I finally have time to write about our 2018. I still have to rebalance our portfolio. I should have probably have done it in December but I was so busy I didn't have time.

Well I already maxed out our 2019 Roth IRA contributions today. I had it transferred and will roll it into the Roth IRA next week. I also interesting made DH's company match be after tax dollars into his 401k. I will discuss with DH the ESA contributions for the girls at $2k each.

So we are in a conundrum in 2019. Should we contribute more to the 401k after tax? And roll it into our Roth IRA? Or should we do taxable investing? Hard choices.

We increased our net worth for 2018 by $27k. Mostly by paying down our debts.

We lost around $1000 on our retirement savings after contributing $36k including the company match. UGH. So we lost $37k on our retirement accounts.

Our taxable accounts we lost $21k in value. So we were down $58k in our investments. Our cash decreased $12k for the year. So how did we increase our net worth?

Paying off our debts. So we officially saved $28.5k to retirement and everything else went to debt. We paid off a ton of debt. Our car on lease we bought out $18k, but started year with $21k in December. Paid our home renovations $35k the 2nd half that we had started paying 9/2017. We also paid off $10k I owed my mom for college I had forgotten to pay for years. She had my written IOU. We also paid private school tuition $7800, $5000 braces for DH and DK1 and our mortgage went down $20k and $5k on minivan through regular payments.

Since the stock market was wild and down for 2019 I obviously A LOT of bang for our buck paying down and cash flowing all those debt. Perhaps long term we might have done okay investing close to $75k cash but we also would have lost say 10% or $7500 this year and had to have made it up somewhere. This way instead we have a paid for car, a forgotten student loan paid, and all medical bills free and clear.

All in all I am satisfied with 2018. My goal for 2019? Bulk up our savings and not spend all that money we used paying off debt to pay off more debt