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 – $13,500 (we paid off $4000 of the car loan, paid $500 for the rest of the cruise, and paid $2600 for dental work)
2. Stocks – $15,800
3. Retirement – $32,600
4. Home – $130,000
5. Cars – $16,000

Liabilities
1. Home – $71,600
2. Car – $4,600 (We made an extra $4000 principal payment in mid-June and our regular payment at the end of the month as usual)

Total Net Worth = $131,700 instead of $135,500
Increase/Decrease = Down $3800 from last month

It sucks to go down again but we only have one grad school payment to go and $4600 on the car.  As soon as Mr. BFS has a contract for next year, we’ll use the rest of our emergency fund to pay off the car completely.  With any luck, we don’t have any more $2600 expenses pop up.

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.