May 2009 Net Worth – $90,562.90
May was another good month for us, especially when you consider that it includes our trip to Europe where we spent a lot of money. We hit the $90k milestone for the first time. It’s an obvious indicator of how the “tough economic times” affected our net worth because we had been consistently hitting $10k milestones every 4 to 5 months, but this one took 13 months as you can see below. May ‘09 – $90k (13 months) Apr. ‘08 Continue article...April 2009 Net Worth – $84,608.02
April earned us our second largest net worth increase ever. I suppose it’s still too early to say things are turning around.March 2009 Net Worth – $77,845.01
If you’re wondering what happened to the money in our Emigrant Direct account, well, we’re taking a vacation to Europe this summer. The wife is graduating college and this is her little reward.February 2009 Net Worth – $75,485.48
January 2009 Net Worth – $79,264.41
December 2008 Net Worth – $80,462.58
While 2008 was not the best year for our net worth, December, surprisingly, turned out to be the best month we have ever had. When the stock market stops working against us, we’ll be hoping to have months like this more often.
The fact that we had such a good month is particularly nice considering the extra expenses we had this month. Not only did we have the usual extra holiday expenses, but my wife managed to bang her car Continue article...
November 2008 Net Worth – $73,317.70
Hopefully the stock sale will continue into January (I have no doubts that it will) so I can load up our 2009 Roth IRA’s at these discount prices.
Interestingly enough, it was exactly two years ago, in November of 2006, that my Roth IRA surpassed the $20,000 mark for the first time. Back then little did I imagine that I would pass the same mark again 2 years later in November of 2008, but this time heading in the Continue article...
October 2008 Net Worth – $77,508.84
An important part of determining your asset allocation is knowing your risk tolerance. Unfortunately, you never really know your risk tolerance until you start watching your money disappear. When markets are climbing, everyone thinks they have a high risk tolerance and they load up on stocks because it’s not worth getting some safety from investments like bonds which have lower returns.
If, during these rough times, you find yourself wanting to sell your stocks or move all your money Continue article...
September 2008 Net Worth – $86,009.44
What can I say, the financial crisis is doing an efficient job of giving our investment portfolio a beat down. It is looking increasingly impossible for us to hit $100,000 by the end of the year. We’ve increased our net worth by about $14,000 so far this year, and we’re still about $14,000 away.
It’s not fun to consider things like the fact that 1 year ago my Roth IRA was worth more than it is today and I’ve Continue article...
August 2008 Net Worth – $88,811.12
June and July were a bit rough on our net worth, so we were glad that August turned out to be a pretty decent month for us. A $3,471.82 gain is our 3rd highest gain this year, and our 7th highest gain of all time.
I’ve accumulated a bit of money in my Emigrant Direct account which will hopefully find its way into an investment opportunity in the coming months.
We’ll need the last 4 months of the year to be Continue article...
