Thank you! 
A monthly reconciliation sounds like it would work well for me. Maybe I’ll try quarterly at some point once I get the hang of things.
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Thank you! 
When I started working with my financial advisor to open this account, we tackled setting up an emergency fund first, so I feel like I’m in a good spot there. It’s definitely good advice to make sure that stays at a good amount.
Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll probably check more frequently once I get the hang of things. It did feel strange to log in to my account the other day and see that money had disappeared, but I need to remember that I’m in this for the loooooong game. Seeing people’s numbers on here go up and down has helped a bit, I think. The market is going to do its thing and there’s only so much we can do about it, so I don’t need to stress myself out over it.
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Yep, exactly. You can’t control it, so you need to make sure you mentally release yourself from that…
I chose to do monthly updates in a separate spreadsheet, and don’t really track all the investments in YNAB. I’ve stuck with that for a while now, and it’s worked out OK…I just log in at the end of the month to each account, note the balance, and take a look at my NW.
Good to see your progress!
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One of the best things I did for myself in terms of “can’t control the market” was putting a spreadsheet line for our direct action monthly changes, excluding market changes. That way I can at least say, well, funny money did whatever it wanted to but I saved $2k this month between mortgage principal payoff and 401k contribution or whatever. Keeps me focused on what I can control.
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Similarly, I’ve started to work on this spreadsheet each year, to get a visual. I’m at a point where the market doing what the market does has mattered more than my own inputs… for 5 years now!
I started another spreadsheet where I track the number of shares I hold at Vanguard. That way, dividends and buying shares shows up, even if the overall value isn’t growing at that moment.
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Ooooh we should make a spreadsheet like that. Because yes our direct action sans market last month was positive $29k (
- huge paycheck month plus massively insane work reimbursement for costs) but our networth decreased by $6k. 
Kinda wild feeling lol.
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I regret not having a record of how much we put in each year to go along with the invested assets. I seem to recall it was a similar mental hack, but in the opposite direction. As you may notice, the tracking really started around 2008, so it was better not to know how much I was putting in without seeing much traction (since I could see the investments when I looked at my main account summary).
I love how many different mental hacks people use to achieve their long term goals.
(I also wish I knew when I read ‘the shockingly simple math’, and when was the first time I made the projection calculations - what I have starts with my net worth Dec 2012 iirc, and what my first projections said I’d invest each year. I think the first projection was aiming for 2027, and then was 2024 for a while)
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Spendy month, and numbers down (to Mar 31) is rarely a good psychological combo
Also should not have looked at just how much we put into prepaying our mortgage 2008-2016.
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November markets were kind to us, as they were to others, and we are at an all time high overall. Spending was up in food and clothing, intentionally so, but still weird to loosen.
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Since 2016.
Such a nice line. This year is +$75k, which is much more than my earnings for the year. Magic.
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what a happy line!!
mine is happy too … almost dizzyingly so
my former company’s stock has like tripled since they laid me off … 
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We crossed a big number with the market increase! I have been waiting to break $400K* since 2021! We were so close and then things kept going down (and our savings are not a ton).
Fingers crossed we can stay above that line since we’re only at, like, $401K 
*I do NOT count the equity in our house (or cars) or my pension, this is just actual money.
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Congrats!
You reminded me that we actually hit £400k in December too (similarly no house in there but we do count pension)
still a way to go and our income/expenses are a lot more uncertain than they were a year ago but we’re in decent shape.
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line went up slightly, somewhat helped by the shadowy one’s tfsa contribution. with cash, we ticked over a milestone number, but that is cheating because it includes the main floor reno. (graph starts Apr 08, but google sheets isn’t happy showing the axis labels)
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how does it feel having the visual?
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Honestly frustrating because I don’t like that google sheets is only showing the dates for Jan 1 of each year. I would rather see the date of each data point instead, but I can’t figure out how to make that happen!
It’s interesting to see the initial big drop in NW we had when we bought our current house in Sept 2021, but then it has recovered and gone up and down a lot, more due to home value fluctuations than anything else!
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This is why I track without home value (I use a fixed number- the appraised value at purchase- to offset our mortgage). I can’t handle the ups and downs from Zillow etc lol.
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