Journey to FI - October Update

It has been another long stretch between posts for me.  I guess that's what happens when we are busy around the holidays.

I did continue to update my monthly tracker so I do have all the data.

I will be posting a few quick updates for the missing months over the next few days.

Here is October's update.

Income:  Still maintain our consistent income from month to month for budgetary purposes.  Our income does fluctuate based on my wife's sales.  She is very successful so we always make more than I budget.

Expenses:  Spending for the month was high due to our rental renovation project.  Our total for the month was a tad over $12,000.  At some point I should dive in and separate our personal vs. business spending, but I am not at that point yet.

Remaining Money:  From my original post stating that we have $5,425 in remaining money, that is strictly from a budgetary standpoint.    That money is all spent at this point because of our rental renovation and debt pay down efforts.  Don't worry, we have our rainy day savings in case of any emergency need for cash, but for the time being, all extra cash is paying for property renovation costs.

Debt:  Our debt was reduced drastically due to the fact that one of my 0% interest offers was expiring so I pushed hard to pay it all down.  That was about $11,000 alone.  Between that and our monthly mortgage and car payments, we reduced our debt by about $13,000 from September to October.  This is a huge impact.

Summary:  After my first month of tracking these metrics outside of Mint.com, I find it exciting to see our net worth grow.  The debt pay down is the big reason for the swing.  Another factor that drove our net worth to increase was the increase in home values.  I am simply using the Zillow value which I believe can be 10-15% off, but it is still a reasonable indicator, to some extent.

Goals for the Coming Months:  Continuing on from last month's goals, I am still working to eliminate the non mortgage debt.  It has decreased significantly from last month, but there are still some expenses from the rental renovation to pay off.  I believe we will be done quickly.

I hope you enjoyed this update.