This is my official January 2017 Net Worth Update. Below are my actual numbers for ALL my investments and liabilities as of 01/31/2017. Detailed explanations and a quick summary can be found below. If you would like to see my previous months net worth posts, please visit my Net Worth Tracker.  I have been tracking my net worth monthly since May 2015.  If you want to learn how to track your net worth then check out how I am doing it.

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TOTAL NET WORTH: $505,174

Quick Summary and comments: +$54,674

 

HOLY COW!  I’m officially a half a millionaire!   I have been working hard to do this and I am very proud of myself and feel accomplished.   How did I do this?  Well long story short, Real Estate and Stocks!     Every January I re-assess my real estate properties to see if and how much appreciation growth they have  had.  I was able to get MLS sold comps for each of my properties and saw a total of a $40k increase in equity.   Which is great!  But also not so great because that appreciation growth only came from two properties.  My house in Austin and my primary house here in Indy.   All others stayed the same.  Which is not really too disappointing because I was expecting that.   After all, I am in it for the cash flow, not for the appreciation.   Any appreciation I do see is just icing on the cake which is fine by me.   🙂

I also saw a nice $8k increase in my stocks for January so that was nice to see.   Now let’s just see how long it will take me to finally reach millionaire status.  My guess, probably another 4 to 5 years.  Ill just keep working hard to invest and maximize my financial growth and hopefully it will come sooner.  A bit of luck will have to come my way though.

 

Personal Life Update – January was a bit of a slow month for my wife and I.  After being on the road for most of December it was nice to take a break in January.   We did however make some big decisions and moved around some money.   In my last post you may have read that I replaced my Jeep Wrangler with a minivan.   Well we did all this in January.  I bought a minivan for $20k and I sold the Jeep for $19k.   All in all, I was very satisfied with how much I got the minivan for and also very pleased with how much I sold the Jeep for.   We did not take a huge hit in our cash position because of this, it was almost like an even trade.   We also paid off the car loan that we had on the Jeep.   Which is totally awesome by the way!!  As of now, we no longer have a car payment.  Hopefully, I will never have a car payment again as long as I live.

 

Amazon FBA Update –  Last month I revealed that Amazon screwed me bigtime by removing my listing and blocking me from being able to sell.  It was a huge mess trying to get that resolved but I am happy to say that I did finally get it resolved.  My product was pretty much inactive for about a month.   Now that my product is active again, it has not been selling so great.  I’m back down to like 1 to 2 sales per day max which is not good at all.  I also even lowered my price from originally $37.99 to now $29.99.      I may lower it even more.  What a bummer it has been for my amazon FBA selling project.  I was so happy and excited when I first started and now I just want to sell all my inventory as fast as possible and call it a day.   I need to re-evaluate my ROI on this but I can tell you that now there is no way I will be reaching the returns I originally calculated.   After having to lower my price and having to keep my inventory at the amazon ware houses even longer, that will really cut into the profits.   I’m pretty sure though that I will at least make a little profit.   All hope is not lost yet and it doesn’t appear that I will lose money.   Just need to see how it plays out.  I will keep you updated.

All in all though, I am pretty much considering my amazon business to be a complete failure.  I might be jumping the gun on this assessment but that is how I feel about it right now.   Since my product is barely selling now, I do not know how long it will take to finally get rid of my inventory but I have about 140 more items left to sell out of a thousand.   I guess when I put it that way, it’s not so bad, I mean I have sold over 800 units of this thing which is pretty good I guess.

Okay enough about that, lets jump into my net worth categories.

Assets: Explanations of each of my assets.

Cash: –$1,542

Cash went down this past month for multiple reasons.  Mainly because I paid off my car loan but also because I had to pay my super expensive credit card bill which had all the expenses from our December travels.  It was brutal!!

My cash as noted above in the spreadsheet consists of my wife and I’s checking account.  My REI (Real Estate Investing) checking account as well as my separate Amazon business checking account.   Satisfied!

HSA account: +$138

Slight increase in my HSA account from my paycheck contributions. Nothing crazy.

My HSA deductible is $1300 for the year and I have close over $5k in this account so with that being said, since I am maxed out already with my yearly deductible, I don’t see a need right now for depositing more funds.  I am only taking a very small amount out from my day job paycheck to fund this account. Any money after that deductible will just sit in that account not making me money. I know I can use the money that I don’t put in there to get better returns as long as I invest it in more real estate. This number should increase each month a tiny bit.   Satisfied!

Company Stock Options: +$4,961

Wow I am impressed with these stock options.  They have reached a new high and have surpassed my sell mark again.  I am locked in a freeze right now though so I can’t do anything with these but if the price remains high like this, I need to think real hard about cashing out on these.

These are stock options from my day job. I am fully vested.    Very Satisfied!

Stock Portfolio: +$3,253

The majority of my stock portfolio is built of precious metal mining stocks.   It has been a roller coaster ride with these as expected.  For now they seem to be going up so I’m pleased with that.    I’m not too worried about what these do in the short-term.  Im in it for the long haul on these as I think it’s just a matter of time before the precious metal sector takes off.    Overall I am still profiting from these stocks as I bought them for dirt cheap.

