As of October 7, My Investing Discoveries has been in existence for an entire year! To celebrate, I went through all my blog posts so far and updated them with links to posts and categories that didn’t exist when I wrote them. Now, all posts are self-referential to help you find the related information you need from the links within each post.
In addition, I created a Categories page so that you can more easily find exactly what you’re looking for when you come to My Investing Discoveries. The list includes links to my specific series on Hereditary Financial Habits, The Carrie Finances and book reviews, as well as personal finance and investing topics like budgeting, saving, retirement and sustainable investing. Some of these categories only have one post in them, while others are more fleshed out. Let me know the topics you want more posts about in the comments below!
There’s also a new section on the Resources page with financial resources specifically for women. When I started researching whether financial literacy should be gendered, I found through “Clever Girl Finance” by Bola Sokunbi that women are still paid less than men despite women living longer than men. For these compounding reasons, women—particularly marginalized women—are more in need of financial advice tailored to them. Since women were kept from even participating in the economy for centuries, there’s quite a bit of catching up to do. See the Women in Finance category for more!
Speaking of Sokunbi, I decided to go back through some of her helpful “Take Action” sections and try one out. The first one that caught my eye was on calculating net worth:
To perform this exercise, I opened every single one of my financial accounts: my Fifth Third bank account, which contains my checking account and regular savings account; my Discover credit card account; my Schwab brokerage account; my SmartyPig and LendingClub high-yield savings accounts; and my Vanguard retirement account.
I wrote down the value of each account and added them up to find my total assets. I included my latest credit card payment that had yet to go through, my current credit card balance with pending transactions and an approximation of my tab at the dentist under the “total liabilities” section. When I subtracted my liabilities from my assets to find my net worth, I was happy to see the number didn’t dwindle too much.
Sokunbi recommends calculating net worth every quarter, but I recalled that Erin Lowry in “Broke Millennial” mentioned doing so on a monthly basis. I think a quarterly review will work best for me, but even annually would be fine. Monthly net worth updates would be too often, and I would likely feel that I wasn’t making enough progress month to month. I’ll start with doing this quarterly and see how it goes!
For the next year of My Investing Discoveries, I have exciting things in store—including going through each step of the AAII PRISM Wealth-Building Process. Stay tuned for more!