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Monday, July 19, 2021

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - July 2021

          


If you have viewed our family's Net Worth Page, you probably already know that it does not include 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:
It's official! According to Zillow, our home is currently worth $1,118,400 ($103,392 in the last 30-days). Wow!! Yes, that is not a typo, our home value went up almost $100K this past month. Not sure if everyone else is seeing the same but the housing market is out of control here in southern California. As mentioned in our post back in May, a nearby home in our community sold for an unexpected $1.4 million dollars! We can't believe the home sold for as much as it did! More importantly, we can't believe that we now "almost" own a home that is worth over $1 million! 


Mortgage Balance (As of July 1st):
$181,617 (down $2,234 from our June post)

Percentage Owed:
16.2% (down 0.9% since our June post)

Home Equity
$936,783 (up $56,934 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 an awesome rate of 2.875%.  My goal is to retire within 5 years and 11 months (71 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 6 years and 7 months (79 months) left on our mortgage. Nevertheless, I would like to have it paid off in roughly 5 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 for as long as possible 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, 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.

Friday, July 9, 2021

Net Worth Report (July 2021 Update)

 

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. The list was previously on Rockstar Finance blog, but The Ultimate List of Blogger Net Worth can now be found on the Caleb Net Worth blog. Unfortunately, it appears that the list is no longer being maintained, it is still fun to see if we can continue to climb the static list and hopefully reach the top one day. :) 

According to the list, which was last updated on May 20, 2020, our family was at No. 52 (out of a total of 283 bloggers). And after our previous update in August of 2020, we had jumped up a few spots to No. 38 on the list. And after this post, we continue to move up the static list and stand at No. 22 (albeit static since it hasn't been updated). With my wife now back in the workforce this past year and her hours and paychecks are both steadily growing, we have continued to see significant momentum with the growth in our family's net worth growth past year. I am happy to say that I also just received a long-overdue promotion this past month so that momentum should continue as we look to finish the last few laps of our financial journey and prepare for retirement in about 6 years or less.  

As of July 1, 2021, our family net worth was as follows:

Retirement Savings:                    $ 768,763 
P2P Lending Account (Prosper):    $    1,936
Dividend Stock Accounts (DSA):     
    Wells Fargo:                            $  77,803
    Edward Jones:                         $  26,385 
DSA - Surplus Cash:                    $  28,313

College Savings Accounts:            $132,834
Cash and Savings:                        71,572
GRAND TOTAL
$1,107,606
(Increase of $177,176 since August 2020)

Although we do not count it as part of our Net Worth,
it is still nice to know that our Home Equity is:
$879,849*
(Increase of $214,003 since August 2020)

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: $1,987,455 (An increase of 
$391,179 since August 2020). Even during Covid pandemic, our family saw some very impressive gains in the last 11 months. For one, we finally reached the $1 million mark without our home equity! Yay! I can now officially say that we are millionaires. To add to that, with our home equity, we are now inching towards the $2 million mark!

* 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.

Friday, July 2, 2021

June 2021 (Recap) - DIVIDENDS RECEIVED

       


Our family had decided to stop adding to our stock portfolio while were trying to cash flow our home improvements this past year. I'm happy to say that Phase II is now complete and just a few loose ends remain. Although we no longer post our buys and sells, we are actively trading once again. This past month, we had 1 sell activity and 0 buy activities. 

What is everyone else doing? Are you buying anything right now?   

Now for what you all came to see, below is a list of the dividends/partnership distributions that we received from our family's dividend stocks portfolio.

DIVIDENDS 
During the past month, 15 companies/ETFs/Partnerships. The total monies received from those 15 companies/ETFs/Partnerships was: $323.47. 

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


WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:

06/01/21 - WFC (
WELLS FARGO & CO): $3.00
06/01/21 - BMY (HELMERICH & PAYNE INC): $15.00
06/01/21 - ENB (ENBRIDGE INC): $69.40
06/04/21 - BKR (
BAKER HUGHES A GE CO): $16.20
06/09/21 - ARMK (ARAMARK): $2.75
06/10/21 - IBM (INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORP): $19.68
06/10/21 - XOM (EXXON MOBIL CORP): $52.20
06/10/21 - AEP (AMERICAN ELECTRIC POWER INC): 11.10
06/11/21 - LUMN (LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES): $31.25
06/15/21 - BRMK (BROADMARK REALTY CAPITAL INC): $3.50
06/21/21 - RDS.B (ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC ADR B): $15.62
06/24/21 - EDIV (SPDR S&P EMERGING ETF): $37.48
06/25/21 - LCEAX (INVESCO DIVERSIFIED DIVIDEND FUND CL A): $15.74
06/28/21 - SU (SUNCOR ENERGY INC): $12.80
06/29/21 - GILD (GILEAD SCIENCES INC): $17.75
 
EDWARD JONES INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:
N/A

OVERALL DIVIDENDS TOTAL THIS MONTH: $323.47

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


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