This marks the end of the 2nd year to my net worth series. In it, I’m documenting my path toward two goals:
- $30,000 in annual passive income by 2025
- $1 million in net worth by 2027
If you’re interested in real-time updates on the numbers, you can check out my net worth tracker, which I update on the 1st of every month.
Before we get into a full review of the last year, let’s go over this month’s numbers.
January 2022 Net Worth Numbers
As a reminder, my net worth last month was at $101,560.45.
Assets – January 2022
We’re currently sitting on around the same amount of cash as before.
As cash comes in, I prefer to invest that into my stock portfolio. I can always releverage that via a margin loan and throw it into real estate.
This also does not include my reserves for the three properties I currently own.
My holdings were a bit volatile this month, but they didn’t fall too much in the end. In any event, we’re over $100,000 when it comes to stocks and securities.
As I’ve mentioned previously, the money in my LendingClub account is being moved out as they shut down the platform.
And I made a slight change with the Indianapolis property accounting; I feel like I have plenty of reserves for it and can start taking more cash flow than I was before. More on that in a moment.
This leaves our assets at $732,076.10.
Liabilities – January 2022
We paid off our credit cards after the holiday shopping season, and we don’t have a ton of purchases slated this month.
We’re only five months away from finally being done with my wife’s tuition bills, and we’re expecting the last bill to come in May or June.
Additionally, the interest freeze on student loans continues, so we’re not eager to pay them right now.
We’re focusing pretty heavily on paying down our HELOC, and we’ll likely be putting a lot more money towards debt paydown once my wife starts working.
Thus, our liabilities this month are $621,592.77.
My Net Worth – January 2022
All in all, that leaves us with $110,483.33 in net worth.
That’s an increase of $8,922.88 from the previous month.
Our debt ratio is at 84.91%.
And our passive income has increased to $1,100 per month.
This increase is because of the change we’ve made to our Indianapolis property. Now that it has plenty of reserves, we’ll be taking about $500 per month in cash flow from that property in addition to the $600 we’re taking from our other rental property.
I decided to stop counting dividends, which accounted for maybe $100 to $200 of the cash flow we had coming in. Since I’m reinvesting all of my dividends anyway, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to count it towards our passive income.
A Year in Review
At the very beginning of 2021, I graduated law school and began studying for the bar exam. That really took up the first quarter of my year or so.
I took the bar exam in February.
I started working part-time at the law firm I’m currently at as a clerk while I waited for the bar results.
By June of 2021, I had passed the bar exam and began officially practicing law as an attorney in Illinois.
So far, it’s been a good experience, albeit stressful at times.
We ended up buying a new house this year, which added a new property to our portfolio.
This was a relatively big purchase, but I was able to use owner-occupied financing. So it wasn’t as huge of an out of pocket expense as it could have been.
The deal looked great on paper, but one problem I overlooked was the sewer pipe issue that caused $12,000 in damage.
Everything’s all fixed now, but it took about a month and a half to reach any sort of resolution.
I learned something from the process and won’t make similar mistakes in the future. That was the most obvious negative of the year.
Besides that, we were able to truck forward on our net worth numbers, especially because I can now work as a full time attorney.
This Year’s Net Worth Achievements
I was able to grow my net worth to over $100,000.
My stock portfolio is also around $100,000, and I’ve consolidated that portfolio into a focused, value investing approach.
I’m also over $1,000 per month in passive income – I think this is the most important milestone. Growing my passive income builds up powerful financial flexibility. I’m still far from financial independence, but it’s good to see we’re making significant progress.
What’s Next?
Over the next year, I do have a few specific goals I’m aiming for:
- Buying 2+ Properties
I do want to stay focused on finding real estate deals. I think that’ll force me to think more creatively on how to get them done. Two standalone rental properties will be very achievable, even if it might be difficult in this hot market. But I would love to shoot for three by the end of the year.
- 2x Net Worth
By the end of 2022, I would like to have over $200,000 in net worth. I’m well behind the million dollar pace line right now, but I’m expecting my growth to be significantly higher over the next twelve months.
The vast majority of our income this year will go towards paying down debt or buying assets.
In any case, I’m eager to see what the new year brings.
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