Monthly Net Worth Check Point: October (down a lot!)
Well, it is that time of the month again…time to check our current net worth. Unfortunately, it is not the greatest week to update all those account balances. To track how we are doing financially, I monitor our net worth and update it on a monthly basis. Check out this page if you want to see the spreadsheet I use to track it and a video tutorial on how to create and update it . If you prefer, I also have a post on some online tools for tracking your net worth .
Our assets dropped only 3.3%
I am not sure how our assets only dropped 3.3% when each individual component seemed to be down – some by very large numbers. Our non-retirement investments were down 13.5%, our retirement accounts were down more than 10%, my daughter’s 529b balance was down more than 10%, and my stock options decreased in value by a whopping 33.4%. I’ve already checked the overall number once, let me do it again quick….yeah, it appears to be correct. Our liquid savings did increase more than 13% due to a gift we were given…but I didn’t realize it would be enough to balance it all out.
Our liabilities decreased by 0.35%
After paying off the last of our student loans last month , our decrease in liabilities will now be much more level (and much smaller) each month. Basically, we have our mortgage and a decreasing contractual obligation that we track as debt.
Our net worth decreased approximately 8% in August.
With our assets dropping more than 3% and our liabilities only decreasing a little bit, it all adds up to an 8% drop during the month of September. It would have been worse without the gift we received (over 10% drop). When I look at these numbers, actually, I have to admit it was not nearly as painful as I expected them to be. I think this is a product of when I checked the numbers and is quite misleading. I took all these balances on the evening of October 6th – which was Monday night. Obviously, a lot happened during the rest of the week. If I had checked the numbers Friday night, I bet they had been much, much worse (I am NOT going to check them again right now!) What this does mean, however, is that even if the market stabilizes the rest of the month, my net worth will show a big drop next month.
So will the events of last week change anything?
So, am I freaking out? No (at least I don’t think so). I have not considered pulling any money out of the market (too lazy for that frankly – I don’t want to have to pay attention to everything all the time in the futile attempt to time the market). In fact, I’m planning on buying more mutual funds (hey, it’s kinda like a 40% off sale). I have quite a few years before retirement and judging from history, the market will recover. It might not be soon, but then again it might be and I don’t want to miss the recovery. In the middle of last week, I finally signed up to have Vanguard pull out a few hundred bucks and invest it in some index funds each month. Tonight after I finish this post, I’m going to decide what to do with some money in a rollover IRA I still have in cash and probably put in a buy order for tomorrow.
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when your net worth decreases by that much you kow there has a be a problem, and a problem taht needs to be fixed right away.
You have any suggestions? (I will assume that you are not going to tell me that taking out a payday loan will fix my net worth problems)