Life Story as Told Through Mint's Net Worth Tracker

[Dezrah]

I first started using Mint around April 2013.  I’ve had a lot of life happen since that time and I was amazed at how much of it was reflected in my Net Worth Trends.  I figured it was interesting enough to share with you guys.  Please feel free to share your own story if you notice interesting things in your own trends.

Here’s little bit of background up to where the graph starts.  I tried to be brief, but I’m willing to go into greater detail if that is something that would interest people.

2008:
DH and I both graduated undergrad in 2008.  We were each gifted a the cost of undergrad and a vehicle by our generous parents.

2008-2013:
We were married early 2009.  I was either job hunting or working professionally.  I changed jobs once.  DH was either working menial jobs, job hunting, or attending grad school.  We moved states twice, bought a house once, sold it three years later.  We had pets but no kids (this is still the case).  DH finished grad school and started working professionally just about the time the graph starts.


Clarification on asset spike: This point is from an investment account that is technically in my name.  It was supposed to be used to pay for college, except it was running at a loss when tuition came due so it was never actually spent.  I was a minor when it started and I wasn’t actually given the means to transfer the account into my custody until relatively recently.  I did nothing to earn the money, so I don’t feel right including it on Mint, so it’s now hidden.  Maybe I’ll make my peace with it someday and figure out what I want to do with it, but for now I’m just letting it sit there.

[englishteacheralex]

So cool! I was just looking at my net worth tracker on Mint and thinking the same thing...I've been using Mint since 2010 or maybe even earlier, and so much has happened in my life since then, as reflected on the graph. Right now it says my husband and my net worth is almost 500k, but it can't link to our mortgage properly so that's not even close to correct.

We're entering a three year plateau period after incredible growth, because I'm about to have our second child and childcare is going to make it pretty hard to save the astronomical amounts we were shoveling in before. My net worth tracker will not be so mountainous...but my life story will be!

[Zikoris]

Mine is very un-exciting.



The little spike near the start and dip near the end were just anomalies due to money in the process of being transferred, that wasn't completed by month end. Stuck temporarily in limbo, so to speak.

It's actually nice to see the consistency of the increases, because my income fluctuates like crazy - here's it is for comparison:

[CanyonMan]

Been using Mint a long time. I hate to say it, but if they moved to a paid model I'd probably keep using it because the aggregate data is very useful.

First, everything:


It's amazing how much the month-to-month volatility smooths out over time.  The only things not included in this view are the vehicle (<5k value) and theoretical appreciation on the house. Purchased it for 240K, current estimated value is north of 280. 15% rise in only 18 months. It screams "Bubble" to me because I grew up in a LCOL area, but we'll see how it works out in the long run. Right now I'm not complaining because I'm about to re-fi and eliminate PMI because of the decreased LTV ratio.

I find it very interesting that the trend did not drastically change after moving to a HCOL area. We paid 70% less for housing in the LCOL area, but the old high expenses of super-rural life (70 miles to the nearest grocery store, 2x priced gas at the local station, 160 mile round trip for dinner and a movie) ended up being offset with higher earnings and lower day-to-day spending.



Next, assets not including the house.

You can clearly see the amount of money we dumped into fixing up the forclosure and getting settled in a new city. For now the "investment" of fixing up the house is missing from mint, because I don't want to update the value of the house and throw everything else off. Once we finish the re-fi I'll likely update it.


Investment accounts are only 2012-present, because I didn't have access to my org's 401K prior to that. If I would have been smarter I would have been dumping funds into an index fund in the 401K during 2012-2014, instead I was just putting it in a money market account that was guaranteed to match inflation.

[arebelspy]

This is a fun thread!

I recently enjoyed CanuckExpat' very similar graph in his journal:
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/journals/journaling-for-fun-and-profit/msg1270317/#msg1270317

Ours definitely shows some fun stuff, but it sounds like work to go and parse it into something legible.  Maybe some day, for now following to read other's NW stories.  :)

[Chaplin]

Yes, telling stories with data a charts/visualizations is great fun!

I only have two years of history in Mint, and because it doesn't have any mechanism that I'm aware of to update home value and most Canadian investment accounts, the net worth chart is wildly inaccurate since I have only occasionally updated the asset values manually.

I do have our net worth tracked back to 2005, but I've only kept the annual totals (I regret deleting some of the quarterly totals for past years). I love the look of the chart as our net worth has grown, but it's too granular to tell a story, and as your net worth grows, the smaller but interesting movements get swamped. Instead of net worth, here's a chart of where our net worth has come from, which in our case tells a more interesting story I think.

Clearly we live in a very hot housing market, or at least it has been for the last few years. For a while we were increasing our mortgage principal payments, but we finally got in line with the math and started reducing our the mortgage payoff and increasing the investments.

