Net Worth Update: December 2020

Last updated on November 7th, 2021 at 08:29 pm

Hello everyone! Thanks for checking out my net worth update for December 2020! These numbers represent my wife and I’s net worth as of December 1st, 2020. I do my best to round to the nearest $100 to keep everything easy on the eyes. Let’s get right into it!

A Christmas Budget

Christmas is right around the corner, and last month we were busy buying gifts for our family and friends. We’ve pretty much completed all of our shopping online this year. I’ve been taking advantage of camelcamelcamel to make sure I’m save money when shopping on Amazon Canada. For all other purchases, I’m using curbside pickup or home delivery from the big-box stores. 

We’ve really tried to cut back on our visits to local stores and businesses due to COVID going crazy (well, relative to how we were doing before!) in our region. We started getting all of our groceries delivered a few months back, and I don’t see us stopping that any time soon; the $5 or so delivery fee has been worth the peace of mind!

Variable Spending December 2020
Gifts were the biggest variable item in our budget.

Because of all of this Christmas shopping, our spending was inflated by $430 spent on gifts. Some of the more expensive gifts for my wife and close family members were purchased over the past few months.

As for our budget, groceries came in at $241 – which is about average for us these days – and gas was a minuscule $46. Every time I see how little I spend on gas, I’m also reminded of the $170 per month we aren’t spending on public transit. Working from home is saving us about $400 per month between gas and public transit alone.

The $70 I spent on alcohol went towards buying rum, baileys, and eggnog. Let’s call them “supplies” to help me get into the Christmas spirit! Overall, our variable spending came to around $900 – which is on the low side for us, even since the start of COVID-19.

Net Worth Increase

I’m happy to report that our net worth increased to $342,300 from $330,600. This is an increase of $11,700 or 3.5%! Now, that seems like an amazing number – and it is – but it’s mostly inflated by our investments gaining back their losses from the previous months.

Sources of net worth december 2020 update
Savings were good – investment growth was great!

If you look at the above chart, you can see that only $3,700 of our net worth increase came from our actual savings of income. The majority, $5,900, came from our investment gains. The remaining came from the equity portion of our mortgage payment and the contributions to my pension.

Savings Rate Revealed

In my last net worth update, our fellow blogger over at Family Money Saver asked about our savings rate. In my reply, I explained that before purchasing our home, our savings rate was 65%, but that it has since fallen quite a bit. I decided to run the numbers and calculate just how much it’s fallen.

Family Money Saver November Comment
One of my favourite pastimes is interacting with other like-minded personal finance bloggers!

Based on the $3,700 we saved, our savings rate for the month was 43% on $8,600 in net income. This is actually quite a surprise – I didn’t realize our savings rate was doing that well. However, due to annual expenses like property tax and car insurance, our savings rate is sometimes much lower. For example, the month when I reported our lowest savings rate was back in July when our property tax bill came due. For that month, our savings rate was a meagre 6%!

Overall, because of COVID, working from home, and not travelling or seeing friends for dinner, our saving rate has increased by a lot. Even though we are paying a mortgage, our savings rate is getting close to what it was back when we were renting.

Investments

As you saw in my “sources of net worth” chart, most of our net worth increase for the month came from our recent investment performance. Out of this increase, only $52 can be attributed to dividends earned from our holdings. Combining those dividends with interest earned on our savings account yielded us $82 in total passive income for the month.

Passive Income Earned December 2020
Passive income since starting my blog.

Despite our passive income being quite low this time around, I’m hopeful that the investments we’ve been making over the past few months will start to boost our dividend income in the new year!

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you so much for reading my net worth update for December 2020! If you enjoyed this detailed look at my finances, please leave a comment, follow AnotherLoonie on social media, or sign up for my monthly newsletter!

If you’re interested in reading more, please check out some of my other recent articles. Some popular choices include my primer on home office expenses for employees and my review of the best Canadian dividend ETFs!

6 comments

  1. Awesome increase! I’m sure you have explained before, but how do you keep your groceries so low and ordering online groceries? Are you and your partner vegetarian?

    1. Hey there, GYM! Nope, we’re definitely not vegan (or vegetarian). We do enjoy the occasional lentil or chickpea dish, however. We eat meat most days, and often twice a day. We’re in the suburbs, where groceries are a bit cheaper than downtown. Other than that, I’m not sure what our secret is exactly; I know my friends and family also spend way more on groceries than we do. Our grocery bill does increase a lot if we’re having guests over, but that hasn’t happened lately. Maybe I’ll post a few grocery bills one of these days and you can help us figure out why we’re spending so little :P.

  2. I agree, the grocery bill is impressive! I think one of the biggest things people can do to cut down on their grocery bill is meal planning, preparation and limited food waste. If you can make a few dishes for the week and use leftovers for lunches and snacks, you’re way ahead of the game! Thanks for the mention above as well!

    1. You’ve very welcome! And you are so right. Meal planning is such a great way to reduce food waste and decrease your grocery bill. We were big into “meal-prep” prior to COVID. We would cook all of our lunches for the week on Sunday, and package them in these to-go containers. It was a HUGE money and time-saver.

  3. Nicely done AnotherLoonie! Your grocery bill looks pretty impressive. Given that food cost has increased because of the pandemic, that’s a very impressive number. Congrats!

    1. Thanks, Tawcan! I appreciate you stopping by. Yes, we’ve always had quite a low food bill. I recently had a discussion with my wife to actually focus on spending a little MORE on groceries. My thinking is if we can have more “fancy” meals at home, we’ll be less inclined to go out for a treat on weekends.

      After receiving many comments on this topic, I also asked her why we’re spending less than others on groceries. Her insight is that she primarily meal plans around when certain items are on sale. For example, if cauliflower is cheap that week, she’ll make a meal with it. If chicken is on sale, we load up, and etc.

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