About once a quarter, I like to take a step back and evaluate my personal finances, and to share them with my readers. Just because I’m a personal finance blogger doesn’t mean I have all my finances in order, it’s certainly a work in progress! There’s been a lot happening in my life with a lot of changes already and more to come!

Income

This past quarter I accepted a new position in the healthcare industry, after 3 years of working at my previous job. Changing jobs is never easy, and it is always a tough decision. However, I weighed the pros and cons and decided to make the switch. It was an offer for more money and in my mind, better career opportunities. I’m learning that jobs and careers often aren’t linear and sometimes you have to reach out and take opportunities as they come! I’m at a new company now and with that, making more money!

With a higher salary, ordinarily I’d increase my investments and savings level, while of course somewhat increasing my expenses. That’s been my normal course of action during my working career so far and it’s worked out nicely. I think a lot of young professionals get hung up on trying to accomplish a whole lot in just a little amount of time, and often times it burns us out and we give up trying to better our finances. What I found that works for me is trying to improve my finances little by little, and a raise (whether an annual raise or one that comes with a new job) is a great time to do so. If and when you get a X% raise, devote a portion of the to savings/investing (or paying down debt), and then the rest to your monthly spending.

I’m not currently planning to increase my savings/investing at this point because of some other investing and future expenses that I have coming up, so keep reading!

Expenses

Expenses have a funny way of growing with your salary, so it’s important to keep them in check as your salary grows, which is why I recommend first “paying yourself” by increasing your savings/investment and thenincreasing your expense level. As I’ve mentioned before, Mrs. Money and I are expecting Baby Money Finance is early 2019. So…you could say our expenses will be increasing in the coming future. Diapers, food, clothes, medical bills, a lot to come and although I had a post about how the Cost of Having a Kid doesn’t have to be as expensive as you think, it sure won’t be cheap! For right now, our expenses have remained somewhat steady, but we’re storing up as ‘winter’ is coming!

Investments

I’ve continued setting aside 15% for my retirement through my 401(k) at work (as does Mrs. Money) and contributing 10% for my company’s stock through the Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESSP). On top of that, I do try to set aside some general savings. Phew! It’s not easy but I always say it’ll never be easier to save as much as you can when you’re young, and we’ve tried to follow through with that. Saving 30%+ of our income isn’t necessarily easy! I think we’re reaching a time in our lives that we may have to cut back on our savings/investing (i.e. with Baby Money Finance coming) but we’ve saved/invested for a good while and have gotten a great foundation in place.

Our other big investment this quarter has been the purchase of our new home! We purchased our first home about 4 years ago and it was really a great investment for us financially. We’ve really enjoyed being homeowners, even with all of the ups and downs that come with it! We always knew our first home would just be our starter home, and we’ve ‘upgraded’ to a larger home, one that we can stay in for a while and grow into. It wasn’t easy and we ended up looking for probably 6 months before we found the right house. With such a large investment it’s important to make sure it’s the right house!

With the purchase of our new house, we decided to keep our old house, at least for the time being. I’ve read a lot about the financial and tax benefits of being a landlord, and wanted to give it a shot. A new job, new house and new baby is certainly a lot, but Mrs. Money and I agreed that we’d try it out. Definitely more to come in a future post chronicling our adventures! (I say adventures because sweet Nana Money Finance told me that Mrs. Money and I always like having adventures.)

Net Worth Tracking

I learned an important lesson over the past month, while purchasing the new house – net worth tracking is truly for the long haul. Of course our savings accounts took a dip while purchasing a new house, not just for the down payments (which I will count as equity in owning the new house) but also all the home moving expenses and buying new stuff for the house. If I was focused purely on the month to month, I may have been dismayed seeing my overall balance go down. However, an investment like a house is a long-term investment and so it may take some time before I see my overall net worth increase as I’d like to. I’m in it for the long-term and so I’m good to play the long game!

A lot going on in our lives right now and I’m thankful for all the opportunities that have come my way. I like to think that the foundations and good habits I’ve been building over all the years are paying off. Following the Alligator Theory of Personal Finance, we waited, built up energy and pounced when the time is right!