Net Worth Report (UPDATE) - JULY 2018

We originally set out to provide just annual Net Worth updates and then eventually started to do quarterly updates.  Now that we have significantly slowed the pace of our posts, I think we will like just pop in once or twice a year simply to let everyone know how we are doing and to keep ourselves honest and looking forward to our ultimate goal of early retirement and/or Financial Independence!  

Also, in case you have not come across it, we are part of an active list of bloggers who provide their net worth on Rockstar Finance's page - The Ultimate List of Blogger Net Worth.

With that said, at the end of the first quarter, our family net worth is as follows:

Retirement Savings:                      $ 537,932

P2P Lending Accounts:                   $    5,743

Dividend Stock Accounts (DSA):     $   84,028
DSA - Surplus Cash:                      $  18,677
College Savings Accounts:              $  78,840

Cash and Savings:                         $  50,338

GRAND TOTAL

$775,558
(Increase of $14,201 since January 2018)

Although we do not count it as part of our Net Worth,
it is still nice to know that our Home Equity is:

$607,970*

(Increase of $47,939 since January 2018)

Although we don't consider our home equity as part of our Net Worth, we understand that some people do.  So for those who include home equity in their Net Worth, our family's net worth would be considered: $1,383,528 (Increase of $62,140 since January 2018).  It's a pretty awesome figure when you include the home equity but until we can accumulate 7 figures without our home equity, I refuse to consider myself a millionaire. 

* Although others do consider home equity, and even cars, collections, etc. as part of their net worth, it is our opinion that since these items are not very liquid and the value of these items is highly dependent on what others are willing to pay for them (at the present time), we have decided not to consider these type of assets as part of our family's recognized net worth.

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - JULY 2018

If you have viewed our family's Net Worth Page, you probably already know that it does not include the equity in our home.  Although, we do realize that it is technically part of our overall net worth, we decided that since our home equity is not an asset that we can count on for income (unless we sell and buy something cheaper) we would exclude it from our net worth calculation.

For the purpose of this blog, we are more interested in documenting our loan balance rather than our home equity.  With that said, we will use the current Zillow value as our estimated home value and use it to figure out the percentage we owe on our home. For those interested, we will include the amount of our home equity, but know that we are less concerned with the equity since we have no plans to cash out or otherwise sell our home. Our main goal is to pay off our home on or before my retirement date. 

HOME VALUE:

According to Zillow, our home is currently worth $864,213 (up $1,242 in the last 30-days). The traditional spring-summer spike in real estate continued to be great for property values, but the reality is whether or not it is up or down, it really doesn't mean much to us since we have no intention of selling our home.  We mainly post these updates to see the remaining mortgage balance and keep us motivated to push forward to be debt free (including our mortgage) one day!  

Mortgage Balance (As of July 1st):
$256,153 (down $1,982 from our June post)

Percentage Owed:
29.6% (down .4% from our June post)

Home Equity: 
$607,970 (up $6,280 from our June post)
   

Mortgage Background:
For those that have not read the Preface on our home equity, we currently hold a 15-year fixed rate mortgage at the incredibly low rate of 2.875%.  My goal is to retire within 8 years and 11 months (107 months) so we are setting out to pay off our mortgage on or before my retirement date. Right now we are a few months behind the target retirement date. Currently, we have approximately 9  years and 9 months (117 months) left on our mortgage. Nevertheless, I would like to have it paid off in roughly 8-9 years. If we accomplish that, I plan to use the money we use to pay our mortgage and aggressively build our passive income to help supplement our retirement and defer tapping into the 457K as long as we can so it can continue to grow. 

Right now we are not putting any extra money towards the principal given our low 2.875% interest rate. We feel that we could make our money grow faster by investing it and while keeping the money more liquid. At a certain point, maybe in 6-8 years, we may consider using some of the money from our investment accounts to wipe out the remaining mortgage balance.  Until then, we will continue to grow that money outside, rather than have it locked into our home.

