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 participant-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 – $9900 ($3600 down. We had another $300 in vet bills, $600 for final cruise bill, the final grad school bill was $2000, and we paid off the remaining $4600 of the car loan…BIG MONTH! Thankfully, we also got a few paychecks that helped. 
)
2. Stocks – $16,800 ($1000 up)
3. Retirement – $35,800 ($3200 up)
4. Home – $130,000 (same)
5. Cars – $14,000 (both of our cars took a $1000 hit this month, lol…at least they’re paid off)
Liabilities
1. Home – $71,000 (down $600)
2. Car – $0 (We paid the $4600 off July 16 at 1:48pm!!! Only mortgage debt left baby!!!)
Total Net Worth = $135,500 instead of $131,700
Increase/Decrease = Up $3800 from last month…hahaha…we’re back to May’s net worth…
Okay, so the stock market was kind to us and made up for all the cash we dished out, woot! NO MORE GRAD SCHOOL!!! NO MORE CAR LOAN!!! Yeah, I still have an allergy-ridden Pug that is going to cost us a bloody fortune, but we only have our mortgage debt left to go!!! WOOT, WOOT!!!
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 very 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.
Super congrats on paying off the car loan! That must feel amazing to be debt-free except the house. I love inspiring stories
Congratulations!!! How exciting to have all that debt gone, and your investments are doing well too. Don’t you love months like these?
I think my house value is what is getting the hardest hit here. At least my tax bill is decreasing- silver lining!!
Wooo update!
hm… so, the allergy-ridden pug is going to cost a fortune, eh? maybe if you had cats….
(notice me NOT mentioning our cat with the heart murmur…)
@Ella, thank you! Sounds like you have either already been through debt payoff or are going through it so congrats or good luck!!!
@Everyday Tips, thanks for the congrats! Yay for lower tax bills!
Our home’s taxable value (appraised amount) and what it’s worth aren’t the same yet thankfully. We’re appraised super low since we were in a high foreclosure area until this year and they haven’t reappraised yet (yay). Our sellable value has fallen from $137,000 to $131,000 in the last year, but since I round so far down, it just hasn’t shown up on our net worth yet. We’re not planning on selling anytime soon, so I actually don’t care much about our home’s value.
@Nicole, hahahahaha…you and cats. Heart murmur probably trumps allergy expenses, sorry. We’ve laid out over $1500 in the last 6 months on check-ups and medicines, but he’s back to being a happy dog, so I guess it was worth it (even if maintenance will cost at least $400 a year). I am actually going to have a guest post about the whole thing on Wednesday over at http://www.liverealnow.net (with pics of Pug).
I never thought I’d be okay with spending this much on a pet before…it’s amazing how your feelings change with attachment and making way more than you did out of college…
That was supposed to say “Wooo great update” Obviously it is too early for me.
Actually I think your expenses might be greater… the heart medication is pretty cheap and she doesn’t have to do an MRI *every* year… And we did know she had a heart murmur and would be expensive when we got her at the shelter. The shelter ladies hadn’t even listed her, but she was the cat we liked best. Worth every penny. Looking forward to the pics!
@Nicole, I am so glad the meds are comparably cheap! That is good karma for saving a damaged but awesome kitty.
Our Pug shouldn’t cost this much again unless he gets another infection. We adopted him from Pughearts with supposedly no issues other than a minor ear infection. Within a year, he went from looking like a normal Pug to looking like a dying dog thanks to major food allergies to meat, dairy, soy, corn, and something in the environment that we can’t figure out (he’s vegan now) and my first stupid vet refusing to give him steroids while he suffered. Yes, I know Prednizone may shorten his life, but he was having a really crappy life without it…he had gotten internal inflamation, a major skin infection, two major ear infections, and a non-related dry eye issue. Most of the $1500 was just for cytologies on the infections and major meds.
Now he should be maintained with $200 eye drops every year, $40 of Prednisone (cheap at Kroger), annual kidney and liver tests for $150, and a special sweet potato dog food ($270 a year, but we were spending $160 a year anyway on his regular food). We may have one “minor” $500 surgery if this last ear infection makes it to his inner ear before the meds can kill it, but we’ll see in September…
Yep, pure breeds are not for the broke…our Dachshund mutt has never had any problems at all. Even though she’s 12, all we’ve had to do is start giving her Glucosamine for her joints for about $50 a year…
That’s awesome! Sorry to hear about your Pug, though. I know that some breeds of dogs have more health issues than others. Is it food allergies, or airborne allergies?
