Welcome to the Ides of March. It’s the middle of the month, so it’s time to take a look at my net worth.
Last month, I mentioned how Zillow had estimated my home to be $17,000 less than the month before. It’s down another $1400 this month, which isn’t going to help my net income. Combine that with the stock market downturn from last mid-February, and this report could be disastrous.
Even though I lost the $1400 in real estate and another $4200 in retirement accounts, I pulled off only a small loss this month – just $1869. I had made up for the loss in several places… My checking account has $2200 extra in it. My Prosper account has $600 more in it. I’ve reduced my HELOC by $900 (and soon to be more with that expanded checking account balance).
I’m pretty excited about the gains, because I’m making new investments grow. At the same time, I’m confident in the investments I currently have. I feel they are very good ones, even if they are not performing at this point. In the long term, balanced stocks and real estate are likely to appreciate.
Just a quick comment: while you can track your paper losses and gains, unless you realize the those gains / losses, they don’t really matter. Why would it be a disasterous month if your house value supposedly went down by $17,000K? It’s your house. Your living in it. AND supposedly you are not going anywhere in a rush.
My point is: don’t let the upswings and downswings in the market get to you. Track them if you wish, but in reality they don’t matter.
Congrats on getting the additional savings. My March net worth won’t be so great. I fee the pain on the home devaluation and stock market hit and haven’t done the savings you have.
Anyway, here’s to progress.
Shadox, actually the home is now an investment property since my fiancee and I moved across country for large, large, pay raises. So I don’t get the benefit of living in it and we went somewhere in a rush ;-).
I don’t let the fluctuations matter to me, which was the point of the last paragraph. I do like to keep track of the numbers. I figure I can always slice the numbers a different way, like excluding the paper losses. However, I can’t include that data back in, if I don’t track the numbers.
I’m not looking forward to doing my balance sheet update next week. It’s always fun when things are going up, but of course no fun when things are going down.