April 2008 Networth Update: Assets -0.2%; Liabilities -1.9%; Networth +2.6%

Ok. So April's update is a bit late. I have been super busy doing research on a business investment. I was thinking of not posting this but for continuity's sake...here we go.

Assets - This month my assets essentially didn't move at all! 0.2%, give me a break.
Liabilities - This month I paid off the standard amount on the student loans and car. I made some good progress on the credit card debt paying down 4% of the total credit card balance! I liiike.

Assets - Liabilities = Networth

I saw a modest 2.6% bump in my networth. Slow and steady and sticking to the plan!

Check out the details here. (April Networth)



Cheers,
TMac

March 2008 Networth Update: Assets: -4.5%; Liabilities: -3%; Networth: +2.3%

Hello All,

I know that March's update is a bit late, but I hadn't even had the time to download my account activity into quicken till Sunday. A whole month's worth of transactions takes quite a bit of time to catergorize!

Anyway onto this Month's Summary...

I had a pretty decent month and didn't even pay that much attention to my finances since the majority of my bills are on auto-pilot. My cash accounts went down a good percentage this month, but this is mainly due to how my girlfriend and I have decided to handle our money and joint expenditures. It could also be in fact that we bought a 42 inch plasma with a sound system just in time for March Madness, but I digress!

I kicked some credit card a$$ last month by paying down over $1300 in credit card debt alone. The other debt accounts were lowered by the same amount that they have been for a long time now since they are fixed payment, low interest loans. I just kind of leave those guys alone, but don't worry student loan your day will come when I unleash the full fury of larger payments like the credit cards are experiencing right now!

Even after the decreased cash flow this month, I still bumped up my overall networth by 2.3% to $-46,167. I am hoping to be able to make.

From now on, I will be including reporting on actual expense catergories. I would have included it sooner, but the numbers are all skewed from the move earlier this year.

(Click on image for larger view)

Cheers,
TMac

February 2008 Networth Update: Assets: -19%; Liabilities: -1%; Networth: -11%

Well February was a rough month. I practically gave back all my gains that I have made over the past year. Alot happened in February to make it a tumultuous month. Namely - I quit my job in DC, bought myself out of my lease and moved to NY and in with my girlfriend and took a job at a one of the largest financial services firms on Wall Street.

Now that the GF and I are sharing expenses, I suspect my numbers to rebound quickly as compared to past dips in networth. Unfortunately I borrowed $2500 from my parents, liquidated $2500 from my Roth and tapped the E-FUND to fund the lease break and the move. Paying those funds back are of utmost importance to me at this point. Once I start getting a regular paycheck from the new job I will be calculating my annual goals. I haven't done this yet since so much was up in the air.

Anyway, check out the numbers for yourself:

Cheers,

TMac

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December 2007 Networth - Assets +4.4%, Liabilities -1.5%, Networth +4.7%

Well I haven't been posting in a while and I actually missed my November networth update. I apologize for that!

Anyway the month of December was pretty strong since I was able to pay for most of my Christmas purchases in cash.

I think that the big accomplishment this month was I was able to pay down a good about of my credit card debt.

Anyway I am keeping this short and sweet.

 

Cheers,
TMac

October 2007 Networth - Assets -1.57 %, Liabilities -1.07 %, Networth +0.82 %

Well the month of October has come and gone and now it is time for the low down dirty details as to where I stand compared to September.


Actually it looks like I am standing in almost the exact same place as I was in at the beginning of the month. About halfway though the month I changed around my direct deposit accounts which in turn resulted in me logging into my debt accounts to change the accounts from which they were drawing their funds. When doing this I was noticing accrued interest on the accounts that my Quicken didn't pick up. As a result I "trued-up" the account balances in Quicken to reflect the accrued interest charges.


Assets:
My assets went down about 1.5% this past month mainly due to a lower than normal account balance in my checking account and a small loss in my Roth IRA account.

Liabilities:
On the liabilities front I was able to retire $731 of my debt. Most of that came from paying down student loans and the loan on the Passat. Unfortunately I was only able to reduce my outstanding debt on my credit cards by $53. This is due to an unexpected mid-month balance transfer. I missed a payment on my Citi card that was sitting at 0% while I was at work in Richmond. Once I got the statement I noticed a huge charge for accrued interest which instantly set off my alarms. I called Citi to see if they would reenact my 0% if I cut them a check immediately - they denied the request. As a result I had to Xfer the debt to another card. After the Citi fees and the balanace Xfer fees I only netted a negative $53 towards my credit cards.

Looking Forward:
November does not look like a good month for making positive gains in my Networth. I have all my regular expenditures that I will need to pay plus I have a few things that will negatively impact my networth.

