Let's Do This

I am tired.

I am tired of feeling like I have no money.

I am tired of disappointing my life because she thinks we have no money.

I want to enjoy life.

I do not want to stress about making debt payments.

I do not want to cringe every time my wife wants to look at a house.

I do not want to see the look on her face when I say we can’t afford it.

I make $62,700 a year in a job I do not love.  I enjoy it at times.  However, I don’t get any satisfaction from it.  I worry that I won’t find my passion.  I worry that my passion won’t be able to provide for my family.

I have a $20,000 car loan and $30,000 in student loan debt that needs to be paid off.  I have a mortgage for $131,000.

My wife wants to buy a $360,000 house.  It’s a great house.  It has lots of space and the neighborhood is fantastic.

How come all I can think about is “how the heck am I going to afford the mortgage?”  How can I pay those taxes?  How much is insurance going to cost me?

I don’t want to live like that.  I don’t want to live like this.  I need to change.  I need to do something.

I’m going to start blogging again to try and find my passion.  I am going to vent more.  I am going to research things more.  I am going to have fun more.

I’m not going to solely talk about money and finances.  I started this blog to talk about everything.  I’m going to post my weight-lifting goals and achievements.  I’m going to research home-brewing and bourbon.  I’m going to talk about money – because it comes up – but it’s not going to consume me.

I’m not going to settle.  I’m not going to be average.  My little boy upstairs is not going to have a dad who is miserable and can’t provide for him.

I’m going to be better than that.  My son deserves better than that.  My wife deserves better than that.  I deserve better than that.

List of topics I want to blog about by the end of April:

1.     Property Taxes and how they effect the home buying process

2.     The weight lifting program I need to get into beach shape.

3.     The best bourbon for my dollar.

4.     The Pirates

5.     Derivatives.

I am tired.  So, I’m going to go to bed.  April 17, 2013 is the beginning of my journey to make sure my wife can be a stay at home mom.

March Net Worth Review

Here's an updated picture of the reason we are all here:

There he is!!  It's amazing how fast they grow up!  It's true though - all the investment monitoring and budget checking is done for him.  So that he can grow up with the necessities he needs to grow up strong and with the same opportunities that his mother and I had growing up.  I want him to go to college and not be stressed about loans or food money.  I want him to dream big and then work to achieve those dreams!

For the March breakdown:

Cash - $17,504 (-$3,837)

Investments - $110,546 (+$6,715)
Home Value - $197,000 ($0)
Personal Assets - $52,112 ($1,289)
Less: Liabilities - $182,567 ($-2,087)


Assets -

Cash - Lots of greenbacks flying around this month!  So, March is the month my bonus and raises go into effect - so that was a nice bump to offset the loss of the Prof's pay since she's not back working.  The major change is just a re-allocation from cash into RLS's 529 Account!  The original contribution of $3,000 was set aside in Growth, so not a big deal.

Investments - On March 30, 2012, the S&P set an all-time high!  The markets are doing their thing and we are doing ours!  As I said before, we set up RLS's 529 Account.  We have a good mix of growth mutual funds to help him pay for ND in 18 years!  (That's probably a good blog post in the future - the funds I picked and why).  Otherwise, I am still contributing to retirement and I made a small transfer to House Fund.

Personal Assets - 

I have no idea why the cars would go up in value.  The Sonata was only driven 3x, so it shouldn't be depreciating too much - but that's not really how it works.  It's really just odd.

Liabilities -
Mortgage - $131,100 - Another mortgage payment.....
Student Loans - $30,112- I nice decrease here.  An extra $500 payment made this balance decrease sharply.  The Prof and I talked about paying down high interest loans faster and trying to get debt free in 3 years.  So, I'm going to take a more aggressive approach to these bad boys so that I can buy a bigger house and make larger college and retirement savings contributions in the future!

Acura Loan - $20,988.  I paid down an extra $200 in order to get the balance below $21k!  Every little bit helps!!
Total Joint Net Worth - $194,596

Well, well, well!!  Not too bad considering the wife is on maternity leave!  Obviously, our investments are making greater headwinds as the Joy of Compounding Interest takes effect!!  Otherwise, we're going to continue paying down loans and paying less interest!!