Networth Quarterly Update – June 2022

Networth Quarterly Update – June 2022

Well this quarter is purely for recording purposes. I have kept up my investing goal and at present, the dollars don’t look like they have moved at all however I know I have increased the ‘units/shares’ so as they go up, the value will increase AND we will have more dividends/passive income. The goal of this post is to document my journey and post each quarter on our timeline.

I reckon in 5 years I will be able to look back at these quarters and *sigh* and have proof that “little by little, a little becomes a lot”……… Gosh I hope so!

This year I am more intentional with documenting each month’s investing and expenses to keep me focused and to feel that I AM doing something. In 6-7 years we will be able to tap into our Superannuation for passive income and gosh I am working on that being a decent amount. Lately, I have been thinking of ways to work for 3 months in the year and live a retired life for the remaining 9 months. As soon as my youngest has completed high school, I am keen to move to something more ‘seasonal’ or ‘remote’ for work. All ideas are welcomed. So far I have the following list:

Jobs for semi retirement

Even though I don’t have much to report, I like the opportunity to write down what swirls around in my head almost every day. So follow along in the below assessment and ramblings.

I work on a BUCKET type system for our expenses and we transfer money each payday into these buckets and when there is none left, there is none left! We do not use a credit card so there is no overflow to the next month. We do have an emergency fund and a yearly expense fund that I tap into these if needed. For example, a new washing machine OR kid’s clothes (which is one of the yearly expenses that I put money away each month for). With reviewing our expenses on a monthly basis and calculating our actuals vs forecast/budget, it has been helpful to see how we are tracking within our BUCKETS.

  • Some key notes on our actuals:
  • Kids Expenses are over forecast due to replacing my Year10’s laptop for school (smashed the screen!). We are at approx 60% of the year’s budget.
  • Investment Expenses (IP) should come down for the second half of the year now that we have fixed our interest rates.
  • All other budgets are close to the 50% mark for half the year. It has been an interesting exercise and also good discussion points with my partner about what expenses we will still have in 3-5years time when the ‘kids’ expenses will drop dramatically.

I enjoy seeing other people’s spreadsheets so I thought I would post a section of my expense spreadsheet. I treat my investing each month like an expense. I budget and pay these out pretty much as first priority. After reading THE RICHEST MAN IN BABYLON and the simplicity of ‘paying yourself first’ I have enjoyed working with this approach. This has been a game changer for me. I no longer consider trying to save what is left. It is my first task and then I am intentional with all my other expenses and am always finding ways to Review, Reduce, Remove (refer to this post)! It is also a self-worth/mindset growth that means a lot to me in my pursuit of peace and harmony with my money.

I have left our properties valued as they were in 2021 so our NetWorth has stayed pretty much the same. Since we have no traveling coming up we have managed to save $2000 so we decided to update our dining area. Love the new table, chairs & rug. I would still rather spend on adventures and visiting family overseas but for now it’s all at a standstill (youngest in Year 10 so I reckon we are staying put for another 2.5 years). I dislike being regimented to going in school holidays and 2 weeks is never ever enough! I will wait and then go for a season!

Lets hope the next quarter is steady and we see some movement upwards 🙂

$5,000,000, is it my EGO talking?

$5,000,000, is it my EGO talking?

I have had a niggling feeling for a few months now that I may be targetting the wrong networth number to reach FI (financial independence and retire by 60). In my early 40’s my dream was to retire by 55. I even had the number 55 written on my wall at work. People use to come in and think it was “55 days to my next holiday” or something similar. I would proudly state that it was when I was retiring. I would get blank stares from people younger and from the older folk, “really?!?!?!”. I even had a TTR (transition to retirement) countdown on my phone. I wanted so badly to retire or have the choice, at 55. I was exhausted from trying to be ‘everything’ to everyone and it beat me down. I just didn’t really know what vehicle or strategy would get us there when our income was not high and we had daycare & primary school kids and the dreaded mortgage!.

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Reviewing ACTUAL Expenses

Reviewing ACTUAL Expenses

Instead of binge-watching yet another series on Netflix I decided to review 2020 and 2021 to re-categorise all our expenses. Don’t get me wrong, I loved some of the Netflix shows I watched over the last few months. They allowed me to zonk out and just vegetate for a while as I was really overwhelmed with 2021! Now with 2022 really kicking into gear, I need to get my head out of the sand and decide WHAT and WHY I am driven to keep going with my financially independent path and more importantly WHAT will be ENOUGH. To be honest there were times over the last few months that I just wanted to close the laptop and decide to work until 65 and give up. Whatever accumulates in super and property growth and do like the majority “just see how it goes”. It scared the bejesus out of me so I pulled back to what I know and that is reviewing spreadsheets, categorising things and simulating options. One of my happy places.

