My Fiscal Year in Review

In my day job, the end of the fiscal year is kind of a big deal so it felt like a good time to look at my personal financial life for the past year.

Here's my Net Worth report (sans numbers):

Even though there's still some red after March, that just shows my credit card balance before I pay it off. I usually send at least 2 payments a month to keep my debt to credit ratio under control. The actual debt was paid off March 1.

The spike in February marks my tax refund. Alas, since Sylvia is turning 18 soon, I don't expect these kind of returns from now on, but I feel like I shouldn't need them anymore, either.

Because I continue to grow certain categories every month (Emergency Savings, Rainy Day funds), this has helped even in the months where I have large bills to pay (like the car maintenance last month). I'm sure a month or two without an upward trend would still be okay, but I admit, I like the current look of it!

This graph, btw, is brought to you by YNAB. I spend most of my YNAB time in the budget screen, but the reports, particularly this Net Worth report, can also be helpful.

Incidentally, being a month ahead also recently helped me. I don't know why I even try to multi-task anymore because it never works, but someone called when I was entering my time, and I thought I could both carry on a conversation and enter my time. When I checked my paystub the following week, I found that I'd missed a day. Oh, well, not the end of the world  - just went back and entered it and it'll show up in the next paycheck. But I did think about those many years in the past when such a mistake would have completely stressed me out while I scrambled to figure out how to pay that week's bills and groceries. We would've been fine, but I don't need - or miss - that kind of stress.

When I first started YNAB (almost 2 years ago), I had a (very) negative net worth. I knew it would be a slow and steady race to get me to the positive, and even though I still get impatient sometimes for certain categories to grow, I know if I just stay on this path, we'll be okay.