Have you heard of the Olympics Hangover? It’s when you stay up way too late watching “just one more event” and end up being red-eyed and unproductive the next day. So to counteract this, I used the public library for the first time in a long while. Funny thing: childless friends and co-workers had no idea where the library was. Only the parents did, since their kids use them. Why do we stop using the library as we grow older?

It was a productive visit, helping me to complete both a few short-term and lifetime goals:

1. Read one financial book per week. Obvious one first. 😉 I put the following books on hold: Work Less, Live More and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Retiring Early. Hope to find some good nuggets.
2. Visit a Foreclosure auction. In most areas, listing notices are required to be in the newspaper. I don’t have a subscription anymore, but I was able to look through the last 3 days of papers at the library for free. Looks like there will be one on September 9th at Noon at the county courthouse. Also, I found an announcement that a local self-storage place is also auctioning off the contents of the lockers that have been abandoned and unpaid. That might be interesting to go to as well.
3. Learn more about financial analysis of potential rental property. Also found the Landlord’s Survival Guide and The complete guide to your first rental property. To judge the quality of books I’ve never heard of, I consider both Amazon.com review (if any) and also the number of copies in the city-wide system. I simply assume (right or wrong) that the better books will have more copies.
4. Plan international travel. The in-branch pickings were slim, but I found a nice book on Spain. I should be able to find many more online. I’ve actually brought library travel books with me on international trips. (Well taken care of and returned on time, of course!)
5. Learn a Foreign Language. Borrowed a few Pimsleur language audio CDs (intro to Cantonese and Spanish). The full sets of these often cost over $200. These will go great in the car and in my iPod while jogging.

Of course, not all goals can be done at the library. 🙂 I also recently signed up for a 3-day PADI scuba diving certification course over Labor Day weekend that will cost around $400 altogether. I’m really looking forward to it.

Watching the Olympics has been both inspiring, entertaining, and also taking up a lot of free time. I can’t believe the amount of dedication these people have towards their goals. I am trying to go back to setting regular monthly goals, and writing them down always helps.

A rough list:

• Visit a live foreclosure auction at county courthouse, just for the experience.
• Buy a term life insurance policy.
• Learn more about long-term disability insurance.
• Read one financial book per week, and take notes.
• Learn more about financial analysis of potential rental property.
• Investigate solar water heater credits, and get quotes from contractors. Also look into solar fan for roof/attic.
• Have a series of dinner conversations about finances with wife. Teach her the details of managing all household finances if I am incapacitated. (Show her where I stashed all the money in all these bank accounts…)
• Help parents firm up outlook for retirement based on current assets. Help them complete rollovers of 401k/IRAs to Vanguard.
• Plan international travel somewhere. Currently thinking of hiking the Inca trail in Peru.

Credit Card Debt
If you’re a new reader, let me start out as usual by explaining the credit card debt. I’m actually taking money from 0% APR balance transfer offers and instead of spending it, I am placing it in high-yield savings accounts that actually earn me 4% interest or more, and keeping the difference as profit. Along with other deals that I blog about, this helps me earn extra side income of thousands of dollars a year. Recently I put together a series of step-by-step posts on how I do this. Please check it out first if you have any questions. This is why, although I have the ability to pay the credit card balances off, I choose not to.

Retirement and Brokerage accounts
It seems like the markets were relatively idle over the last month. We made $2,141 in pre-tax 403(b) contributions. Not much else to report here, although our 403(b) plan did announce some new lower-cost fund choices for later this year, which is nice. I should do another portfolio update soon.

Cash Savings and Emergency Funds
Our mid-term goal is still to have $30,000 in net cash put aside for emergencies, which is 6 months x $5,000 per month in estimated expenses if both of us find ourselves unemployed. We are now a bit over halfway there at at $17,526. This fits in with our overall “just-in-case” focus for this month, hopefully we will also be getting some life insurance soon.

Home Equity
Another $500 of loan principal paid off. Housing values look to continue to be dropping a bit in our neighborhood, although nothing is really selling so it’s hard to tell. I’m definitely aware of this, but I’m still not going to try and re-value my house every month. I’ve found that Cyberhomes.com offers some good data on tracking median prices by zip code. Again, can be tricky to apply if only a few houses sell in your zip code and they aren’t really comparable in size or neighborhood.

Overall, a relatively quiet month financially. You can see our previous net worth updates here.

(By the way, my post yesterday on emergency planning was messed up due to some typos which cut out some parts, you can re-read it if you’d like.)

