July 2026 Net Worth Update: I Paid Off the Car Loan I Took On Six Weeks Ago
Last month I bolted a $99K car loan onto a clean balance sheet, on purpose. I said I'd probably kill it early and go back to being boring. Turns out "probably" meant "one paycheck cycle later."
The $99K auto loan is gone. Net worth is back up to $2.26M. And the balance sheet looks like it did before I bought the car — one loan, the mortgage.
TL;DR:
- Total Net Worth: $2.26M (up ~$23.9K from $2.235M)
- Key Driver: Paid off the $99K auto loan in full — funded by draining the money market, a tactically timed ESPP re-enrollment, and selling the July RSU vest
- Spending: ~$7.7K core (over target) — no repeat of June's car-driven spike
- FI Progress: 45.2% toward $5M (up from 44.7%)
The Bottom Line
| Metric | Value | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Assets | $2.588M | -$75.9K |
| Liabilities | $329.1K | -$99.8K |
| Total Net Worth | $2.259M | +$23.9K |
Net worth $2.26M. Up $662.2K (41.46%) all-time. The line is climbing again after June's dip — though it hasn't reclaimed the top yet.
Assets fell $75.9K and liabilities fell $99.8K — the payoff moved more out of assets than it took off the liability side would suggest at first glance, but the gap is real progress underneath.
| Month | Net Worth | Growth | New Money In | Market Did |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2025 | $2.042M | +$42.5K | $6.1K | $36.4K |
| Jan 2026 | $2.080M | +$38.6K | $24.0K | $14.6K |
| Feb 2026 | $2.134M | +$53.8K | $18.2K | $35.6K |
| Mar 2026 | $2.197M | +$54.0K | $27K | $27K |
| Apr 2026 | $2.240M | +$43K | $9K | $34K |
| May 2026 | $2.270M | +$30K | $4.5K | $25.5K |
| June 2026 | $2.235M | -$34.6K | -$14.2K | -$20.4K |
| July 2026 | $2.259M | +$23.9K | +$11.1K | +$12.8K |
Growth = New Money In + Market Did. July's New Money In folds in a real RSU vest (first one this year), a restarted ESPP contribution, and take-home — minus spending. The loan payoff itself doesn't touch either column; it's a transfer, not growth.
Here's the honest read: markets gave back a modest +$12.8K, and income plus the RSU vest added +$11.1K. Combined, that's most of June's $34.6K drop clawed back in a single month.
One thing worth flagging: $2.259M is still about $10.7K under May's $2.270M peak. It's not a new high yet.
Assets Breakdown: $2.588M
| Asset Class | Value |
|---|---|
| Taxable Brokerage | $992.5K |
| Retirement Accounts | $715.1K |
| Real Estate & Business | $671.1K gross / $342.0K equity |
| Vehicle | $112.0K |
| Cash & Equivalents | $84.8K |
| Crypto | $12.8K |
The big move is Cash — down about $64K, because the money market is where the loan payoff came from. Taxable brokerage dipped slightly despite an RSU vest landing, since those shares got sold toward the payoff. Retirement and real estate barely moved. The car itself is unchanged at $112K — only the loan against it disappeared.
Liabilities: $329.1K
- Mortgage: $329.1K — down another ~$800, autopilot as always.
- Auto Loan: $0 — paid off in full.
- Credit Cards: $0 — paid in full.
Back to one line. The same clean shape as May, just with a car sitting on the asset side and nothing owed against it.
Paychecks and Contributions
Two regular paychecks in July — one mid-month, one at month's end — each ~$9.75K gross. The mid-month check looked strange on paper: net pay north of $23K, more than ten times normal. That's not a bonus. It's the ESPP story below, showing up as a reversal on the paystub.
Same payday: a small wellbeing reimbursement, and the year's first RSU vest — ~$21K gross, ~$6.7K net after tax withholding. Those shares got sold and went toward the payoff too.
YTD Front-Loading (through July)
| Account | YTD | % of 2026 Limit |
|---|---|---|
| 401k Pre-Tax | $16.9K | 69% |
| Mega Backdoor Roth | $26.1K | 56% |
| HSA (Emp + Employer) | $5.4K | 62% |
| ESPP | Restarted for H2 | in progress |
Every account kept moving on schedule. ESPP is the one line that reset — on purpose, not because I stopped contributing.
Spending: $9.8K
July spending: $9,847.80. No car-sized outlier this month — just the usual categories.
Total July spending was $9,847.80. Core spend, excluding the mortgage, was ~$7.7K — over my $5K target, driven by health ($1.5K), dining out ($1.25K), a gift ($1K), and bank fees ($920, the Amex annual fee from June still working through). The $220 "Auto loans" line is the last payment that hit before the loan was cleared.
The payoff itself doesn't show up here — it's a transfer between accounts, not consumption, same treatment as June's car down payment.
How I Actually Paid It Off
$99K doesn't come from nowhere, so let me show the math instead of just the headline.
Lever one: the money market. SNSXX went from $137.6K to $80.8K — about $57K drained. This is the exact playbook from May's M1 loan payoff: if cash sitting at ~4% can retire a loan at 5.25%, that's not a hard call.
Lever two: the ESPP, timed on purpose. Company stock had dropped enough during the first half of the year that a share-count cap kicked in on the end-of-June purchase — I'd have been capped out of buying with the full balance anyway. So instead of letting a capped purchase happen, I withdrew the accumulated ~$21K in contributions as cash and re-enrolled for the second-half window to buy more shares at the reset, lower price. That's not a retreat — it's optimizing for volume at a better entry point, and the cash happened to be useful for the payoff at the same time.
Lever three: the RSU vest. July's vest landed $6.7K net after tax withholding. Sold, and folded into the payoff.
All three landed in the same month. It's less about lucky timing and more that having cash and equity spread across a few different pools meant I could move fast once the decision was made.
Reflections
- Paying it off wasn't a sacrifice — it was the plan. Same logic as May: when a guaranteed-rate loan costs more than idle cash earns, clearing it isn't discipline under threat, it's just math. Nothing else in the budget changed to make it happen.
- Spreading money across a few pools made this easy. Money market, ESPP, RSU vest — three different sources lined up to fund one decision in a single month, without touching retirement or the taxable brokerage.
- Recovered most of June, not all of it. +$23.9K against a −$34.6K drop puts me at $2.259M, still about $10.7K under May's peak. There's still a gap to close.
Next up: whether August clears the May high-water mark for good, and whether that's income, markets, or both.
Your turn. Have you ever timed an ESPP or RSU sale around a life decision, rather than just letting it ride? Or paid off debt faster than you originally planned? Drop a comment — I'd like to hear how you decided.
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