Source: Anton Novoselov via Flickr under a Creative Commons license
Well hello and welcome to the month of July. And sorry for the long title.
Today, I’ve completed another month of my long journey toward my debt paydown and completed another year of life, and so think this a fitting time to do a reality check with a little bit of net owrth update..
It’s crazy to think how much my personal finance outlook has changed over the last year. In that vein and just for fun, I pulled up the net worth update from the last time I had a birthday, right here: http://debtblag.com/july-2013-net-worth-update-june-goal-results/.
I was working hard at paying off debt, but was definitely in far more dire straits; I still had credit card debt — to the tune of $12,000! — and my net worth was an even more cartoonishly negative six figures. Yikes!
Today, I’ve paid off all of my credit card debt and have yet to go back, and my net worth is only half as negative as it was back then.
What’s more, one of my goals was to become less terrible at blogging. It’s sad to see that even a year on, I still haven’t accomplished that 
Let’s just look at the numbers.
The numbers
Click to enlarge
Good stuff: I crossed a huge milestone this month; the total amount of debt I’ve paid off since starting crossed $50,000, which feels like an unreal amount. This was indeed a big month for paying down debt — a very big month indeed. I have been slipping recently on paying down my student loans, but managed to knock $1000 off their principal balances in June.
Another good thing? I mentioned it earlier, but at -$66,700 my negative net worth is only 58% of where my negative net worth was the last time I had a birthday. Negative net worth is bad, of course, but I’m happy that I’m quickly pushing it in the right direction.
Bad stuff: I wouldn’t call it necessarily bad, but I spent a solid amount of money on birthday celebrations and prepaying for wedding travels later in the summer. Actually, on second thought, that’s definitely good stuff, but it is money that I didn’t send to debt paydown.
Questionable stuff: You may have noticed that I added percentage changes to my monthly changes. I think this helps with understanding how big the changes are relative to the small (for retirement) or big (for debt) bases I’m starting with. I’m not sure whether a percent change for net worth makes sense while it’s negative; thoughts?
Also, check out this chart I made:
Click to enlarge
Easy enough to understand, right? Every month my net worth goes up by a certain nominal amount, and some of it is because my debt went down and some of it is because my retirement savings went up.
You may notice that the orange portion of each is growing each bar has gotten bigger this year. I’m questioning that strategy right now. Any thoughts on it?
I think I’ll continue making this graph, with the hopes that the total nominal amount trend upward as my base gets bigger (or less negative). I’ll note that I don’t quite see that happening yet and it’s making me want to dig into why that is.
It looks like I’ve got lots of thinking to do.
How did everyone else do in June?
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