The million dollar mark

Before I jump into the milestone, I've been hard at work on my January goals this month. Here's what I've accomplished so far.

• Not listed, but my primary goal is to get up to speed in my new role at work. I switched positions right before we left for Hawaii, & I'm still trying to wrap my head around my responsibilities. I like feeling totally confident in my work, so I'm devoting extra time to work & getting up to speed.
• I've lost zero pounds so far. *womp, womp*. But, I've tracked my eating every day in MyFitnessPal, and. . .
• Completed 340 minutes of cardio, 3 strength, & 1 stretching workout. Additional exercise planned for tonight. I was too tired to work out at 5:00 am this morning, as M's alarm went off at 3:50 for an early flight.
• I've paid $1359 in mortgage principal (towards our monthly goal of $5000).
• I've also decluttered my night stand, a dresser, & a jewelry armoire. I have a huge stack of things to list on Ebay.
• I sold my first item of the year & made less than a dollar due to postage costs. *sad panda*
• I'm also attempting to increase my volunteer time (as part of a larger goal to increase my charitable giving - both financially & my time).
• I refiled our 2011 taxes (as a result of the repaid bonus drama fest) & expect a refund of around $5,000. Yeah!

The Refinance That Never Ends:
We're also neck-deep in refinancing our two properties. Why, oh why, oh why did I sign on to refinance through different brokers (the properties are in different states, which makes licensing a problem) over the holidays? I've spent at least 80 hours pulling paperwork, running back & forth to another building where there's a fax machine, & just generally wanting to pull my hair out at the sheer volume of paperwork needed to complete this task. As part of our refinances, we had to complete appraisals on both of our properties.

It's not surprising that our primary residence was up quite a bit (the Seattle market is very hot, & inventory is extremely low right now), but it was even higher than expected. And, the area our vacation home is in has also been recovering nicely from the market collapse. That house was also valued quite a bit beyond what we expected.

What does all of this mean? For the first time ever, our net worth exceeds one million dollars.

*if only blogger was allowing image uploads, I'd upload pictures of confetti, balloons, & people celebrating. I guess you'll just have to visualize it. :-)*

We're not fools & understood that the real estate market can fluctuate. As we learned very distinctly a few years ago. We consider our net worth a yard stick of how our investments are doing, and how our portfolio compares with where we'd like it to be. We will not be booking a trip around the world any time soon. In fact, I'm fairly confident that one of the reasons our net worth is growing is that we're keeping our variable expenses as low as we comfortably (and, in some cases, uncomfortably :-)) can - to focus on building our net worth via our real estate investments. We intentionally have a great deal of our income tied up in fixed expenses (mortgage payments), which not everyone is comfortable with.

The Math:
Here's how our net worth plays out. (And, if you're a long-time reader, you may notice that I removed my stock options from this list, as they are not accrued yet and vest over time. This protects us in the event that I leave my employer before the next vest). We also do not include kids college funds, as we consider those part of their net worth, not ours.

Liabilities:

• $1,007,981 - Property loans
• $45,000 - 401K loan. This is a new loan we took out a few weeks ago, in order to secure a non-jumbo loan. We've run the number  & this will drop our interest payouts drastically over the next ten years. Jumbo loans are still very high, given the current market, while non-jumbo loans are at historic lows.

Total Liabilities= $1,052,981

Assets

• $1,045,000 - value of primary residence
• $400,000 - value of vacation home
• $562,335 - retirement accounts
• $54,542 - investment account. (Most of this is the 401K loan, waiting to be applied toward the property loans once our refinance clears.)

Total Assets = $2,061,877

Total Net Worth = $1,008,896

What's Next:
Where do we go from here? Well, our number one financial goals this year (aside from staying on budget :-)) is paying off the 401K loan. After that, it's to continue to pay down our mortgage balances. I want to see a number below a million in 2013!!!

I've hesitated sharing information like this in the past, because I know our financial situation is not applicable to most people. However, if there are basic suggestions I can share, or background of how we got here that would be interesting, please ask & I'm happy to post more.