1. Car Insurance - my car insurance is due in November. That will be about $420 out of pocket that I will need to pay. When I was with ING I had an account specifically for the accrual of money for car insurance, however, I inadvertently liquidated this account when I left ING and I used some of the proceeds towards paying for other things. BAD TMAC! :-(
2. Auto Service - Also related to my car I have come up to my 30,000 mile service. This is one of the big scheduled service events for my car. Unfortunately the local VW dealer will bend me over for this one. I am expecting it to be in the neighborhood of $300.
3. Decreased Car Value - Related to #2, I am going to adjust down the value of my car in my Quicken account based on the new mileage which will further reduce my assets.
   
4. Thanksgiving - throw in a trip to Boston to see family and friends that I haven't seen in about a year and that will make for a quasi-expensive weekend. Luckily I was able to talk dad into footing the bill for the flight home to Boston (arguably the most expensive part) if I promised to drive up for Christmas. Now I just need to find a way to save some money on drinks and getting around!
   

November is going to be killer.

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July Networth - Ohh So Late

I don't put a whole lot of stock in net worth as a measure of wealth, but I do value the exercise of performing the calculation because it forces me to address the amount of debt in my life.

Since my MS Money meltdown I have been flying without any financial management tool's help. I must say that the manual process of going into each account I have and noting the balance as of July 31, 2007 is a big pain in the ass.

The fruits of my labor were not surprising. My net worth went down like the stock market. I am currently running a net worth of -46,087 which means I lost 1.8% over last month's progress. Please see the net worth IQ graph in the sidebar for a visual.

This month was tough, I took about a grand from the girlfriend as a small personal loan to help keep myself liquid during the move. It ended up working, but I think that I am going to have some serious issues moving forward with cash flow due to me having to foot the new apartment all by my lonesome.

I think that I am going to switch to Quicken. Today I got a $10 coupon in the mail and commenter "adammm" was extolling the virtues of said program after my MS Money fiasco. How much different could Quicken be to Money?

Unfortunately, I don't think that August is going to be any better. More details to follow.

Photo Credit: Man's Daily Struggle

June Networth

OK. I know I am delinquent in posting my financial update for the month of June, but things have been busy. Give me a break! It's my blog gosh darn it!

I was able to make some healthy gains this month and hold onto a lot of cash that would have otherwise been spent because I was staffed on a project in Richmond. And as we all know when TMac is staffed away....he uses the Amex to pay!

OK enough with the corny one liners..... Check out this month's results.

May Networth

Good thing I don't work for Dominoes or y'all would be getting some free pizzas! Better late than never is what I always say! I know that I am a week late in getting my net worth update out there for May so without further adieu....

All of my finances have pretty much stayed on track from previous months however there were two things that changed (1) I went on vacation (2) I had to pay car insurance. Since I knew I was due to pay the car insurance premium I had the money in one of my ING accounts. Since paying it and effectively wiping out one of my cash hordes I knew my net worth numbers would take a hit.

I am proud to say that I am still retiring a good amount of my credit card debt every month. Unfortunately it isn't as much as I would like, but I am still on track.

I have updated my sidebar with this month's progress.

Month End...Time to Take Stock.

Ok. I have been MIA for the past week or so. I am sorry, I have been uber busy. I have kept up with the blog reading and commenting, but my content output has been lacking. In the past week I have plowed through David Allen’s Getting Things Done and have tried to implement the system in my own life. I am having some growing pains getting it to adapt to my own personal technology infrastructure, but that is for another day.

Also my mind is still feeling from the International Franchise Expo I went to this weekend in Washington DC. I was completely floored as to the amount and variety of concepts that are franchised. Did you know there is a franchise out there that rents rims to people during the nicer months of the year! I had no idea there was a market for something like that. I am now more convinced than ever that franchising is going to be the way I build my wealth in the long term.

With that, on to the month end updates…

March was an alright month for debt reduction. I paid just over $1,000 towards my total debt. My month over month spending went up in a number of categories:

• Auto Fuel - Recently I was staffed on a project in Winchester, VA (90 miles from apt)
• Dining Out – Actually the numbers on this weren’t that bad except I picked up the tab on an anniversary dinner between me and my boo at Fogo de Chao. Otherwise spending in that category stayed pretty constant. That has been one of my trouble areas that I need to work on.
• Overall Entertainment – This category mainly went up due to two things (1) buying a couple domain names related to this blog and (2) buying seven books. The book expense is a twice a year expense so it is hard to normalize.
• Groceries – This went up mainly because I have been cooking more and more at home. Now I just need to keep this steady and make sure the dining out goes down!!
• Household Expenses – This category went up due to the purchase of a rice cooker/steamer and a set of good knives.
• Vacation Expense – This went up because the GF and I are planning on going to Florida in May during my two weeks off! Ballin!

