Welcome to the second week in April and it’s finally time for March’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: March was an interesting month. Work moved at an avalugg, or glacial, pace while the rest of my life was busier than a combee. At work we have hit what I call the “Open for Tonys Morelull.” In order to be nominated for the Tonys, a Broadway show has to open and be running by April 26, 2018. Thus, after that date there are no new shows opening, which translates into no new work for our costume shop. Without new work, our workload relies on costume reorders which there isn’t much of at the moment. This year it has been a lot of cleaning house, reorganization and paperwork catchup. Basically, I feel like I spend most of my energy during the day finding work to keep myself busy that by the time I got home, I was more exhausted than usual. We also got a new project manager which had a smooth baton pass between the outgoing person and the incoming one. As for my own projects for the month, I got a lot done, but not as much as I intended. I was able to prepare for facilitating discussion for BiRequest, a bisexual peer support group in New York City. I also applied for a park permit to plan some Bi+ family picnic style potlucks for this summer. My first permit was approved April 2nd and I am excited to start planning. I also was able to hang out with a handful of new friends over games, drinks and dance to get to know them better. I also managed to decide on three costumes to start preparing for Drag Con later this year. I disappointedly missed two blog posts in March due to my poor prep and scheduling for them. (One I should be posting this following weekend.) Overall, I would say it was a pretty successful month. Income Unusualness: Earlier in the month I had some overtime, but as work morelulled, there were a couple of weeks where working the full 40 hours became a struggle. Luckily my budget was able to accommodate for those paychecks by underbudgeting for each paycheck. Overall Budget: My budget was fine. There was one week I juggled rent by setting aside more with my overtime paycheck to cover for the undertime paychecks. Other than that, everything seemed to work great. I can see in March’s Net Worth the fair amount of damage the extra money I flung at my credit cards did, however, I don't think April will be as successful. Budget changes: I basically just upped the week base HP to match March's since it worked so well. I power split that extra $20 between saving for a new cell phone, my emergency fund, and my retirement. I also carried over the underlining automatic payments. Net Worth: I am glad to see that it continues to rock climb, although it seems to be growing tired as it seems to reach shorter heights each month. I get a sense that my debts are slowly plateauing and my investments are sky dropping because of the current market trends.
Savings Accounts: It was good to see it go back up this month. Emergency savings and my fun money savings is working well. My new Claimed Savings, or the money that I subtract from my savings total, has $15 I’m saving for a new cell phone. I hoping to grow that a little more next month. Investments: Basically, the only reason any of my investments went up was because of my deposits into my IRA Roth and haven’t purchased anything with them. I managed to deposit $50 into my IRA Roth this month and shall start scouting new stocks to buy after next month’s deposit. My Acorns is currently giving me a market gain of 10.26%, with a total loss of 2.15%. Acorns is dropping, but that’s just the nature of investing. As Blackrock just surfs the market, it has hit some market whirlpools and I hope it doesn’t dive too deep. I am considering putting some money towards Blackrock while the stock market is having this stock sale. I think it could help climb up the waterfall after all of this turbulence ends. Credit Card Relationship: I use plenty of ether this month. I used up my Visa PP on my dentist and park permit fees and needed to ether to pay for a work-related dinner, tickets to Black Panther and a trip to Wal-Mart to stock up on home items like garbage bags and soaps. I used up my Amex PP on a date night dinner and a friends’ dinner and using ether only once at a toy store. Extra cash didn't protect any credit spending this month. I found myself reminding myself what it is like to be tighter with my spending and the rewards it can bring. However, I felt blessed and acknowledged that I was long reaching for a few things I wanted this month. April I will return some inner focus to my spending. I'm glad to see I have reached my New Year’s goal for my Amex to pay off 5% of the amount of debt I owed in December. My Visa is getting close, but I don't think that goal will be reached in April. My dentist high horsepower kicked that goal in the teeth which will appear in April's net worth. I also have some plane tickets to purchase soon for wedding season 2018! Plus, last month I had a whole extra paycheck to help bring it down, I won't have that luxury this month. Student Loans: Once again my student loan debt appears to have grown, but when I look at them individually, Nelnet is the only one not recovering. I do not understand NelNet one bit and I have been too busy to get around to having that chat with them. The longer I wait to chat or attempt to develope a new plan, the interest will just keep stockpiling until it’s time to spit up all over my finances. Maybe instead of saying I’m going to do it, this coming month I just need to pick a date, let’s say June, to sit down and do it. Wedding accounts: Although the net total decreased, I believe we are actually in a pretty good place. Now that we’re married, we filed jointly to double battle our taxes. We used some of our savings to pay for our tax prep with my husband’s tax person. Our refund is slightly more than the tax prep and will return directly to our savings. So when I look at this stat, I remind myself that we will have about $600 going back into the account, which puts us at more of a stat increase than decrease. Other notes: I want April to be a month of continuing net worth growth. I want to get a better handle on juggling my extracurricular activities, my activism, designing, and this blog while also not overspending. March burnt some full incense and I hope April can burn some pure incense to reduce distractions. I am pleased with the direction everything is heading and I just want to keep things moving forward. With another delightful visit from Trixie Plusel, I have made contact with my 2018 goals, now I need to keep working with them. Let’s chat: How were your finances in March? What kinds of activities are you looking forward to this spring? Further reading: Rockstar Finances Blogdex Net Worth Tracker- over 540 other bloggers’ net worths February 2018 Review and Net Worth Update- last month’s review and update March 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.)
4 Comments
4/14/2018 06:11:15 pm
I remember when we had -$270,000 in student loans. Often I wish I had started blogging back then to show the uphill battle we fought to get out of debt.
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4/22/2018 07:09:42 pm
Congratulations on your journey! I just hope I can keep my journey moving forward like yours has. Thank you for the encouragement!
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4/22/2018 07:11:46 pm
Congrats to your brother! That sounds like an great spring trip. I love the Rocky Mountains.
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