By: Revanche

Net Worth & Life Report: April 2016

May 2, 2016

Life and Money report for April 2016: we had a huge boost to retirement last month but the March bills put on credit cards came home to roost. But we had an appraisal and that did some pretty amazing things for our NW!ON MONEY

I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.

  1. GoBankingRates says CA is the worst place to be for saving money. *looks at consistent 25% savings rate* In your face, California! Or GoBankingRates.
  2. Last month’s insurance bills and this month’s travel piled up for a truly horrific/impressive $4500 credit card bill. I’d done my best to mitigate using points and miles, but on top of that horrendous tax bill, OUCH. It’s all expected spending that rises and dips through the year but Mint is totally judging me and my spending right now.
  3. As one of the steps in the dang refinancing, we had an appraiser come through here and I updated our appraised home value in my personal spreadsheet. It was off by more than $100K, if that’s any hint about how conservative I’ve been playing this. Call me paranoid but I hate the idea of assessing the value of our home as a part of our net worth, and relying on that number as we progress toward retirement numbers, because I remember the bottom dropping out of the real estate market. It’s not super likely that it’ll hit the SF Bay Area that hard but we’re due for a big earthquake…that would do it! But we did, if I’m going to stop being so paranoid, hit Major Milestone 1! ::confetti::
  4. I dabbled in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk this month just to see what it was like. 30 minutes of tinkering yielded a fee of $0.56. *laughs* It’s not going to make up the difference above but you know what I’m about: Every little bit makes a difference.
  5. I was saving up for a side table from West Elm that PiC liked and had cashed out a $50 GC from my Citi Thank You points towards the purchase oh, 16 months ago. I earn Thank You points veerrryyyy slowly. But it wasn’t a high priority. Then he found a far cuter cubbything from Sprouts for half the price and $70 is a no brainer over $140 so now I have a West Elm GC that mocks me.
  6. Comcast’s internet-only pricing is outrageous. After a promotional rate expired, it shot up to $70/month so I had to talk to them. Unfortunately I had to add cable back to our package to have the price only go up $10/month instead of $30. *grump* What a pain.
  7. The numbers: Our net worth increased 16% almost entirely because of #3. We had a total year-to-date increase of 51%. We still have a long way to go but this is good.

ON LIFE

Family road trips got a LOT harder. LB doesn’t sleep as well in hir car seat and packing a car for a family of four takes a Tetris skill level I can only aspire to. Perhaps, as Mom of Many friend suggests, I’ll just reach a level of Zen when I throw a diaper in my bag, and buy the rest at the other end. (Magic 8-ball of my life says: HAHAHA has she met you?)

Mid-month got TOUGH. It was an onslaught of things to get done and not nearly enough consciousness with which to do them. It turns out that losing an hour of sleep a night is exponentially worse for me than it used to be, and losing more than an hour a night, well, that is ten kinds of bad. Lesson relearned.

To add insult to injury, I developed a two week long sore / swollen throat that was so bad I couldn’t eat solids for the second week. It crept up on me! The sore or scratchy throat symptom is usually the first sign of an impending cold or flu so like a frog slowly boiling, my brain didn’t turn over and recognize that the throat symptom was the problem. Naturally, as with all health care, I didn’t twig to it til Friday when it was too late to contact my doctor. I came thisclose to being tested for strep, but like threatening to Office Space your printer makes it work, my throat miraculously recovered.

In the food corner, we were opportunistic cooks this month and that was awesome. The local market had medium shrimp on sale for $4/lb so they went to the good cause of shrimp and grits (with Tillamook garlic white cheddar instead of garlic cheese spread). Safeway had a pair of pork blade steaks for $2/lb so they were nabbed forthwith and became 4 awesome dinners courtesy of cooks.com.

:: How was your April? What’s on the slate for May? Am I being overly cautious about not attributing much value to our real estate?

10 Responses to “Net Worth & Life Report: April 2016”

  1. SP says:

    I had to recently call comcast and get a new promo rate. I wish I could threaten them that we’d go without internet, but the KNOW that it is a necessity.

