March 2016 Net Worth Update - Cash Flow Diaries (2024)

This is my official March2016 Net Worth Update. Below are my actual numbers for ALL my investments and liabilities as of 03/31/2016. Explanations and quick summary below chart. If you would like to see my previous months net worth posts, please visit my Net Worth Tracker.

Quick Summary and comments: +$3,719

I am SHOCKED that my net worth actually went up in March. Still can’t believe it as I am writing this. The only time I keep track of my net worth is literally when I write this post and if you have been reading my previous net worth updates, then you know that I had and have some big expenses coming. Well guess what!? A huge chuck of those expenses I paid all in the last week. I literally spent close to $12kpaying these abnormal expenses which I don’t normally have and for that reason alone, I was convinced my net worth would be in the negative. Read more about what these expenses are in my Cash section below.

Well! The stock gods have blessed me because the only reason why I am not in the negative this month is because I saw $9k growth in my stocks. Yay for stocks! Never thought I would be saying that as the volatility of the stocks I own had recently been unpleasing to say the least. March ended up being a great month for all my stocks. Hopefully they continue to grow. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. 🙂

I am still not out of the woods yet on these future big time expenses either so the next fewmonths should be interesting to see what happens with the net worth update. If my time estimate is correct, I actually don’t plan on paying for the next batch of big expenses until May so I may just be in the clear for April. We’ll see!

Since these net worth updates have evolved in to a little life update as well I decided to break down some of the things happening in my life. Here is all the fun and excitement that I went through in March.

Fun – You may or not have read but I live in Austin, TX and this past month was a really super awesome festival that we hold every year called South By Southwest (SXSW). I spent 4 days partaking in the festivities, listening to countless hours of live music, eating great food, getting a ton of steps (fitbit owner hehe), and hanging out with super cool people. One of those people just happens to be Bryan from Income Surfer. Another blogger in the personal finance world was here in TX and he made an effort to come out to Austin. We hung out for a bit and had a great conversation about our blogs, income and just life in general. Was really cool to hang out with him and if you don’t know who he is, make sure you check out his blog, Income Surfer.

Wedding – My wedding is officially just a few months away now, most of the planning is done, just waiting to hash out final details depending on all the RSVPs we get. FYI – this is part of the big expenses coming up in my near future. I am however super excited to be married and start this new chapter in my life. In case you never read it, check out how I proposed here.

My new business: Amazon FBA – In march I dove in head first to the world of amazon and have big plans to make additional income with this business. You can read all about my amazon plan to make money here. I do plan on writing a more detailed post with updates on this on the blog later this month but to give you a quick update, I have officially chosen a product to sell and have made a bulk order. I am going big and ordering 1000 items of said product and will have it shipped by sea to the united states. Spent countless hours just researching how to do that properly. But that is another blog post on its own. 😉 Anyhow, I didn’t choose a cheap product and I had to pay 30% of the total cost now to start production. That was part of my big expenses that I paid for in March. Fun, Fun!!

Okay enough about my personal life. Now let’s get to the breakdown of each asset.

Assets:Explanations of each of my assets.

Cash: -$5,353

I typically always see a cash increase on all my net worth updates unless I am buying rental properties. Which is what I like to do if you haven’t noticed. But this month I hada big fat loss! I had big expenses to pay in March between owing the IRS for taxes and making my first purchase for the Amazon biz. I owed close to $8k in taxes and I will never see that money again. Hurts me just thinking about it. Haha. And I spent close to $4k just making the first 30% payment of my amazon product I will be selling. Knowing me, of course I went big on the amazon product and didn’t go with something cheap. It’s okay though because I feel really confident that I will make money and early estimations have me doubling all the income I put into the amazon business just from this one product alone. That’s right, once I run out of inventory, I should have cleared all my expenses plus 100% return. So in theory, if I can sell my 1000 items in one month on amazon, then I should be making close to 20k inprofit. It will probably take months and months to sell out but I like to dream.

My cash as noted above in the spreadsheetconsists of two different checking accounts. My normal checking account and my REI (Real Estate Investing) checking account. SomewhatSatisfied Considering!

HSA account: -$180

HSA went down this month because I actually had to go to a few doctor appointments for an issue I am having with one of my ears. It’s really strange and I would rather not get into it but my medical insurance did not cover a bunch of these costs hence the negative HSA amount.

My HSA deductible is $1300 for the year and I have close to $5k in this account so with that being said, since I am maxed out already 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 themoney 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. NotSatisfied!

