Net Worth Update For April 2021

 

Just like that another 6 months have passed. It was a long winter, but one change I made at the beginning of November was that I started to take daily walks. I also got myself a smart watch and use it each day to keep track of the number of steps I take and the number of "heart points". Heart points is the measure of the number of minutes of activity that raises your heart rate. I don't know. It's a Google Fit thing, but it's based on World Health Organization metrics. I've found that I would need at least 30 minutes of fast walking to reach this metric. For times I don't take my fast walk (like walking with the family, for example), exercises also seem to cover this. However, with exercises, the more strenuous the exercises, I can be awarded 2 heart points a minute depending on the corresponding heart rate measurements from the watch.

Either way, it's made me more physically active and I have a lot more endurance for taking longer walks (for curbside pickups 2km+ away, 4km+ round trip) or for biking 14km+ without feeling like I'm about to keel over. Despite having asthma, it appears these walks have also strengthened my lungs and these exercises don't provide the sounds of a "lung orchestra" as my old family doctor used to say.

Finance wise, I don't think anything major happened. Wifey received a huge tax return as a result of changing employers. She essentially paid twice the amount of CPP and EI so that was refunded when she filed her taxes. I suppose the rest of the gains were from the stock market. I haven't really been paying attention. Staying at home and not being able to do anything or go anywhere has been a help. However, I feel like we do spend money on things so I'm not sure what is the real answer.

With taxes filed, we've essentially maxed out our RRSP and TFSA room. I've left a buffer for Wifey in case she changes jobs again and has a group RRSP with company match. Currently, she doesn't have one. I've also left myself some buffer room as well, but I don't foresee myself leaving my company anytime soon.

I only just started putting money back into the mortgage in April. Despite that the mortgage still went down $16,000 so that's nice. Around $170,000. I'm wondering if it's possible to get it below $150,000 for the October 2021 update. Maybe target a $140,000 mortgage by October as that would mark two years since moving to the condo and that would mean we would have knocked out $100,000 from our mortgage in two years. We'll see. I think $150,000 is doable. $140,000 may be a stretch.

Overall, our net worth increased over $131,000 which is crazy to me. I checked the numbers a few times to confirm, but I guess it's been that kind of run. However, as I write this, I think May has started out poorly, so we'll see where we end up in October.

Health wise Ontario made the Covid-19 vaccine available to adults 18+ in all hot spot postal code two weeks ago. As a result, Wifey and I both booked appointments for our first shots and received them a couple of days later. As of writing this, Ontario has opened up to all adults 18+ so that's nice. I foresee us still doing physical distancing for a while longer, but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The following is a summary of the numbers for the April 2021 update:

• Net worth: $1,279,563.72 (+$131,585.72)
• Total Assets: $1,449,607.28 (+$115,585.56)
• Estimated House Value: $865,560.19 (+$8,605.33)
• All Financials: $584,047.09 (+$106,980.23)
• Cash/Investments: $496,138.27 (+$92,878.97)
• RESP/Pensions: $87,908.82 (+$14,101.26)
• Remaining Mortgage: $170,043.56 (-$16,000.16)