Personal Balance Sheet and Mutual Fund #4

What is your personal net worth? What is your families net worth? If you don't know this number off the top of your head, you probably need to look at building a personal balance sheet. No I'm not talking about getting all fancy and binning items into short-term or long-term assets and liabilities, but rather a simple format for knowing how much your personal net worth is.

Take your 401k, Roth/Traditional IRA balance, CD's, mutual funds, stocks, cash, bank balances, Personal Property (house, car, jewelry, electronics, furniture) and assign a current value for those items. These items totaled together will make up your asset side.

Now take all the balanced based debts you have and total those up. They would include, mortgage, car loan, personal loan, student loans, credit cards, and any other obligation that has a balance due on it. This does not include items like gas, electric, water, or cable. Those are expenses, and should not be included here.

Now when you have your total assets and your total liabilities, you just subtract assets - liabilities = net worth.

This number will help you determine how far away from or close to your financial goals you are. I do a personal balance sheet the first of every month and archive them to compare and contrast where I am and where I was.

Mutual Fund #4
Bridgeway Aggressive Investors 2

I really thought this was going to be my number one pick in January. With a 31.7% total return for the year to date, the Bridgeway fund has invested in my personal favorite companies this year, including: CROX, DECK, AMZN, and PCU among others, so they know how to find emerging growth companies. They summarize their fund best when their goal is to exceed total market returns. Isn't that what all mutual funds should be striving for?

At an IRA initial contribution of $2000 and $500 additional it will require slightly more cash to maintain the fund, but its 5-year annualized growth rate of 21.99% is enough of a sign that your money is going to the right place.

They sport a 1.19% expense ratio, and of course no load.