December 2017 Net Worth Performance Review

As I mentioned in my June 2017 Net Worth post, I will be popping back in periodically to update my net worth on this blog.  As I mentioned in that post I have been spending far more of my time working on my net worth and improving it rather than writing about it and I think the results are really paying off.

December 2017 Net Worth: $1,300,000

When I first started tracking my net worth in July 2011 I had a net worth of $120,000.  For it to have grown 10x in 6.5 years absolutely blows my mind.  

Before I get into the nitty gritty here are the high level numbers for December:

As you can see I haven't really had any change in my liabilities over the year and the increase from $880,000 to $1,300,000 was entirely driven by the increase in my assets over the year.

However as I mentioned in June there are a few things going on in the assets column that I should highlight:

There is a lot happening in the assets column so I thought I would explain the large moving parts and why things have moved the way that they have:

June 2017 Net Worth Performance Review

After years of consistently writing posts on this blog you may have noticed that the blog suffered a rather sudden and silent death.  Whilst I never intended to just disappear there was a very deliberate reason I stepped away from blogging...

While I love blogging about financial topics and personal finance, I found that I was spending far more time talking about finance and investments rather than taking control of my own financial life.

It doesn't mean that I was not doing the things I was saying that I was doing.  There was just a lot of "this month I will do x, y and z" and honestly a lot of that stuff never got done.

In addition to this I decided that I needed to concentrate far more on my career and my time at home got taken up with a new addition to our family.

However I still kept tracking my net worth...

Just because I wasn't writing posts on it every month doesn't mean I let my focus on my net worth and financials fall by the wayside...

Actually with all the time I freed up by not having a posting schedule (and by giving up my industry blog that I started as well) I found that I had far more time to dedicate to my own personal finances.  I still track my net worth every month and I my plans have evolved significantly since the last time I posted on here.

I'm going to go through a quick summary of my net worth, the changes that have happened over the last year as well and then will cover quickly what my new plans look like.

June 2017 Net Worth: $1,130,000

I finally cracked the $1 million mark a few months ago however this had as much to do with how I measured my net worth as improvements in my savings and investing focus and outcomes.  Before I get into the nitty gritty details here are the highlights:

As you can see I have managed to increase my assets significantly over the last year while holding my liabilities flat.  

My liabilities are fairly basic - I have a home loan, some credit card debt (which is rolling and I pay it off every month) and some tax liabilities which come due once a year.

My assets are far more complex and over the last year I've spent some time re-working how I think about my assets.  Historically I just broke them into categories like shares, property, cash etc.  I now take a more nuanced view of my assets which you can see below:

The differences in totals are due to rounding at various asset classes but don't worry my numbers add up on my spreadsheet.

Now that we can see what is actually going on in my asset portfolio we can have a discussion about what I've actually been doing and changing.

Investment assets

Broadly speaking my investment assets fall into two categories that you can see above. Controlled investment assets and restricted investment assets.  

Restricted investment assets include my retirement accounts (the majority) and employer restricted shares.   I have little to no control over these and I don't add excess amounts to these accounts so let's set them to one side for the moment.

Controlled investment assets are where I've been concentrating my efforts and in the last year these accounts increased by ~60,000.  

• My investment holdings have done really well in the last year especially post the election of Donald Trump in November last year (who would have thought?!).  I have been selling out shares which have performed particularly well as well as holdings which I am no longer particularly close to
• Years ago my parents gave me some managed funds and I've held onto them for years.  However they were incredibly high fee and didn't really outperform the market after tax so I recently sold them and am slowly reinvesting them back into index ETFs and select individual stocks
• Uninvested cash is cash that is sitting there for investment purposes but which I haven't found a home for yet.  I don't like this cash balance to get too high and it is sitting a little higher than I would have liked.  Most of this is in USD and I'm waiting for the exchange rate to come back before bringing it back

The largest increases in my asset base have been in my non investment assets whose total value increased ~$240,000 over the year

• The Principal Place of Residence as the name suggests is my home.  Historically I valued this at the amount I paid for it and a few years ago I increased it from $440,000 to $480,000 when the bank did a revaluation.  More recently I've been using a selection of apps which track the market value of my home.  Tracking this at historic value may have been conservative but it actually belied the level of equity I had to draw on and the exposure I had to the property market so I've been using market values.  My home property market has been on a tear for the last few years which is the cause of the large increase in my home value
  
• My non investment cash holdings is the cash we are saving to buy our new home with.  It offsets most of my liabilities (my home loan) and will be used to pay for our new home.  As we are looking to buy a new home in the next year or two this is where we have been concentrating most of our savings efforts

Financial Freedom Targets

When I first started this blog in 2011 I was in my mid 20s and I wanted to be rich.  Not just comfortable but rich.  In fact as you can tell from the title of this blog I wanted $90m and I was willing to do anything to get there.