Credit Card Debt
If you’re a new reader, let me start out as usual by explaining the credit card debt. I’m actually taking money from 0% APR balance transfer offers and instead of spending it, I am placing it in high-yield savings accounts that actually earn me 4% interest or more, and keeping the difference as profit. Along with other deals that I blog about, this boring activity helps me earn extra side income of thousands of dollars a year. Recently I put together a series of step-by-step posts on how I do this. Please check it out first if you have any questions. This is why, although I have the ability to pay the balances off, I choose not to.

Retirement and Brokerage accounts
There were three paydays in April for us based on a biweekly pay schedule. In addition stock prices are up about 6% from my last update on April 1st, making this month extra juicy. I estimate that capital gains accounted for ~$6,000 of the net worth increase. We also made our IRA contributions for 2007 before the April 15th deadline ($4,000 x 2), as well as $4,451 in 401k contributions in order to be on track to max out this year. All these things together made the value of our portfolio jump a lot.

Cash Savings and Emergency Funds
We did a bad job on increasing our cash savings, due to a big hardwood flooring purchase on top of the late decision to contribute to non-deductible IRAs. Taking into account the increased credit card balances, our net cash actually shrank. Need to fix this next month.

Home Equity
I’ve decided to switch to a simpler way to track home equity, as the previous method was a bit confusing. I have my estimated home value in the asset column, and my remaining loan balance in the liabilities column. The difference is home equity. I don’t use a Zillow estimate because that would put my house at nearly $700,000 in value, and although that sounds nice it’s not very accurate.

You can see our previous net worth updates here.

Credit Card Debt
If you’ve recently starting reading, you may have some concerns about my high levels of credit card debt. I’m actually taking money from 0% APR balance transfer offers and instead of spending it, I am placing it in high yield savings accounts that actually earn me 5% interest or more, and keeping the difference as profit!

Along with other deals that I write about, this helps me earn extra side income of thousands of dollars a year. Recently I put together a series of step-by-step posts on how I do this. Please check it out first if you have any questions. This is why, although I have the ability to pay the balances off, I choose not to.

Cash Savings, Home Purchase
We’re still in the process of buying a home. There will be big drops on the cash column soon as we finally spend our down payment funds as well as pay for things like closing costs and home improvements for our home.

$5,000 was put towards the earnest deposit, and I just marked it as spent. But I will have to decide on how to account for my home value in my net worth. I’m leaning towards just keeping it simple and taking option #2, but that may be considered a cop-out if my home value drops.

Retirement and Brokerage accounts
For the third month in a row, our investments overall have dropped in value by 2-3%. Good thing I only check in once a month. I gloomily predict that things will get significantly worse before they get better… but I don’t actually risk my money on guesses. I continue to “stay the course” and keep making regular investments into my asset allocation.

New Midterm Goals?
Although I still want to visit Brazil, Australia, and Southeast Asia, it looks like we’ll probably be spending the next 6 months instead installing hardwood floors, remodeling bathrooms, and jackhammering some concrete. I don’t know if we’ll have the time or money to visit any other place besides the wonderful world of Home Depot. We’ll have to see.

You can see our previous net worth updates here.

Credit Card Debt
If you’re a newer reader, you may have some concerns about my high levels of credit card debt. I’m actually taking money from 0% APR balance transfer offers and instead of spending it, I am placing it in high yield savings accounts that actually earn me 5% interest or more, and keeping the difference as profit!

Along with other things, this helps me earn extra side income of thousands of dollars a year. Recently I put together a series of step-by-step posts on how I do this. Please check it out first if you have any questions. This is why, although I have the ability to pay the balances off, I choose not to.

Cash Savings, Unknown Goals
These numbers are as of January 1st, but I didn’t post them because I was hoping to announce new goals at the same time. But I haven’t pinned them down exactly yet. I know that do want to create a formal emergency fund, as opposed to just relying on the existing cash cushion we have right now from our future house down payment. So that’s where the cash increase will go towards. We also still need to re-examine our insurance needs.

(Added) Again for newer readers, this is the total net worth for both my wife and myself. We are (now) both working professionals in our late 20s making sizable incomes in the six-figure range. Until recently I was still in school (again). Our expenses are low right now right now, not having a huge mortgage to support… yet. But we do want a house and want to put 20% down if we can, so that is what the large amounts of cash savings are for.

Retirement and Brokerage accounts
Our investments overall have dropped another 2-3% since last month. As reported in our retirement portfolio update, we have both placed $15,500 into each of our 401k/403b plans this year. For 2008, I think we will try and make the contributions more spread out across the year in order to dollar-cost-average and make our cashflow more consistent.

You can see our previous net worth updates here.