February numbers:
- Personal:
- Gross monthly W2 pay: $4,833 (no change from prior month)
- Net monthly W2 pay: $2,834 (no change)
- Total credit card debt: $21,391 (-$749)
- Total other non-mortgage debt: $2,096 (-$4,137)
- Total mortgage debt: $113,988 (-$726)
- Cash/cash equivalents: $14,880 (-$5,049)
- Total retirement savings: $140,359 (+$8,274)
- Net worth: $17,764 (+$8,837)
As you can see, my retirement savings and net worth both jumped a huge (relatively, anyway) amount this month. Sadly, this isn’t because of anything I did – this is just Mr. Market playing his little games. Relative strength in the market gave back much of my losses from the end of 2018. Nothing I can do to effect that, so it isn’t something I’m counting as MY victory (much as I’d love to!) Well, it is a victory in that my regular investing allowed for the amount of money in the market to jump by that amount. But, that’s not something active, like selling a car.
The other categories were mostly trade-offs. I sold a block of stock in a former employer and used that to pay off the last gasp of my HELOC. The rate on that had grown to 7.5% (and rising) so it was time for that to go. I’ll continue to use that as a draw account if needed on a month-to-month basis, while plowing any excess earnings into my other non-mortgage debt (a whole life loan at 6%). When that is gone I’ll likely dump cash into savings to build a war chest to either A) pay off the 0% credit cards as they come due, or B) buy another property. With last-years focus on paying off debt I feel I’m in a decent cash position to buy again if the right deal comes along.
Spending on my collectibles business continues to be a challenge – I’m just straight spending too much and not selling enough. My focus the next two months in that area will be on selling enough to get back to even. Then I’ll build the same war chest in that account. Try to keep myself from buying too much in advance of my cash flow. It’s a delicate balance. Buy too little and you don’t have product on hand to keep a sales cash flow, buy too much and you end up burning cash/credit and bottlenecking how much you can sell in a given time period. After all, no matter what the value of it is, if you don’t have the time to sell it, it’s pretty worthless.
In any case, that’s my month. I’ll be working on posting more regularly – make sure to ask any questions!
