Saturday, December 22, 2007

Want to know your net worth?

I did. But I was bloody terrified to even think of it. I was reading up on a few blogs tonight when I came upon a post over at 100K Journey. His blog is all about meeting a personal goal and it pointed me to a very cool tool at NetWorthIQ. It takes two seconds to register and input your info and presto chango it spits out a report scarier than Medusa having a bad hair day.



I went over and plugged in all my info and was not happy but not totally disappointed given a divorce and selling and buying a house in a downturned market. I made it public so I could share with you nosy folks. I'll be updating each month. You can check out my starting report by clicking here.



$76K is not a bad place to start. I lost a good amount of money in the divorce because of the real estate market. My ex and I had been the first round of lottery drawings for a new community in the Phoenix area. We got a great deal on our house. We sold out old, 1655 sq. ft home for $350,000 when we had a small $142,000 mortgage. We put the whole proceeds into a 20% down payment on the new 3,100 sq. ft. house ($412,000) and the upgrades ($80,000). Not such a good idea. A year and a half later, it sold for $498,000 which was enough to cover the initial costs but we had a second mortgage (we consolidated debt) and realtor fees. I walked away with $43,000. Would you like to kick me for selling the old house? I'm getting tired of doing it myself.



So my mortgage is higher than I expected and the market is going down, down, down into a ring of fire. My house is worth $10K less than what I bought it for 6 months ago. So, I can see the effects. It just reinforces my plan to pay more down and save more. Sigh.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi,
The information provided is great and much appreciated. 'Home borrowers may be benefiting from investors’ flight from a scary stock market to the safety of government debt. The move has pushed bond prices higher and their yields lower. Mortgage Interest rates are probably the most important part about buying a house. After all, your aim is borrow the money you need for the least possible cost, so you need to assess which type of interest rate is best for your particular circumstances. :)

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