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| image courtesy of Cesar R. |
It's the Monday following Justin's pay day, so it's time for my monthly finance review. Woo!
To begin with, we'll start with the good news: we hit an all time net worth high since I began this project. YAY!!! It's only by a little over $1,000, but I will take it! :) That's a difference of 4.37% from last month. Slowly but steadily we are conquering our net worth, and I am grateful for the opportunities we've had to improve it.
We decreased our debt by 4.6% which is pretty good, but in doing so, we, unfortunately, decreased our assets by 6.4%. (We used some of our savings to pay off our Slate credit card before it reached 22% APR after 15 months of having it at 0% APR. In the long run this should save us a good bit of money even if we took a hit in the short run.) Currently our total assets are sitting at approximately $200 short of my ultimate goal, but we are not looking to add to them in the next few months until we finish paying off credit card debt. I will probably not begin accruing any money in savings until after the new year. Bring on 2015!
This brings me to the positive news that our interest fees have decreased by 19.8% in the past month. This means we will be able to put more money toward paying down debt without accruing any additional fees much more easily. (Always a good thing.)
Neutral news: Despite a flight up to DC last month to visit friends, we still had a positive total net income. YAY! Seeing friends and visiting DC while not getting into more debt definitely makes me happy. :) Unfortunately, we did not stick to our budget and thus our positive income was below what we have typically been able to save on a per month basis. Hopefully this month, we will be able to find a way to make up for that loss somehow…
Looking ahead: My goals are to pay off all of our credit card debt by approximately mid January. After which, I intend on seeing student loan debt going down much quicker and hopefully seeing our savings account also rising. I'm not sure if we will be looking to buy a new car in the next year or even a computer… it's hard to say. It's also hard to plan to give up that much money. I will be looking to continue traveling though and seeing how best to do it as cheaply and comfortably as possible.
Are you documenting your finances monthly? If so, are you meeting your goals?
