The only significant expense of the month was a wonderful wedding up by the Finger Lakes region of New York where we had a wonderful time. It was a Friday wedding so we drove up early to stay with a college friend. Her family has a cabin on Lake Canandaigua and she graciously let us stay there the night before. We’ve been up there before for holidays and it’s absolutely beautiful. The weather was wonderful, the water looked refreshing, and we were so glad to be able to have a nights sleep after a six hour drive. The wedding the next day was on Lake Seneca and the weather cooperated wonderfully. Afterwards, we stopped by Cornell as one of our friends showed us around his old stomping ground.

All in all, it was a great little weekend mini-vacation.

Irregular Income

As a full time blogger, I pay taxes on a quarterly basis. This means that my income will seem abnormally large for a few months, then drop down significantly for a month, then seem abnormally large for a few months… you get the picture. This is the case for all independent contractors, which is technically my employment status, and I don’t see a need to adjust earnings to account for this. To smooth things out I could adjust my earnings by a suitable withholding amount, say 25%, to make the number seem smoother but that seems like a lot more work than its worth. At the end of the day, the actual number doesn’t matter as much as the meaning behind it and I’ll know the meaning.

If you have irregular income and track your net worth, how do you manage it for your planning purposes? At the moment my income, while irregular, is still pretty stable within reasonable single digit variances. I think of seasonal contractors or teachers as the ones who face this most often when there is a lull in work, how do you, or if you even do, factor this into your net worth tracking?

Laughable Rollover Story

I’ve rolled over my 401(k)s from my two previous employers into Vanguard Rollover IRAs. With the first employer, I wrote about how you should liquidate your funds and then rollover, because otherwise you might find yourself with some dividends left over. Well, I cashed out the dollar or two in the 401(k) and took the 10 cent hit. Three days ago I received another letter, notifying me that my account still had forty cents in it. Unbelievable.

That, and the 401(k) at my last employer had a dollar or two left in them. Argh.

Oh, and the taxes you pay on the withdrawal isn’t even recordable on your return because it’s less than a dollar (and gets truncated).

The Future

Last month we talked about some super-long-term items and then some not so long term, one of them being a pet. That’s still on hold (along with the tankless water heater!) as we’re going to try enjoying life with what we have now rather than adding to it, but they’re still ideas floating around in our mind. Our dishwasher stopped draining so that’s the current minor headache (don’t know if it’s the solenoid, though we don’t hear the thud, or the actual drain pump failing) on the brain right now.

Update: I ordered the pump assembly from AppliancePartPros.com (I chose economy delivery, 4-7 days but it arrived the next day because their distributor is located in Williamsport, PA) and discovered a piece of plastic stuck in the old pump assembly when I removed it. We are lucky the motor didn’t burn out. I put back the original, turned on the dishwasher, and it drains perfectly! I’m going to keep the part around for a few days (thirty day return policy) just in case but it sounds like this mini-disaster was averted.

Until next month!

July ‘08 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Eating Out

We’ve gone out to eat at restaurants less frequently for numerous reasons. First, gas prices have increased the cost of my wife’s commute, which is mitigated by my commute. Second, it’s far healthier to eat home on all accounts. You eat less and what you eat is healthier for you. Third, we need to learn how to cook better which only comes with practice. Eventually, whenever we have kids, eating out will no longer be an option (again, from the health and cost perspective) so it’s better to learn how to cook now than learn under the gun.

Estimated Taxes

Estimated taxes are paid quarterly, for the most part, and so the month in which those payments come due will be times when my net worth will see an “artificial” drop. Technically, that’s not accurate, it’s the other months that are artificially inflated, but you know what I mean. This is one of those cases where understanding the underlying cause explains away any concerns I might have, at least with this reason. Retirement is a totally different issue.

Retirement

Everyone knows that retirement accounts are long term. I know that when I log into my IRA’s, I can’t touch that money, unless I wish to pay a penalty, for another 40 years. However, it’s really difficult to look at the Dow drop 300+ points and not think about how one of our largest account balances is in an account pegged to that metric.

