Irregular Payments

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‘When the world is a monster
Bad to swallow you whole
Kick the clay that holds the teeth in
Throw your trolls out the door’

It’s awfully difficult to chose the right path to go down when you don’t know where you’re at right now. So before I set any real goals, I should probably figure out where I am today. And that would be as follows, current as of midnight April 1, 2005:

Vital Statistics

• Ages: 34 (mine), 33 (wife), 1 (son)

Income

• My Salary (monthly):
  $4,150.00 (pre-withholding/SIMPLE-IRA)
  $3,148.02 (post-withholding/SIMPLE-IRA)
• Wife’s Salary: $0.00
  (SAHM, at least for the time being)

Checking & Savings

• Joint Checking: $440.66
• ING Savings: $55.00
  (opened this month)

total in checking & savings: $495.66

Debt

• Mortgage: $0
  (currently renting)
• Vehicles: $0
  (all vehicles paid off; all vehicles closing in on or exceeding 100k miles too, so they’re worth about $0 as well!)
• Hospital Bill: $669.15
  (final bit of a very expensive birth)
• Credit Cards
  • MBNA: $1,455.53 (@21.25% - evil bank that arbitrarily raises rates)
  • Chase: $19,328.56 (@13.25%)

total debt: $21,453.24

Retirement

• Wife’s 457 Plan: $24,554.58
  (from previous employer)
• Wife’s PERS: $9,000 [approx.]
  (needs to be rolled over into an IRA since she isn’t vested)
• My ROTH IRA: $100.00
  (account opened this month)
• My SIMPLE-IRA: $747.00
  (account opened in January)

total in retirement: $34,401.58 [approx.]

So, if I’ve got half a clue, that makes:

• Total Assets: $34,897.24
• Total Liabilities: $21,453.24
• Net Worth: $13,444.00

A thought or two…

Quite honestly, we’re really in a helluva lot better shape than I assumed. Not that I’m anywhere near pleased about $20k in credit card debt at those rates, but if push came to shove, we could be out of debt in short order by cashing in our retirement savings (not that I have any plans to do so or anything; just that it could be done if absolutely necessary).

That said, 95% of the basis of that retirement was in place three years ago, with a paltry $847 added since that time (and all that in the last three months). And in a time that we invested so little to the future, we also approximately doubled our credit card debt load. So we definitely need some radical alterations!

Next up: how about a goal or two?