Welcome to my net worth update for January 2023! These numbers represent my wife and I’s net worth as of January 31st. Please check out our previous net worth update if you haven’t already!
Consider subscribing to my newsletter if you’d like to receive my easy-to-use Expense and Net Worth Tracker spreadsheet. I use it every month!
A Slight Process Change
My regular process for net worth updates has been to title them using the month I published. E.g. the December net worth update would be published in December but have used numbers as of December 1st. So really, that post would account for my earning, spending, and saving done in November.
Going forward, I’m going to switch it up and try to be most consistent with some of the other personal finance bloggers I follow. From now on, I’ll be titling my post to match the month that the numbers are attributed to.
So this post (the one you’re reading right now!) has the numbers from the month of January—from the 1st to the 31st inclusive.
I hope this will make it a bit easier for everyone to understand and follow along on.
Savings & Expenses
January was an expensive month for us. Mainly because we went on an amazing weekend ski trip to the Big White Ski Resort! I’m not a very good skier but I am always happy when I get a chance to give it a go. And it was my first time visiting Big White, so that was an overall great experience.
We also booked some travel for later this year. This is consistent with my New Year’s resolution to focus more on “living in the now” and to visit some new countries in 2023.
In the past, spending a lot of money on travel or big-ticket items would really freak me out. But now it has become something I’m more comfortable with—as long as those purchases provide real value and align with my goals.
Other than our travel spending, it was an otherwise pretty regular month. Groceries came in at just over $300, and we managed to spend another $700 on home items, which was bang-on for our average monthly spend in this category in 2022.
February is a shorter month and is often a much less expensive month for us, so I’m hoping we can save a lot more. In January on $10,900 in income we only managed to save $875.
Investments & Dividends
I made some changes to my dividend reporting in 2023. Basically, I decided to exclude the dividends I received from my leveraged investment strategy since it skewed the January numbers so much.
For example, last month I received $2,062 in dividends from the VEQT I purchased with leverage.
I’ll still share these dividends but I’ll exclude them from my “official” dividend income chart.
As you can see, even excluding dividends from my leveraged investments, January was a very-high dividend month for us. In total, we received $1,850 which is our highest grossing month to date.
If you’re interested in seeing what we invest in, check out my fall portfolio deep dive where I shared all the ETFs we like to invest in.
Net Worth Change
Thanks to a surprising rally in January, our net worth increased by $25,000. Our net worth is now $745,800 which is up from $720,800 in December.
Here’s where the increase came from:
- $1,300 in home equity pay-down
- $1,200 in mandatory pension contributions
- $875 in savings of income
- $21,500 in investment growth
One difference you may notice is our pension contributions have increased a lot compared to my last net worth update. This is because I hadn’t re-estimated my monthly pension contribution in some time. And my income has since gone up, which caused the pension contribution to go up as well.
I have to say that it’s cool to see that we’re growing our net worth by $2,500 each month just by paying our mortgage and contributing to my pension.
Thanks for Reading
I recently wrote a few articles that you may be interested in. This includes my huge update to my best Canadian dividend ETF article and post sharing my top 30 holdings! Consider giving those a read if you think they’ll help you on your financial journey!
Consider supporting my blog by sharing or joining me in using any of my recommended services:
- Join Tangerine using my Orange Code (46870461S1) to earn $50!
- Join Questrade using my referral code (336421347418465) to earn $25 to $250!
- Create your own website using Web Hosting Canada!
- Save online and earn credit card sign-up bonuses by using Great Canadian Rebates!
Such a great progress and glad to see you updated the month in the title. I admit, it was a bit confusing lol.
Ha, thanks for the honest feedback. It was your monthly dividend post that inspired me to make the change when I saw how everyone else was doing it :). Hopefully it’s easier for you now!
I only calculate our net worth every 6 months because I like to see the bigger movements, and there tends to be less “volatility.” You had a great increase this month and well done on the dividends .
Thanks Maria! Running the numbers every 6 months seems like a pretty cool idea. Less volatility and a lot less work too.