Goal Update: End of July 2016

At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of July, 2016
Current value: $24,827
Change from last month: +$742
Percent of Goal:  22.83%

Note that the funds in this account are invested in stock, so there will be fluctuations in value that are outside my control. I never withdraw money from this account, so any dips are purely due to stock price changes.

Events Of Note Last Month:

I'm almost to $25,000!

Income this month from my online courses was $202.61. I received miscellaneous income from several sources this month: $16 from a DRAM class action lawsuit settlement, $1.33 in ebook royalties, and $119 from a quarterly bonus at work. My hard money loan continues to pay on time ($133.33 a month).

I normally invest my funds in Realty Income (O) stock, but it's risen about 35% for the year and I think it's approaching overbought territory and due for a pullback.  As I write this, it's trading at $71.90 per share. The company raised their monthly dividend payout this month from $0.1995 per share to $0.2015, which translates to a yearly dividend of $2.418. That means buying at this price gives me a 3.36% return. That's not enough for me, considering I believe the stock is due for a price correction. I'm going to wait to buy some more until the price drops to $69.08, which will give me a 3.5% ROI, which I consider to be the minimum I am willing to accept. Until that happens, I'm sitting on just over $1,000 in cash earning effectively nothing until the stock reaches my entry point. If the stock goes much higher, I'll have to look at selling the shares I do own to capture these crazy gains.

Net Worth Update

Our net worth continues to grow, increasing by $43,172 from last month to a new total of $691,979.

June 2016

July 2016

Note: Mint.com categorizes our HELOC as a credit card debt, not a loan, hence the apparently high credit card balance.

We had a huge jump in net worth this month - almost 6.75%! Twelve thousand dollars of that, in the Investments category, came from some portfolio adjusting I did. I had an annuity that was not being tracked by Mint.com before. In June, I surrendered the annuity and transferred the money into an account at Schwab, which Mint then picked up. I'll give more details about why I did this, and some information about annuities in general, in coming weeks.

So $12,000 of this jump wasn't really a change in our net worth - it was simply due to me moving funds from a source that was not being included in the calculations to one that was. Still, excluding that leaves a $31,000 increase in our net worth. Where did that come from?

My 401(k) increased in value by about $4,000. One quarter of that was from my contributions and the rest is from a rising stock market. My various other accounts increased a bit here and there - nothing over a thousand dollars in any one account. But...

Mint also says our home increased in value by $15,000 this month! (This after increasing in value $10,000 the month prior.) That's where most of the big gain came from! Mint gets its real estate valuations from Zillow.com, so these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, the real estate market is making a comeback in my area, but I'm not sure it's this strong. What probably happened is, after a long time of no sales in my area, a couple houses finally sold, which means Zillow has more recent data to use in its algorithms.

Anyway, this gain is all paper gain - it's not like I got an extra $15,000 in my pocket that I can go spend. Still, I have to use some yardstick for measuring and Mint.com is what I've chosen, so we'll go with that.

If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please drop me a line!