July wasn’t messing around. It was a month of changes in a number of areas. Let’s just call it financially dynamic. Join me as I unpack the happenings from the month that was and come see how the Heartland on FIRE household fared in July.
As always, you can check the latest and greatest info on the Track Our Progress page.
First, the numbers:
Net Worth:
- End of May Balance: $374,847 Up $13,518 (3.74%)
- Year to Date (YTD): Up $69,847 (22.90%)
Portfolio:
- End of May Balance: $266,904 Up $5,093.00 (1.95%)
- YTD: Up $26,904 (11.21%)
Monthly Contributions: $2,792.58 Up 64.3%!!
The green streak continues for the 4th consecutive month. The numbers are actually a bit better than this since I pulled out the girls 529 balances from my calculations. I pulled the 529 balances out because this money really belongs to our girls…not us.*
*Full disclosure: For some reason Personal Capital won’t link to the accounts anymore, so this is really me just being lazy!
July Notes
Focus on 401k(s) – With my car paid off, we turned our sights to boosting our 401k contributions. Roughly mid-month we set our pay check deductions to max out our allowed annual 401k contributions over the course of a year. Basically, we went from contributing 5% to closer to 20% on average. This should help keep the net worth line moving up and to the right!
And then there was none – our taxable joint investment account is finally transferred from Edward Jones to Vanguard and I’ve converted the fee heavy mutual funds to Total Stock Market ETFs (VTI). Thus completing our Great Financial Migration (See Parts I and II). #feelsgoodman
Pay Raise – I got a 3% pay raise at work that becomes effective this week. It’s nothing extraordinary, but every little bit helps.
Blog Traffic Spike – This blog received a substantial jump in traffic this week. Thanks in no small part to Rockstar Finance featuring my post: How Much are You Really Paid? 10 Items You Must Consider. It’s truly an honor because Rockstar is always featuring great content from the best personal finance bloggers. So I have no idea why my post made it. I guess even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut!
Coming Up in August
Daycare Decrease – Our oldest starts kindergarten next week. That just feels crazy to type. Where the hell did the time go! While the emotions are complex, the finances are quite simple and certainly a positive. Daycare costs will be dropping approximately $100 per week. That’s quite welcome, and good timing because…
Timber! We’ve got a substantial-sized oak tree in our yard that has died. It’s one of the biggest trees on a street with many big trees. Worse, it’s in our backyard so access is tricky, and tricky means expensive. Now its losing branches and stressing me the heck out. How bad will this be? Early bids have its removal at over $2,000!
And that, my friends, is why an emergency fund is so important. But there is one silver lining: Once the tree is removed there will be…
Thanks for reading and check back in next week!
Good job! We’re also slowly but surely pushing towards our number! Long way out still, our plan is to reach FI in about 5 years. So far so good!
Thank you! We are a long ways off ourselves, but it’s good to be making progress. 5 years sounds awesome to me! Best of luck to you on your journey!