Monthly Update – July 2018 (+$32,332.17, +11.20%)
It’s been a while since I’ve made an update (8 months to be exact…), but I’m finally coming back around to doing this. I’ve been pretty lazy with our finances the last several months. I’ve realized that I’m only really good at focusing on one or two things in my life at a time, and lately my focus has been on improving my career. I heard a quote one time that went “what you focus on will expand“, and that couldn’t be truer in my life. I haven’t focused on growing on our net worth, and it hasn’t expanded much. Surprise, right?
I made this post as a monthly update, but it really covers the last 8 months. And a lot has happened in that time. Just to list off a few of the highlights:
- We found out we’re pregnant with our third boy (yes, 3 boys… our house will be crazy town).
- We needed to purchase a new vehicle for the new baby. We landed on a Nissan Pathfinder as it came out to the best bang for your buck SUV that had decent trunk space. (We couldn’t do a minivan even though it was the most practical financially…)
- We’ve celebrated me officially becoming old with my 30th birthday.
- My wife took on a new job as a fitness instructor which will help increase our savings!
- I also recently accepted a new position focusing on web development (very excited to get started)!
I’m sure there’s some big events that I’ve missed, but the bottom line is that it has been a busy last 8 months and it’s not going to slow down anytime soon!
Time to break down the numbers. This comparison is completely unfair, since the last time I made a post was 8 months ago, but here we go anyways.
Net Worth Statement:
Even though I haven’t focused on our finances at all in the last 8 months, we still had an increase of over $32,000! This is really derived from the automating of 401k contributions, and the increase in the market.
We had also saved up cash (mainly from end of the year bonuses) and purchased a vehicle that can hold 3 kids (the Pathfinder mentioned above). You can see the increase in automobile values and the decrease in cash to pay for it.
Also, we hit our $350k milestone and we’re planning to celebrate this tonight! I’ll put a new blog post up on this soon! EDIT: We went to a Breaking Benjamin concert to celebrate!
Expenses:
There’s a massive $23,650 in the uncategorized category which is the purchase of a new vehicle that can hold 3 kiddos. The Kelly Blue Book value on this car is listed at $24,500, and we drove it off the lot for $23,650, so I feel like we got a pretty decent deal on it. The car buying experience this time around was pretty exhausting. I had made an offer on another vehicle that had more miles, and we had settled on a number. Once I was ready to purchase, they said “sorry, we don’t negotiate off internet prices.” Even though we had just negotiated the price… So, yeah. Several weeks of negotiated and finally landed on this car. I’m happy to be done with car buying for awhile!
Scanning over the rest of our expenses, shopping and food are still our main problem areas. $948 on food could easily be dropped to $500 or so if we could finally stop eating out. It’s difficult to do when you and the kids are starving and you forgot to let the meat thaw from the freezer. This is where good ol’ Chick-Fil-A really saves you…
Looking forward:
- I plan to get back to monthly update blog posts at a minimum.
- I’m starting a new job at the end of August which will result in an increase in income going forward.
- There will be a week off in-between jobs where I won’t have any income. This is slightly poor planning from me, but a week off feels pretty needed these days!
