Although it’s a little late this month, it’s now time to share my personal finances. I’ve been doing this roughly every month since Consumerism Commentary started in July 2003. I did recently make one important change — I am no longer counting my “business” bank accounts in my net worth. I’m trying to separate my business, which consists mainly of Consumerism Commentary, from my personal accounts.
October was an interesting month. I traveled to my brother’s wedding in California, so there were a number of extraordinary expenses related to the event. I do have some good news, however. The IRS has approved the reclassification of my side business from a sole proprietor LLC to an S-Corporation. this should result in a refund of over $8,000 from my 2008 tax payments.
It could take a while to receive the refund, so I’m not planning anything for it yet, but it will most likely stay in a savings account for a while.
Here are the numbers.
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So you requested a change of filing status (or whatever) effective last year? How did you get around the deadline issue?
The IRS may try to charge a penalty for a late filing, but haven't yet. According to the accountant, we can respond to the IRS if they charge a penalty and most likely have it waived. We shall see.
flexo, always been impressed with these templates you display. I assume you automate this output from Quicken reports somehow? Would be very interested in those templates. Quicken just doesn't produce the right reports, and I'd like to do more but it's gotta be “easy.”
Thanks! It's mostly automated. I customized one of Quicken's Net Worth reports, export it to text, import it to my Excel template, and do some quick changes that could probably be accomplished with a macro, then copy the spreadsheet into Photoshop, and export it as a GIF. Ok, so it's not very automated at all.
Sorry, forgive me for being naive as I'm new to this but how come the Assets do not equal the Liability?
No problem. Assets are things like bank accounts and investments, things you own. Liabilities are credit card balances and loans, things you owe. There's no reason the two should equal each other. The formula is Assets – Liabilities = Net Worth.
What I post is a “modified net worth” because I leave out some assets like household items and some liabilities like future tax payments. But this way, the numbers are more meaningful to me.
@Flexo – have you considered adding a net worth-to-expenses multiple to your spreadsheet? While net worth tracking is really useful, identifying your net worth-to-expenses multiple is even more so. As an example, your net worth has grown by 86.5% yoy, but have your expenses changed in the interim? Just curious because it's a lot easier to see when you'll be able to retire with nwte.
Are you still publishing your monthly income statements?
any chance you share the Excel templates in the future?
I've posted a basic template before. Here it is.
I stopped publishing the income statements last month.
That sounds like an interesting approach. It's not one of the financial ratios I normally think of.
In case you need it…here's a post on net worth-to-expenses http://bit.ly/ktmwM