JOURNEY UPDATES: from Fellow Bloggers (JULY)

As our family continues to save and invest towards Financial Independence, we love seeing how others have progressed in their personal journey.  Good or bad, the results we see around the blogging community has been both a gauge and a reminder that we must stay focused if we are to reach our end goal! Being part of this community has allowed us to learn and grow during these past few years.  Our success has certainly been aided by the abundance of information and reports that can be found on practically a daily basis. Here are is just a small snapshot of what we mean:

• ROADMAP 2 RETIRE - R2R recently provided an update of his Baby R2R Portfolio. An account he maintains for his daughter's future. The account is now up to $9,149!  
• DIVIDEND DAZE - Daze recently provided an update on his dividends for June and Q2. He is seeing awesome growth year-over-year. His June dividends were $138.39 with a Q2 total of $293.22.
• DIVIDEND DIPLOMATS - Lanny and Bert both recently provided an update on their dividends for June. The progress both are making is quite impressive! Lanny reported that he had received $1,828 in dividends, while Bert reported a dividend income stream of $1,156.
• PASSIVE INCOME PURSUIT - JC recently provided an update on his Net Worth and June dividends. He just continues to kill it with a Net Wort of $557,325  while receiving a dividend income stream of $1,037 in June!
• DIVIDEND HAWK - DH continues his amazing journey with a reported dividend income stream of $1,274 in June!
• DIVIDEND PORTFOLIO - Although DP is juggling student loan debt, he has been doing a very admirable job trying to building his investments. In June, his dividend income stream reached its highest mark at $98. 
• DIVHUT - Keith recently provided an update to his dividend income. From his taxable account, Roth IRA and traditional IRA, he received a grand total of $976 in the month of June. 
• BUY HOLD LONG - Although Caleb is in his mid-20s, he certainly has the right mindset and approach.  His journey has currently brought his net worth to $54,987.   
• DIVIDEND AND HOBBIES - D&H recently provided a net worth report of $346,477 while receiving $699 in dividends during the month of June. Way to go! 
• POLLIES DIVIDEND - Excluding cash from his side hustles, Pollie reported receiving a mid-year dividend income stream of € 1,792.73. Good luck reaching your annual goal of € 3,600!
• THE DIVIDEND PIG - Blake is well on his way to early retirement! He is in his mid 30s and his goal is to retire at 45. He also set a personal record this past month with a total of $1,580 in dividends from 55 different companies!

Way to go everyone, big of small, we celebrate your success and growth!! 

We apologize for not listing everyone here but, 

FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT WITH YOUR RECENT UPDATE 

AND WE'LL GLADLY ADD YOU TO THIS POST!!

We Just Joined the 700K Club!!

A BIG "Thank You" to everyone that has supported, and continues to support and visit our blog...whether you have been with us from the beginning or you've just recently joined the journey, we would like to thank each and every one of you for your support.  

We started blogging about our frugal family's journey roughly 51 months ago, on March 15, 2014. Our blogging journey started out as a hobby and simply a way to keep on track of our progress. Flash forward 4 years and roughly 1 month later, I am thrilled to announce that because of each and every one of our readers, we just reached yet another milestone.  Within this past week, our blog crossed over the 700K mark! Although we are not as active as we had been during the past, its humbling to see we still have some loyal followers whom continue to click on our posts to see how we are doing on our journey to financial independence. Old or new, we thank each and every one of your for your loyalty and support.    

It took approximately 15 months to reach our first milestone of 100,000 page visits to our blog. The second milestone of 200,000 page visits took 6 months and 28 days. The third milestone of 300,000 page visits, even with a 6-week hiatus last summer, took us 7 months. With newfound drive, we reach our fourth milestone of 400,00 page visits in just 4 months and 22 days. Continuing that incredible pace and traffic, it took us just 3 months and 17 days to reach our fifth milestone of 500,000 page visits. But at that point, we decided to switch gears and concentrate on a different side hustle as we felt that our efforts blogging simply could not compete against the rewards from our other side hustles. Nevertheless, we still reached 600,000 page visits in 5 months and 20 days.  Flash forward roughly 7 months and 15 days, we reached 700,000 page visits this past week!!

Since I am somewhat of a stats nerd, below are some additional stats behind our 700,000 visits.

Top Referring Sites

Google searches and internal cross links within our posts play a vital role in our blog traffic. But we also want to recognize and give special thanks to our twitter followers, as well as My Dividend Pipeline, Captain Dividend,  Passive Income Pursuit, and Rockstar Finance for the traffic from your respective blogs. Lastly, although not present on the list above, I would like to also thank a few other fellow blogger and friends, Roadmap2Retire, Dividend Diplomats, and Dividend Hawk for your continued support and friendships.