Company Stock Options: +$7,034

I have been seeing a lot of red in the past few months with these stock options but for some reason, they decided to go up this past month and it could not have been better timing.

These are stock options from my day job. I am fully vested. I may end up selling a bunch of these in the future if it hits a certain price. I would like to use the money to buy another rental property. I’m not in a hurry to sell it so I will play along with the market and see what happens. VerySatisfied!

Stock Portfolio: +$1,899

In January, I dove into the world of stocks and so far it’s been going well. I have seen improvement on this since I started so I am very pleased with this. My stock portfolio consists of a few precious metal stocks and one normal company stock which I regret buying. More on that later. I haven’t really wrote a post about all this yet and I do plan on writing one so I can let everyone know why I did this and what stocks I purchased. Stay tuned. Satisfied!

401K: +$407

Finally months later, this actually went up a bit. Whoo hoooo!!

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. I really don’t like the idea of having an account that punishes me to take money out because of age. Satisfied!

Property # 1

This is my primary residence. The market I live in is extremely hot and I expect the appreciation on this house to continue to growhoweverI will only update the market value once a year, in January of each new year. Satisfied! Here are more details on this future investment property.

Property # 2

I am right smack in the middle of a vacancy turnover on this one. I indicated last month that my tenant told me he was moving. Well he decided to just move even though he is still under contract. Not in a bad way though, he is still paying me. He just is paying 2 rents now. To be honest, this could not have been a better situation for me. He is paying me for the month of April even though he is not living there and that gives me a whole month to find a new tenant. He is actually under contract until the last day of May but I told him if I find a new tenant to move in for May, that we can break the contract and he will not have to pay me for May. He was a great tenant and that is the least I could do.

Well on top of that to make things even better, I already filled the vacancy and approved a tenant. The new tenant will be moving in May 1st and they already paid me the security deposit. That is a new line item in my net worth spreadsheet above if you noticed. I literally filled that spot within 24 hours of listing the rental. The market here is crazy hot and I was flooded with rental prospects. It was awesome plus I even raised the rent from $1230 to $1300. Huge win for me and I wish all my vacancy turnovers went like this. I am not actually going to lose any money at all on this. Pretty awesome!!

This is my first rental property. It used to be my primary residence. I expect gradual appreciation from this property as well because it is in the suburbs of this HOT market I live in. Love me some HOT markets! 150K is about what its worth now based on MLScomparisons. Satisfied!

Property # 3

Rent paid on time. No issues or repairs. This is my first turnkey rental property I purchased out-of-state. I do not expect much appreciation on this property. I purchased this for CASH FLOW purposes only. Satisfied!

Property # 4

This was the property in which I fired my property manager from. The tenant was great and always paid on time. I just had a horrible PM. Thankfully, beginning April 1st, the tenant is now paying my new property manager. The transition for the tenant was very smooth although I am still not done dealing with the horrible PM. I have yet to get paid for my March rent payment because of “technical issue” they are having with the payment system. I know the tenant paid so I should be getting that money but we’ll see. I wouldn’t be surprised if I never see that money again because this property manager is horrendous. The crappy PM did tell me that I should see it by end of next week so I will keep my fingers crossed. Man I am so happy that I fired them!!

This my 2nd turnkey rental property. 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. 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 paidon time. No repairs, however the lease is expiring on this one in May and the tenants have informed my awesome property manager that they will not be renewing. So I will be dealing with a vacancy turnover on this one in a few months. Hopefully there is not too much damage to the house. We’ll see.

This is my 3rd turnkey rental property, Ipurchased it in early June 2015 and I absolutely love this house. I do not expect much appreciation on this property. I purchased this for CASH FLOW purposes only. Satisfied!

Property # 7

Rent paid on time, no issues, no repairs. This is my most recent turnkey rental property, I just 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!

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 purchased this vehicle before I had the proper knowledge on how to be totally awesome with finance and investments so that is the only reason why I have this loan. If I knew then what I knew now, i would have purchased a used vehicle all cash. It is not worth it to me to pay this loan off because the interest rate on this loan is 2% and I would rather use that money to buy more rentals where I will make a much greater return. I will continue to pay it down slowly. Satisfied!

Last 30 days net worth graphfrom Personal Capital

I really do love this chart, it looks great and its nice and big. The big increase at the end is from where I updated my property value on my primary residence. That is exactly what I want to see each and every month in this chart.

If you want toset up and track your net worth online like I do, create a FREEaccount atPersonal Capital.

There you have it folks! How was your month? Subscribe here if you would like to receive emails on future posts including more net worth updates.