Since I use pear budget I can see how I stuck to our budget for the year or not.  I can also plan accordingly for 2010 based on our spending in 2009.  Since I do an annual budget broken down monthly, this is the most important time for my budget.  I don’t worry about going over or under monthly, but let things rollover if there is a surplus or borrow against a category if not.

I’ve been doing this for 3 years now, I can pretty easily guess and manage my spending.  So how’d it go?   I should probably start with updating our net worth for the month.   It was a good month, we increased our net worth by $9k or 3.3%.

So did 2009 turn intoa  good year financially?  One would say yes.  The stock market helped tremendously obviously.

Our total net worth increase of $66k was a lot.  We paid off about $9k of our mortgage and saved $30k, but the rest of gains from the market.  If 2010 is so generous to us we should be doing well.

I think 2010 might be a good year financially for us, because we plan on paying off a large chunk of my DH’s student loans.  Got the paperwork in the mail and the repayment starts in September @ a fixed 6.8% interest because they are subsudized stafford loans.  Since we’ll be paying off at least $15kor more, this will likely affect our net worth more than even our investments.  And at 6.8% I find it hard to beat that return on investment. 

Granted I’m not sure what a baby costs and I could be completely wrong and we go into a spending frenzy and end up running through savings due to unexpected medical expenses, etc.  But overall 2009 was a fantastic year for us.  Hope 2010 remains the same.