March 2007 Financial Status / Net Worth Update
About My Credit Card Debt
Newer readers may be alarmed by my high levels of credit card debt. In short, I’m borrowing money for free and keeping it in safe investments while earning me 5-6% interest. Along with other things, this helps me earn extra side income of thousands of dollars a year. Recently I put up a series of step-by-step posts on how I do this. Please check it out first if you have any questions.
Commentary
- The stock market stalled a bit this month, as should be expected given its healthy run for the last two years.
- The big drop in cash reserves and credit card debt is due to the ending of one of my 0% balance transfer cards in February (Discover Miles Card). Everything went smoothly and it was paid off without a hitch.
- Our combined incomes continue to far exceed our spending, which is great. I still need to finish tallying up last month’s budget results.
- We still haven’t done our taxes, as I am still waiting on some corrected 1099s and trying to organize my business records. I have a feeling we might have to file an extension this year.
- I know this is poor form, but I have mentioned previously that I keep forgetting to include a $2,000 taxable investment I made in a micro-cap mutual fund (BRSIX) several months ago. If it doesn’t show up in Yodlee, it’s almost like it isn’t there
Anyhow, I’ve finally accounted for it and it’s helped the numbers a bit. - We are now at $48,167 in net cash and $57,288 in total non-retirement assets. That’s 57% of our mid-term goal, and 96% of our (much easier) May goals regarding saving up for a house down payment. I remain completely confused about housing prices…
You can see all my previous net worth updates here.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:37 am
In your opinion, what’s the best/cheapest brokerage for buying mutual funds when it’s not a “No Transaction Fee” fund through Vanguard? Places like Sharebuilder and SogoInvest don’t seem to have the option.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Good effort! You will get rich soon
March 6th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Jonathan,
Looks like you might have some overlap in your bar charts. Your total net worth is $126,525 - but your bar charts show 57% of $100,000 and 13% of $1,000,000 for a total of $187,000.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
You’ve converted me to Yodlee. I’m addicted.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Very few brokerages offer Vanguard as a NTF fund, as they don’t charge 12b-1 fees which usually end up compensating the brokerages (at the expense of the investor).
ThinkOrSwim offers 3 free mutual fund trades per month. FirsTrade used to offer free mutual fund trades, but this will be ending soon. Wells Fargo has a new program for free trades if you have $25,000 in total account equity, I wrote a bit about it previously.
Another option is to try to construct a portfolio out of ETFs, which should become easier as time goes on.
The $57,000 is for non-retirement assets, and is a subset of my total net worth.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
The stock market drop was unexpected.
I think you mean to say it was no big deal.
March 6th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Well, it depends on how you look at it. I expect at least a few month-to-month drops this year, although I have no idea which month they will occur.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Nice work! Keep it up. I enjoy reading your blog.
What happened with the cash reserves? I assume they weren’t invested in the market. Did buy a plasma TV?
March 6th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Sorry, should have made it more clear in the post. I paid off a 0% balance transfer. Cash went down, but credit card debt went down more
March 7th, 2007 at 10:39 am
are you prosper loans in there somewhere? just curious where it would go.
but wow, very similar nw to me
March 7th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Another graph that would be interesting to compare to your net worth over time is income coming in over time. It might show that good saving discipline has more to do with increasing your net worth than raises.
March 29th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Why so much money in cash?
March 30th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Are there are any good web tools for tracking your net worth?
I know I can come up with a simple spreadsheet but I prefer to have something that I can access at home, work or while travelling.
March 31st, 2007 at 11:09 am
Disregard my last message. I see now that you use Yodlee which sounds pretty cool. I’ll be registering for it in the near future.
April 4th, 2007 at 8:00 am
I personally use networthiq: http://www.networthiq.com/
April 4th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Just wanted to post regarding the Vanguard Mutual fund. I opened a brokerage account with FirstTrade a while ago. I pretty much only use them for mutuals. Take a look into them. For stocks I use Choicetrade.
BTW - Just signed up for the high interest savings with WaMu. Great find!
April 20th, 2007 at 9:32 am
What about the balance transfer fees? Everytime I transfer balance on one of those zero percent deals, there is a balance transfer fee of 50 bucks or so.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:34 am
hi,
I am a first time visitor to this blog of yours and was very impressed by this blog of yours!
I mean this is the first time i have seen a website like yours, and rarely do u find people revealing their finance to the world!
So, cheers man and keep it up!
August 14th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
isn’t that scary to see such a drop ?
or is it me that just didn’t get it :S
September 21st, 2007 at 6:50 am
I really like this blog you have here. It’s full of great information. I especially like our tactic of using 0% balance transfers to take advantage of credit card companies. It’s a little retribution for the interest rates they charge… usually.
February 16th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Very cool that you’re doing this–and very unique, in my opinion. I am pretty much loathe to share my financial data with anyone. Including family!
June 15th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
You deserve #1 rank on Google. This site is very thorough and absolutely amazing. I really hope you get to number one. Has this site helped monetize your income in a significant way? I’m floored. Super site.