I bought all my shares using tradeKing.         Satisfied!

401K: +$168

I made an executive decision awhile back to take money out of my 401k and no longer contribute any more money to it. Mainly because I do not get matched contributions from the dreadful day job. But also because I KNOW I can make better returns using that money on rental properties.    Any movement you see in this asset is only from market fluctuations.   I am not able to withdraw the remaining amount in here until I quit my job.   I really don’t like the idea of having an account that punishes me to take money out because of age. Satisfied!

Property # 1

After the rehab I put into this house when I first moved to Indy I am happy to report that the appreciation has been nice on this.  With the sold comps I reviewed I priced the house to be worth now $130k.    Could be more actually but I am a bit conservative with this one.    This is my new primary house which is actually one of my older turnkey rental properties that I have purchased.   I moved into this rental because I love the location, the size of the house and because my mortgage on it is less than half of what I was paying when I was living in Austin, TX.    Super Satisfied! Here are more details on when I originally bought this one as a rental property.

Property # 2

This is my only other house that saw an appreciation gain.  It wasn’t much but it was a nice $5k boost.   I also went a bit conservative on this and thing it actually is worth a bit more.    Other than that, Rent paid on time, no repairs requests.  This is the property I self manage in Austin.   Even now that I live in Indy, I will continue self managing this one.  I think I can do it from afar and if in the future I realize that I can not continue being my own property manager, then I will probably just find a PM to handle it.   So far everything is going great.  I have not heard a peep out of them and they locked in for a 2 year lease so I’m hoping this one is a cash cow for a long time.

This is my first rental property. It used to be my primary residence at one point. I expect gradual appreciation from this property because it is in the suburbs Austin which has been growing tremendously.  Love me some HOT markets!           Satisfied!

Property # 3

Rent paid on time, one repair call came in however I declined it.   The tenant wanted to have the gutters cleaned by me but luckily the lease I have specifically says the tenant is in charge of cleaning the gutters.

This is my first turnkey rental property I purchased out-of-state in Indianapolis. I do not expect much appreciation on this property. I purchased this for CASH FLOW purposes only. Satisfied!

Property # 4

Rent paid on time every single month and haven’t had any repairs on this since the last one which all went down when I fired my property manager from.    The tenant is happy, the PM is happy and I am happy.  Hopefully I will continue to not have anymore problems with this one now that we have resolved all the issues we had before with the plumbing and the horrible PM.

This my 2nd turnkey rental property in Indianapolis I do not expect much appreciation on this property. I purchased this for CASH FLOW purposes only. Satisfied!

Property # 5

Mortgage paid on time. No issues. This is a note that I own from a house that I sold via owner finance in the Austin area.  If you notice though, the reason why this asset will continue to go down from the spreadsheet above is because it is a note and the principal balance on it goes down each month as the buyer pays me. Remember, I’m the lender on this one. Satisfied!

Property # 6

Rent paid on time and no repairs on this one either.    This is the last turnkey rental property I purchased located in the Kansas City area.  I bought this in late October 2015. I purchased this property also for CASH FLOW purposes only. I am not expecting appreciation gains on this one. Satisfied!

Property # 7

Rent paid on time and no repairs on this one.

I bought this rental property from a wholesaler here in Indy after I moved here.  I paid this one in cash and it came with a properly screened and paying tenant which was great.  The property needs some fixing up however I won’t mess with it until after the tenant moves out or submits repairs.   This is the one I really want to convert to an AirBnB.

Property # 8

This is my newest rental and the tenant moved in late December.  He did submit a few repair calls and it ended up costing me about $1k.   It was pretty much my fault for not checking the items he called about when I rehabbed this home.    So in other words, this just adds to my rehab budget and I feel bad that the tenant had to call it in.

I bought this house from a wholesaler here in Indy for $65k in a very popular Indy neighborhood back in late October.   I finished the rehab on this one in late November/early December and got it rented out for $950 just in time for christmas.   December is not easy to find a qualified tenant.  Not only did my property manager find a qualified tenant but the tenant signed an 18 month lease so that we both don’t have to deal with a vacancy/move in December again.  Talk about a Christmas miracle!!!

Liabilities: These are self-explanatory so I wont dive too deep into these however I would like to include the items below for informational purposes.

Credit Card

I only use one credit card (rewards card) that I use to purchase my everyday expenses. I pay this off in full every month. I am receiving 1.5% cash back on this card and am very pleased with it. Satisfied!

Car Loan

I FINALLY PAID OFF THIS CAR LOAN!!  WoooHooo!  Im excited about this.  I always had the cash to pay this off but never wanted to because my rate was so low.   This loan was for my Jeep Wrangler which I replaced with a minivan.   Since I sold the Jeep, I had to pay off the lien.  Good riddance!!  On the loan that is, not my poor Jeep!!   🙁

 

Last 30 days net worth graph from Personal Capital

I really do love this chart, it looks great and its nice and big. The big dip you see at the end is from when I bought my new rental property cash, then it goes back up after I added it as a new asset in the account.  Good stuff!

 

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