Bank of America's My Portfolio is an excellent tool to safely keep track of net worth for individual users like me. You have access to it if you own a checking account with this bank. You can add all your accounts - credit cards, investments accounts, loan accounts, etc. It can even keep track of your rewards accounts, e.g., airline miles, credit card points, and so on. In the end you get an overview of your net worth, and it tells you how much you have gained or lost since the beginning of the month.As you can see my net worth, as of today, is just over 66K. Much is this is not really liquid. As you can see from the following snapshot from my portfolio, most of the assets are the house (even with its depleted value), and the retirement account -- both of which I cannot really cash without losing a lot of money. If I wanted to sell the house, firstly there is no guarantee that I can fetch the real worth of the house in this market, secondly I will end up losing a good 20-25K in selling the house. If I wanted to cash in on the retirement account, I will end up paying a substantial amount in taxes. So, not much of the net worth is really liquidable.
The house value is a bit of a relief. As I said in my last post, I bought this house almost at the peak of the housing boom in March 2006, for 506K. Today, even if I believe the value shown on Bank of America's my portfolio (BoA gets the values from zillow.com's so-called "zestimate"), the house has lost about 20% of its value, which is more than my own money I had put into the house. That is all of the money I put into the house is down the drain.
Still, if I look at the chart, it seems the house value has just moved up after hitting a bottom last month. There was a free fall lasting well over two years before that. Does this indicate a slowing down of the recession? I don't know, but I hope the house prices start going up. At current prices, it has been difficult for me to get even my mortgage refinanced. As you can see, my two mortgages add up to about $438K, which is well over the house value of $409K. At 5.75% per annum, I am paying well over the current market rate. A reduction of even .75% would shave off a good $3000 off my annual interest payments, which would mean a reduction of $250 from my monthly payment. Then only saving grace is that I am expecting some relief in the property tax payments. I am currently paying close to $8000 in annual property taxes. Hopefully the new tax bill will be lower, although it will take time working its way into the escrow.
