This month we were able to knock out another goal. I contributed the final $3k to my Roth IRA to complete our 2012 contributions. So now that all of our other goals for the year are completed, we can focus on saving for a house! During November we made our first deposit into our House Fund, which was $2k. As of August, that’s how much I wrote that I hoped to save by the end of the year. In December we’ll be able to make another deposit to well surpass that mark by the end of the year! Since combining our finances, we’ve been improving our net worth by an average of over $4k per month, which is absolutely fantastic and I’m looking forward to trying to keep that momentum. However, I know December will be tougher because we’ll have increased expenditures with Christmas, my side income will drop some, and I have a week of unpaid time off.
That’s great momentum! How are you blogging goals going?
As you can see from my lack of blog updates, my blog goals aren’t going too great. I definitely need to be writing more, reading more, etc. Unfortunately, recently it’s come down to choosing to make more money or being more active on the blog, and I’ve opted to go with the money for now. Because of it, my blog updates have suffered. My goal is to get back to a better balance.The middle of this year went really well, but the last couple of months have not.
Wow this is an amazing example of almost doubling your net wort in a year. Congratulations! Mine has been a little stuck this year. I hope next year is better than this one. Maybe my stock portfolio will help me reach my goals. A quick question why do you keep so much cash? Planning to buy a house or building a business?
Thanks Luis! My cash balance is composed of both “personal” and “business”, although they’re really one-and-the-same. However, I like not having to worry about cash management. Basically, I never want to have to worry if my rent and a credit card payment hitting on the same day are going to wipe me out. For this reason, I tend to keep a solid amount of cash on-hand. As I earn more cash, and feel comfortable with the balance, I transfer money to various savings goals. So it’s not that that all of that cash is for daily spending or anything, it simply has not been allocated to savings. I am eventually planning to buy a house, but that’s not why I have a large cash balance. I estimate I will need at least $100k for my down deposit when I choose to buy, so I’m still quite a ways from purchasing a house.
You pointed out something I hadn’t realized. I’m very close to doubling my net worth for the year and that would be absolutely fantastic. I hadn’t realized this, but it will be my new goal for this month (not that I can really do much about it at this point). But it gives me a good reason to save a bit more and maybe with the help of a small stock rally I’ll get there.
I usually don’t have too much cash on hand because I have been trying to pay off debt as fast as I can and at the same time trying to start some online related businesses to use as an investment vehicle later on if everything goes well.
I hope 2013 goes better than 2012. This year Google’s penguin update hit my site and I lost almost all my online income. I eventually moved most of the content to revenue sharing sites and they are making a nickel here and there. LOL! Have a great 2013! 🙂