Retirement accounts took a 4.41% cut across the board, the largest single month change in my short adult life. I will do exactly nothing in response, though Todd Harrison, founder and CEO of Minyanville.com, who was a former trader at Galleon Group, Cramer Berkowitz, and Morgan Stanley, is in all cash. (there’s more to it but that’s the headline idea) A lot has happened in the last 10 years, there’s a lot more that will happen in the next 40.

The one thing I won’t be doing is adding to positions outside of the regularly scheduled retirement contributions. I think we already have enough invested in the stock market for our comfort level and unless we settle on our other long term investment goals (kids, college, home), we won’t be adding to our taxable brokerage account.

Actions from May

In May I listed three “action items,” I merely said it was looking towards the future, and I think it’s important to revisit them to see where we’re at. Think of it like my own little checklist of important things to do and where we’re at with them. I want to thank everyone who leaves comments with advice, suggestions, etc. because it definitely helps me out in many of these areas. I don’t have experience in a lot of these things and your insight, even if it’s what you did or what you’ve, is a tremendous help.

• Jewelry Insurance: A year after first discussing it and a few weeks after putting it into a monthly review, I finally got jewelry insurance for my wife’s engagement ring. If you read the article when it first was posted, I invite you to go back and read the comment Tim left as it covers many points I missed or misunderstood.
• Auto insurance: I mentioned earlier this week that being married doesn’t affect car insurance premiums and readers pointed out it was the multi-car discount, not the marriage aspect, that decreased premiums. The process will now be to get car insurance and register the car in Maryland, which includes paying the 5% tax. There may also be a penalty involved because you’re supposed to register a car within 60 days of moving to Maryland (you get a credit for taxes paid elsewhere), so we will see how that plays out.
  One interesting point, when I requested a quote, they lowered my six month premium from $282.60 to $203.30 even though it was a sample quote. This reflects something Dedicated said in a comment: “The discount comes from the wife expectance to drive a portion of the time on the mans vehicle. Thus, his rate goes down.” Cool! The addition of the new car only increased the six-month premium to $355.40. The insurance doesn’t include collision and comprehensive coverage.
• Water heater, Roof: The roof replacement is complete and the charge is sitting on our Citi CashReturns card, due next month. We opted for the 1.2% cash back over the six months 0% financing. 1.2% cashback is $53.40, 6 months 0% financing in a high yield savings account earning 3.50% is about $56 – not worth the effort. Water heater is still pending… the prospect of a tankless option is more and more attractive as energy prices increase.

Looking to the future:

• Further Consolidation: My wife and I still has some accounts floating around out there that have since outlived their usefulness. I made a big push to the last few months to consolidate as many accounts as I could, so we will have to keep plugging along. Consolidation sounds easy enough, they’re just activities that take longer than you expect.
• Getting A Pet: Every once and a while my wife and I watch my parents-in-law’s two Scotties. They’re adorable, lots of fun, and they poop everywhere (most of the time outside). My wife thinks I need more companionship during the day, the SAHMs at the gym don’t count, and so we’ve discussed getting a dog. Right now we’re leaning towards adoption from a local pound because there are so many there, it makes no sense to look elsewhere. An added benefit is that often those dogs have had their shots and are current on everything. Before pulling the trigger, we think it’s important to look at the finances just to be sure.
• Continuing Education: One of the longer term goals we have is for my wife to return to college and get her Masters or a Ph.D. Many programs offer tuition assistance or funding, but some don’t. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. This is one of those farther in the future type things, but one of the reasons why we bought those Series I bonds was because earnings are tax free when used for education. Just something to keep in the back of our minds.
• Kids: Ahhh just kidding, not yet.

June ‘08 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Last month I talked about three things in the future – roof replacement, water heater, and diversification of our investments. The roof is set to be replaced on June 16th, contingent on good weather, at a cost of $4,450. The roofing company offers a six month same as cash option but I think we’re going to put it on the Citi CashReturns card for the 1.2% cashback since interest rates are so low (it’s nearly a wash after taxes, so we figured for simplicity the credit card option was better). We knew the roof needed to be replaced so we were prepared, there won’t be any other financial impact (other than the -$4,450 to the bank account).

