Monday, January 10, 2011

Net Worth Update

As of January 1st, my net worth was $141 897 (up 2.8% from $137 993). If I exclude house-related assets and liabilities, my net worth was $99 532 (up 3.8% from $95 888). However, the last payment for the windows has not been made yet, so the totals should actually be $2 500 lower. And December was a 3-payweek month, so this also boosted my assets. But the year 2010 has been a very good year. :o)

Assets ($204 124, up 3.5% from $197 251)
  • Bank Accounts $8 132 (up 41% from $5 754)
  • Emergency Funds $2 783 (up 3.9% from $2 678)
  • RRSP Accounts $63 134 (up 4.6% from $60 361)
  • Non-Retirement Investments $31 423 (up 3.3% from $30 411)
  • Home $98 430 (stable)

Liabilities ($62 226, up 4.1% from $59 779)

  • Credit Cards $6 076 (up 75% from $3 482)
  • Mortgage $56 065 (down 0.4% from $56 324)
  • Line of Credit $0 (stable)

Ratios

  • Debt / assets: 0.305 (up from 0.303)
  • House value / total assets: 0.482 (down from 0.498)

Just before the Holidays, there were some big unplanned expenses. First, my lady's car had some extensive repairs that needed to be done, which were a safety issue. She didn't have the cash on hand to pay for those, and was looking at a 9% financing to pay for it. So I offered to pay for the repairs and she'll pay me back. Similar story for her computer -- it had been troublesome for some time and key features began to fail, so we replaced to. Together, those two items cost about $3 000, which explains the spiking of the amount on my credit card. I'll pay this fully (out of available cash from my emergency fund) when the CC statement comes in.

If not for this, expenses for the Christmas would have been quite reasonable. Even with those, things are still running smoothly. It's good to have some margin of safety!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Frog: would you please advise your readers what CGI stands for?
Additionally, would you be willing to share your portfolio listings?
Finally, how come your mortgage did not go down very much in 2010?
Thank you for your time

Frog of Finance said...

CGI stands for Canadian General Investment, a closed-ended fund traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Good idea about my portfolio; it's been a while since I've detailed my holdings. I'll do that soon.

As for my mortgage, in 2010 it went down from $59K to $56K. That represents only my part of the house (not that of my spouse), since we track our finances separately.

We are still in the early years of our house ownership (we bought 6 years ago and are financed over 25 years), so about half of our payments goes towards interest. But since the interest rates are low, paying down our mortgage is not a priority. But we are still paying 20% more than our scheduled payments.

Anonymous said...

Dear Frog: Thank you so much for your response. Yes, certainly do update your holdings, it will be very interesting to see them. Do you think CGI is really a good investment? I'm asking, cause I don't know very much about this stock. Waiting to hear back from you.