Net Worth Challenge

I recently went through my annual review at the office.  I always seem to get very anxious and worried leading up to my review.  It’s not that I have anything to really be worried about, but rather, I just fear that unknown.  I know I’m doing a great job in my position at work, both professionally and personally.  But that still doesn’t stop me from worrying about the review and worrying if those around me value my presence and contributions at the work-place.

For the second year in a row, though, my worries have been put to rest!  I received the highest marks in all measured categories (ok, I have to boast a bit) — and my boss has been very pleased with all areas of my work.  At last year’s annual review, I was promoted into a leadership position within my department and was given a sizable raise in pay.  While a new promotion is not in the cards this year, another sizable increase in my salary is coming my way.  Just like last year, the increase was much larger than I could ever have expected.

It does make me feel good that I am appreciated at work and that my contributions are being recognized.  The salary increase was a nice bonus and a great cap to another wonderful year at my company.  Of course, after getting home and sharing the good news with my wife, my mind naturally switches over the question — “now what should we do with this additional money?”  My wife and I were not expecting the increase that I was given; and so we have decided to put most of it away into our investments.  The types of investment category (retirement or non-retirement) has yet to be determined, as I will be taking a little time to analyze the tax implications of the new salary.  I suspect that we’ll move to maximize our 401k contributions in order to reduce our tax burden  at the end of the year.  But that has yet to be determined.  For now, I’m just enjoying my status on “cloud nine!”

We had another solid month of gains in May.  I know I had been anxiously holding my breath to find out how well our performance was during May!  Some of the highlights for this month were:

1. Stock Market — the stock market continued it’s upward trend, which certainly helped our net worth gains for the month.  It’s been a good year so far; and I hope to see it continue the upward gains during the second half of the year.  I may not have made the post yet, but my wife and I have already maxed out our Roth IRA contributions for the year.  I accelerated our monthly contributions in order to get to this point.  If the market continues it’s upward trend, we’ll benefit even more because of it.
2. Rental Unit — May is the first “rented” month for our new rental property.  It certainly helps to have that rent check coming in at the first of the month now that I have to start making mortgage payments, insurance payments, and tax payments on the property.  We rented the unit on a shorter-term lease than our standard, but we are compensated by a higher rent because of this option.  For the next three months we’ll have a higher cash-flow on the property than the cash-flow on our standard one-year lease.
3. Spending — I have never went into a deep analysis of our spending on the blog, but this is an item that represented a negative for the month of May.  My wife and I were on the road a lot during May and spent a considerable amount more on dining out (and fast food) than we usually spend.  Hopefully we can bring this spending under control in June, although we will be traveling about the same amount as in May.