Detailed Financial Picture – November 2014

October’s Numbers

As of November 4, 2014, we are $14,500 in debt without a mortgage to speak of (yet).  We currently have $519,313.87 in assets.  Our retirement accounts are at $410,727.21. Our Net Worth is $504,813.87, up from $491,961.16 last month (2.61% increase).

October was nice to us on the investment front.  I took a week without pay in October because of our two week vacation – University policy only allows them to “front” me 5 days of PTO, so the rest was unpaid – which was fine with me.  But that also meant that my gross pay was affected, which affected my 403(b) contributions and match.

I’m happy that our net worth is back over half a million dollars – and hopefully continues to grow!

We’ve signed the final paperwork for our new home, which will increase our net worth by ~$370,000 and with an expected mortgage of about $296k – just over half of our previous mortgage.  Because we don’t borrow the money until the house is finished, we can’t lock in rates yet.  If we were to borrow right now, the rate would be about 4.2% (with no points, discounts, etc).  I’m hoping that the rates are still low in February/March when we have to lock in our rate.  Then we have to decide about paying points, escrowing, etc.

We’re getting a 55k discount on options from the builder for using their lender: the fees aren’t horrendous and the rate is in line with others we’ve gotten quotes from.  But at the same time, I’m willing to almost immediately re-finance if I can get better terms elsewhere (and/or better service).

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 4.21%):  $0.00 
  • Car loan (0%): $14,500 (-500.00)
  • Mortgage (4.125%): $0.00 

Total paid off in October (not counting the mortgage):  $500

6 thoughts on “Detailed Financial Picture – November 2014

  1. Mrs PoP

    How did you find housing prices in Pittsburgh? $370K sounds like it would be a mansion around there from the last time I was hearing about prices there. (Unless does it depend a lot on school district?)

    Reply
    1. Mom Post author

      370k is relatively expensive for the area, but we’ll be in one of the best school districts in the state (and country – Jefferson Hills). We were originally looking at 250-300k for “used” houses, but not finding anything we liked in an area we wanted. The “new” house will be about the same square footage and acreage as our house in DC (~2600 sqft finished – with a large unfinished basement and .25 acres of land). We’ll also be 20 minutes from Grammy and the daycare that Daughter Person is at now – which she *loves* (and it was a big factor in our decision of locations – she’ll remain there until Kindergarten starts).

      The house is *huge* (bigger than we’d really like), and has a “gourmet” kitchen – which was the deciding factor for us. There’s enough space for both of us to cook at the same time. None of the “used” houses had even sort of acceptable kitchens 🙁 We’d have had to do major remodeling on anything “used” to make the kitchen usable for us. It was easier to just have something built for us.

      Reply
  2. DivHut

    Keep fighting that debt but don’t forget to keep adding to your Loyal3 account. Any amount helps. $25, $50 or whatever. You’ll see those small amounts add up over the course of a year and reinvest those dividends too.

    Reply
    1. Mom Post author

      We’re adding $50/mth to the loyal3 account and $250/mth to our Fidelity taxable account – in addition to maxing out our 403(b)s. After we move into our new house and I figure out our new expenses, I’m hoping to save an additional 11k/yr for Roth IRAs. Anything left after that is going to taxable accounts. I’ve not solidified my investment plan for the two taxable accounts, but I’m leaning towards purely dividend investing, mostly via ETFs (IDV, DVY, and ITOT are in my Fidelity account).

      Reply

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