For anyone new to BFS, I post a net worth update at the beginning of every month in order to keep myself motivated and to involve BFS readers.  Please feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, or even post your net worths too.  I am a particpant-motivated blogger, so please jump on in.

I calculate our net worth as listed below.  I don’t include the value of our possessions, I round down to the nearest hundred for assets, and I round up to the nearest hundred for liabilities.  I also don’t include my husband’s pension account since I’m too lazy to keep up with it and it shouldn’t actually matter until he retires.

Assets
1. Cash – $20,800 (we had vet bills, bought $5000 of stock, and paid for most of a cruise for next month)
2. Stocks – $16,200
3. Retirement – $33,600 ($2400 loss, ouch)
4. Home – $130,000
5. Cars – $16,000

Liabilities
1. Home – $72,200
2. Car – $8,900  (We made an extra $650 principal payment in mid-May and are waiting for our regular payment to clear)

Total Net Worth = $135,500
Increase/Decrease = Down $1700 from last month 

It sucks to go down, but that’s not as bad as it could have been.  We lost $2400 in the retirement accounts alone not to mention the money we had put in this month, paid $300-$400 in vet bills, and paid $1550 towards our upcoming cruise.  We cut back on our food expenses and other fun expenses a bit so that our net worth wouldn’t completely crash.  I’m also going to warn you that next month’s “Cash” is going to plummet…we have upcoming dental expenses and we’re probably going to conglomerate a few accounts to pay off our car.

I base the value of our home on two things: comparables selling in our neighborhood and the estimated appraisal by Chase Home Value Estimator.  I will always estimate low.

I base the value of our cars on Kelley Blue Book’s Private Party Value of our vehicles in “Good” condition truncated down to the nearest $1000.  For example, if my car is valued at $4600, I’d calculate that as $4000.

Please feel free to visit the archive to see our past net worths.