As for diversification, my lovely wife and I had a chat about the future on a recent walk around the lake. We plan on outlining major milestones over the next thirty years, as best as we can guesstimate, and then adjust our financial plan to meet those milestones. I’ve come to the realization that after you’ve maximized your 401(k) and Roth IRAs, you have to begin saving for specific goals. We already have a house so that’s one significant goal achieved, so we have to determine the other milestones on the list (such as education) so we can chart a path forward. One idea I had was to use target retirement funds to simplify saving for specific goals.

Looking to the future:

• Jewelry riders and homeowners insurance. We got an appraisal for my wife’s engagement ring and need to add a jewelry rider to our homeowners. I called them up and got a quote for $100 a year for total coverage from our current insurance provider, Travelers, and a quote of $105 from an independent jewelry insurer, Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company. Why haven’t I pulled the trigger? I actually wanted to contact Erie Insurance and figure out whether it’s worth it for us to go with them for homeowners. In thinking about it, I should probably mail off the independent jewelry insurance form and then talk to Erie.
• Auto insurance for my wife may be a little tricky. The title for her car lists her and her father as co-owners, which allows her to be on her parent’s auto insurance. The auto insurance now has four vehicles listed, which probably isn’t good. We should be on the same policy, now that we’re grown ups , but the sticking point is that putting the insurance in Maryland may force her to register the vehicle in Maryland – that’s a 5% tax on the blue book value of the car ($500). We will have to investigate further.
• Water heater is still on the radar but now on the back burner with the roof. We actually just bought a really nice Fridigaire dishwasher (to replace this old Whirlpool dishwasher) for $150 thanks to a find by Fred at One Project Closer. It was a rush sale by a guy who was being foreclosed on and moving out of state in two weeks (yikes), but a great deal. Getting a new dishwasher wasn’t a priority, I had been looking around, but $150 for something worth around $500 was too good to pass up. Quite fortuitous!

One nice benefit of these net worth monthly reviews is that it forces me to think about what we’ve done this past month and what we need to accomplish in the next month. As I was writing, I was forced to think about things I had set off to the side. In looking back, the net worth portion is really a minor part (I mentioned the increase, what was a main contributing factor, and then moved on to more “strategic” level ideas) but I think that’s a good way to approach it. Please let me know what you think!

May ‘08 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

The fall was due to the payment of income taxes for 2007. I paid a pittance in estimated taxes last year because income from this site (and other online ventures) was relatively small and so I wasn’t required to pay much in estimated taxes. However, on April 15th, the piper had arrived and was demanding his money so I wrote some of the largest checks of my life. I had to pay 2007 federal and state income taxes as well as first quarter 2008 estimated taxes to both the feds and Maryland. The end result was chopping off 12.1% of my net worth. However, since it was expected and planned for, it’s not a big deal. Here’s a case of where the numbers don’t tell the whole story and why commentary is always important.

What did I learn from this? Numbers don’t tell the whole story. It’s much like how the weight scale might not show a fall in your body weight but the mirror shows you putting on more muscle and adding definition. Numbers are good but only to a certain extent, so don’t let it get you too high or too low because they can be deceptive. -12.1% of unexplained net worth loss is crippling, but if you know the reason and it’s not indicative of a bigger underlying problem then you’re okay. In this particular case, -12.1% was good because I earned interest on those monies as they sat in a high yield online savings account!

Other notable actions of the month:

• Series I Savings Bonds: We purchased some Series I Savings Bonds near the end of April, $5k each for my wife and myself, in order to lock in the 1.2% fixed rate. Savings bonds don’t give crazy stock market type returns but it establishes a good base and one that is guaranteed. It locks our funds in for at least a year but the earnings are local and state tax free.
• Consolidation of Accounts: I finally rolled over my former employer’s 401(k) plan into my Vanguard account, a process that was both painless and fast. This didn’t net any financial benefits but it means there’s one less account I need to log into and review, so there’s a net time benefit in that one (I did miss out on a couple days of solid stock market increases while the funds were in transition though, boo!, but you can’t plan for those).