The news isn’t all bad. I made some good progress on some categories that were killing me in previous months…

• Bank Charges – Bank of America was killing me for some time because I didn’t have enough liquid capital to cover the bills that were going to hit my account. If I had one aberration from my spending and I overdrew, they would hit me with several $33 fees for each item and each day that my account was overdrawn. I have moved to Electric Orange and life has been markedly better. I was able to save $140 this month over last month.
• Finance Charges - Carrying a balance on your credit cards is expensive. I have learned that first hand. I have completed transferring my balances off my AMEX card to other 0% cards. This is a process that has to be actively managed, but it is saving me over $250/month in finance charges.
• Taxes – The cost of tax prep (TurboTax, mailing, printing, payments to states) is gone and out of my life for another year. Total savings over February >$200.
• Utilities – I have turned down the freaking heat and saved $60 in gas during March over the month of February. Also I have saved a significant amount in electric in part to the early time change and switching to CFL lightbulbs.

Networth-wise I made some decent progress and increased my networth by almost 3%. However, I think that number is a little skewed due to the date when my paycheck hits. I think that I will have some more data as month two of the envelope system takes effect. So far so good! If I hadn’t taken the loan from the girlfriend and had the cash on hand to fund the first month of the envelope system I would have moved my networth by almost 7% last month instead of the 3% that I did. Ohh well, you gotta play the hand that you are dealt. Here are the numbers:

Well that’s me in a nutshell for the month of March. The Goals Sidebar has been updated. Q1 2007 is in the books, bring on Q2!

Time to Take Stock....Month End

I have compiled the numbers from February. There are a few outstanding transactions that are sitting in my debit card buffer, but I don't expect them to materially impact the results of this month.

So in the spirit of full disclosure...

	January	February	% Change
Assets
Bank and Cash Accounts	$ 1,525	$ 1,747	14.6%
Value of Vehicle	$ 18,550	$ 18,550	0.0%
Investment Accounts	$ 2,779	$ 2,773	-0.2%
Total Assets	$ 22,854	$ 23,070	0.9%
Liabilities
Credit Cards	$ 17,588	$ 18,089	2.8%
Student Loans	$ 33,960	$ 33,638	-0.9%
Car Loan	$ 20,314	$ 19,941	-1.8%
Other Liabilities	$ 700	$ 700	0.0%
Total Liabilities	$ 72,561	$ 72,368	-0.3%
Net Worth	$(49,707)	$(49,298)	-0.8%

When looking at these numbers two numbers jump out at me. First, my cash on hand went up 14% from the month before. This is due to my new cash management strategy that I am going to discuss in a later post. Also the credit card balance went up, not down. This is attributed to buying a plane ticket from DC to NYC to visit my girlfriend. Other than that, all the other numbers are trending in the right direction - albeit, slowly.

And now for some month-end finance fun facts:

• My Automobile Fuel expense went down 75% from Jan to Feb. This is to do with the current status of my job. I am currently not assigned to a client so I get to come into the office and I avoid driving during rush hour which helps greatly on gas consumption.
• My Dining Out expense went down 18% from Jan to Feb. This is mainly due to cutting off Dominos and Chipotle in the latter part of the month due to Lent.
  
• My Gas bill went up 196% from Jan to Feb due to a severe cold snap down here in DC. Plus I am convinced my apartment is poorly sealed and the hot water is not efficient. The thermostat has been adjusted accordingly.
  

The Numbers Are In....

At least the high level ones...

Over the past couple months I have been playing around with MS Money as vehicle to track my spending. I was hoping for it to provide some visibility into the problem areas of my finances and the areas of greatest opportunity for imporvement. After the initial "beta" run during Q4 of 2006, I am running live in FY07 and can't wait for some of the powerful trending and reporting metrics to start showing me some meaningful data once I get more raw data into the system (I'm a dork like that)! So without further adieu..

As of 2/18/2007
Account	Total
Assets
Bank and Cash Accounts	$ 2,144
Value of Vehicle	$ 18,550
Investment Accounts	$ 2,842
Total Assets	$ 23,535
Liabilities
Credit Cards	$ 17,904
Other Liabilities	$ 54,857
Total Liabilities	$ 72,761
Net Worth	$(49,226)

Man! That's a pretty large negative red number! Ok, now for a bit of qualification of those numbers. The credit card debit is way too high, I know this. However, I lost my job around this time last year when I was living in Philadelphia and that is the accumulation of that debt. The Other Liabilities line item is also quite high. That line item consists of two categories - students loans and car loan. About 62% of that debt is made up of my student loans; the remainder is just my car loan. My cash accounts are a series of several different ING accounts that I have which allocate money from each paycheck to pay off a specific fixed payment. The numbers in that account flucuate alot.

That is it for now, I will delve deeper into the situations behind those numbers in the coming weeks.