Net Worth Update: July 2020

Last updated on November 7th, 2021 at 08:27 pm

Welcome to my net worth update for July 2020! The numbers here all reflect the reality of my wife and I’s net worth as of July 1st, 2020. Where possible, I round numbers to the nearest $100 to make this article a bit easier on the eyes. Please check out my first net worth update if you haven’t already.

Last month was another positive month for our net worth. Despite some major expenses, my family was able to eke out a $2,900 increase to our overall net worth. Continue reading to find out how we managed to accomplish that!

Budget in Short

My wife and I did a good job keeping our variable spending under control last month. Our grocery spending came in under budget at $186. Our spending on dining out, gas, and public transit were also well under budget – thanks to COVID. We only spent $75 on dining out, a minuscule $43 on gas, and $0 on public transit. If you’re interested, check out my article on how COVID has affected our budget.

The hot weather has really been helping us with our home heating costs. To give you some context, this past January our natural gas bill was $112. Our most recent gas bill was only $26. Our bill for May was $52. As you can see, the cost of heating our home has dropped off dramatically since the start of summer. It’s our first summer in our home and so it’s nice to see that we are in fact saving on our monthly heating costs.

The one exceptional expense we encountered last month was our property tax. We own a pretty average detached house for our area. As a result, our property tax came in at just around $3,000. That number is after applying for the B.C. home owner grant. It’s our first year in this house, but this amount wasn’t at all unexpected. You’re typically able to see property tax information on the listing when shopping for a home. You can also search for this information online (in my province, we use bcassessment.ca). Our assessment didn’t change very much since we purchased the house, and so the property tax owed was about the same as last year’s.

Investments

This month was somewhat eventful on the investment front. First, my wife deposited $2,500 into her TFSA. With that money, and with some cash she had sitting idle in her TFSA, she purchased a little over $5,500 in securities. I’ll write about her investment strategy in another article, but for now, just know she bought a few select ETFs – one being XDIV.

On my end, I purchased 10 shares of VTI in my RRSP. This amounted to approximately $2,100 CAD, or a little over $1,500 USD. Back in March, I deposited about $7,700 USD into my RRSP. Each month I’ve been slowly buying some VTI until the amount I transferred is completely invested. In hindsight, it would have been better to buy all my shares around the time I deposited it. The market has basically recovered to its pre-COVID levels, and so I’m not quite getting a “deal” like I was back in March. In either case, I’m happy to have that money invested instead of sitting in my U.S. savings account.

Overall our investments did okay last month. And to be honest, in the age of COVID, I’m quite happy with an okay performance. Across all of our accounts – my RRSP, TFSA, and my wife’s TFSA – we earned $175.16 in dividends. This amount was buoyed by all the quarterly payers that paid out in June. The overall performance of our holdings, which includes growth in prices and the amount of dividends received, was $265.65. If you add the $24.28 in interest we received from our savings accounts, our net worth increased a total of $289.93 thanks to all of our liquid holdings.

Net Worth Update

Our total net worth increased to $295,100 from $292,200 the previous month. This is an increase of $2,900. Put another way, our net worth increased by 1% last month. Here’s a breakdown of how our net worth is distributed across the various assets we own:

As you can see, the majority of our net worth is sitting locked away in our home. We purchased it last year with a 20% down payment. Since then, thanks to our monthly mortgage payments, our home equity has increased by approximately $1,300 each month. The remaining portion of our mortgage payments goes towards the interest owed on our loan. In the following chart you’ll see where the remainder of that $2,900 net worth increase came from:

In addition to our home equity, our net worth increase was due to $800 in private pension contributions, $500 in new savings, and $300 in total investment growth. The $500 listed above as “Savings of Income” is the amount of income we saved after all of our monthly spending was accounted for. Normally I’d be very disappointed with only $500 in new savings. But, given that we paid our $3,000 property tax bill this month, I’m quite happy with $500.

Hopefully next month you’ll get to see a better example of what my family’s true savings rate is. Well, as long as there are no unexpected major expenses :).

Thank you so much for reading. 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 interesting examples include my post on best gold ETF in Canada and my post on saving with CamelCamelCamel Canada.

I’m interested in hearing how your net worth has been changing recently. Were you affected by COVID? Have you been saving more than ever? Drop a comment below and let’s chat!