A little late on this net worth and home update but I still wanted to do it. Happy to say I’ve made a recovery since the last quarter. 

The current screenshot I took was supposed to be this quarter’s (Jul-Sept) net worth growth. However, when I compared that to my June 2021 net worth update, I realized that I ended June 30th with $137,927 and started July 1st with $147,963. 

June 2021 Net Worth: $137,927

Sep 2021 Net Worth: $168,258

3rd Quarter Net Worth Change: +$30,331
Year-to-Date Net Worth Change: +$40, 687

I have no idea how my net worth went from $137,927 to $147,963 in the span of 1 day. Clearly something was off. I’m going to assume one of my accounts was not loading properly on June 30 and I didn’t realize it when I took the screenshot that day.

Oh well, I’m just going to roll with it. This year’s net worth calculation has been a mess since the start so I’m not going to fret too much over it.

At this point, I’ll take what I can get. It’s still pretty up in the air whether I will meet my $200k net worth goal by the end of 2021. I’m leaning towards no, but a girl can dream 🙂

I’m crossing my fingers that the construction on my home will be done by the end of 2021 and I’ll be able to close before the end of the year. This likely means more chaos on my net worth tracking. 

So even if I did end up hitting $200k net worth by the end of 2021, my Personal Capital account may not quite reflect that until I manually add in the value of my home (if I decide to do that). 

Update: Just got news that the expected closing for my home won’t be until Spring 2022. The sales agent said March could be very likely but the fact that they’re not giving me an exact date or even month leads me to believe in the worst case scenario which is May.

Ugh I just can’t believe it could be delayed by almost half a year. I was really hoping I’d be able to move in by December of this year.

I’m hoping it’s just for safety reason and they’re really trying to create a safer build rather than rushing the process, but I have a feeling that they’re pushing closing date out because mortgage interest rates are so low right now. And with most of the buyers going with the builder’s lender, there’s a big incentive for them to hold off until rates go back up.

I’m extra annoyed because I even delayed my 401k and Roth IRA contribution in order to save up for my down payment and lost out on quite a bit of market growth doing that earlier this year. Had I known I would have at least 3 more months, I wouldn’t have delayed my retirement contributions so drastically.

As comparison, the 401k account that I started this year with new company shows only a 9.64% rate of return vs Year-to-Date Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTI) has gone up by 20%. That just goes to show how much I missed out by not contributing earlier.

While I have made up my early deficits and thankfully will still be able to maximize all my retirement vehicles this year, I still can’t help but think it was such a lost year.

Something that has been bugging me about my net worth is what I will do once I own my home. While I do think the value of my home should be considered in my net worth, I also don’t know how to go about assessing that. Should it stay at the price I bought the home at, or should I manually update every month with estimated home value from Redfin or Zillow? That’ll be a different concern down the line.

What’s Next?

Now that I’m not closing on the home this year and I’m almost fully set with maxing my retirement vehicles (401k, Roth IRA, HSA), I find myself in a good dilemma. I actually may have extra take-home pay.

I have a couple of options on what to do for the remainder of the year.

1. Invest in taxable brokerage account – While I had created a Vanguard taxable account years ago, I’ve never had a chance to actually contribute to this account since my focus had always been on paying off student debt. After maxing out my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA there was simply never anything left over in previous years to contribute to this account.
   
   This is such an appealing choice because I want my money to work for me. Although it will not be in a tax-free account, as exemplified by even my measly 9.64% rate of return from this year, that’s still 9.64% gain that I didn’t have to work for. Passive growth is amazing and I’d hate to miss out on it when I actually have a chance.
   
   
2. Keep contributing to savings account in anticipation for home furniture/decoration costs in 2022 – There’s a bit of personal family history with this that I won’t go into but it’s very likely that my mom will move in with me in my new home at least for a year and we’ll be able to take most of the furniture from our current home.
   
   As a backstory, I picked out and paid for many of the furniture in our current home so I like the style already. While it’d be nice to decorate my new home with something fresh, I really don’t mind keeping those furniture if it means saving thousands of dollars on replacing them.
   
   While it’s always nice to have money available in a savings account that can be pulled more easily, it seems unnecessary as I don’t plan on spending all that much on furnishing, especially when I already have the big ticket items like couch and dining table on hand.
   
   The con to keeping too much money in a savings account, of course, is the opportunity loss of investing that money. And while I cannot guarantee that the bull market will continue, historically speaking, investing in the market will always yield a greater result than leaving that amount in a savings account garnering less than 1% return.
   
   
3. Aggressively pay down student loans – I still have $39,074 student debt left. And while I’ve rarely discussed it, my initial goal when I started this blog was to have my student debt paid off by the end of 2020. That clearly did not happen. And I’m okay with that. My goals changed. I prioritized building up my net worth by investing and saving up for a home.
   
   Since I’ve refinanced my student loans to a low 2.2% interest rate, it also didn’t make that much sense for me to aggressively pay this down when I know my mortgage rate will likely be higher.
   
   However, it still remains a burden that I’d like to rid of. Sometimes, I imagine just paying it all off at once and ridding myself of that $881 monthly payment.
   
   That likely won’t happen, but I will say as a compromise, I do plan on paying off the ~$4,300 remaining on my federal loan once COVID-19 forbearance is over at the end of this year.

So that’s it for this quarter’s net worth and home update. I didn’t think I’d end up in this dilemma, but for now, I’m hoping to finish strong this last quarter. Let’s get to $200k!