Also, thanks to all that have tweeted or re-tweeted our posts.  Our additional presence and our followers on Twitter continues to help get our blog grow. In case you would like to follow us on Twitter, we can be found under: @FrugalFamilyof4.  I'm proud to say that we currently have 1,852 followers on Twitter. That is 79 new followers since our last milestone post on November 19, 2017.

Most Popular Page Visits

Our top three most popular page visits are: 1) Dividend Stocks Portfolio with 25,194 page views; 2) 2015 - Collection of Recent Buys with 13,747 page views; and 3) 2017 - Collection of Recent Buys with 13,068 page views. It is great to see that our readers are utilizing our free reference tools. Sorry we have not been maintaining them this year.  We are hoping to bring them back later this year but it probably won't happen until the kids are back in school.  They are on summer break and free time is kind of a luxury right now. :) 

Most Popular Posts

Our top three most popular posts are: 1) Stocks Added to Collection of Stock Analyses - December 2016 with 26,573 page views; 2) Stocks Added to Collection of Stock Analyses - November 2016 with 25,611 page views; and 3) P2P Accounts (Update) - August 2014 with 2,121 page views. 

Top Page Views By Countries

We are tremendously grateful that our blog has seemed to have a worldwide presence as evident by the chart above.  However, the top page views to our blog came from the following top four countries: 1) United States, with the largest presence at 459,700 page views; 2) Germany is now in second with 28,466 page views; 3) Russia fell from second to third with 26,833 page views; and 4) Canada rounds out the top for with 22,669 page views.  These top four countries has consistently remained our top readers, but it appears that with each milestone, the United Arab Emirates and France continue to gain ground on these top four!

Its fun to look at the stats and maybe even create a little friendly competition with them.  But the reality is, near or far, first or tenth, we truly value each and every reader.  Thank you for visiting!! Our blog and posts received the page views they did because of you (our readers and fellow bloggers).  Thank you for reading and/or sharing our post with others. We truly appreciate each and every one of you for the support!

THANK YOU FOR HELPING US 

REACH YET ANOTHER HUGE MILESTONE!!

JUNE 2018 - DIVIDENDS RECEIVED

Below is a recap of the dividends/partnership distributions that we received from our family's dividend stocks portfolio –  JUNE 2018 (recap).

DIVIDENDS 

During the past month, our family received dividends/partnership distributions from a total of 17 companies/ETFs/Partnerships. The total monies received from those 17 companies/ETFs/Partnerships was: $192.99. 

Below is a breakdown of the dividends/partnership distributions received this past month:

WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:
6/01/18 - WFC (WELLS FARGO & CO): $2.73
6/04/18 - ENB (ENBRIDGE INC): $36.27
6/08/18 - EXC (EXELON CORPORATION): $12.05
6/11/18 - TGT (TARGET CORP): $11.78
6/11/18 - IBM (INT'L BUSINESS MACHINE CORP): $9.42
6/11/18 - XOM (EXXON MOBIL CORP): $16.40
6/11/18 - CVX (CHEVRON CORPORATION): $16.80
6/15/18 - ESV (ENSCO PLC): $5.00
6/15/18 - O (REALTY INCOME CORP): $3.29
6/15/18 - CTL (CENTURYLINK INC): $13.50
6/18/18 - RDS.B (ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC): $13.16
6/18/18 - NOK (NOKIA CORP): $16.74
6/21/18 - FLO (FLOWERS FOODS INC): $3.60
6/22/18 - EDIV (SPDR S&P EMERGING ETF): $26.51
6/28/18 - GILD (GILEAD SCIENCES INC): $2.84
6/29/18 - BPY (BROOKFIELD PPTY LP PARTNERS): $0.65
6/29/18 - NOV (NATIONAL OILWELL VARCO INC): $2.25

EDWARD JONES INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:

N/A

OVERALL DIVIDENDS TOTAL THIS MONTH: $192.99

How did you all do? Hopefully you all continue to see your dividends growth month after to month, year after year! 

In case you interested, our family's dividend stocks portfolio 
may be found by clicking on the link below:

Dividend Stocks Portfolio