July 2008 Net Worth – $85,339.30

We managed to just eek out a positive month in July. It's a little frustrating to watch my portfolio continually get beat down, but I'm staying the course and anticipating the eventual bounce back. The wife is no longer working, so we're down to one income. Her school schedule for the upcoming semester just didn't allow time for fitting in even a part time job. We've moved from DINK's to SINK's. On the positive side, a couple of investment opportunities have presented themse...

June 2008 Net Worth – $84,881.80

I ran these numbers at the beginning of the month, but I haven't gotten around to publishing them until now. Maybe because the numbers were kind of depressing. June was pretty brutal to the stock market and we felt the effects in all of our investment accounts. Our last two months were pretty strong so it kind of stinks to take a step backwards this month. See the results below. (more…)

May 2008 Net Worth – $87,264.27

After having our largest net worth increase ever last month, we followed it up this month with our 2nd largest ever net worth increase, beating the previous record by just a few dollars. Two strong months in a row like that let me know we are doing something right. We hit a couple of minor milestones this month as my 401k crossed $20k and my Roth IRA crossed $30k. Our entire net worth 1 year ago was only a little over $50k, so it's kind of cool to have that in just two accounts today...

April 2008 Net Worth – $82,394.84

Wow! April turned out to be a surprisingly good month for us. In fact, $6,587.24 is the largest net worth gain in a month that we've ever had. And the good news is that it wasn't due to any one time irregular income like a tax rebate or economic stimulus payment (still waiting for those). This is simply what's possible when our monthly investment contributions aren't erased by market declines. We hit the $80k milestone this month, 5 months after hitting the $70k milestone. The follow...

March 2008 Net Worth Snapshot

Things got a little better for us in March and we posted a gain of $2,571.12. You'll see that we took some money out of Emigrant Direct, but we used it to make a $2,000 deposit into the wife's Roth IRA. That $2,000 will ensure that she hits her 2008 $5,000 limit as she is currently dollar cost averaging into it at a rate of $3,000/year. Hopefully this is the beginning of better things to come. After today's run up, if these were today's numbers, instead of yesterday's, the gains wou...

February 2008 Net Worth Snapshot

Despite a significant market drop on the last day of the month, we still managed a small amount of positive growth for the month of February. We pay our mortgage bi-weekly, and this was a month where one of the extra half-payments was paid directly into the principle. We put the surplus cash we had into Emigrant Direct for now, but it will most likely find it's way into one of our Roth IRAs in the coming months. As I've said in the past, the lower stock prices should be a good thing for...

January 2008 Net Worth Snapshot

A brutal start to 2008. We eked out a positive gain of $224.24 only because the market had a couple of positive days at the end of the month. In order to reach our 2008 net worth goal, we'll now need to average a gain of $3,000/month for the rest of the year. A tall order considering we only averaged a gain of $2,171/month in 2007. In the long run, the drop in stock prices should be a good thing for us, and we're trying to take advantage by buying while prices are low. We deposited th...

Net Worth Growth Chart: 2005 Through 2007

Sometimes it's nice to have a visual representation of your progress. With that said, here's what our last three years look like: (Click the picture to view full size)

2007 Our Financial Year in Review

We are pretty happy with 2007. We met our major goal of a $70,000 net worth and we got rid of all debt other than our mortgage. We increased our net worth by about 20% more than we did in 2006. Sometimes I feel like we could be doing a little better but it seams like each month we face some large expense either expected or unexpected. Like usual, we have high hopes for the upcoming year and we'll continue to seek financial progress. Total Increase: $26,054.79. (At that pace it wou...

December 2007 Net Worth Snapshot

December wasn't a particularly impressive month, but considering the extra expenses we had, (Chirstmas, tuition for spring semester, and a trip across the country to see the in-laws), and the continued poor performance of the market, I guess we should be happy with our $1,000 gain. We made an extra $350 payment to the wife's Roth IRA. Her automatic investments it currently at a rate that gets her to $3000 for the year. So, in order to max her Roth, we need to come up with an extra $1...