Simple Financial Freedom

Welcome to the QuirkLife November 2011 Net Worth Update – Minor Delay Edition. These net worth updates will be a monthly check up to let you know where I am financially. These updates will be posted at the end of the month or near the beginning of the next month. I am going to use these posts to track the progress of my journey towards one million dollars in net worth.

I have been slacking in my net worth duties this month as I have been trying to get in the Blogging habit. As I said last month, I have been tracking my net worth for a little over a year now on an excel spreadsheet but wanted to begin publishing this information on this site. I graduated university about 18 months ago and since then my net worth has taken off (for obvious reasons). I hope that these monthly posts will function as not only an accountability exercise for me but will spur other posts about the strategies and tools I am using to build my net worth.

All the numbers are moving in the right direction this month with the exception of my stock investment accounts but as I am mostly invested in Index Funds and have an extremely long time frame for these investments I am not too worried especially with the turmoil in the markets these days.

There are some large percent change numbers in many of my accounts but these are mainly due to the small balances that are in some of these categories, so a small fluctuation in dollar terms will look like a huge change in percentage terms. My credit cards are paid off in full at every bill so the overall balance in these accounts will swing quite wildly at times but rest assured they will always revert to zero at the end of the billing cycle.

This year I had three major goals.

1. Save at least 30% of my total income for the year. (Currently 31% based on current savings and projected income for the remainder of the year)
2. Begin to build an emergency fund (Ultimate Goal: $ 15,000. Current: $ 2,600)
3. pay off money owed to family and friends (only $ 640 remaining)

On to the numbers:

Assets: $ 34,900 (+4.8%)

• Cash: $ 4,200 (+55.6%)
• Savings: $2,600 (+18.2%)
• Registered Retirement Accounts (RRSP): $13,300 (-1.5%)
• Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSA):  $14,800 (-0.7%)

 Liabilities: $1,990 (-5.2%)

• Revolving Credit (paid off in full every month): $1,350 (+575.0%)
• Money owed to family and friends: $640 (-66.3%)

Total Net Worth: ~$32,910 (+5.5%)

Some quick notes and explanations:

The Cash

The $4,200 in cash is held in chequing and savings accounts. I do most of my banking though ING Direct and have slowly started to move more and more of my business over to ING from my original account at RBC. I am almost ready to cut the cord and this month I made my final step towards complete RBC emancipation. I switched my rent from RBC to ING beginning in January. ING does not have any minimum balance requirements so the money in these accounts is more in place to serve as “Working Capital” over the course of the month. All my bills and payments are made online so ING handles most of the heavy lifting. I am finding it more and more comfortable to have a nice cushion of cash in my bank account so I have been slowly building this up over time.

Savings

My Savings are also at ING and up until this month were simply in the ING Orange Saving account. However Christmas came early at ING and they were offering a 2% one year GIC so I jumped and put my emergency fund savings into an ING GIC. An interesting feature of this GIC is that unlike most where your money is locked in for the term, ING allows you to withdraw the funds if you need them making it a great place to house your emergency fund. This is my rainy day fund and I have been receiving a sick and slightly disturbing amount of pleasure of the last couple of months as its balance has been increasing. The Goal with this account is to build it to an eventual balance of $15,000 as I feel this will be more than enough to let me sleep at night and should be achievable in the next year (by December 2012).

RRSP and TFSA Accounts

All of my investing is done thought self directed investment accounts with Questrade. The main reason I invest with Questrade is because of their low fees. I am charged $5.00 per trade which amounts to a very small percentage of total assets given the amount I trade every year.

Welcome to the QuirkLife October 2011 Net Worth Update – Ground Zero Edition. These net worth updates will be a monthly check up to let you know where I am financially. From here on in these monthly net worth updates will be posted near the beginning of the next month. I am going to use these posts to track the progress of my journey towards one million dollars in net worth.

As this is my first Net Worth post I it will function more as a starting point than a comparison. I have been tracking my net worth for a little over a year now on an excel spreadsheet but wanted to begin publishing this information on this site. I graduated university about 18 months ago and since then my net worth has taken off (for obvious reasons). I hope that these monthly posts will function as not only an accountability exercise for me but will spur other posts about the strategies and tools I am using to build my net worth.

• I currently have both an RRSP and a TFSA account; these are both with the discount brokerage Questrade.
• My liabilities are low as I don’t have a mortgage or any other outstanding loans.
• I use ING Direct for most of my banking.

This year I had three major goals.

1. Save at least 30% of my total income for the year. (Currently 27% based on current savings and projected income for the remainder of the year)
2. Begin to build an emergency fund (Goal: $ 15,000. Current: $ 2,200)
3. pay off money owed to family and friends (only $ 1,900 remaining)

On to the numbers:

Assets: $ 33,300

• Cash: $ 2,700
• Savings: $2,200
• Registered Retirement Accounts (RRSP): $13,500
• Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSA):  $14,900

Liabilities: $2,100

• Revolving Credit (paid off in full every month): $200
• Money owed to family and friends: $1,900

Total Net Worth: ~$31,300