Detailed Financial Picture – February 2014

January’s Numbers

As of February 7 , 2014, we are $447,106.09 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $29,246.90 in debt.  This includes student loans and an auto loan.  We currently have $1,018,603.97 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $343,855.36.  Our Net Worth is $571,497.88 (includes house and mortgage), up from $561,939.69 last month (1.70% increase).

We paid off one of the three student loans this month, with two more to go.  We owe taxes (based on the documents we have so far and estimates on the others, I don’t have all of the paperwork yet), so I put aside $1k to handle those in February – it’s not unexpected, it happens every year.  I don’t expect the estimated amount to change significantly, I’m pretty good at doing the estimating based on end-of-year statements.  It still eats into our payoff schedule.  I’m hoping that we’ll be able to pay off the last two student loans in June and July – and forward looking numbers indicate that it’s very possible, but if something large comes up, we could miss.  I can’t wait until those are paid off!

I updated our car values from KBB into our assets, and they both went up (huh?).  Not by much, but that’s a bit odd – I use “very good” for the 1.5 year old RAV4, and “Fair” for the 14 year old Accord – which runs perfectly, it just has some scratches and dings on it.  A house down the street from us is on the market for almost $600,000: it’s much smaller than ours, and at the end of a pipestem, so Zillow’s estimate of our house at ~$633k is probably pretty accurate, but I don’t know what that house will ultimately sell for.  Most of our net worth increase is from our house, and I suspect Zillow’s prices will continue to go up through the spring and summer, it’s a “hot” time to sell in our neighborhood.  There are already about 4 “coming soon” signs as I walk through the neighborhood.

The stock market overall had a not so stellar month, but we did OK relatively.  Mostly because of our contributions.  I upped my contribution to 6% total (1% into the Roth 401(k)).  We *always* get an obscene amount back from our state taxes, and so I adjusted my withholding for the state and it pretty much made up the difference, so I didn’t notice much in my take home paycheck.  Dad on the other hand needs to change his federal withholding since we always seem to owe the feds a significant chunk.  Between state and federal taxes, we are pretty close to even, but we fall into the married with similar high incomes withdrawal trap and so we never have the correct amount taken out of our paychecks.

Dual high incomes sounds nice until it comes time to do taxes. Then it’s a PITA because there’s always an assumption that one spouse makes a lot more than the other – you can see it mostly in phaseout limitations – 200k AGI for a single, 250k for married.  At least it’s no longer in the tax tables – married filing jointly is pretty much double what single is in almost all cases.  I used to contribute to a Roth – until we were married, and all of a sudden I couldn’t any more yet my income didn’t change significantly.  Overall though, I’ll take the higher incomes!

Debt (in the order we’re paying it down):

  • Line of credit (8.75%): $0.00
  • Chase (4.99% for life): $ 0.00 
  • Student loans (aggregated 5.32%):  $10,176.90 (-2,323.83)
  • Car loan (0%): $19,070 (-490.00)
  • Mortgage (4.125%): $ 417,859.19 (-676.09)

Total paid off in January: $3,489.92

4 thoughts on “Detailed Financial Picture – February 2014

  1. Derek C. Olsen (@DerekCOlsen)

    Congrats on paying off the student loan.

    Thanks for posting all this info. I find it very encouraging.

    Do you count the value of your cars towards your net worth? If so, why?

    My wife and I just started posting our numbers, so, thanks for leading the way.

    -Derek

    Reply
    1. Mom Post author

      I count the trade-in value of our cars in our net worth because we can sell them if we needed to (probably at higher than trade-in value). They are assets, even if they are depreciating assets.

      Reply
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