    Congrats on the milestone!
    SP recently posted…May Money UpdatesMy Profile

    • Revanche says:

      If I was willing to switch back to AT&T and spend that time, then I’d save money but it’s a frustration I don’t have time for at the moment :/

  2. “Office Space your printer” — awesome! And yeah, threatening my body with a doctor’s visit sometimes does the trick. More often, by the time I’m worried enough to go the doctor the problem’s there to stay. Poo.

    I understand not wanting to trust an appraisal. Granted, the only one I’ve gotten in the past two years was from Zillow. And that’s overly optimistic. But it would appear our house value is clipping along nicely. (Just not as nicely as if our backyard looked a little nicer and the “patio” actually had screens and screen doors. Like it was built to. Ho hum.)

    Still for anything other than just theoretical purposes, I’m just going to concern myself with the amount in our retirement account, the amount left on our mortgage and, hopefully, an eventual rental house.
    Abigail @ipickuppennies recently posted…Floss, finances and flower pollenMy Profile

    • Revanche says:

      I’ve had the same problem with waiting too long to go to the doctor. At which point I just don’t want to bother confirming that there’s nothing they can do about it *glare*

      At least official appraisals done by a service SHOULD be pretty accurate?

  3. The sore throat thing is alarming me, because I’ve just come down with a sore throat and not much else.

    • Revanche says:

      Oh dear. I’m not sure if it’s best to go get checked quickly, if you have that option. It was pretty bad in that last week there.

  4. Linda says:

    I had an amazing April financially, but keep thinking I’ll get time to write about it so I don’t want to spoil it here. Apparently I’m going back to Chicago in May (just found out today that I need to book a business trip two weeks out, and I won’t get any family time), so I’ll be out the cost of house-sitting/pet care. (Too bad work doesn’t pick that up!)

    The broadband providers are getting wise to people just wanting to stream their entertainment, so they keep the prices for Internet-only high. In fact, AT&T Uverse sent a notice saying that they will enforce caps on broadband usage for people who don’t have TV service. !!

    As for real estate…it just seems to keep going up here in the Bay Area. It would have to be one hell of an earthquake to drop the values that much. There was a sizeable earthquake in my town in 2014 and the RE values barely paused before continuing to skyrocket. I think I shall be forever a renter here.
    Linda recently posted…Rice and lemonadeMy Profile

    • Revanche says:

      Yay for the great April! I look forward to reading about it. I’m sorry Hannah Dog doesn’t care for others, we’d have been happy to take her while you were gone.

      Good to know about the caps on the Uverse service, in contract to Comcast raising their caps to 1Terabyte in some markets. I suppose I’ll have to find a way to stomach the prices as part of the cost of doing business :/

      And you’re probably right, though I’m convinced we’re in a bit of a bubble again. If we’re prepared with cash, maybe we can jump on it if there’s a good deal coming down the line.

  5. Joe says:

    Maybe time to get a minivan? šŸ™‚
    Good to hear you’re feeling better. It’s not good being sick for an extended period.
    I’m having a hard time with missing sleep as well. Previously, I could stay up until 1 am to work on the blog, but now I’d be exhausted the next day. I think I need more sleep as I get older. Can’t stay up late anymore.
    April was good for us. It was a routine month without any big surprises, that’s good.
    Joe recently posted…April 2016 Goals and Financial UpdateMy Profile

  6. Cassie says:

    I don’t think you’re being overly cautious to be perfectly honest. Our real estate values aren’t nearly as high here as what you have in SF, but I apply a conservative real estate value to our net worth estimate as well. The city’s assessment for our house is about ~$40k lower than what it would currently sell for on the open market, so I use the city’s estimate.
    Cassie recently posted…Well, It Was A Dress…My Profile

Leave a Reply

CommentLuv badge

This website and its content are copyright of A Gai Shan Life  | Ā© A Gai Shan Life 2024. All rights reserved.

Site design by 801red