More updates

Looking at my spreadsheet that I use to calculate and track net worth, I see that since January we've had a 11.11% increase in our net worth.

We've also managed to drop our short term liabilites from just over $16,000 to $7,759. Our investments are down a bit (around $1,300), but our property has increased in value.

All-in-all I feel pretty good about our progress this year. We still need to rebuild our emergency fund, so starting tomorrow I'm having more taken out of each paycheck to go to our money market account at Edward Jones.

Latest Updates

This summer has certainly been a busy one at our house. The garden did well at first, but the incredible heat this summer has beaten our best efforts. We're now planning to put out a fall garden to get some more fresh produce later.

The price of gas has really hurt as well. I drive a Saturn SL1, and generally make about 36 mpg, but have a long commute (about 50 miles one way). Luckily, the local Krogers stores (Dillon's) also owns some gas stations, and when you spend over $100 in groceries and the like you get a coupon for 10 cents off on gas.

I've been doing better on exercise and eating, and have now lost a little more weight after plateauing a bit last month.

Financially we're doing Ok. We hit a rough patch at the end July, but made it through without taking on additional debt. So that was good. Didn't get to reduce our existing debt that much though, so that was not so good.

I'll be updating the progress bars today.

One more time

Ok, our debt is pretty much under control with more and more being paid off every month. But I realized that I'm falling short in one important area - those expenses that come regularly, but not monthly.

We have real estate and personal property taxes and tags for the cars annually, insurance quarterly, and some others.

So I re-did our budget. I broke out those types of expenses by frequency (quarterly, semi-annual, annual) and then determined what I needed to save each month to make them. It was an eye-opener to be sure. The problem I was having every quarter became apparent - I didn't have enough left over to make those payments.

It may seem obvious to you all, but I just didn't get it, until now.

The preliminary budget (I'll go over it with my wife tonight) looks good. It allows for enough savings to pay those periodic bills AND still add to the emergency fund. One pontential problem is for our heating expenses come winter. We use propane, and the price we'll pay come winter time is very unknowable right now.

Things will continue to be tight, but I think we'll be ok.

Doing Dad Stuff

I may be late at this, but my son and I took in a baseball game (the local minor league team). We had gone to a few big league games years ago, but we both got busy with other things and hadn't really done anything together for a while.

A minor league game is really different than a major league one. For starters, the tickets are dirt cheap ($10 each for really good seats), the food is cheap ($2.75 for a stadium style hotdog), and parking was free.

The game was good too. These guys are still pros, but are usually just starting their careers in baseball (or doing rehab from their major league parent club).

One really "Dadish" thing I did was teach my son how to keep score during the game. We printed off scoresheets from a website and taped them to some thin cardboard pieces for an instant scorepad that was firm enough to write on. My grandfather had taught me how to keep score years ago, but I hadn't done it for years. It was a lot of fun for both of us. My son is already asking when we'll go again.

Been a busy month

It's been a while since I posted. That wasn't by design, this has just been a hectic month. My wife and I did manage to see a movie (RV with Robin Williams), but it's been mostly work, work, work.

We have been doing a lot of gardening/landscaping, and the outside of our house looks great! We have a nice crop of veggies coming on (in fact, we've already enjoyed some radishes and onions) and are really looking forward to getting some fresh tomatoes and peppers in a month or two. While it may not have that great of impact on our food bill, it will certainly taste great.

We have a couple of big (for us) expenses coming up - tires for our Saturn and some drivetrain work on our old pickup. This month might be a little tight, but I think we will still be able to put some away in our emergency fund and investment accounts AND continue to pay down our diminished credit card debt.

April Updates

We made good progress this last month, at least financially. We have passed our current year end goal for credit card debt, made our goal for our "wealth index", and saw a 4% increase in net worth.

Here's our balance sheet for the end of April, 2006

Total Assets - $224,990
Total Liabilities - $124,570

April Net Worth - $100,420

Our credit card debt, which in January stood at $16,165 is down to $7,775, just over $200 below our year end goal of $8,000. Time to reevaluate and set a new goal.

Our wealth index now stands at .50, right at our goal. Again, time for a new goal.

In the emergency funds area we took a hit. As I wrote earlier, we are taking a bit of a gamble in drawing down emergency funds to pay off high interest credit card debt. So far, so good.

In the weight department, well this hasn't been a good month. She and I are working on some healthy diet changes (not a diet, but dietary changes) to help that out some.

I'll be updating the progress bars shortly.