Putting this together I can’t help but reflect where I’ve come from.  What choices I’ve made.  Ultimately, what I could have done differently to be further ahead in life.  It’s a work in progress as always, but if you’re curious about my past, I am putting together a quick timeline that elaborates on some of the main decisions I made regarding finances (how they impact our net worth) since 1997. 

Net Worth

My goal here is yet again goal accountability and am excited to see where this set of data will lead us over time.  Since this is just the beginning there is not so much data to analyze. Just a snapshot of where we sit financially. Future posts will contain summations of what caused the fluctuations in the graph you see below. Here we will examine the big picture and speculate future growth, as months go by. Just take a look! (Update: the graph below is broken, but I am working on a fix.)

 A History

To give some context to our Net Worth position as of today, I felt it important to share where we’d come from. My wife’s financial history is pretty much a constant record of no assets, and no liabilities. My own is more of a tragic story. I can’t easily go back and display a month by month historical record of this story, I can however share a few monumental moments of my financial life.

January 2010

We begin in January 2010 because it marks the pinnacle of my Life’s Net Worth before marriage. I was 27 years old, and had just changed career paths from land development to personal finance coaching. My assets, totaling $216,000, included a townhouse, a timeshare, A dodge truck and a harley. The problem were my liabilities were $178,600 due to the debt I was still paying off. One number I never want to look at is how much I lost in interest payments on these loans. All-in, my net worth was just shy of $38,000. I remember feeling proud that I had a positive net worth at the time. Truth be told, the only way it was possible was a gift from my parents to help purchase my townhome in 2008.

December 2012

Moving on! What could change in three years? Starting a new business is hard. Anyone will tell you that. It’s even harder with debt, and more so with poor spending habits! I had both. At the end of a failed career venture my Net Worth had dropped $60,000. Partly due to my townhouse’s devaluation, the rest from credit card usage for ongoing debts and living expenses during the three year period with little income to counter it. It was a dark period.

August 2013

For the next eight months, with the help of family, I was able to chunk away at the debt. After what they did, I owe a lot to my parents. They truly reformed my situation, for that I will be eternally grateful. Not being quite out of the woods, My net worth rebounded just shy of where I had left off just 3 ½ years prior. Which couldn’t have been timed more perfectly because this period marks the moment when I first traveled to Italy, or in other words started a family and gained increased life purpose.

May 2017

Which brings us to May 2017. Since Moving to Italy, most of our American liabilities have subsided. With steady income coming mainly from the Italy, we have a nice simple life, with a wonderful growing family. One of the most beneficial steps we’ve taken to increase our Net Worth was the purchase of a ‘Villa a Schiera’ on Auction just south of Milan.  We were able to pick it up for 30 cents on the dollar. Of course our net worth will fluctuate based on the market, but for now we’ve given a very conservative value for the property we’ve purchased since Italy still suffers from a market recession.

June 2017

Based on our most recent events, we have had quite the bump in Net Worth.  Sure it’s dependent on a lot of things. The real estate market for one is where most of our value lies. Soon to be paired with some growing business ventures. This past update covered a 2 month period, but our net worth increase is largely due to one event. On June 23rd amidst our family festivities, we attended and won a property auction. It’s definitely a fixer-upper, but we couldn’t have asked for a better deal. We’ll be posting updates shortly, but what is important now are the gains. As of this update we stand to make $41,300 on a deal we are working on. Good money for a quick flip.  For the data above I’ve depicted an increase based on our long term strategy of fixing and selling the property as newly remodeled. In such a situation, we stand to gain approximately $75,000. Of course these are hypothetical.  I plan very soon to graphically present a marginal range of our net worth that would account for potential market changes.

January 2018

We made another auction purchase on the 17th of January. This one was an entire floor of a large apartment complex. Our intention is to remodel it a bit and rent it. By remodel, I mean to split it into two properties. You can read about that here. As of today, we are still waiting for the processes to finish on the last two properties we purchased. We ran into some trouble with the one from last June, so we still have not received the keys for it. 

The Future

What does the future hold for Team Dauvo? We’re looking into more auction purchases at the moment. With good preparation, and a little bit of luck, our net worth is set to blast-off!