We finally bought a brand-new Tesla Model S Performance with Ludicrous mode. We dreamed of this moment for years! It goes from 0-60 in 2.4 seconds and cost a mere $131,500. Let’s talk about that, but we would like to share our net worth update first.
Monthly Net Worth Update
Assets
Our assets increased by $2,671.32. This was from an unforeseen bonus in my 401a match, and a 3% annual merit increase in my salary. Extra income goes toward paying debt and into savings. Here are the details.
Cash Savings
We increased our cash accounts by only $115.26 last month. Our Synchrony Bank High Yield Savings account only increased by $70.47. Dr. SoS managed to keep us under our monthly food budget by new record of $62.23! All in all, I consider this a win.
Cash Back/Gift Cards
I finally located our Costco Cash Rewards certificate in the Citibank mobile app. We cashed it in for $278.77. Our cash back accounts are down to $390.18. We have a $50 restaurant gift card we plan to use next October for our annual anniversary lunch. I began cashing accounts at $100 or more and use the money to pay on debt or add to savings.
Cryptocurrency
My Ethereum is up by $102.92. I guess that is something.
Retirement
I read articles nearly every day about a pending crash. News speaks about the inverted yield curve, the price of palladium, and many other indicators that the market is headed for the tank. The market is up today, but we are really at the same level we were at January 22, 2018. If you have your money in an index fund, money in that account is worth the same amount now as it was then.
The market dropped during 2018, but we hit today’s amount on September 14, 2018. Then the market dropped, but came back on November 8, 2019. Then it dropped again and we are finally back up to that same peak today. This is why I am looking for my own investments. Until the market gives me a strong signal that it is headed up, I will stay out.
529
No additions to these accounts this month, but the balance increased by $10.19.
House
Houses are so overvalued in our neighborhood right now. The good thing is that it appears we own 50% of our house right now compared to our mortgage balance.
Cars and Boat
Despite the huge drop last month, Kelly Blue Book shows our cars increased in value by $190. The NADA Guides show that our boat retained the same value since last month.
Liabilities
We made serious headway since last month paying debt. We reduced our liabilities by $4,949.97. This was due to paying off all our credit cards, paying on the mortgage, and keeping up with our huge monthly HELOC payment.
Credit Cards
We finally made it. We paid the final $600 on our 0% credit card last month. Since we pay the rest of our credit cards each Friday, we are finally out of credit card debt. I never thought about the fact that we truly still had credit card debt and how much that was weighing on me until we paid it off. Even at 0% it was money we owed and prevented us from saving even more.
I read the other day that the average American family has $5,700 in credit card debt. As a country, we have over 1-trillion dollars in credit card debt. This saddens me, but I am glad we are finally out of ours. We plan to do our best to encourage others to pay theirs off, as well.
Car Loan
It is crazy to me that this 0% loan is down to $12,600 and that we only have 21 more $600 monthly payments to pay it off. I bet that once we get closer, I will get the itch to pay it off early, just like I did with our last 0% credit card.
HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit)
We made our fourth monthly $2,000 plus interest payment on this loan. Our balance is now less than $16,000. A week or so ago, I shared an update in my second post in my Big Audacious Debt Payoff Plan series. We are determined and as the months roll by, we will get this debt paid this year. We may even get it paid by sometime in June.
Mortgage
Our monthly payment went up slightly to cover estimated tax increases for Escrow. We congratulated Chief Mom Officer this past week as she not only paid off the last of their mortgage, but are finally debt free. Just 116 more payments or 9 years 8 months to pay off this loan. Hopefully, sooner than that we will celebrate being debt free, as well.
Student Loans
We are still making minimum payments so we can knock out the HELOC. After we get that debt paid off, we will begin funneling more and more of our income into paying off this debt, as well.
Summary
As of the first day of April 2019, we have a new net worth high of $563,279.16 up 1.37% from our net worth of $555,657.87 last month and up 55.57% from our net worth of $205,797.78 from the first of April 2018. Our current net worth puts us in the top 30% at 227/768 bloggers on the Rockstar Finance Directory Net Worth Tracker.
We compile this information each month to keep us accountable and to hopefully inspire others to spend less than they make, save more, and make wise investment choices. If you have any comments or questions, please leave a comment or contact us directly.
