At the end of each month’s financial review, I have a section with a few notes about my net worth.  These notes reference things that I want to be clear body clear with my readers about.  I feel it is important to point out that my net worth only tracks my personal assets and liabilities and not my husband’s finances.  I don’t include his finances because we have not merged our finances.  Even with our recent wedding, we don’t see a reason for us to merge them right now.
 
Treating each other’s financial pokémon teams like we do our battling pokémon teams has been working well for us these past five years.  We discuss them often by talking about our problems, ideas and are open to making and listening to suggestions.  We understand the basics of each other’s team, how they function and each other’s strategies behind them.  When it comes to battling our finances, we do it individually and make the battling decisions ourselves.
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This works for us for various reasons. We have different strategies and goals.  Separate finances assist us when we are both freelancing.  Our current system is equal, fair and we trust each other to control our own teams.  Plus, we can always join forces for an occasional Multi Battle.

​The year of 2015 brought an evolution to how I saw my personal finances.  I had a strong budget that was flexible enough to adjust for a month out of town.  I also started working on my credit card relationship by limiting my spending with PP.  That Christmas season I over-swiped and I could visually see that I had no control over my Christmas spending.
 
A year later, I knew I needed to start preparing for Christmas earlier than I had the year before.  In October, I started odor sleuthing what I wanted to buy my family and started to build up a plan.  I used an Excel template to track my present ideas and the credit I used to purchase them.  I kept a keen eye out for deals and ended Holiday Season 2016 without using any extra PP.  This year I want to track a few more things with my Christmas budget level it up into an even more useful tool.

​Welcome to October!  The first week in October means that it’s time for September’s Review and Net Worth Update.
 
For those who are new to The Grown-Up Pkmn Trainer, each month I write a financial review to xatu my net worth by writing down my thoughts on the previous and following months.  I share these summaries so everyone can gain insight into my personal finances and my thoughts behind them.
 
I started tracking my net worth to measure my progress, inspired by Budgets Are Sexy, which has helped me pay closer attention to my personal finances.  I have been tracking my net worth since January 2015 and writing monthly financial reviews for myself since 2016.  I recommend tracking net worth because it has been such a helpful tool to see my personal finances stat changes all in one place.