Looking to the future:

• Roof replacement: Our roof is leaking and has been leaking for some time now, so a full replacement will need to occur in the next month. This week I’ll contacting a few contractors to get quotes but I estimate the cost will be in the neighborhood of $4,000. It’s a problem we’ve been aware since before the wedding (in February) but there hasn’t been many heavy rains since then so we’ve been lucky.
• Water Heater: Replacing it is on the radar but it’s currently in great working condition, it’s just old, and we may opt to replace it with a tankless version simply for the energy savings. Since it hasn’t been a priority and since the tank is in the basement, it’s been an “out of sight, out of mind” type of situation.
• Diversification: I need to take a hard look at all of our investments and make sure we’ve properly diversified. It’s something that Nickel and I have talked about quite a bit lately. He told me about Vanguard’s Portfolio Watch, which looks like a great way to help facilitate this.

Please share your thoughts below!

April ‘08 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

So, in this return of monthly reviews, I’m going to simply outline the good, the bad, and the ugly of the decisions thus far. From here we’ll see how the month to months go.

Good

• Marriage: Since my wife and I got married this year, our tax situation for 2007 was unchanged. We are, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, are one of the many couples affected by the “marriage penalty” created by uneven tax brackets (married filing jointly brackets are not double the single brackets). Additionally, since the house and mortgage are both in my name, I was itemizing while she was claiming the standard deduction. Next year, we will be hit with the marriage penalty plus the loss of a standard deduction… considering its something we didn’t have much of a choice about it (hush those anti-marriage folks in the crowd!) we’ll just roll with it.
• Going with Accounting Pro: I’m now working with an accountant to handle some of my business taxes and help me become legit with the online enterprises. There comes a time when you just have to pay a professional and it’s now time for me to pay (rather than to be the professional/consultant!). It’s not cheap but it forces a rigor that is far superior than the record-keeping I had been doing before.

Bad

• Capital Gains: I made a mistake last year in selling some funds for capital gains but then not offsetting them with some capital losses that we should’ve taken, that was a big mistake. We took on about $5,000 in short term capital gains without offsetting it, whoops. That was entirely my fault.
• Stupid Fees: In all the marriage madness and my own ignorance, we took five months of $3 fees for having less than $300 in our savings account at Bank of America, despite having more than enough in our checking account. Dumb dumb dumb. We got $15 back, for three months, but they said they couldn’t go back farther. I was going to push for the other $6 but they wouldn’t budge and, honestly, I don’t blame them. One month I can understand, five? Hmmm… I screwed up.

Ugly

• Stock Market Suckage: This is ugly not because we made any bad decisions but only because it’s happened. In our taxable brokerage account, we’ve had about an 11% in loss on the holdings stretching back into Q4 of last year. That’s pretty gnarly, but nothing we can do, and we’re just going to set it in forget it.
• Honeymoon: Honeymoon is expensive and one of my vices is splurging on vacations. You only get married once right?

The Future

• Rolling Over 401(k)s: We need to investigate the rolling over of all of our legacy 401(k)s to our Vanguard, each of us has one legacy 401(k) to move. It’s not a difficult process, we just need to hammer out the specifics of doing the trustee-to-trustee rollover process for each account. Don’t want to take a disbursement… that’d be ugly (and foolish).
• Consolidating Accounts: We also need to start consolidating all those excess accounts so we can simplify our finances. The process is made much more difficult as my wife is changing her name so we’ll have to wait for those to shake out before we can finalize all of these. I personally have too many accounts to keep track of so it would be good to start cleaning these up.

I hope this satisfies the voyeurs out there, at least for now, but look for more updates starting in May.

Return of Monthly Reviews! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

That being said, I have to say that January was another strong month financially for various reasons:

• My fiancee was promoted again (it’s like her second promotion in six months, I’ve actually never been promoted). Her meteoric rise from a “technician” (I don’t really know their job titles but this was essentially a temp job) working second shift to project manager of that product line took little more than a year. While I don’t talk much about what she does, I figure this is as good a place as any to celebrate!
• Blogging income is still growing, thank you everyone for reading and commenting (I just went full feeds too). It was exciting seeing this site mentioned in the New York Times this past weekend, I always get excited when cool things like that happen.
• I began dabbling in PPC (I spent less than $10 in January) so affiliate income may become a more significant source of revenue in the future once I get my tracking down.

