Net Worth Update: March 2022 – Windfall!

Last updated on May 15th, 2022 at 09:32 pm

Welcome to my net worth update for March 2022! These numbers represent my wife and I’s net worth as of March 1st. Please check out our previous net worth update if you haven’t already!

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Unexpected Windfall!

This month we received some amazing news! Without giving too much away about what we do for a living and our individual job situations, we (well really, one of us) received a sizable “bonus” from our employer. To the tune of $30,000!

And as you may expect, we enthusiastically dumped this money into our RRSP accounts, which should produce a sizable tax refund for us in the coming months.

Expenses in Depth

This windfall really couldn’t have been more well-timed; it coincided with RRSP season ending and also with a rather expensive month for us.

For one thing, we finally received the couch we bought back in September. This meant paying the remaining balance of $1,830.

We also spent another $700 on car maintenance, including new front brake rotors and pads, an oil change, and servicing the rear brakes. This is my first time spending any real money on car maintenance in quite some time. And with working from home, I decided to visit a well-reviewed mechanic nearby my home instead of going to the dealership in town.

Last month was expensive!

We also spent $400 on home maintenance—mostly new weatherstripping and expanding foam after I learned more about the benefits of home air sealing. A great resource on this topic for B.C. residents can be found here. $200 of that $400 was spent on a landscaper to do some much-needed tree trimming.

Other expenses were pretty regular. We continued eating out once or twice a week at nearby fast-food and takeout restaurants. We also spent modestly on clothing and on fun experiences and hobbies.

Net Worth Update

Our windfall was also well-timed for another reason: the stock market has been getting clobbered. So much so that although we managed to save a good amount of income, our total net worth actually declined if we excluded the windfall. In fact, over the past two months, our investments have lost us $12,000!

Our investments declined by $7,000 last month.

On the plus side, this recent market turmoil has presented a great buying opportunity for us. And luckily, with our windfall, our net worth increased significantly from $585,100 to $615,100. That’s an increase of $30,000!

What I’m most happy about is that this boost in net worth is coming from the “liquid” side of our assets. This contrasts with last month, where our net worth increase came from our home equity. See my article on that topic to learn more: Hitting the Real Estate Jackpot.

Dividend Income

Dividends in our March update are consistently quite low since we don’t receive any quarterly dividends in the preceding month. We only received two dividends: one from XDG and one from XDIV. Both of which are my wife’s monthly dividend ETFs.

However, it’s still nice to see that our dividends reported this month are much higher than last year. 63% higher, in fact!

This is some amazing dividend growth, and I attribute it to our aggressive saving in 2021.

Last January, I reported we contributed $64,300 to our investment accounts. And in 2022, we’re already off to a great start, having now contributed almost $50,000! Much of this comes from this new windfall, some came from our emergency fund last month, and the remainder is from saving our income.

Thanks for Reading

I recently wrote a few articles that you may be interested in. This includes my post on Canada’s housing market in 2022 and my post on TFSA contribution limits. Consider giving those a read if you think they’ll help you on your financial journey!

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