This week will be a simple one.  Last week you had a big assignment to create your personal financial binder and this week we’ll be adding the Net Worth Statement to the binder. 

I will be sending out a copy of the excel spreadsheet I created to newsletter subscribers so watch your inbox.

Part 1

Part 2

There are a couple of guidelines to follow in creating your first Net Worth Statement:

1. Don’t go overboard and try to include all your possessions in the first version.  You should only include your house, cars, and at most 1-3  of your most valuable possessions.  Then, every time you update your statement you can add one or two more items.  Over time you’ll have quite a comprehensive record of your possessions.
2. The first statement should take you 20-30 minutes to create.
3. If you haven’t completed your List of Accounts and List of Debts for your financial binder, please do so first.  This will make creating your net worth statement much faster and easier.
4. In the screencast I mention three resources for determining the value of your assets:
• Zillow.com for real estate.
• Kelly Blue Book for vehicles.
• Ebay using the “completed listings” search for general possessions.

5. Here’s a list of items you may want to include in your net worth statement
• Assets
• Cash
• Checking accounts
• Savings accounts
• Money Market accounts
• Stocks, bonds, CDs
• Market value of your home
• Major household items
• Market value of other real estate
• Rental property
• Time shares
• Vacation homes
• Market value of cars
• Value of Cash-value life insurance
• 401K accounts
• IRA and Roth IRA accounts
• Liabilities
• Mortgage
• Lines of credit (HELOCs, etc)
• Auto loans
• Credit card balances
• Student loans
• Other loans
• Owed taxes

There are several advantages to creating and updating a net worth statement.

1. Your net worth is a single number that reflects whether you are making progress financially or not.
2. Recording a list of your possessions can act as a safety measure if you were to be robbed or have a fire and needed records to get reimbursed for insurance purposes.
3. Updating your net worth statement keeps you in tune with your various accounts and amounts in them.  It increases your overall financial awareness.
4. In recording possesions and their worth you may uncover some assets you can sell for a healthy profit and put those assets to use in a more valuable way.

As always, leave any comments or questions below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

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It’s finally here. It’s time to start the 12 Weeks to Fiscal Fitness with a Pre-launch podcast. In this podcast I’ll talk about:

• My family’s journey on the path to total financial control. How we went from barely being able to pay our bills to meeting all our financial goals.
• What you can expect to learn from this course.
• What this course won’t do for you.
• Your first assignment:
• Get your spouse on board. Agree to follow the course unless you BOTH disagree on a single point in which case you can choose not to follow that point.
• Agree to never work on or discuss finances more than 30 minutes at a time

CLICK BELOW TO DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN FROM YOUR BROWSER.

 

 12 Weeks to Fiscal Fitness - Prelaunch [28:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Please email me or leave comments below and let me know what your biggest financial challenges are.

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Wow, I’m posting a slew of winners today. Here are the winners for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. I’ve been a little late publishing these winners because life has been a little crazy lately. We just adopted a little baby boy and have been back and forth between the hospital.

The good news is, the giveaway is still in full swing and we have another week full of prizes. Keep entering. Nobody has taken advantage of all the ways to enter yet so you could really increase your chances by doing so.

Here are the winners so far for this work week:

Jocelyn Robertson wins a Food Storage Made Easy Binder
Joseph and Heather Holdaway win a lifetime membership to the Scrooge Strategy
John Wininger wins a copy of The Millionaire Next Door courtesy of J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly

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It’s time to announce more giveaway winners. Today I’m announcing the winners for Saturday and Sunday. The winners are:

Marvin Bobo wins a 6-month subscription to Pear Budget.
Erin Stanfill wins a copy of You Need a Budget (YNAB) budgeting software.

Congratulations to today’s winners. If you haven’t entered yet, there’s still plenty of prizes to win. I’ve noticed that most people are only entering one or two ways. You could significantly increase your chances if you take advantage of all 10 ways of entering.

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Ok, I’m two days late! So today will be filled with prize winning goodness. Below are the winners for Thursday and Friday. I’ll be announcing today’s winner this evening.

And the winners are:

Shenna Coates wins a lifetime membership to the Scrooge Strategy, courtesy of Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich.com!
Jolynn McCormick wins the book Your Money or Your Life courtesy of J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly

There’s still a great chance of winning if you register and the prizes will keep coming. Today’s prize will be a 6-month subscription to Pear Budget so hurry and enter!

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