Welcome to March and it’s time for February’s Financial 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 keep a keen eye on my personal finances. I have been tracking my net worth since January 2015 and writing monthly financial reviews for myself since 2016. I recommend both because they have been such helpful tools to watch my personal finances stat changes. Summary of activity: February was another social month. I went a lot of places and I saw a lot of people, both old and new. The Olympics steamrolled my apartment almost every night and most of my spare time. I also managed to watch 4 plays this month, three of which I worked on and three of which I did not pay for. I almost had some close combat with some over drafting, but focus sashed some money into my account just in time. Income Unusualness: Although work was busy, I didn't really work much overtime. The few times I did, it wasn’t much. I also received a tynamo sized paycheck for some work I did for the milliner across the hall, but every little bit helps. I used it to pay for date night. Overall Budget: My budget worked well again, but I ran into a diglet in the road. I saw two amounts on my budget going to our wedding savings on the same week and spliced the two together. I forgot that one of the amounts was to indicate my automatic transfer that mists my savings to stay fee-free. I have updated my budget by underlining those payments as a remember. Budget changes: This is the first five-week budget since my new student loan meal plan. By keeping my student loan payments relatively the same as during a four-week month, I have more money than usual to power split between savings and credit cards. I added extra money to emergency savings, rent savings, our wedding savings and my retirement. My excitement from my progress paying down my credit cards made sure I arranged for some money going to them as well. As for the tax beast boost, I have decided to account for $5 of it in my budget to leave the extra $10 as a barrier for my credit cards and reflect for when I don’t work a full 40 hours. My phone bill payment changed form by separating how much to pay my phone bill and how much gets stockpiled to purchase a new phone. I also underlined the automatic payments that keep my accounts fee-free as a reminder. Net Worth: Overall, I am glad to see continued progress. I am starting to acknowledge that my newer student loan meal plan has shell smashed to apply the money I was using for student loans to speed up other goals. I am at my third net worth increase in a row and I want to skill link this barrage to keep it going. Although lowering my credit card debt is important, I also need to mat block my student loans, savings, and investments from losing worth.
Savings Accounts: The main reason my savings dropped this month was that I used fun money savings to pay for dinner at our friend's birthday party. It was nice knowing that I had money set aside for exactly that reason. I also needed to switcheroo a focus sash with some money to prevent an accidental overdraft caused by my not clearly paying attention to my budget. Investments: My investments did not have a great month, but neither did the stock market. The only reason it appears that my IRA Roth had a good month was that my deposit cleared the day before the statement was created. My Acorns is currently giving me a market gain of 10.96%, lower than last months, and a total loss of 1.83%. I redistributed my Acorns at the end of the month to be a little more conservative than they were last year. Naturally, Blackrock surfed down with the tide of the market. Credit Card Relationship: I used my 2 PP for my Visa this month to see a show and for my doctor's appointment. I used 1 PP from my Amex to buy a book. Having some extra cash in my checking account has been a great barrier for my credit cards. I am quite pleased to see my credit cards balances dropping each month. Now, I just hope it can withstand some powerful blows once wedding season starts drill running its way into my debt. I have two weddings this year and flying is my credit cards’ biggest weakness. Fortunately, I have the Plan It program on my Amex and I am curious to see how this may assist in battling flying debt. Student Loans: As a category, my student loan debt has grown. As individual servicers, Nelnet is as moody as a glalie on Mount Lanakila, one month it’s causing my student loan stat to increase and the next month it’s allowing it to drop. I neither understand it, nor have I taken the time to understand it. Maybe that can be a goal for March. My other two servicers continue to get paid off, so at least I have those making progress. Since it is a five-week month, I am allowing one of my six ACS loans to continue with its usual five-week payment boost, while mean looking the others into my newer student loan meal plan. Wedding accounts: My husband and I had a great discussion about the present and the future of our wedding accounts. We decided to use only the money from our wedding savings account to pay our line of credit. This way we have one total amount to refer to when we discuss a plan for paying our line of credit. My additional payment in January grass knotted our plan. So from February forward, I will be contributing my fair share to our savings. This change in the plan didn’t make my February budget which was another factor in causing the potential overdraft. Other notes: I have been thinking about a bunch of different personal projects that I want to get started and am trying to figure out how to find the money in my budget to make these projects into realities. One solution I have involves the tax beast boost. However, I want to give myself one more month with it to see if I can get used to having some extra cash in hand. With another plusle of a month I continue to long reach towards my 2018 goals. Let's start making contact in March! Let’s chat: How were your finances in February? Did Valentine’s Day or the Olympics have any effect on them? Further reading: Rockstar Finances Blogdex Net Worth Tracker- over 525 other bloggers’ net worths January 2018 Review and Net Worth Update- last month’s review and update February 2017 Review and Net Worth Update- where I was a year ago *A few notes about my net worth* My net worth only tracks my personal assets and liabilities. My husband’s finances are not included. I include our wedding accounts on a separate line because I haven’t figured out how our accounts fit into my personal net worth. The numbers are taken from each accounts’ monthly statements. I don’t use dollar signs because looking at just the numbers helps me focus energy easier for analyzing by removing any prior attachments, emotional or otherwise, so I can look at the numbers as just numbers. (In my excel file, I don’t use commas either.) I only show the current month and the one before for illustrative purposes. (My excel file contains the entire year.) I use plusle-red, and minun-blue for illustrative purposes. (In my excel file, they are all in black.)
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