Every year it is fun to look back and see the bird’s eye view of the past financial year. Mint.com makes that especially easy to do.
Our spending was heavily weighted by the down payment for an apartment building.
Spending by Category
Taxes normally dominates our spending followed closely by Kids (aka childcare). This year Travel made a big splash because we took two international trips. You can read about those trips here and here.
Our asset allocation has also shifted quite a bit over the past year. Our primary residence and apartment building now make up a significant portion of our assets.
Assets by Account Type
We still have the majority of our assets invested in the stock market under tax advantaged accounts (401ks, IRAs, 529s). We also have maintained a healthy liquid cushion should life throw us any curve balls.
The apartment acquisition also put us back into the debt game.
Debt By Type
Credit cards balances are still being paid in full every month, but the ‘Loan’ is the mortgage for the apartment building. At 3.5% for 30 years, I would consider it ‘good’ debt. We currently have no plans to make any accelerated payments.
Overall net worth (assets – liabilities) trended upward for 2016.
net worth (primary residence not included)
The upwards trend is a good sign that we are living below our means.
In some sillier number comparisons,
we used more water this year than in 2015. There are likely two reasons for this: 1. Frugal Boy is using more water than when he was a baby and 2. I replaced a super low flow shower head with a medium flow head.
~ 600 cubic feet more water used
Electric usage is also up this year. There are more gadgets and gizmos in our house. I also ran power tools quite a bit this Fall while working on the basement remodel.
electric usage
Natural gas usage has remained inline with previous years. Insulation efforts have not yielded any major changes in efficiency.
natural gas usage
We used approximately 1.3 TB of internet bandwidth this year.
That is a lot of Netflix!