Over time my priorities have changed.  I value lifestyle and living a full life as far more important than I used to and as such my financial priorities have changed as well.  I discovered the FIRE (financial independence retire early) community and a lot of what they had to say inspired and motivated me.  

Now I'm not looking to retire particularly early but financial independence and having investment income to cover my living expenses sounds pretty appealing to me.  It gives me the flexibility to perhaps pursue a life where I earn slightly less but perhaps get to live a little more.

So I started with a target:

My target is to earn $100,000 p.a. (in 2016 dollars) from investment income

This would cover the lifestyle that I currently live with a bit of a buffer and would allow me to be comfortable even without a job.

I then back solved what this would require in terms of assets:

Obviously this is incredibly dependent on your assumptions and I'm not going to set out all of my assumptions and asset allocation mix here.  But basically:

My income target of $100,000 requires $2.8m of total assets (including a home value) in 2016 dollars

Now why do I keep mentioning 2016 dollars?  Because inflation eats away at the spending power of your money.  $100,000 today is not the same as $100,000 15 years from now.

Accounting for inflation my 2017 asset target is $2.9m and importantly these numbers are net.  Meaning I have all my debt paid off.  So I'm aiming for $2.9m this year and my net worth is $1.1m which means:

I am currently $1.8m short of achieving financial freedom

This seems like a huge amount to be short by but once you consider that I can save and invest at above inflation rates then I should be able to achieve this target over time

So am I back for good now?

Well...no.  I found that being able to concentrate on my investments and career has really started to pay dividends for me and given it's working for me I'm going to continue with it.

That being said my aim is to update my progress on these big goals on occasions.  Given that it is a slow moving target I'm currently thinking semi annually seems about right.

July 2016 Net Worth: $788,000 (+3.5%)

My net worth is up pretty significantly this month however other than saving a decent amount into our home loan offset account I didn't actually do all that much which is a little disappointing.

I still have plenty to do with respect to my personal finances before I'm in a position where I'm happy to just sit back and let my investments do their thing.  These are just some of the things that I'm looking to do:

1. Get my individual stock holdings down to 10 individual stocks (currently at 11).  
• I've been doing quite a lot of work on this and have managed to narrow what I hold
• This does not mean that I only want to hold 10 securities. I'm willing to hold far more than that in broad based index funds but those are pretty much set and forget type investments that I don't need to think about all that much
• I want to hold at maximum 10 individual stocks.  Any more than this and I honestly do not have enough time in the day to do them justice and I end up not knowing enough about the stocks I own
  
2. Progressively transfer stock holdings into my wife's name
• I currently hold most of my share investments in my name which is incredibly inefficient from a tax point of view (given that she is in a lower income tax bracket)
• As I sell shares over time I want to move more and more into her name
  
3. Work out what I want to do with my managed funds
• Several years ago my parents gave me a portfolio of managed funds and they have slowly been growing over time
• However they are quite high fee and they do tend to create tax issues for me each year so I need to work out what I am doing with these
  
4. Move cash and stock progressively out of my interactive brokers account
• Interactive Brokers is a great platform if you are looking to trade frequently
• My investing methodology has been changing over time and I am far more a buy and hold forever type of person...interactive brokers isn't great for this especially given the inability to participate in DRPs or receive franking credits

I could keep going however these are just a few of the larger things I need to do to get my portfolio into shape over time.  Some of these I just need to sit down a do a bit of work and others I can only do opportunistically.

However that's enough about the future plan...let's see how I've actually performed this month.

July was a bit of catch up month after a dreadful June...

I've outlined below how I performed in different areas

June 2016 Annual Report

This post is one I really enjoy writing every year.  I love looking back on the year and assessing how I did and also looking at what I wanted to achieve.

In some ways the last year has been a little boring on the financial front.  I have been building cash so that my wife and I can look at buying our new home so I haven't been as active with my investments as I was in the first few years of this blog.  However this year I have been doing a lot on the personal front and in cleaning up my share portfolio which had grown incredibly unfocused.

