Net Worth Update: November 2022

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

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Savings & Expenses

Last month I earned an extra $10,000 “bonus” (let’s call it that) from my employer. This is an abnormal, unexpected payment that I probably won’t receive again anytime soon. I also received a few health insurance reimbursements from some of last month’s health spending. These abnormal cash flows helped us save $17,700—a crazy-high amount.

These savings were offset by some higher-than-normal expenses. The largest of which was $1,500 for a new phone, charger, and accessories. Another $500 went towards helping out family with a few travel-related expenses. And another $200 on birthday gifts for a couple of our friends and family.

The last abnormal expense was the $700 we spent on travel. We didn’t actually go anywhere last month, but we wanted to buy a few odds and ends to make our upcoming trip better: a new suitcase, travel pillow, and etc.

Overall our largest expense was that new phone. But luckily, that’s something that only happens every few years. And because it’s a top-of-the-line phone, my wife agreed to keep it for at least 3 years. That’ll make it less costly to own compared to buying a new phone every two years.

Investments & Dividends

Thanks to the extra income I received, I was able to plough a significant amount of cash into my RRSP. Here’s the breakdown of our investment contributions for the month:

  • $8,500 to my RRSP
  • $300 to my wife’s RRSP
  • $10,000 to our Smith Maneuver account (Interactive Brokers)

That RRSP contribution was used to bring some balance back to my portfolio. I mainly bought VEE and VIU. Now that we maxed our TFSAs last month, I expect my RRSP will be the focus of our investment contributions for the next few months.

We also earned some significant dividends last month: $698 compared to $350 during the same month last year. That’s an increase of 94% which is about the same increase I noted last month.

That means we’ve earned over $5,000 in dividends in 2022. This is a significant improvement over last year.

Net Worth Change

Thanks to the stock market recovering a bit last month, our net worth actually improved dramatically compared to the previous month: we’re up $37,000 to $699,500. Our liquid net worth saw the largest increase, rising from $250,000 to $285,000.

This is mainly from stock market performance and the large bonus we received. With some more luck, we may break $300,000 liquid net worth by the end of the year. Here’s hoping!

In reviewing our accounts, we ended the month with the following:

  • $254,700 in wholly-owned ETF investments
  • $98,400 in ETF investments financed with debt (VEQT)
  • $60,600 in HELOC debt
  • $24,900 in personal line of credit debt
  • $15,500 in margin debt
  • $30,000 in cash savings

Including leveraged investments, we now control $353,000 worth of ETFs. This is a pretty huge position (for us) and means that just an 8% decrease can sink our net worth by $28,000. This is akin to what we’ve seen this year, where market turmoil has made it very difficult to meaningfully increase our net worth over the past many months.

However, this has presented a nice buying opportunity, and we hope the turmoil continues for the next little while as we continue to add more to our positions. Time will tell how that works out for us in the long run.

Thanks for Reading

I recently wrote a few articles that you may be interested in. This includes my post on the best REIT ETF in Canada and my how-to article on the getting cash back from your realtor! Consider giving those a read if you think they’ll help you on your financial journey!

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