March’s Numbers

As of April 9, 2013, we are $469,922.50 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $45,405.71 in debt.  This includes credit cards, student loans, lines of credit and an auto loan.  We currently have $924,691.81 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $279,886.34.  Our Net Worth is $454,769.31 (includes house and mortgage), down from $455,341.70 last month (0.13% decrease).

Our overall net worth decreased a little this month as I updated our car values through KBB.  My car lost about 5k in value (considering it’s a 2012 model, I think that’s pretty good), while our house lost some value as well – according to Zillow anyway.  I realize that it’s not perfect, but it should be in the ballpark, and we have no intentions of selling the house anytime soon, so I’m too lazy to run the comparables 🙂

Our retirement accounts did OK this month (up 1.77%); I changed my withholding to 5% in a 401(k) and 1% in a 401(k) Roth account, since we make too much to contribute to a Roth otherwise.  It lets us hedge our bets on taxes in retirement.  But we’ve evened out our new paychecks, so I have a better idea of how much money is coming in.

Our electric bill has increased by about $40-$50/mth to run the humidifier, but we think it’s worth it, so we’ll keep paying it.  And it’s almost 85F here today, so we’ve had the heat pump turned off the last 3 days and the windows open.  We probably won’t turn on the heat part of the system again until next season.  Once humidity levels start to climb though, the A/C will be on.

I got rid of a lot of things to goodwill, and not making too many.  Most of what I have left on Amazon are Japanese language items, which will likely sell better towards the beginning of the school semester, so not too many things leaving by way of Amazon.

Dad had an extra paycheck in March, so I was able to really pay down some of our debt.  And I filed an FSA claim for Daughter Person’s daycare and got a nice fat check for about $1400 to put towards debt payment as well.

I also sent more money to Chase – I think they’re skirting the new CARD rules on applying payments to the highest interest rate balance first.  The annual fee and interest end up being charged at the stated interest rate of 12.99%.  You’re supposed to overpay the minimum for them to apply it to the highest interest – I did last month, but not enough to make sure (only rounded up to $100 from a min payment of $96).  This month, I paid $100 + the balance at that rate: $93.70, so I expect that balance to be gone on the next statement – and if it isn’t, I’m going to be making some phone calls.

We’re really close to paying off our line of credit, and I’m most definitely getting excited at the prospect.  It will be paid off in May, and then one of the student loans is next on the target list.

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

• Line of credit (8.75%): $1,300 (-4,600.00)
• Student loans (aggregated 6.55%):  $13,766.70  (-0) <- auto-debit hasn’t happened yet
• Chase (4.99% for life): $6,449.01  (-167.39)
• Car loan (0%): $23,970.00 (-490.00)
• Mortgage (4.125%): $424,516.79 (-635.44)

Total paid off in March: $5,892.83

January’s Numbers

As of February 8, 2013, we are $477,596.76 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $51,811.27 in debt.  This includes credit cards, student loans, lines of credit and an auto loan.  We currently have $914,906.34 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $266,177.40.  This includes my January contribution.  Our Net Worth is $437,309.58 (includes house and mortgage), up from $419,485.53 last month (4.25% increase).

I notice that our assets are approaching $1 million.  That’s a nice number to shoot for.  Having our net worth at half a million dollars looks nice too. I did the math, and assuming retirement accounts don’t increase in value (a bad assumption, but a conservative one in this case), and our house doesn’t change value significantly, we’ll have a net worth of half a million dollars once our debts are paid off.  What gets me is that $250,000 in our retirement accounts qualifies us for “wealth management services” at Fidelity.  We’re not going to take advantage of them yet, but once debts are paid off, it’s very likely that we will meet with their adviser. I don’t think that 250k in a retirement account is really all that much.  We’re projecting to need 1-2 million in that account to retire (in the DC metro area anyway), $250k is just a drop in the bucket.

Our retirement accounts did well this month (up 3.6%); the stock market is on a roll – hopefully it continues that way.  I also got a bonus in January, of which a percentage is taken out to add to my 401(k).  This is the first time my contribution and match have shown up in the account before the 15th – maybe it’ll continue this way?  We had a rather large bill to the accountant for representing us in front of the IRS: $3,000, and that came out of our emergency savings + what we had already set aside for taxes.  We didn’t owe the IRS anything more, so we shouldn’t see more on the audit front.  But a good chunk of my bonus went to “paying back” our emergency fund.

I’ve already done our taxes in TurboTax, but I’m waiting until the final audit paperwork comes in before filing, so I already know what we owe/get in taxes.  We net $118 between owing the IRS and getting a refund from our state.  So, the money I had been setting aside to pay taxes went to debt repayment instead 🙂

We’re really doing well with paying down our line of credit.  Dad gets an “extra” paycheck in March (he’s paid bi-weekly), so that will be going to the line of credit, and will hopefully kill it off in April.  After that, I’m going to separate out my student loans (the new processor allows that), and attack the 6.55% loans first, leaving the 2.15% loan until after the Chase card is paid off.  I’m starting to get really excited because if nothing bad happens (yeah right!), we’ll have everything but the car paid off by the end of this year.

