Net Worth Challenge

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.