I will look at most of these points in detail below and this post is going to be one of my longer ones so feel free to skip to whatever section interests you most (I've tried to signpost it as well as I can)

Annual Net Worth Performance: +$200,000

Over the year to June 2016 my net worth increased from $561,000 to $761,000 and although this is a spectacularly large increase there are a few reasons why this is a one off which I will discuss below.  However even excluding these one offs my wife and I managed to do really well this year especially given the amount we have been doing in our personal lives including:

• Getting married
• Going on two overseas holidays
• Doing some expensive renovations on our home

Although the net worth performance over the year looks pretty amazing there are a few one offs I should probably call out here:

1. In 2015 I had adjusted my net worth down to account for the fact that we would have to spend a significant amount on our wedding and honeymoon so these big expenses didn't actually impact our net worth
   
2. At our wedding in July last year our guests were incredibly generous (especially our parents) and this boosted our net worth by ~$30,000
   
3. We had our home revalued in August last year by the bank and this added another $40,000 to our net worth over the year

However even allowing for this we still managed to do very well over the year.  Before I go into the details of what we did over the year it may be worth looking at how I have done since I started writing this blog over 5 years ago.

The power of continuous saving really does work...

June 2016 Net Worth: 761,000 (-1.5%)

I thought I would start this post with a quick thank you to those who still read this blog 5 years after it first started.  I know that I am posting less than I used to and it has gone from being a blog which disseminated some (hopefully) useful financial knowledge to pretty much a pure personal financial blog.

I know I've explained it before but I thought it would be worth recapping why I decided to post less.  Most of us only have a finite amount of time in the day and I had to decide how to spend mine.  Instead of posting on this blog (and indeed on other blogs which I write) I decided to scale that back and spend time actually investing and trying to get ahead financially.  There were plenty of things which I had planned to do financially which, frankly, were never getting done and I was spending hours each week writing blog posts.

I decided that a better use of my time was to focus on my business of investing.  Unfortunately this has meant that I have far less time to post here.

With that being said I do still enjoy tracking my financial progress and it does allow me to take stock once a month of where I am at.  This month I will also do an annual review of how I have performed over the last year (I will upload that post in a few days time).

June 2016 was a tough month...

I don't think I'm the only one that had a tough month this month with markets going into a nose dive on the back of the unexpected Brexit vote.  My share investments tend to be higher risk and have a higher beta and my financial performance suffered significantly as a result.

Here is a summary of where I ended the month...

Now let's see where I took most of my pain this month...

May 2016 Net Worth: $773,300 (+2.5%)

I continue to honestly be surprised at how my net worth continues to rise month on month.  My wife and I have been talking about finances a lot this month.  As crazy as it sounds this is the first time in my life I have felt any anxiety about money at all.

Why am I feeling anxiety when I am doing pretty decently for my age (for those of you who don't know I just crossed the big 30 a few months ago)?  Housing is the reason.  My wife and I are saving for a new house and housing in the state I live in is incredibly expensive.  I keep going round and round in my head the different options:

• Do I sell some investment assets to be able to afford a better home?
• Do I compromise on where I live to buy something more affordable?
• Do I buy something more expensive and keep the investment assets but leverage myself more?
• Do we go for the area we want but perhaps not the house that we want?
• Can I afford to take extra leverage if I'm the sole bread winner and we have kids?

Obviously in a world with limited resources where I am not a multi-millionaire these are all very real questions and questions that lots of people ask...it's just my time to ask and go through these issues.

Why do I raise all of these issues in a post about my net worth?  I haven't been tracking my net worth performance this month all that closely and given the stress I have been feeling with the above questions it was a relief and pleasant surprise to see things continue to go well.

So how did I actually do this month?

My net worth performance breaks down as follows (note that totals may not add exactly as there are formulas which round everything to the nearest $100)

Let's walk through some of the major movements this month...

April 2016 Net Worth: $754,400 (+2.0%)

I was surprised how well I performed this month.  I actually spent a fair amount of time this month working on our personal finances and sorting out some admin problems we had (including spending about 2 hours speaking to my superannuation fund to make sure that there weren't any admin errors).

This month we focused a lot on trading and not a lot on investing.  I'm hoping to get back into investing more aggressively over the next few months.

Let's have a look at the breakdown in performance this month:

March 2016 Net Worth: $739,900 (+2.7%)

This month was a pretty good month...I managed to get away for a 2 week break overseas and also to do pretty well in terms of my net worth performance.

Instead of a long rambling summary I thought I would get straight into the numbers.  Below I have included a detailed breakdown of my net worth performance.