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2022 – KICKING GOALS – Monthly updates on my personal goals

2022 – KICKING GOALS – Monthly updates on my personal goals

This post will be updated each month as I update my Monthly goals. I found this to be helpful last year to keep me on track (link to 2021 goals). Too many great ideas or goals are left in the draw, or notebook, as we don’t look back at them and keep ourselves accountable. This is definitely something I have done in the past.

Last year taught me to keep myself accountable, even when I didn’t want to check in with myself. At the end of the year, I was thankful I did.

Below will be each month’s GOAL update in order. Let’s do this!

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Networth Quarterly Update – December 2021

Networth Quarterly Update – December 2021

The end of another year. This is our second December quarterly review and I have to say, I enjoy seeing the changes. The saying “little by little, a little becomes a lot” is so relevant. As is “just keep swimming”. I should have these tattooed somewhere as these two sayings really helped keep me going. To end the year, we stayed within our boundaries of what we had as income with only taking a few thousand from the Emergency fund for expenses that I couldn’t hold off anymore.

We also sold some shares. FIRST time ever! We could have taken from our emergency stash but that would make me really on edge so had to sacrifice some blue-chip shares. Sold 30% of our NAB shares as we needed to honor our challenge to our 17-year-old who had saved for a car and we were matching what they had saved, (another post about this coming).

So overall our networth has increased by 5.6% from last quarter. This increase was mainly our properties in Sydney increasing in value ( up $106k) as well as our SuperFund (up $40k).

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KICKING GOALS – 2021 – Monthly Updates

KICKING GOALS – 2021 – Monthly Updates

Looking back to one of my early blog posts REALIGNING GOALS, which was about getting my goals locked down and on paper, I am so glad I did that and I encourage you all to do the same if you haven’t already.

I started by looking long-term and decided on my goals for the next 8 years. Check out the original post for more on this. Then, I broke it down to my goals for this year, 2021.

Each month, I’ve been able to reflect back to these goals, update my progress and feel good about what I’ve achieved each month. Even a little progress makes a difference. It can be really hard to think about your goals every day when you have so much ‘life stuff’ going on, so being able to refer back to 6 clear goals and break them down, makes it so much easier to work them around every day life.

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THE YEAR THAT WAS MY PASSION PROJECT

THE YEAR THAT WAS MY PASSION PROJECT

On the 19th of October 2020, I published my first Instagram post about myself and linked it to my blog page. I was ecstatic.

I had a wish for years that I wanted to document my finance journey and have a central place to publish all my learnings and thoughts. I had so many notebooks and post-it notes that I wanted a place for it all. A few times I tried to create a blog page and it just didn’t look right. Not pretty enough. THEN I found the FIRE community, mainly on Instagram, and I loved the energy and posts that were being loaded. The websites and posts were so inspiring. I had to try.

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Networth Quarterly Update – September 2021

Networth Quarterly Update – September 2021

Another 90 days have gone past and life has sent us some curveballs. Lockdown for 3 months, Hubby being on JobKeeper for a while now, finally finding a job (yeh!) but then 10 days later in hospital with fractured ribs and in ICU. It has been overwhelming, to say the least. I find, for myself, the way to shelter my mind is to ‘zoom in’ and keep all of life out. Feeding my family, bare minimum working AND LOTS of reading was my antidote. I logged out of social media and slowly time went by and we are now moving forward.

I wasn’t going to do anything for a while, however, I had promised myself that I would be consistent with my quarterly updates. So here I am updating my numbers and reviewing the quarter that was, financially.

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Setting Up Your Teen’s Financial Success

Setting Up Your Teen’s Financial Success

One of the main things I admire about Scott Pape is his passion to teach young people about money management and giving these young minds that knowledge CAN help their parents, teachers AND themselves for the rest of their lives.

Canna Campbell mentions in her book ‘Mindful Money’ that her dad intervened when she started working to make her set up a bank account and invest her money in shares. He went on to explain dividends and how money makes money. How powerful is that? I sometimes think I may talk too much about money with the kids but then I read something like this and know that I am doing my kids a service for their future selves when money does become a main part of their lives.

