It’s two months later, and I still need to achieve another $50,000 to reach my net worth goal of $210,000 by December 31. With so much of my assets tied into the stock market indexes, it’s no surprise I’m not making the progress I hoped for.

When the company I work for releases its quarterly results, they include a special warning about “forward-looking statements.” The company forecasts its earnings for the rest of the year based on a 2% return in the stock market at large through the end of the year. If the market fares worse or better, they have no problem adjusting expectations. I’ll need to do the same.

Every month, I report my financial status, so here are the numbers. Click on the thumbnail to zoom in.

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

• The report is made with Intuit Quicken and Microsoft Excel. Here’s a balance sheet Excel template. If you don’t want to go through all the trouble I do every month, but you still want to post your financial reports online, I suggest checking out NetworthIQ.
• The credit card balance is paid off every month and earns cash back.
• My student loan interest rate is 4.25% and my savings account interest rates are mostly above 3.0%.
• I determine the value of my car using the private party value from edmunds.com, but only several times a year.

Explanations and Details

My cash line is creeping upwards mainly because I haven’t done a diligent job of tracking my cash expenses. Before it gets too far out of hand, I should probably restate the balance. I don’t carry that much cash around, nor do I stash money under my mattress. I do have a growing coin collection, however, which is still at face value a small portion of that amount.

The amount I keep in savings accounts is growing healthily. I’m keeping a strong cash position for some flexibility for future real estate. Ten years after graduating college, and I’m still not sure whether I want to stick around in this area of the country.

July was once again a poor month in terms of my investments. Despite contributions to my 401(k), the balance remained flat. On the one hand, I’d like to see my investments perform better and move my accounts in an upward direction, but I’m comfortable with low prices as I’ll be in “buying mode” for another few decades. At age 32, I still have a long time to allow stocks to increase.

This past month, I increased the payment toward my student loan and associated interest from $750 to $1,100. I’ll continue to accelerate the amount I put towards paying off this debt. Since 2002, the earliest I have been tracking this information, I’ve paid $3,798 in student loan interest. It will be nice to put an end to these interest payments.

Overall, I’m happy with a 4.5% increase from June 30 to July 31. Stay tuned for my income and expense report.