Happy New Year! If you are reading this congratulations on making it through 2020! December was all about wrapping things up in our household. Read on to check out this month’s update.
You can check the latest and greatest info on the Track Our Progress page.
First, the numbers:
Net Worth:
- End of December Balance: $760,380 up $40,630
- Year to Date (YTD): Up $194,838 (up 34.5%)
- Since January 2018 (this is when I started tracking our net worth): Up $455,380
Portfolio:
- End of December Balance: $615,871 up $30,684
- YTD: Up $200,633 (48.32%)
- Since January 2018: Up $375,871
If you woke up from a coma and didn’t know anything about COVID, you would probably be pretty happy with that year to date growth! Honestly, as much as I love to complain… and anyone who knows me knows I do love to complain… 2020 was a financial success for us. We are incredibly fortunate.
December Highlights
Year End To-Do List
There are several tasks that pop up in December. Most of these get handled the last week of the month.
Pay personal property taxes – Joy! We purchased my wife’s car last year, so the hit on the personal property tax bill came this year. This bumped the bill up around $100 or so bucks. Taxes Paid – Check
Pay for Christmas – Most of the Christmas shopping was done in November (thanks to the industrious Mrs. HoF). The lionshare of the charges on the credit cards are due in December. Check
Make final investment contributions – This year we were fortunate to max out our Roths earlier with the proceeds from the sale of our rental house. But we were lucky enough to be able to park some additional funds into our taxable brokerage account this month. Check
529 Contributions for the Kiddos – We were also able to add to the girls’ 529 plans. Double Check
Charitable contribution – We’ve donated to Give Well the past couple of years. I first heard about GiveWell from Mr. Money Mustache’s article. As far as I can tell, GiveWell is a great way to maximize the impact of our donation. I’m happy to say we were able to increase our contribution a bit this year. Check
Put a Bow on the Master Bath Remodel
As I mentioned last month, we started renovating our master bathroom the week of Thanksgiving. I’m pleased to announce this project is (substantially*) complete. Here are a few before and after photos to give you a sense of what we did.
*all except plumbing the tub and tub filler.
A couple lessons learned:
- God I hate drywalling. There was only a little bit involved on this project, but mudding and taping was still a bitch.
- I do love luxury vinyl plank flooring.
- When drilling holes in porcelain tile, most definitely use a diamond core drill… like THIS ONE. Oh… make sure you continuously spray the bit with water. Ask me how I know. (Hint: broken tile, yelling, bad times).
- When installing a free standing tub filler:
- Make sure there is at least 2 inches of floor structure around the roughed in supply lines.
- Triple check the provided supply line length. Ours were too long and required custom length ones to be made and shipped out. Hence the tub delay.
Internet Fee Renegotiation
We noticed our internet fee jumped up recently and it was set to increase again in January. I called up the provider and after about 5 minutes on the phone they offered to reduce the monthly fee by $15. While the reduction isn’t as much as I was hoping for, it sets the rate back to what we were paying over a year ago. And hey, every little bit helps!
After checking everything off the to do list this month, I felt a bit like Michael Corleone.
Coming Up in January
Escalating the Auto Investing
I am always a fan of automating savings whenever you can. Since we no longer have the rental mortgage and sewer as recurring monthly expenses, we decided to increase our automatic contributions to our taxable account by the same amount.
Summer Vacation Planning
It would be really, really nice to get away for a vacation this summer. Especially since it will be our 10-year wedding anniversary. Hopefully, the COVID situation will allow that. Either way, we’ve been snooping on some vacation rentals and judging from the lack of properties available it sure looks like everyone is trying to make up for lost vacations.
Here’s to a happy (healthy!) and prosperous year for you all! Thanks for reading!
