My "savings"

At this time in our financial lives, about the only way we are increasing our net worth is by my 401k (contributions and the matching portion and the pension portion from my company) and by the gradually increasing value on our home. My measly $35 addition to savings/EF sure isn't doing it!

My 401k has had a nice increase this year, so far sitting at a 17.73% gain as of my 9/30 statement, plus employer contribution of $2275 and my re-started contributions of $100/mo (re-started after a 3+ year lapse, stopped when DH had to stop working). In total, almost $7,000 more then my balance was at the beginning of the year.  Now that I am contributing again, my company will also put in a 50% match. Within the next 12 months my 401k will increase $1200 by my contributions, $600 by company matching and another $2468 by my company's pension contribution. Hopefully, I'll also see some gains on top of that. Come this time next year I could potentially be up to $40k in my 401k. Not near where we should be at this time in our lives, but I keep telling myself at least it's something and it's growing every year. Of course I realize that the stock market is as flaky as can be, but I also have close to 20 years on my side of saving until I retire, so hopefully time is on my side to ride the ups and downs and still come out with a nice return rate.

I've been tracking our home value on zillow. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I guess it is at least a gauge for the percentage the value is going up or down. I started tracking on 6/1 and the value was at about $136k. From then on every time I checked the value every few weeks it was going up quite substantially, by 9/1 it was up to $143k. But 6 weeks later, as of today, it is back down to $136k. Hmphffff.....It does say that my area should expect to see a 7% increase in home value this year. So, with that portion of our net worth hard to track, I can at least know that I am reducing my mortgage principal balance by approximately $6,000 a year, and thereby increasing my net worth by that much (assuming my home value doesn't decline any).

We are 7 years into a 20 year mortgage (not including our HELOC loan). 13 more years and it will be paid off. In the meantime, more and more of our payment will be going towards principal and not so much interest, gradually increasing our net worth. Hopefully at some point our home value will rise enough to meet our principal going down and we will get out of being in a hole with our home value.

I guess I'm just trying to find a bright spot in our otherwise bleak financial existence~
I don't think I helped myself much......