My Net Worth Post 2008 Taxes

My networth definitely improved in the past year, despite the massive losses in the stock market. Now that my taxes are paid, my networth stands at $29,082.11 not counting my piece-o-crap car.

I started recording my networth on June 21, 2007. At that time, I had $25.7k. That was also the year I was very unwise with my finances, before I got myself in check. By 10/8/2008 my networth was just $13.9k. Granted, I was over estimating on my taxes for 2008, but my spending habits had yet to improve in order to have my networth return to the state it was at before I spent too much money on travel and other things.

This year, my income should increase (as long as I can keep my job all year) which means I have no excuse to let my networth drop. In fact, I'm setting some pretty high goals for myself this year (which are largely dependent on if and how quickly the stock market recovers, but I can still save smartly and do well.)

I'd really like to save $20k this year, so that my networth by April 15, 2010 is $49k. Is that do-able? I probably would need to cut out all my extra expenses such as voice lessons. I was thinking of calling it quits on those in July since they cost $160 a month. But I also wanted to start taking some other courses that were more in line with my future grad school plans, and those cost even more. So I go back and forth on whether I should really focus on increasing my networth (so I can pay for most of grad school up front) or if I should just spend it on classes now so I can get into a good grad school. Hmm. And the question remains, do I even really want to go to grad school? I'm still not clear on this.

I did some quick calculations and to meet my goal I need to take in approx $300 extra post-tax per month through freelance projects (do-able with current blogging gig, where I can make $600 a month pre-tax, as long as that lasts) and I can spend, at most, $1600 per month. That should be do-able, right? I've been spending quite a bit more than that per month, but I'm going to see if I can cut costs and get down to that $1600 per month target. Will track my progress on here. Wish me luck! (oh, and I am not going to count April because I'm already way over due to some spring shopping and my boyfriend's birthday gift. This is starting today, the new, really frugal me.)

**my average monthly spending for from March 2008 to March 2009 was $2279.30
So I'll need to whack off another $679 per month to meet my goals.