@Little House, 90% food and 10% airborne it seems. Changing him to the new vegan food helped a bunch, but he was still having a few skin issues. According to the doggy dermatologist, 85% of all dogs that have food allergies have environmental allergies too…the combo of a new food diet and one 5 mg Prednisone a day has him looking 99.9% better than he did in February.
Note: Pugs make up about a third of my doggy dematologist’s clients…so I now know that this little guy will be my last pure breed Pug ever. I may get a Pug mutt in the future since they have the most awesome personalities, but they have been so inbred that the pure breeds just have too many issues for me to repeat this on purpose…
Market certainly helped me this month. I’m at $21,063, up from $19,108 last month. This despite shelling up $2,200 for property tax payments.
Good to hear the little guy is at least doing better.
MikeS, thanks. I’m glad he’s doing better too.
Yay for the market bouncing back a little! Otherwise our net worth would have TANKED.
Just so you know, I really look forward to your updates every month. Thanks for participating! It just seems more fun when I know someone else will be posting too.
wow huge month for you, congrats! are you planning on paying off your mortgage ahead of time to be debt free even sooner? i still have a car loan as well as a student loan to work on, but i always get a little more motivation when i see posts like this! thanks for the motivation!
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Congrats, BFS… hey, a gain is always better than a loss, and you’re one debt down, one more to go!
Congrats! I’m sure it feels great having both cars paid off! More money for investments!!!
I have a chocolate lab that has a food allergy (she can’t eat beef). So I feel your pain on the pet front
Still dogs are great, so we cope with the negatives. 
@Stephan, awwwwww, thanks for saying that! I’m glad I helped!
We’ve been overpaying the mortgage since we got it – $900 on a $740 mortgage – so it will be paid off no later than 2017.
@Invest It Wisely, yeppers, just one more…it’s a biggie but I’ll definitely post about it in 6 years, hahaha.
@Money Reasons, labs are pretty awesome! We had a 95 pound black lab named Baby but she died in 2008 of bone cancer. Our house was too small for her anyway, so we decided we wouldn’t get another lab without some more space. Yep, dogs (pets in general) kick butt.
Great progress on the net worth! Congratulations.
Sounds like that little dog is a walking net-worth siphon.
My greyhound had allergies (though not that bad). Main aggravating factor was corn, and of course most dog food contains corn. One thing the vet discovered was that many canine ear infections are actually manifestations of allergies. Food allergies can lead to ear pain in dogs. Soon as I put him on dog food with no corn, he never had another ear problem.
German shepherds are another breed that’s been overbred into chronic illness. My Ger-shep ran up similar bills for similar drugs. Loved her dearly, but I’ll never own another shepherd.
Yay on your net worth! Mine is back and up 4K from my April 2010 net worth. Yay! This market is so volatile, and I’m of the camp that we are going to have a double dip recession so I will be rebalancing our portfolio in our 401Ks to reflect this soon.
@Funny about Money, thanks! Yep, pets – especially sick pets – are money siphons. Our doggy dermatologist also said that Mr. Pug’s ear infections would most probably go away once we beat this last one and he stays on Prednisone. Between the Pred and the new food, he shouldn’t have any big reoccuring issues.
I thought German Shepherds were a healthy breed…huh. I’m making a mental note to steer clear too…I don’t think I could handle another major allergy issue. My friends Desiree and Mitch said that Doberman’s are allergy-prone too.
@Julie, yay on your net worth increase! Hope the rebalancing works out for you. I have no idea what the heck is going to happen and would hate to guess wrong, so we’re just leaving the 401(k) and Roth IRA in their target date mutual funds. I’m not too worried since we do have 30 years before we’ll even be able to touch them. We may sell some of our individual stocks and invest in different ones, but that’s about it.
BFS, pls remind us where you live again? You can’t even buy a room for $130,000 in the SF Bay ARea, even in the worst part of the city!
@Financial Samurai, we live in Houston, TX…land of the inexpensive homes.
Honestly, I can’t imagine ever living anywhere that $200,000 isn’t enough to buy a great house, but I was raised in Texas, so I am very biased and used to what we have here. Our home was a foreclosure that was built in 2004 – it was appraised at about $150,000 and we bought for $114,000 after it had been on the market for about a year. Our loan was for $91,200 and we have about $71,000 left.
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