I would like to deep dive into what I have played with to help my kids get started with their finances, especially when they started working and bringing in their own CASH.

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GETTING READY TO INVEST

GETTING READY TO INVEST

Knowing how much you have available and what your debts are is the first step. You can work through my Finance 4 U Series which goes into the foundational steps to KNOW your numbers in detail.

The series goes through some key elements to help you feel more confident with your finances and consciously be aware of where your money comes from, where it goes, and how to manage that process.


Investing is different to saving. Invested money is not as easily available as money held in saving accounts, however, some investments are accessible within a few days if needed. My intention with this post is for investing for the long term, so there are some steps you need to consider BEFORE you start moving money to investments.

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The BEST tax calculator & how to use it for planning your New Financial Year

The BEST tax calculator & how to use it for planning your New Financial Year

I think this is the BEST tax calculator around! It’s so easy to use AND is up to date with the latest percentages.

Have you ever wanted to know:

  1. how much a base wage/salary is as a take-home pay weekly, fortnightly or monthly?
  2. updated tax brackets for this year or previous years?
  3. what the difference in taxes will be if you were to salary sacrifice?
  4. how much superannuation your employer will pay?
  5. The real difference between a pay rise or a job offer?

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Networth Quarterly Update – June 2021

Networth Quarterly Update – June 2021

It is the end of the financial year for Australians and I’m closing my first year calculating our Networth in this format each quarter.

I moved some last-minute dollars into my super fund to get as much in for tax benefits relating to the carry forward concessional contributions. I have been worried about how we are going and I gotta admit I would like to be having the choice to work or not from now. I am grateful I have a job however I am bored and feel so restricted. Sometimes I wonder if I could give up working and then I recall my WHY and know if I give up now, I will worry about money for the rest of my life. So I will carry on!

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MY TAKE ON ‘THE LATTE FALLACY’

MY TAKE ON ‘THE LATTE FALLACY’

I first heard Vince Scully speak on a My Millenial Money podcast and was nodding all the way through. I had to know more about him and so hopped onto Google and went down the rabbit hole for a few hours.

His current creation, LifeSherpa, is an online financial literacy & adviser site, which is excellent and for all ages. So much information to assist at every stage of life and learning. On the Life Sherpa website you can request a ‘discovery session’ and I was lucky to get Vince for the meeting.

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FINANCE 4 U – STEP 10

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 10

Hooray, we are at the pointy end now. Well done.


My wish for you is that you have discovered some things along this journey that will help give you the confidence to keep going. Now that you KNOW YOUR NUMBERS you can definitely CONTROL the majority of them and when (and there will be a ‘when’) things go haywire, you will be able to refocus on what you need to do, to get out of the situation. You will be able to move forward and rebound fast as you are BUILDING your numbers to Wealth for you and your family … for FUTURE U!


I am proud of you and me for getting this all down on paper 😀 … a pat on the back all-round!

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FINANCE 4 U – STEP 9

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 9

This post has been the hardest to write as there are so many different ways to building wealth. I have been thinking that there are many similarities to working towards having a healthy lifestyle at this step. The foundations of both these goals are pretty generic. Know what you put into your mouth, or in our case what you spend (Step 2-4). Understand where we are at with our inner health and current weight, or with finances, knowing what we have to work with, ie, our Networth, debts, and our possible surplus each month.

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FINANCE 4 U – STEP 8

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 8

Let’s get excited. Well, you can fake it for now and I assure you, you will be later! This is where we start putting the plans and information into action.


It’s kind of like what they say in the building industry – “measure twice, cut once”. A lot of our work so far has been in preparing, collating and reviewing. Now we will start putting some steps into action to lead to building wealth and financial confidence.

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Networth Quarterly Update – March 2021

Networth Quarterly Update – March 2021

Time does fly …. 3 months have gone by and we have had some good movement. We have had just over 4% to FI increase ($218k) and 10% increase in networth. Most of the increase in our networth is due to having our properties revalued. I have taken the conservative amount that our real estate agent advised. Sydney property prices have been steadily increasing and we have not changed the value for at least 3 years, so worth bringing up to 2021 prices.