Thank you for reading!
Mr. SoS
P.S. Although we would really like to purchase a brand-new top of the line Model S, we won’t. We will own a Tesla one of these days, but we have plenty of debt to pay off first. Besides, it will be more fun to buy one with cash than take out more debt to afford it. If you are wondering why I started out my post that way, it is because today is April 1st. Have a great April Fool’s Day!
Congrats on being out of credit card debt!
This – credit card debt – is such an alien concept in most of the rest of the world, and here we are in the United States with the average family still racking up this absolutely insane debt 🙁
What would you consider a strong signal from the market?
Hey there NWA-non!
Thanks for the comment. The crazy thing for us was that we did not “think” we were in credit card debt because we were not paying any finance charges. I knew we would have the 0% card paid by April 20th, but wanted to get everything else to $0. In January, I began paying our total credit card balance on the three cards we use each Friday. That way when we got to the end of March, we were able to pay the final payment on the 0% card early and the balance of everything else. Now we can say we are truly out of credit card debt.
When it comes to market signals I look at the DJI (Dow Jones Industrial Average) and SPX (S&P 500 Index) on a monthly basis over the past 10 years. I have three indicators that I use concurrently to track overall market movement. These are the MA (Moving Average), MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence), and Slow Stochastic Oscillator. These indicated a downward trend in December, so I decided to get out of the market. If you want to know more about these, please send an email and I will provide the specific settings I use.
So essentially you’re doing is technical analysis on the markets to get a feeling of where it is heading. The markets has risen ~20% from the lows of December. Do you feel you missed out on the rise, or are you still holding out for a lower low?
With me, I don’t try to time the market. Repeating a oft-repeated mantra you hear around FIRE site: Time in the market is much more important than timing the market.
I’m in the JL Collins camp. I will consistently keep on investing when I’m in the wealth accumulation stage. I’ll think about SWR and sequence of return risks when I’m withdrawing.
You can still send me the info. I’m always open to learning new things 🙂
So I fell for the Tesla purchase and got really excited for you. You b@stard!
But, as I’ve always said about people publishing their net worth statements each month, everything you need to know is in the numbers. I didn’t see a drop in cash or an increase in car values or vehicle liabilities, so I caught the punchline there.
Feels good to be able to read a set of financials understand the month’s activities.
Well done on crushing that credit card debt! Piece by piece, slow and steady, your goals are being chipped away at. Keep it up!
Hey there Church! I am surprised that I caught you with my April Fool’s post. Is it because you would also enjoy one of those sweet rides?
You are right about the net worth. A $135,000 purchase would show up quite evidently in the numbers. Good catch!
Thanks for the encouragement with our debts. The credit card debt did not seem like credit card debt because we never paid a finance charge, but even at 0% it is still debt. I was glad to finally be done with it. The amazing thing is that keeping current with all our credit cards makes it so much easier to budget. I know that money spend on groceries this week will be paid this week immediately reflecting in our checking account.
Lastly, although we have a ways to go being debt free, we are moving in the right directly. It is great to see the balance drop each month.
Ha! I almost went into a whole long comment about how we made the same mistake a few years ago by buying our dream luxury car when I finished grad school. Thankfully, I do not need to go into the details of how it was totally NOT worth the debt! I will say, however, that I only needed to make that mistake once, as I will never again invest in a superficial material object that requires me to go into that level of debt. So I guess, in a way, one could argue that it’s actually saving me money in the long run. Or perhaps I’m still trying to justify it to myself. Either way, good on you for staying strong!
Elise
Elise, thank you for your comment. Just before we had Baby SoS we bought a new car. My paid-off car at the time, a 2005 Hyundai Tiburon, was not car-seat-conducive. Who knew one had to consider those things? Dr. SoS knew. That’s who.
We looked at used cars, but found that for only about $8,000 more we could get a new car at 0% interest. We have since paid off the car my wife, Dr. SoS, drives. Her next car will be a Tesla, but we plan to pay cash for all our future cars. I am not looking forward to nearly 2 more years of car payments for my car, but at least we are not paying interest. My guess is we will pay it off before the remaining 21 payments.
As for purchases we regret, I have plenty of those, but we can only learn from our mistakes, right?