Net Worth Update: April 2023

Welcome to my net worth update for April 2023! These numbers represent my wife and I’s net worth as of April 30th. Please check out our previous net worth update if you haven’t already!

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Spring Is In The Air

After many months of miserable weather in “Raincouver”, it has finally started to look like spring. In fact, as I’m writing this, this week is shaping up to reach almost 30 degrees Celcius. This is a huge improvement over last year, where it rained and was cloudy well into June.

Now, that bodes well for my personal life—I’m excited to go eat out with friends and do some hiking—but it doesn’t bode to well for AnotherLoonie. Just seeing that forecast makes me a little worried about my New Year’s resolution to post every week. Let’s see how I manage, shall we!

Savings & Expenses

April was another great month for us savings-wise. The topline number is that we saved 50% of our net income. This is well above our 40% annual savings rate that I reported over the past two years—wohoo!

Best of all that excludes our huge tax refund. That’s right, we were happy to get our taxes submitted before the strike and received a $12,600 refund.

Most of this refund is from our RRSP contributions, with about $1,200 is from the interest deduction from my investment loans. I expect we’ll get an even larger refund next year if we manage to meet our RRSP contribution goals.

What helped us achieve this 50% savings rate is that we didn’t spend too much money in April. Dining out and coffee was a little elevated, but most other areas were under control.

And we didn’t have any huge, abnormal expenses last month. The only thing that came close was the $387 we spent on hobbies and activities and the $324 we spent on travel. Both of these categories were a mishmash of things, all towards future travel and fun activities.

Investments & Dividends

Last month we received $503 in dividends. That’s a 41% increase compared to April of 2022.

May is usually a very low dividend-earning month for us, so I’m not expecting much. If anything, we’ll get around $50 to $100—or maybe less if our dividends somehow show up late.

In either case, I’m really excited for June and July. Both months could potentially cross the $1,000 barrier, which I’d be very happy about.

Net Worth Change

In April, our net worth increased to $800,500, up from $770,500 in the previous month. That’s an increase of $30,000—in just one month! That makes April the best month of the year for us so far, even better to the $25,000 gain we saw in January.

Here’s where the increase came from:

  • $1,400 in home equity pay-down
  • $1,200 in mandatory pension contributions
  • $18,000 in savings of income and tax refunds
  • $9,500 in investment gains

That means we’ve increased our net worth by $79,600 so far in 2023. If we keep up this trend, we could grow our net worth by over $160,000 in 2023!

However, I really doubt that will happen. We have some big expenses coming up—like our property tax bill—which will weigh on our ability to save. Not to mention all the activities we have planned for this summer.

The stock market has also done really well so far in 2023, and so I think the later-half of the year could be more muted.

In either case, I’m happy to see how we’ve done so far this year. Let’s see what May has to offer!

Thanks for Reading

I recently updated a few articles that you may be interested in. This includes my post on how investment loans are costing me $500 each month and my Q1 New Year’s resolutions update. Consider giving those a read if you think they’ll help you on your financial journey!

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