Net Worth

My name is Joey ("Hi, Joey!") and I am a Net Worth addict.

It's true.

I use Quicken to track all of our finances. Literally every penny we earn and spend is accounted for in Quicken. We accomplish this by downloading all of our bank account transactions and credit card transactions, as well as my asset accounts. We use one credit card each for almost every purchase we make, because we get airmiles for every dollar we spend. This comes in handy considering we are in North Carolina, and have family in Texas (mine) and Oregon (my husband's) and we love to fly to see them. Anyway, we simply pay off the credit card each month, but in the meantime all of our spending is tracked and we can see exactly how much we're spending in a given category (gas, groceries, etc.).

Well.... on the main page there is a summary of my assets and my liabilities, and at the very bottom left corner is my very favorite part of Quicken: My Net Worth.

I don't know why I'm so fascinated by this, really. I just love to watch it grow, and it bothers me when it shrinks (like when the stock market isn't doing well and I lose several thousand dollars in investments). It's rather silly of me to get all caught up in my net worth at this stage of my life, especially since I will not need the money in my retirement funds for many years, but I can't help it.

I remember when my net worth passed the six-figure mark for the first time. I felt absolutely rich! And then some bills came out of my checking account, and the net worth immediately dipped back into the five-figures. Sad. But then money got deposited for my IRA and it went back to six figures. Happy! And this is how it goes for me.

Want to know your net worth but don't have something fancy like Quicken? You can calculate your own net worth HERE.

One more fun little thing to try: See where you rank based on age and income. It's very interesting to me. I am WAY above normal for my age, and right at the median net worth for my income. How about you? I mean, not that I'm trying to get YOU addicted or anything, but.... try it! You'll like it! :-)

Jury "Service"

On Monday of this week I was summoned for Jury Duty. I innocently believed that I'd be in and out of there in a couple of hours. Not sure where I got that idea from, but let's just say my expectations were not met. At 9am I reported for duty, got signed in, and waited for 30 minutes. Then a woman who had clearly memorized a script proceeded to recite the script to us. If she had sounded the least bit conversational it wouldn't have appeared strange, but no. After her performance, she turned on the TVs and we watched a Charles Kuralt video on the pleasures of Jury "Service". "Many people call it jury duty", he said, "but truly you are in service to your community". Nice spin, I thought. And considering that Charles Kuralt has been dead for over 10 years, well.... the video was a bit outdated, to say the least. Then we got sworn in. Everyone had to find their nearest Bible (and there were tons of them laying around), put our left hand on it, hold our right hand in the air, and promise to tell the truth. "I DO", we all said in unison. I wondered about all the people in the room who were of other religions. Surely there has been some lawsuit somewhere in the country where a Muslim was offended that he or she had to swear by a book they do not believe in? Anyway.... 7 hours later and one very tired butt from sitting in a chair all day, we got released with no explanation and a "thanks for your service". If it weren't for a very good book, and getting to eat lunch downtown with my husband, it would have been a miserable day. (We even had a beer at lunch! Shhh... don't tell the jury police!) And thus concluded my "service" to my community for at least two years.

Here we go

I am late to the whole blogging game, I realize that. I never have been all that original. But for months, maybe even years, I've asked myself if I really have enough to say that might be worth writing down. And increasingly, my answer to myself is "yes". So... I'm going with that, and even if this just ends up being my online diary that no one reads but me, I am good with that.

I named it The Personal and The Professional because I intend to talk about both. For me, these two strongly overlap. I am a mortgage broker and I have a big interest in not only mortgages, but also personal finance. I am drawn to finance blogs way more than just general blogs. So, we'll see how it goes.

Here we go.

Joey