Some things on the horizon that I might be talking more about in the near future:

• Taxes naturally, specifically all the taxes I’ll need to pay on the self-employment income. I’ll also be investigating the use of a tax professional in the area so that will make for some thrilling reading if you’re into taxes.
• While I won’t blog much about the wedding planning, it’s certainly on the brain. While expensive, everything seems to be priced within reason with the exception of freaking photographers. Why does it cost $3000+ to get someone to spend 4-6 hours taking photos and the end product being a 24 page book and some blown up shots? $3000 for a really nice reception hall rent, sure I’ll buy it (you have all sorts of costs), but getting me to shell out three large for the photographer is going to be a little tough.

January ‘07 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

If you’re struggling through debt, posting the amount of debt you have gives you motivation to work harder at paying it off. As you pay, you watch that number shrink. As you pay, your readers celebrate your one step closer to debt freedom. But who celebrates when Random Joe Blogger adds another X% to his net worth? I know I don’t really care and I’m pretty sure no one else really cares either.

What people care about are the things you did, not the amount you saved, and so my monthly personal finance updates will now focus on any personal finance related decisions I’ve made in the last month and not on the dollar amounts. Do you think it is a mistake? Do you welcome this change? Do you not really care? Please share your thoughts!

No More Figures in Net Worth Posts from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Net Worth: $174,329.82 (+5.04%)

Retirement Assets: $79,161.53 (+9.90%)

Before the crowd goes wild, the huge uptick in the retirement assets had to do in part with the fact that I contributed 90% of my income into my 401k in December (I planned on doing it in November but I didn’t submit the request in time) in order to reduce my taxable income. I’ve since pulled it back to more earthly numbers.

The major increases in net worth are in large part due to my fiancée and I combining our assets and me starting to count some of those assets in the net worth values. I included our joint banking accounts and her high yield savings account (I’ve moved our emergency funds and other savings into her account to lower the tax liability since we’re still filing as singles) but left a couple things out because I didn’t want to bug her about it.

The blog experienced some growth and I will likely see a net worth slowdown in April as I reconcile my taxes for the blog, I don’t think my standard withholding and my deductions will cover the income from the site anymore. I’ll also be looking into quarterly estimated payments and incorporating into a nice little consulting/blogging business. In fact, I already have one client that I’m helping monetize their site and it’s been pretty good going. In the first month I increased their earnings by nearly a multiple of five and then followed that up with an increase of another 300% times. If this interests you, give me a shout and we can talk.

Finally, one thing I was very proud of was our ability to donate as much money as we did (it’s not really that much in an absolute scale but it’s a lot for us just starting out in life) to various philanthropies both nationally and locally. It means a lot to my fiancée and me to be able to give back and we’re thinking about also donating time in addition to money in 2007. Also, If you’ve read our goals for 2007, we’re looking to give back to our respective high schools in some way, perhaps sponsoring a small scholarship of some kind… I think that would be exciting stuff.

Alright, that’s it, have a happy new year!

December ‘06 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

November was one of those truly good months in which nothing bad happened – everyone is healthy, the cars are running well, and the house is still in great shape. For all you number lovers, more after the jump.

Net Worth: $161,957.79 (+3.74%)
Retirement Assets: $69,029.34 (+2.26%)

I wrote a few days ago that I was going to contribute 90% of my income into my 401k but unfortunately that didn’t pan out – apparently I didn’t submit the request early enough (I submitted it on the 27th).

So, where did that retirement asset boost come from if not from my own contributions? It came from huge gains by my stock investment in Airtran Airways, which was upgraded by Bear Stearns and spiked up around 20% to around where I bought it. Funny thing is that Bear Stearns was the one that downgraded it in mid-October which led to its drop in the first place.

One thing that was pretty exciting this past month was that it marked the third consecutive month that this site generated more income than my starting salary at my “real” job three years ago. This is part of the reason why I was motivated to investigate whether I could really contribute 90% of my income to my 401(k) and because at this rate I was going to get phased out of being able to contribute to a Roth IRA – something I had already done for 2006.

See you next month!

November ‘06 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

All the gory details are after the jump.

Net Worth: $146,886.30
Retirement Assets: $67,501.11

Normally there are percentages next to those number, they’ll return next month.

