Confronting My Debt Burden – (March 2023 Net Worth Update) 

I’m been documenting my journey towards reaching two goals: 

• $30,000 in passive income by 2025
• $1 million in net worth by 2027

I post an update every month, good or bad.

My goal is to be transparent through the process.

You can track my progress with my net worth tracker, which I update monthly.

Last month, I finished my transition into operating a small business which I bought in early January.

With that said, let’s get into the numbers.

https://youtu.be/K8KayuCom44

March 2023 Net Worth Numbers 

As a reminder, my net worth last month was $107,909.08. 

Assets – March 2023

The market surged forward in the early part of February but has since come down quite a bit. Thus, my stock portfolio hasn’t changed a whole lot this month. 

When it comes to real estate holdings, my Indianapolis property is now vacant. Unfortunately, we have a mold issue in one of the bathrooms, so we’re getting that all taken care of.

After remediating and remodeling the bathroom, we’ll be working on improving things throughout the unit to boost the rental and property value, mainly through simple cosmetic upgrades but also some long-term system repairs.

We should be getting that rental back up pretty quickly. However, I have been considering selling that property and either investing in something more scalable or using the cash to pay down debt. 

All told, that leaves our assets at $1,275,478.08.

Liabilities – March 2023

Nearly every single balance on our liability sheet has gone down in the past month. Most notably, my M1 Finance margin is fully paid off once again, so now I have no risk of a margin call.

Otherwise, I think I’ll focus a lot more on my personal loans in the coming months. I’ve been making the minimum payments on all of those, but I want to accelerate my payments towards these loans now that I don’t have the margin to worry about.

To that, I made it a goal at the beginning of the year to pay off $200,000 in debt. Here’s my progress from last month:

For the year, I’m at $36,935.05 in cumulative debt paydown.

I do also want to keep an eye on my HELOC, as that is a variable rate, and rates continue to tick up.

That could become one of the higher interest loans, so it may make sense to put more money towards that. As of right now, the HELOC is at about 7% interest. 

As a reminder, about $15,000 of my credit card is interest free until December or so, so paying down that balance will become a bigger priority for me later this year.

In total, this leaves our liabilities at $1,162,403.87. 

My Net Worth – March 2023

All in all, our net worth is $113,074.21. 

That’s an increase of $5,165.13 from last month.

That leaves our debt ratio has decreased to 91.13%.

And our passive income remains at about $1,100 per month.

What’s Next?

Overall, it was another productive month. 

Long term, when it comes to the debt situation, I don’t want my debt ratio to be higher than about 80%.

We’re well above that now.

I’ve found it pretty hard to focus on paying down debt over the last couple of years. I’ve had a hard time stopping myself from investing in new assets, plus we’ve had some major expenses to deal with (namely, my wife’s tuition and moving to Texas!).

It’s gotten to the point where it’s uncomfortable. If all goes well, I should be able to pay this down quickly using my business’s cash flow and our salaries.

Now that I have this business to focus on, it’s taken some of the mental energy that was going towards trying to find new opportunities. So I’ve found it much easier to throw money towards debt, which I will definitely continue focusing on in the coming months.

But I’ll never say never to a truly great deal…!