In line with the new way I disclose my net worth and the extra detail provided I thought I would address each of the major categories in turn.

Direct Share Investments: +$7,800

I didn't invest anything new in the share market this month and the total gain was due to positive share market moves.  Given the real pain I have taken over the last few months this was a welcome relief.  

Most of these gains came from industrial type stocks.  I made quite a large move into resources and oil exposures while the price was falling and given the low oil price these bets haven't paid off for me yet.  I'm currently considering investing more in this space but am a little gun shy at the moment

Other Investment Assets: +$4,500

February 2016 Net Worth: $720,300 (-1.0%)

This was my first negative month in 7 months which is a pretty good run rate when you think about it but I have a bit of an embarrassing fact to admit...I totally screwed up last month's net worth which actually did terribly...as in the worst performance I have ever had.

It was only because an error on my part that I thought I actually had a decent performance.  The error in last month's performance was due to a share consolidation that I had missed.  Basically the error was as follows:

• I have ~$4,000 worth of Hello World, an Australian listed travel agency
• Hello World did a 1 for 6 share consolidation which raised the price 6x
• I should have just adjusted the shares I held by the same amount but because I missed it (and my share prices populate) I looked like I had $24,000 worth of shars
• January's net worth was actually overstated by $20,000...instead of an increase of $13,000 I should have seen a decrease of $7,000 to $707,000

Why did I outline this?  Because I actually did reasonably well this month in increasing my net worth to $720,100 and my explanations wouldn't have made sense in the context of a falling net worth.

February 2016 Net worth...the detail

January 2016 Net Worth: $727,400 (+1.7%)

You may have noticed that over the last few months I have really dropped off on my posting schedule.  I have not uploaded any goals for this year and I haven't really been updating you on what has been going on in my financial life.

Originally this is because I was developing a new financial blog concept.  This blog was originally set up when I wanted to be rich and take over the world.  Since I started this blog however many things in my life have changed including my perspective on life.

I sat down and did some really hard thinking and worked out that...you know what?  I don't know what I would do with $90 million that I couldn't do with $5 million and what I want with the $5 million is more freedom rather than toys.  The only extravagance I would spring for is Business class airline seating (seriously!).

If I'm going to be honest with you I don't really know what I want anymore.  I'm in this odd place where I'm remarkably comfortable but I'm not really sure what comes next.   I'm not financially "free" yet and I'm going to keep working towards this goal but I haven't yet nailed down what a 'perfect' life would look like and until I do my goals are in a little bit of limbo.

With that out of the way - I will (for the foreseeable future) still be updating my net worth on this blog.  When I work out what I want to do next you will be the first to know.

January 2016 Net Worth...the detail:

December 2015 Net Worth: $715,000 (+2.1%) and Goal Tracker

Another month and another year have gone by and I'm incredibly happy with house this month and this year have panned out.  Not everything has gone to plan especially in relation to this I couldn't control (like the stock market) however having a plan in place for my own personal finances helped me whether some pretty tough conditions to come out far ahead of where I originally thought I would be.

Enough of the nostalgia and onto the numbers.  Below I have provided the usual summary of my net worth however I have gone into far more detail than I usually do on my goal tracker given I have just completed my goals for the year.

Net Worth: $715,000 (+2.1%)

	Value	% Change
Assets	$1,121,000	+1.1%
Liabilities	$406,000	-0.7%
Net worth	$715,000	+2.1%

This month I had hoped to increase my net worth to $705,000 so I was pleasantly surprised to see it increase far more than that.  Some of the increase was driven by large factors but a lot of it was just grinding along and following the plan I have laid down for myself.

Some of the key factors which affected this month's performance included:

November 2015 Net Worth: $700,000 (+5.9%) and Goal Tracker

I love bonus month!  It's the one really big cash inflow that I have during the year and this year was no exception.  Bonus month helped my net worth jump almost 6% to hit the $700,000 mark for the first time.

Crossing these milestones is always a bit of a strange experience.  I technically know that I am building wealth but my life doesn't feel any different.  I'm still doing exactly the same thing day to day but the effect of compounding seems to be accelerating the process.

Net Worth: $700,000 (+5.9%)

	Value	% Change
Assets	$1,109,000	+2.7%
Liabilities	$409,000	-2.3%
Net worth	$700,000	+5.9%

This month my net worth increased $39,000 and there were a couple of huge factors that led to the increase.  For once most of it was actually expected (as opposed to hitting me from nowhere) but it was still pleasing to see everything running as expected.