Here are some things of note that have changed in my financial picture since I last wrote one of these:

• I’m engaged. While the numbers above partially reflect some of my fiancée’s assets and liabilities, they don’t reflect all of them. In fact, the only financials on her side that are counted are those that we share in a joint bank account where we both direct deposit our paychecks but that hasn’t been significant since we’ve only had about a month of paychecks deposited in there so far.
• I switched jobs. Hopefully my net worth growth curve will be elevated with the increase income but it also experienced a slight blip as a result of my former employer paying me for two and a half weeks of vacation. That temporary blip will be very temporary as I’ve already put that away for my new windows and doors.
• I paid off one 0% balance transfer. It was the Citi mtvU card, a 6 month offer, that got paid off. After all these 0% balance transfer deals expire, I’ll probably stop doing them. While it’s taken only a small amount of time, there is a lot of hassle involved and I’ve gotten too busy as my new job to really have the energy to stay on top of these.
• Opened Up A Vanguard Account For Extra Savings. My fiancée opened up a Vanguard mutual fund account (we put it in her name since she’ll be in a lower tax bracket and we aren’t yet married) and we’ve deposited $5,000 into it and put it with an index fund, this will be the first time any one of us has invested money in the market outside of a retirement account (401k or Roth).

Some thoughts on my mind:

• Rolling over my 401(k). I was looking at the fees on my former employer’s 401(k) plan funds and most of them were under 0.7% with the exception of the Emerging Markets fund which had a whopping 1.5% fee. While Emerging Markets had performed quite well for me, I am debating whether or not I should just push my 401(k) to a Vanguard IRA and put it in a Target Retirement fund.
• Business Income. This blog has been incredible, all of the folks who read it are incredible, and I’ve been lucky to make even a penny off just writing my thoughts on money. That being said, I have no idea what I should do with this extra income. Right now it just gets lumped into my bank accounts and pretty much disappears into the numbers (with the mental note that we’re probably saving it for the wedding) but I’d like to earmark it for something bigger after we’ve saved enough for the wedding. I’ve thought about using it as a down payment on a rental property but I think I need to research that a little bit more before I do anything drastic.
• Budgeting Daily Expenses and Being More Frugal. I’ve been really really lax on this the last year or so. Part of that was because I was over-diligent before I bought the house and I may have been burned out because of it, keeping track of expenses pretty much sucks honestly, but you have to do things you don’t like to do in order to achieve the goals you want to achieve. Another part of the reason was that this blog started to earn money and I saw that money as “free.” I wasn’t really “working” for it and so any excess spending I had would be covered by this income… that’s a bad strategy, it’s a lazy and irresponsible strategy, so I’m going to change it.

Well, that’s that, tune in next month to see how things have progressed and if you have any advice, as always, I welcome it with open arms.

October ‘06 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

First, I proposed to my girlfriend while we were on top of a mountain in Lake Tahoe on the 27th of July (she said yes) and I will be starting my new job of the 28th of August. Yes, I proposed on 7/27 and will be switching jobs on 8/28… I love palindromes (and coincidences and sarcasm). The workings of these events all occured in the last few weeks and I hadn’t blogged about them (much) because I wanted to get word out in other ways and make things official before I wrote about them. (For those of you keeping score with the net worth updates and how I haven’t had one in a few months, I didn’t want the numbers to clue anyone to the fact that I was going to propose… net worth updates will continue as usual in September October)

So… expect to be reading a little about the first and a lot about the process of the second in the coming days or weeks.

I’m Engaged & I’m Switching Jobs from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Own any stocks do ya? May was a pretty rough month for the ole retirement portfolio with the S&P dropping 3.1%, the Dow slipping 1.75%, and the Nasdaq Composite plummeting 6.2% – I felt pretty happy only falling 5.4% in an emerging markets heavy retirement portfolio. Compare that with VWO, Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock VIPERs, which fell 11.54% and that 5.42% doesn’t look so bad…

If you noticed, the net worth figure increased by 1.66% despite a “significant” drop in my retirement assets, that’s mostly because of blog earnings since my regular salary hasn’t changed and my spending has, on the whole, maintained the same level. Other than that, nothing significant worth mentioning.

One change in my Net Worth calculations was the inclusion of $7,300 in credit card debt that I’m now carrying month to month for arbitrage reasons (that debt is offset by a balance my bank account). The most challenging aspect of seeing $7,300 extra money in my Emigrant Direct bank account is mentally separating it from my own money. I see the $7,300 in there and there’s no risk that I’ll “accidentally” spend it but I have to remember it’s not mine.