I’ve been collecting some cash from selling old games, and most of that is going to debt repayment as well as getting “stuff” out of the house.

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

• Line of credit (8.75%): $62,61.73  (-1638.27)
• Student loans (aggregated 6.55%):  $13,912.12  (-71.85)
• Chase (4.99% for life): $6,687.42  (-22.11) <- annual fee hit this month
• Car loan (0%): $24,950.00 (-490.00)
• Mortgage (4.125%): $425,785.49 (-631.09)

Total paid off in January: $2,853.32

December’s Numbers

As of January 8, 2013, we are $480,450.08 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $54,033.50 in debt.  This includes credit cards, student loans, lines of credit and an auto loan.  We currently have $899,935.61 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $257,038.00.  This doesn’t include my December paycheck deduction or match – that doesn’t get deposited until the 15th of the month.  Our Net Worth is $419,485.53 (includes house and mortgage), up from $394,691.18 last month (6.3% increase).

December saw gift expenses (which were mostly planned for throughout the year), and January was slightly reduced because I expect we’ll owe taxes and I’m starting to put that money aside so that it’s ready in April.  We have the maximum taken out of our paychecks, but we almost always end up owing money, it’s just a matter of how much – and our deductions are *well* above the standard deduction (we’re estimating $23k in deductions more or less).  Stupid marriage penalty.

I managed to make $.77 in dividends on my single share of McDonald’s in my taxable account – which was a bit of a rush, but I know it’s nothing important or big at this moment. I’m glad that we’ll still be paying 15% tax on any dividends we make for a while.

Our paychecks have unfortunately decreased by about $200 every month ($100 for each of us), so instead of attempting to pay $2800 towards debt every month, we’re at paying $2600. I’ll adjust that as we start to get all of the paycheck data in. Dad has had one paycheck, I haven’t had one yet in 2013. I’ve been making at least $100 in sales stuff over the last two months, but so far, not much in January – and no one’s biting on my baby stuff on Craigslist – guess they got it all for Christmas.

On the plus side, we don’t expect any trips to Pittsburgh in the near future, and gas should be nice and low. Family is coming to the DC area for Daughter Person’s birthday later this month.

All of us have contracted the plague. I was sick from about Christmas until this weekend, and this weekend, both Dad and Daughter Person had really high fevers. Daughter Person and I warranted a doctor’s visit (with attending co-pay), but Dad has so far weathered it better himself. As a result, I haven’t really done much in the meal planning department. I’ve picked our recipes, but when I went to put them on a menu, my brain froze. I think I’m more of the “cook a bunch and eat from the freezer as you go” type of person. More details in a new post on the topic.

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

• Line of credit (8.75%): $7,900  (-1696.27)
• Student loans (aggregated 6.55%):  $13,983.97  (-139.57)
• Chase (4.99% for life): $6,709.53  (-67.79)
• Car loan (0%): $25,440.00 (-490.00)
• Mortgage (4.125%): $426,416.58 (-628.93)

Total paid off in December: $3,024.56

The big thing we’re focusing on now is our finances. We’re over $67,000 in debt not counting our mortgage – which is over $420,000. We were previously unintentional landlords to a townhouse, and we had to spend money to get rid of it.

At about the same time, our heat pump died. We lived without heat or A/C for 3 months (luckily, it was fall), but we finally had to buy a new heat pump. I thought we could handle another few months, but with winter looming, and the previous 2 winters being horrible – Dad insisted we replace the heat pump. Turns out, we barely used the wood stove, and winter was *very* mild after the blizzards we’d had previously, but Dad enjoyed the heat pump (and I enjoyed the lowered electric bills). We ended up taking out a line of credit from our bank to pay for the heat pump and the money we had to bring to closing: $17,500.

In May, my 9 year old car with 178k miles on it decided to destroy the A/C compressor – and take out the serpentine belt at the same time. We were stranded in the middle of nowhere (luckily without Daughter Person), and an estimated $3200 in repairs – we bought a new car. We had been looking at a larger one anyway – to haul Daughter Person’s “stuff” – and with the repairs being more than the car was worth and the hybrid battery pack going to need replacing in about 20k miles, we donated it.

All in all, we ended up with more debt on top of what we already had. Luckily, the car was 0%, and the line of credit was “only” 8.75%, but still, more money we didn’t really want to borrow.

We just paid off a credit card that had at it’s peak $24,500 (not included in the total above) – it took us 6 months. Now, we’re attacking the line of credit.

We’re well on our way to paying off the line of credit by next February (maybe December?), but that’s only the first of a few debts we need to pay off.