My bonus got paid in the month

• My annual bonus forms a significant part of my income and it was paid this month.  I'm not going to go into the specifics of exactly how much it was but a good chunk of the increase this month was the bonus payment
• Part of my bonus is deferred for the next few years (although part of this gets paid out every October so if you read my post last month you will have seen a significant uplift from that)
• Tax is also taken out of my bonus payment automatically...given that it is taken out at close to the top marginal rate, I'm losing 50% of my bonus almost straight away
• Even with all these mitigating factors it was still nice to see a significant step up in the amount of cash I had on hand

I paid my tax bill during the month

• I had an absolutely massive tax bill this month...I owed the government more than $8,000!
• Most of this was due to my trading in shares and as I generate profits on my share portfolio I keep track of the capital gains tax I have owing which forms part of my liabilities above
• Although I paid out a significant amount in cash this month it actually didn't affect my net worth all that much as my liabilities stepped down by a similar amount

My investment portfolio continued to perform well

• My investment portfolio did rather well this month increasing by almost 2% over the month
• I also continued to contribute to my employee share plan and my employer continued to make superannuation payments on my behalf
• My investment portfolio (including my superannuation) represents approximately half of my net worth with the rest being the home I live in and the cash I am stocking away from my next house

My credit card balance remains stubbornly high

• One of the few disappointing aspects of this month's performance is how stubbornly high my credit card bill remains
• We are doing renovations on our home at the moment and everything we buy goes on the credit card...I think this is an area my wife and I probably need to focus on going forward.

When I look back

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

August 2015 Net Worth: $639,000 (+8.0%) and Goal Tracker

This month was massive for me.  I crossed the $1 million mark in terms of assets and my net worth crossed the $600,000 mark for the first time.

One of the interesting things about updating my net worth every month is that I totally ignore the larger numbers...I'm far more interested in how I'm performing month to month...but occasionally when I cross a bit milestone like $1 million in assets...that's pretty exciting!

So how did I do it and what changed?  Well read on below for details.

Net Worth: $639,000 (+8.0%)

	Value	% Change
Assets	$1,052,000	+6.3%
Liabilities	$412,000	+3.8%
Net worth	$639,000	+8.0%

This month was absolutely crazy for me.  I took a massive hit in my share portfolio as global share markets sank to their lowest levels in 4 years.  However offsetting that was a large increase in the value of my property.  I will go through this and more in my detailed explanations below.

July 2015 Net Worth: $592,000 (+5.6%) and Goal Tracker

My net worth increased by ~$32,000 and although I'd love to say it was because of some incredible investing on my behalf the answer was actually far simpler than that.  I got married during the month and we asked for cash gifts to help fund our honeymoon and people were far more generous than we could have imagined.

There were other incremental positives as well.  The share market bounced back after it's atrocious month last month and I slowly started to pay off my credit card debt.  There were also other swings and roundabouts which I will go into further detail about later.

In this month's round up I also look at the goals we managed to tick off during the month and I start to track the goals that I set at last month's 2015 Annual Review.

June 2015 Net Worth: $561,000 (-0.9%)

After an incredibly strong performance last month, this month saw my net worth slip by almost 1% driven almost entirely by an incredibly weak Australian share market.  In this post I'm going to highlight what happened to my net worth this month, what drove most of the chances and where I am heading in the future.

In the coming week I will also upload my annual performance review which tends to give far more detail about how my portfolio is structured.  My apologies for the late posting of this month's net worth.  I was on leave from work (and my computer) for a few weeks as I was getting married and moving home...I will also post more about what is happening on the personal front soon.

Before I take a deep dive into my performance this month let's have a look at the headline numbers.

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.

April 2015 Net Worth: $551,000 (+0.4%) and Goal Tracker

It's once again time to update my net worth and this month has seen some serious swings in the composition of my net worth even though the actual numbers didn't change all that much.  I continue to keep track of my 'future liabilities' (see this post for an explanation of them).  As at the end of April my future liabilities sit at $43,000 (down from $52,000 in March).

