October Net Worth Update (+$38,472)

October was a month full of huge changes! I continue to pile it on and present our new combined net worth update. This month's expenses included our wedding, honeymoon, and moving my wife to China with me. The finances have gotten signficantly more complicated as funds are spread over more accounts than I'm use to and money that is now tagged for certain expenses (examples: my wife's car fund, and wedding gift money). Lets get started.

Assets	Sep-07	Oct-07	Change	%
Cash & Savings	$ 56,442	$ 76,941.29	$ 20,498.88	36.32%
Taxable Brokerage Accts	$ 68,134.40	$ 71,400.46	$ 3,266.06	4.79%
Roth IRAs	$ 37,246.29	$ 41,554.79	$ 4,308.50	11.57%
Pre-tax Retirement Accts	$ 146,725.11	$ 148,007.89	$ 1,282.78	0.87%
Stock Options	$ 19,560.00	$ 18,216.00	$ (1,344.00)	-6.87%
ESPP	$ 33,421.91	$ 33,477.46	$ 55.55	0.17%
House #1 - Rental	$ 160,000.00	$ 160,000.00	$ -
House #2 - Rental	$ 128,225.00	$ 128,225.00	$ -
House #3 - Primary		$ 116,500.00
Receivable (Payable)			$ -
Other Assets	$ -	$ -	$ -
Total Assets	$ 649,755.12	$ 794,322.89	$ 144,567.77	22.25%
Liabilities
Credit Card Balances	$ (14,376.15)	$ (11,911.87)	$ 2,464.28	-17.14%
House #1 Mortgages	$ (115,393.14)	$ (115,188.90)	$ 204.24	-0.18%
House #2 Mortgages	$ (102,504.30)	$ (102,390.59)	$ 113.71	-0.11%
House #3 Mortgages		$ (109,348.03)
Rental Deposits	$ (6,447.00)	$ (6,447.00)	$ -	0.00%
Additional Tax Liability	$ (6,846.00)	$ (6,375.60)	$ 470.40	-6.87%
Other Liabilities			$ -
Total Liabilities	$ (245,566.59)	$ (351,661.99)	$ (106,095.40)	43.20%
$2million Goal Progress*	$ 404,188.53	$ 435,508.93	$ 31,320.40	7.75%
Net Worth	$ 404,188.53	$ 442,660.90	$ 38,472.37	9.52%

*$2million Goal Progress - With the addition of a primary residence (asset & liability) I want to track our progress to reaching the $2million goal of investable assets - this line will back out the asset value (and mortgage) associated with our primary residence.

Net Worth - This line item will still track everything including the primary residence. This should keep the transistion smooth and avoid large changes when we move primary residences. Our financial freedom goal can be tracked with this measure as well from this target formula: [$2 Million in investable assets] + [Primary residence asset value] = [Financial Freedom goal].

Highlights for October

All credit card debt (except current month's purchases) is in the form of 0% APR balance transfers earning interest in my savings accounts.
From a strictly financial sense, I have to make a big mental adjustment. I/we have effectively doubled the liabilities (2 people to now provide for), but the income/balance sheet was not adjusted accordingly. However, thats nothing compared to what I have gained in marriage. I am on top of the world.
We have the addition of primary residence that my wife owns. It is a small townhouse that we will live in until we are ready to purchase our more permanent primary residence. We will likely sell this townhome at that time and use any proceeds as part of the downpayment for the new home.
I am not going to provide more details on what my wife came into the marriage with than what is presented in this chart. However, going forward we should be just as candid as before about our total income/expenses.
Wedding expenses dominated the spending this month. At some point in the distant future I may break down the wedding expenses, and who paid what.
We had a very short honeymoon in Hawaii. It was so short my wife declared it wasn't a honeymoon halfway through the trip. Hopefully some of the trips we are planning while in China will suffice.
An agreement my wife has insisted on is that $17k in cash savings she came with is to be used for her new car. She has been saving a long time for a car and wants to make sure she has a decent car when we start a family. This money is tucked in an ING Direct account that I don't have access to yet. At some point I might try again to convince her to move it to a higher yield online savings account.
We received several gifts of cash/checks at our wedding. We will likely set this money aside to help decorate our new home.
I am hoping next month our expenses will return to a more normal state. It will be a good opportunity to see what our joint baseline monthly expenses will be going forward while on assignment.
We have taken additional steps to consolidate our finances.

Additional Stock Investments October (Outside of 401k & ESPP):

$25 in ConocoPhillips DRIP
$100 in USG DRIP
$250 in Vanguard Roth IRA
$50 in Pfizer DRIP
$1500 in MMC via Sharebuilder

You can see my previous monthly net worth updates here.

Related in Net Worth Archive:

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Comments (8)

I have one small complaint to make. I was hoping you would talk more about China in your blog. I know, I know, your blog is personal finance related. But you're living in CHINA! Discuss the differences in price level, what are you able to afford better in China than in the US? Any cultural differences you see regarding money, etc? Food? Cheaper, better, just different?
I think there should be some way to make it work :)

Posted by Rochelle | November 6, 2007 11:14 AM

No worries, its definitely on the short list. I'll get around to it at some point.

Posted by 2million | November 6, 2007 7:16 PM

Looks like even though you added on liabilities and had wedding expenses this month, you still came out looking pretty good.

Posted by SingleGuyMoney | November 6, 2007 8:30 PM

You are right, a positive month is nothing to complain about

Posted by 2million | November 8, 2007 7:11 PM

Impressive. I would like to see the statistics of how the rest of the worlds cash and savings moves during a marriage. I have a sneaking suspicion that you did better than most. ;)

Chuck

Posted by Chuck | November 8, 2007 7:28 PM

So where is the extra 40k$ coming from?? It's very hard to relate to any of this when there's no real explanation as to where the gains are coming from - especially since I notice your net worth tends to jump the most on any month where you complain you just spent a lot.

Where are the spurts coming from?

Posted by Muzie | November 12, 2007 5:09 PM

Did you make your 2007 Roth IRA contribution in October? For an account to go up over 11% in the month is incredible!

Posted by Thomas Ayson | November 12, 2007 7:52 PM

See above, I merged my wife's assets into this month's statement, hence the sizable jump.

Posted by 2million | November 13, 2007 4:13 AM