Eighty rows, one per month, since January 2020, in a spreadsheet called family net worth v2, backed up in three places cuz v1 died with a laptop charger in 2019. Five columns, same order every row: checking, house, cars, loans, retirement. Typed the last Saturday of the month, after the coffee, before anything else is allowed to happen on a Saturday.
The January 2020 row is the one I show people. Checking: $640. Savings: $0. House equity: $25,038. Car loan: negative $9,880. Student loans: negative $34,210. Retirement: $0. Bottom cell: negative $18,412. I typed it on a folding chair at a card table cuz we did not own a desk, while our daughter, nine months old, ate a cheerio she found on the floor. Negative eighteen four twelve. That was the whole empire.
Six years later the spreadsheet reads $104,772, as of the August row, and the part I am proud of is not the number. The house line went up and to the right, from $25,038 to $96,300, and anyone's would. The car line ran the other direction, and I let it, because of a finance-office trick nobody clarified to me at 27. In June, row 78, the bottom cell crossed $100,000, and I colored it, and my wife asked why the cell was green.
the january 2020 row
What that first row could not show: the loan deferment ending that November, daycare starting at $1,140 a month the same fall, and the first six rows all gettin' worse. Row 7, July 2020, bottom cell negative $21,900, the deepest mark on the whole chart. We were $3,488 underwater from where we began, in a pandemic, on a folding chair. The chart has a dip in it that I can still feel in my chest when the line scrolls past.
the $600 target month
July 2021, the fight. A Target run for a bookshelf came home with $611.90 of bookshelf and non-bookshelf, and the Corolla parking lot hosted the worst conversation of our marriage, voices up, both of us doin' arithmetic at each other. The rule got written on the back of that receipt, which is taped inside the spreadsheet's folder: no money moves over $100 without a text to the other person. Broken twice in five years, both times by me, both confessed within the hour. The rule is the reason row 78 exists.
the house line
Bought August 2018, $232,000, 4.25 percent, both of us 29 and terrified at the closing table. Refinanced February 2021 to 2.9 percent, closing costs of $3,100 rolled in, monthly payment down $212. The equity row has gone from $25,038 to $96,300 since, part principal, part the 2024 appraisal at $297,000, which the refinancing lady ordered and which I typed into the row that same Saturday with no attempt to hide my disbelief. The house line is the boring one. It just goes.
the car line the wrong way
The finance office, spring 2022, and something legal was done to me that I understood only later. Here is the whole trick: trade in the RAV4 with $6,400 of negative equity, roll it into the Highlander loan, 72 months at 6.9 percent, then say the magic sentence, "your payment stays about the same." The payment did stay about the same. The hole went from $9,880 to $31,004 by March 2024. The car line is the red one on the chart, and it pointed down for 26 straight months cuz I kept saying yeah to that sentence.
the fix, 150 a month
January 2025, we attacked it. An extra $150 a month on the Highlander, automatic, every month, no debate permitted, though the receipt rule technically applies and the text has now been sent 18 times. The car line reads negative $24,700 as of August, pointing the right way for 18 straight months. The zero target is December 2027, and the spreadsheet says February 2028, and I have stopped arguing with the spreadsheet.
june, row 78
June 27, 2026. Assets: $214,742, house appraisal, retirement, and a checking balance I finally let breathe. Debts: $114,424, mortgage, Highlander, the last $11,900 of student loans. Bottom cell: $100,318. What pushed it over, honestly, was a June bonus of $2,400 and a 401(k) match true-up of $612 landing the same week, without which the crossing happens in July or August and nobody colors anything. I right-clicked, fill color, green. My wife looked over from the stove and said, "Why is it green?" It just is.
what eighty rows average
The long math, done once, never again: from negative $18,412 to $100,318 is $118,730 across 78 months, call it $1,522 a month. The worst twelve months averaged negative $89 a month, all of 2022, the car. The best twelve averaged $2,961, the year of the refi and the promotion and no emergencies, which the spreadsheet quietly proves was mostly luck. The average hides all of it. The rows do not.
row 81
Row 80 went in on August 29, a Saturday: $104,772. Row 81 gets built September 26, same card table, which we bought a real desk to replace in 2021 and which I kept anyway. The car cell will move the right way for the 19th month. The bottom cell will stay green. That is it. That is the whole spreadsheet.
