopped writing.

The fact is that I used my honeymoon to reassess what was important to me and what I wanted and needed to be spending my time on.  I love writing this blog and have loved writing it since my first post in 2011.  That hasn't changed at all. 

I stopped writing as many posts because I came to the realisation that it was taking time away from things I needed to be doing more.  At one point I was writing 1 - 2 posts per day on this blog.  Each posts would take at least 45 minutes to write and some which required more research took considerably longer.  I was happy to do it too but given that it was taking ~4 hours of my week it needed to be assessed alongside all the other things I could be doing with my time.

What I needed to do therefore was to work out exactly what I wanted to do with my life and importantly what the most productive thing I could be doing with my time.

What do I want to do with my life?

October 2015 Net Worth: $661,000 (+3.4%) and Goal Tracker

Apologies to everyone for my absence from the blog for a significant amount of time.  I went on my honeymoon for just over 5 weeks and although I have been back for about 3 weeks now I have made some major changes in my life (which I would love to share with you guys and I will do so in an upcoming post) which mean that I am now spending far less time blogging than I used to be.

These net worth posts will continue into the future though so if that's what you come to this blog for...have no fear!

Net Worth: $661,000 (+3.4%)

	Value	% Change
Assets	$1,079,000	+2.6%
Liabilities	$418,000	+1.3%
Net worth	$661,000	+3.4%

This change represents two months of net worth progress and although it pales in comparison to previous months where I really had gangbuster returns there was actually quite a lot going on under the hood.  The 3.4% increase above actually represented an $22,000 increase in my net worth and given the changes I'm going to outline below...I'm actually pretty happy with that!

Below are just a few of the items which affected my net worth over the last 2 months:

We paid for our honeymoon expenditure out of savings...but we continued to earn our wages at the same time

• My wife and I had fully funded our honeymoon through a years worth of savings.  I had accounted for the upcoming expenditure as a 'future liability' and so the cash saved for this honeymoon never really formed part of my net worth
• However while we were away for 5 weeks we didn't really spend any money that wasn't part of this savings AND we continued to each receive our wages
• This meant that we had far more cash in the bank when we returned than we originally anticipated
• We put all of this extra cash towards our home loan

My bonus shares vested this month...however this was a net negative

• As part of the bonus I receive from work I receive shares which I am not allowed to sell for a period of time
• I account for these shares as part of my net worth as I have no intention of leaving this job
• However there is a tax impact of actually being granted these shares and I don't know the impact of this until they actually vest
• This actually had a significant negative impact on my net worth this month