I can’t wait until July 1st when the energy bills spike.

May ‘06 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

April, like March, was a great month for several reasons:
1) Blog – Again, the blog accounted for a nice part of the 8.73% networth increase. When I started doing all this I told my girlfriend all I wanted was for it to pay for a vacation a year, it’s done so much more and I’m thankful to all the folks who spend time each day reading.
2) Tax Refund – I bought a house nearly a year ago and I’ve been paying more than my fair share of taxes (only a little more). I can thank Uncle Sam’s honesty for a nice boost a few weeks ago.

I think I’m really messing up my retirement assets (Roth specifically) by playing around in the stock market. You see that the retirement assets amount has increased by 4.23% and you are led to believe that it’s been a good run (and it has been) but a large part of that is because of my heavy allocation in emerging markets (and it’s strong performance). What you don’t see is that I keep screwed myself over by playing around with the money in my Roth.

My Roth consists of four holdings right now, two of which are underwater.

The two I’m underwater on are Amazon (AMZN) and Ford (F). In work emails, my friends often write ‘f’ instead of the full four letter, more colorful, equivalent; sometimes I feel like Ford is seriously f’ing me. I bought Ford after it tanked a few weeks ago thinking that it had finally hit its low and was going to make a comeback. I felt that auto was last year’s airlines and since Ford was profitable as a whole and sitting on a ton of cash, it was a much better play than General Motors (GM). I’m down -15.76% on Ford as of today.

Amazon, however, is a different story. I’m a fan of the company and I’m an Amazon Associate so they pay me a nice little check every quarter. The reason I bought into them is because I like Amazon, I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, and they reported a bad quarter and were, in my opinion, punished unfairly for it. Since then they’ve been up and down and as of today I’m down -9.56% on Amazon.com.

Of the two that have been profitable…

The first is Cap Rock Energy Corporation (RKE), a special situation investment I bought into after test trying Fat Pitch Financial’s Contributor Corner (it’s pretty sweet honestly, George writes about his investments after the fact for those interest). You can win a month simply by being the most active member of Fat Pitch News, a Digg-like site for financial news. Honestly, RKE was a sure-fire win because they’re buying back shares at $21.75 and I bought them at $20.45.

The other company I hold is Disney (DIS). I bought them prior to their Q1 earnings announcement, which were favorable, and I’ve held them since. I’m up +10.57% on that trade.

So why do I say I’ve been screwed myself? I could’ve saved myself all the heartache (not that much heartache, it doesn’t bother me when Ford tanks 7% in one day because I don’t have that much money in it and I don’t plan to touch it for 40 years) by investing in an index fund like every other intelligent person.

At least my 401(k) is kicking ass instead of kicking my ass…

April ‘06 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Net Worth: $115,365.77 (+3.19%)
Retirement Assets: $57,193.22 (+3.90%)

This past March has been very good to me and the biggest reason for the net worth increase was this very blog. We were able to sell some very solid advertising and it appears that the hard work I’ve put into this baby is starting to come into fruition. As for the retirement asset improvement, some of that had to do with me creating a SEP-IRA and a pretty healthy return from my 401(k).

I doubt I’ll see as many good months as this past one but one can always hope!

March ‘06 Net Worth Monthly Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Total Liabilities: $257,594.76
About $24k of that is student loans which are currently in deferrment until I complete my studies at Johns Hopkins and the balance of that amount is from my home mortgage.

Total Assets: $384,714.93
The vast majority of that asset value is in the home, appraised at $299k. Approximately $16k go towards my 2003 Toyota Celica (Kelley Blue Book value), $55k in my retirement accounts, and a little over $15k stuffed into my mattress.

Net Worth: $127,120.17
Before you say, wow that’s a great net worth for someone who is 25, $40k of that is in the form of a “gift” from my parents that went to the purchase of my home. While by all accounts it was a gift, on a personal level I see it as a loan I want to repay, even if they don’t see it that way. I’ve mentioned this in the past before and readers have said that I should count that in my net worth, but in my mind I don’t.

My February 2006-end Net Worth: $87,120.17

February 2006 – Monthly Net Worth Review from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.