April 2015 Net Worth: $551,000 (+0.4%)

	Value	% Change
Assets	$965,000	+0.0%
Liabilities	$413,000	-0.4%
Net worth	$551,000	+0.4%

My performance this month at the headline level was actually quite lackluster and didn't quite live up to the modest $553,000 goal I had set at the end of last month.  However under the rather flat result there were a more movements and portfolio changes than I have had in a very long time. I've outlined some of the changes that were made this month below:

• A significant re-organisation of my share portfolio
• Recently I have been talking pretty consistently about how much the Australian share market has run and how I have been starting to get uncomfortable with being invested at these levels
• Well in the last month I put my money where my mouth is.  I sold some pretty big parcels of shares...some of which I wrote about and others which are just a continual re-balancing of my portfolio
• In the month I sold ~$30,000 of shares and made a significant profit...however from a net worth standpoint it was actually a negative
• This is because I account for the current market value of my shares in my net worth however it is only when I sell them that I actually generate capital gains liabilities
• Selling the shares therefore didn't increase my asset value but it did increase my liabilities to the tune of ~$4,000

March 2015 Net Worth: $549,000 (+2.2%) and Goal Tracker

I love updating my month end net worth post.  I actually don't spend that much time during the month focusing on it because unless I'm actively changing something in portfolio it does me no good to keep track of where I am day to day.

This post includes a category of liabilities I included recently called "future liabilities" which is where I account for the fact that I have committed to spend a certain amount on different activities and that some of the cash on the 'assets' column of my balance sheet are actually already accounted for.  At March 2015 my future liabilities balance sits at $52,000 - a significant drop compared to last month.

March 2015 Net Worth: $549,000 (+2.2%)

	Value	% Change
Assets	$964,000	-0.1%
Liabilities	$415,000	-3.0%
Net worth	$549,000	+2.2%

My performance this month was actually much better than the $540,000 I was originally aiming for.  It was really driven by a reduction in my future liabilities balance (which I discussed above) with some other small positives along the way.

Below I have outlined some of the positive and negative factors which affected my performance

Positive factors

• A significant reduction in my future liabilities balance
• My future liabilities balance decreased by ~$13,000 this month.  Although some of this reduction was offset by cash (or an increase in credit card debt) to pay for the expenses, a lot of the expenses were also borne by my fiance
• We are planning a wedding together and a large part of the liability relates to the wedding and honeymoon expenses
• For the sake of simplicity I include the whole liability on my balance sheet however she has been saving and paying for significant parts of the wedding and honeymoon as well
• A large reduction in my credit card bill
• My credit card balance was abnormally high last month and I have managed to bring this down slightly this month (although not nearly as much as I should have)
• Continued savings towards my employee share plan and emergency fund
• My employee share plan is the only guaranteed return I will ever get in my life and I continue to contribute the maximum amount that I can 
• I will discuss this below but I also continued to save towards my emergency fund
• A particularly good outcome on a recent share purchase plan
• I have historically had pretty bad luck when it comes to my share purchase plans however one finally went well for me.  I will write about this in more detail soon.

Negative factors

Unfortunately this month had a slew of negative factors which affected my result including

• A significant step up in my capital gains tax liability
• As mentioned before I am starting to feel uncomfortable with the levels the stock market is currently reaching and I am taking the opportunity to sell some of my more overvalued stocks
• However this has the downside of crystallizing capital gains tax

February 2015 Net Worth: $537,000 (+5.5%) and Goal Tracker

I have been doing these net worth posts for almost 5 years now and I am constantly refining the process.  As explained in my last post I have 'reset' my measurement methodology to account for future committed liabilities (like my wedding and honeymoon) to more accurately reflect what my net worth position was.

This is the second month where I have included these future liabilities and is a clean month (i.e. you can compare back to last month easily).  My future liabilities balance currently sits at $65,000 so add this to my net worth if you want to know what I would have been at if I had not restated it.

February 2015 Net Worth: $537,000 (+5.5%)

	Value	% Change
Assets	$966,000	+2.5%
Liabilities	$428,000	-1.0%
Net worth	$537,000	+5.5%

I can't believe the month I just had.  In absolute terms this was the best monthly performance that I have had (outside of months where I am paid my bonus) since I started tracking my net worth.  The best bit is that it was a 'clean' result - there were no restatements or inclusions of big swing factors.

Below I have outlined some of the positive and negative factors which affected my performance.

Positive Factors

• My share portfolio performed incredibly strongly
• Australian shares have had an incredibly rally since the end of the last calendar year and my portfolio benefited significantly from these moves
• A couple of stock specific bets really paid off this month and I took the advantage to sell some of my FKP (now AOG) stock which I have written so much about.  I have sold approximately 1/3 of my portfolio locking in a ~90% gain (although  did crystalise a capital gain which increased my liabilities a bit)
• Additionally the Australian dollar continued to depreciate against the USD which helped my international shares which make up just under 50% of my portfolio
• My employee share plan vested
• I get a significant bump in