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FINANCE 4 U – STEP 5

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 5

Thank you for coming along on this journey. The last 4 weeks have all been about Owning your Numbers and allowing your mind to think about your past and current journey. Having these details in black and white and down on paper is such a tangible thing. It allows this information you have written down to swim around in your mind and also attract what you are thinking about. Like if you are thinking of your car insurance and how to best get this expense down you may start seeing insurance ads or you overhear people at work talking about insurance. Take note and ask around or call to see if you can reduce your expenses.


Curious to know what this week’s task is?

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FINANCE 4 U – STEP 4

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 4

Glad you are still following along. This is the last step for the foundational phase of Finance 4 U. This step will wrap up the start of the process. Once you know where your money goes and how much you can bring in, it will help you focus on THE NUMBER.

I call this your LIVING NUMBER. To live the life you have carved out for yourself at the moment, these fundamental numbers give you a guide or starting point to move to the next levels of your money management. You are the CEO of YOU … always remember that!

Let’s do this!

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FINANCE 4 U – STEP 3

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 3

In this week’s tasks, we are going to look at all the debts we have. Because we are in the collation stage, I would like you to write down on a separate page each loan you have. This could be a home loan, car/boat loan, furniture, credit card, and family/friend loans. The intention of one debt per page is that we will be going back to these in the next phase to Review, Reduce or Remove. More on this later.


So for this week, only write out each debt and some pertinent details relating to these debts.

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FINANCE 4 U – STEP 2

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 2

Okay, are you ready? 😊


Last week the task was for you to source an exercise book or notebook so that we can get started on your money journey of Owning your numbers, Controlling your numbers and Building your numbers.

We are going to use some good old fashion methods. If you have already been on your money journey, this series can help remind you of some expenses that may have crept up, or help you tweak your numbers. I will also be working alongside you.

As we move along the SERIES I will explain and cover lots more about building wealth, but for now, we are working on Owning your numbers, slow and steady whilst you are busy living. 😊
Excited?
I AM …

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FINANCE 4 U – STEP 1

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 1

I am excited to share this with YOU and I hope that you join me on this journey. Whether you have your budget/expenses/finances already handled, or you just cruise through each week and each month, OR even if you have your head in the sand …😊 I would love to help guide you through with some good old fashion foundations and then get into the FUN stuff… you may not think it can be fun, but trust me when I say this, when you have a plan and you are ticking off achievements and there are fewer surprises/expenses coming your way, you will feel at peace. And even occasionally have a little happy dance! 😊

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FINANCE 4 U SERIES

FINANCE 4 U SERIES

I am excited … this has been a goal of mine for so long and I am thrilled to finally get this out of my head and down on paper/virtual paper!

My intention with this series is simple. Work through the basics of your finances and then, when the foundations are under control, start building wealth for your life and your family. Some of what I will share is simple and perhaps a little ‘old school’. Some ideas will relate to food (more on that later) AND I know that there are perhaps more efficient ways to do this, but to get to know your finances, I believe you need to become really intimate with them …

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ACCOUNTABILITY & REVIEW – BUDGET vs ACTUAL

ACCOUNTABILITY & REVIEW – BUDGET vs ACTUAL

In order to make our investment goals and hit the targets we have set for retirement (see last week’s post about our Financial Planner and Retirement plan here), we need to hone in on our expenses AND review regularly because hubby’s work is still not back to full time. He has had no superannuation for nearly a year and his wage is at around 70% of normal wage.

This reduction has meant we have eaten into our emergency fund a little (about 15%) so need to keep ‘massaging’ day to day expenses to keep our eye on our medium to long term goals.

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BOOK REVIEW #1: THE BAREFOOT INVESTOR (what I agree with and what I don’t)

BOOK REVIEW #1: THE BAREFOOT INVESTOR (what I agree with and what I don’t)

I thought it would be a good way for me to recap books and knowledge I have come across to share with you, and hopefully make it stick more for me to apply too. I will take the parts of the book that really resonated with me and explain how I am applying them into my life. I will also touch on the areas of the book I am not so sure about.

I had read The Barefoot Investor a few years ago and have since bought it for a few people that I care about, hoping they use the guidelines to help them in their financial journey. I am excited to say that my husband has been listening to the audio version these last few weeks, and it has been great to hear his comments and take-aways. He doesn’t do much on our finances, but this book helps him understand the effort and passion I have been tasking myself with for a long time. It also helped me, getting a recap of the book with fresh ears!

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