Well, well, well, it’s nearly the end of the year, and that means it’s time to start planning for next year. As part of getting my finances and my blog ready for the coming new year, I’m in the process of making some changes. That includes here on the Amateur Financier.
Some of the first changes I’m making are on my net worth statements, like the very one you’re reading through now. I’ve added two rows of data that should help to clarify my current financial standing. First, I’ve added a ‘Total Investments’ row to my investment list (look at the bottom of the first box below). Both my retirement accounts and non-retirement accounts are quite similar in how I treat them (that is, I don’t intend to pull any money out of them until I reach retirement), so why not look at them in aggregate?
The second addition is ‘Available Funds’, which is my saving minus my debts. Basically, if I cashed out all my savings accounts and used the proceeds to pay off my current debts, the ‘Available Funds’ total is my remaining cash (or currently, how much more I would still owe). If I can get that value positive, it’d be the functional equivalent of getting out of debt (to my mind, at least). You can call it my net worth, if you choose want to completely discount the value of my investments. Now, let’s see where exactly I stand financially:
Well, in a word, crud. Unfortunately, all the shopping I’ve had to do in the past week, as well as things like eating out, has really, really blown my budget out of the water this month. I’ll have to do my best to keep my spending in check in the new year, as well as specifically saving for Christmas (and possibly a major trip sometime in the summer, as we did this year). Definitely something I need to improve on in the future.
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