[Roboturner]

Neat!




I also decided to share this one, goal is 1.2MM liquid by my 30th bday - it'll be tough but we'll see... :)

[Mola]

It must be that time of the year because I recently consolidated my mint history with my older YNAB history to get a longer look.  Started thinking the same thing as the kind of story this simple graph tells.

You can see a bit of acceleration after I discovered MMM. I focused on spending less and saving more, but the problem was that I had always been a frugal saver (thus why MMM seemed so attractive). It wasn't until I decided to aggressively pursue salary advancements that things really took off. I found that you can sit at a company and get a 3% raise each year or you can jump ship every 6-12 months and get 20-30% each year. All that overage just got saved pushing us to 85+% savings rate. Also started investing in rental houses which have been doing well so a lot of that rise is not more cash or stock but more home value.

Actually got to a point where I could, by the SWR math, stop working. Did that for a while and for a variety of reasons took another contract that will end this coming July. Not sure what I'll do then.  In my opinion the MMM philosophy is attractive when in accumulation phase, it lacks the same robust philosophy for the FIRE stage and I am still muddling through the existential issues as everyone must.

[arebelspy]

In my opinion the MMM philosophy is attractive when in accumulation phase, it lacks the same robust philosophy for the FIRE stage and I am still muddling through the existential issues as everyone must.

That might be how you're taking it.

I think MMM would argue he has a life philosophy, and ER is a side effect of living that way (i.e. by living efficiently, using badassity, muscle over motor, etc., you'll naturally get rich).

If you find the life philosophy lacking, but liked getting to ER, well, you probably read what you wanted into his stuff.

Not that it's a bad route to get to a place of freedom from work, but it does leave you wanting after, as you've discovered.  It's definitely worth working out a life philosophy.  It's one many of us struggle with.  :)

Good luck!

[Mola]

I think MMM would argue he has a life philosophy, and ER is a side effect of living that way (i.e. by living efficiently, using badassity, muscle over motor, etc., you'll naturally get rich).

Sorry, Im not referring to MMM the person, I mean MMM the body of thought and knowledge here on this website which includes his posts and these forums.

I think it is fair to say that the majority of information here is about how to get to financial independence through a specific construct of frugality, savings, investment, etc. The minority of information is about what you do with that freedom. Its not absent, but its not the salient theme.

How you get to financial freedom is the easier thing to discuss and share because its about real-world, pragmatic things. What you do with it is much more subjective. So if you get to FI and you were always dying to be painter, well great, now you get to be a painter. But what if you didn't have that kind of impelling essence? That's not discussed as much here. So in my opinion, once you get past FI you start to get to the edge of the MMM map. I'm sure MMM the guy has a nice island on the edge of that map, but that's his island and out here we all have to find our own.

[arebelspy]

Thanks for clarifying.

I 100% agree with that post.

:)

[Feefers]

Tracker goes back about a year and a half before I graduated college. Started full time position in July 2013. The dip is due to dropping cash for a car but not accounting for it as an asset.

[natb2347]

I just discovered all of these graphs and awesome views and filters on mint myself.  So eye opening and gratifying to visually see how the effort put forth is making a difference. 

One thought I had -   It would be cool if Mint had simulations for goals - like the CreditKarma app that estimates how your credit score would change if you paid this or that much on your cards. 

[Roboturner]

I just discovered all of these graphs and awesome views and filters on mint myself.  So eye opening and gratifying to visually see how the effort put forth is making a difference. 

One thought I had -   It would be cool if Mint had simulations for goals - like the CreditKarma app that estimates how your credit score would change if you paid this or that much on your cards. 

Look at Personal Capital, go into the Retirement planning section - also lets you know how your investments are balanced vs what 'they' recommend.

PC is much much better at looking at your whole NW and investments, we just use mint's budgeting side as PC's is pretty weak and gets all gummed up with investment returns

[MoneyMage]

This thread is fascinating. It would be pretty cool to highlight all of the graphical stories where "started reading mmm" made a big difference, as testimony to convince others to get on board. The proof is in the numbers, so they say.

Curious... do y'all factor in an estimated value of your house when calculating your net worth, or do you feel that it gives an inflated sense of how much you are working with?

For example, I track the Zillow estimate for our house on YNAB as an Off-Budget Account (and do I realize if we actually sold the house today it would probably go for up to 10% less than the Z-estimate) but the value of our house is equal to almost half of our total assets. If I take out the house our assets and Net Worth look like a lot less.

[arebelspy]

House is absolutely part of net worth, but usually not part of portfolio value for FIRE number except in the case you plan to sell.