As a follow on to my post yesterday regarding our increased retirement contributions, I checked our retirement account balances this morning and we just broke the $50,000 mark. I’ll provide the specifics when I post our net worth spreadsheet at the end of the month, but it feels great to be making solid progress. In December 2008, our retirement accounts totaled $23,506.87, so it’s doubled in less than 1 year.
Step Up Our Retirement Contributions in 2009
We’ve done a good job of increasing our retirement account contributions this year. Thus far, we’ve contributed $3,802.39 to my 401(k) and $3,976.48 to my wife’s 401(k) and a total of $8,400 ($4,200 each) to our Roth IRA’s. That puts us at $16,178.87 in total contributions to our retirement accounts so far for the year.
By the end of the year, another $617.91 will be contributed to my 401(k) and another $1,040.63 to my wife’s 401(k). We hope to contribute another $800 to each of our Roth IRAs to fully fund them for the year. If we’re able to do that, we’d have a total retirement account contribution of $19,437.41 (roughly $1,620/month) for 2009. That’s a huge increase over our $12,111.56 retirement contributions in 2008 and our $12,330.19 retirement contributions in 2007. We’re feel very blessed to be able to sock this kind of money away for early retirement.
Car Paid Off
Both my parents and my wife’s have paid off their auto loans early to save a ton on interest. Now we get to join the club. Thanks to my wife’s $4,872 ($2,255.97 net) quarterly bonus and our accelerated payments, we just paid off the 6.5% auto loan on our 2006 car. The loan was originally scheduled to be paid off April, 2012 and at the beginning of 2009 our balance was $15,586.49. It feels great to have this paid off early. We now have $450 a month to save and/or invest.
Net Worth Milestone – $60,000
We passed the net worth milestone of $60,000!
My wife’s quarterly bonus help us reach this new net worth milestone. We hit our last net worth milestone of $50,000 in August. We’ve been blessed to have a strong second half of 2009. Based on my estimates, we may hit a net worth of $70,000 in February.
Bonus Time!
My wife received her quarterly bonus today. She was 5th in the region in sales and received a $4,872 ($2,255.97 net) bonus! In addition, she received a special Teamwork award.
$730.80 of the $4,872 was deposited into her 401(k). The $2,255.97 check will be spent as follows:
$487.20 to tithe
$1175.74 to our auto loan
$593.03 to savings
My wife is doing awesome in her job and, at this rate, our goal of early retirement is all the more possible.
Earning More SkyMiles
Quick update:
I just returned from a business trip, and earned another 6,180 Delta SkyMiles. I now have 57,135 Delta SkyMiles.
October 2009 Income Statement
Our income in October was a bit above average and we did an good job keeping our expenses down (click on spreadsheet below).
For the 3rd month in a row, my company increased my salary 1%. In addition to our paychecks, my wife received her $110 company reimbursements, I sold my old gym membership for $480, and we earned $85.89 in credit card cash back rewards. We also earned $0.95 in interest income from our online savings account.
If you pull out the extra $1,150 we paid to our auto loan, our total expenses were only $5,266.53. That includes being dinged with a $342.50 towed bill. I was out of town 2-1/2 weeks of the month, so my wife gets credit for keeping expenses down.
Next month brings more good news. My wife may receive her quarterly bonus (early) and my company will be increasing my pay again.
October Net Worth Update (+$675.72)
What Worked
I received another 1% increase to my salary (3rd time in 3 months). We paid an extra $1,150 to our auto loan, bringing the balance down to $2,907.26.
What Didn’t Work
We pulled $1,393.43 out of savings to pay our credit card bill for the balance of our
Next Month
God willing, November should be another net worth increase month. We plan to continue our accelerated payments on the auto loan and invest another $1,500 in our retirement accounts. I will have a large gym membership bill due next month, a portion of which may come out of our savings.
3.5% Salary Increase
The Owner of my company just announced he will be increasing everyone’s salary again. I’ll be getting a 3.5% increase, or ~$2,100/year. This brings me to a total of 6.5% in increases over the past couple of months. That leaves only another 3.5% till I’m back to $70,460/year, where I was in February before the 10% salary reduction.
My company has been doing much better lately, but I’m surprised our salaries have been increased so rapidly. I was happy just having a job in this economy, but am very thankful for the extra money. I plan to increase my 401(k) contribution from 8% to 15% in January (my wife just increased her’s to15%). These salary increases will help make that doable.
Solid 6 Month
I always feel like we could be doing more to reach our goal of early retirement, but am very thankful for all of our blessings. I’m also thankful for my parents for being such great personal finance role models.
We’ve been working hard to increase the contributions to our retirement accounts and have done a good job over the past 6 months. Our average monthly contribution since May has been $1,453.
Here’s a month-by-month breakdown:
May
$1,025.19
June
$1,675.19
July
$1,743.52
August
$1,181.48
September
$1,592.71
October
~$1,500.00