Net Worth Update-- September 4

Overall, the market was pretty flat this month. In late July I got hammered, and in August, despite the volatility, things were better. My market investments overall gained 0.23%. The bigger story for me (and my net worth) was debt reduction. I eliminated my auto loan this month . . . which led to a drop in my assets (lowest level since May) but a much bigger drop in my liabilities. My net worth is up 1.8% over my last report in August, and I'm back on track to meet my goal (though the market will need to help me a little more in the coming months). This is a new high for my bottom line after a dip last month, and I'm now up 24.2% since I started tracking in February. I think I still have a period of fast growth ahead of me, as new savings/investments will still be a decent chunk of my net worth. I won't post my goal graph this month, as I think it's getting a bit tedious . . . I've given you the pertinent information anyway.

As in previous updates, I checked in on my Net Investable Assets and Net Liquid Assets, both of which grew in relation to my net worth. NIA is now almost 51% of my net worth, and NLA is almost 8%. Both of those figures are new highs.

This month I have added a new figure to help track my progress: Earned Retirement Income (ERI). This concept was introduced to me by BrokNowRchLatr and he gives an explanation in this post. Essentially it measures what your current picture means in terms of retirement income. Instead of focusing on the dollar figure, I am tracking my ERI as a percentage of my goal. This month my ERI is 12.0%-- meaning I have enough saved to fund 12.0% of the retirement income that I feel I need. With my auto debt out of the picture, I expect my progress in ERI to speed up (it's only up from 9.8% in February).

I hope everyone has had a wonderful month and didn't worry too much about the markets. I apologize for the sporadic posting, but life gets in the way of blogging sometimes.