Now that May’s arrived, how’d I do for April?
First off, the goals I made for myself:
At least set up a traditional IRA for my wife to hold her pension rollover, if not do the rollover itself
The account is in place; just waiting to hear back from the state to see what’s required for the rollover.Start researching investment possibilities for all our retirement savings
Not done by any means (can’t imagine I’d ever really be done with this one), but as a start, I have a solid feel for the course I’m wanting to head at least – more at a later date…Set up all our accounts in Quicken
All done, and all up-to-date.Back enter a few months of our transactions in Quicken to get a view of where our money goes(and set up at least the modicum of a budget with that info)
I did go through the trouble of entering a few months worth of transactions into Quicken, but must say Quicken’s budgeting tool simply sucks (or maybe I just don’t get it). You’d think it’d be able to extrapolate a bit more reasonably from past data, but most of the assumptions it makes are just insane, and I’d be better able to create one out of thin air. Will have to look into this one a bit more, it seems.- Pay down total credit cards debt at least $1,000 (ideally $1,250)
Reasonably close, but no cigar… I think I’ll blame the wife for this one. She took the opportunity to attend and present at a conference in order get some of the credits necessary to keep her credentials up to date in her field. So she ended up charging a few items like travel to and hotel stay for the confence (everything up to this point, peachy keen). Plus, unbeknownst to me until the CC bill arrived yesterday, a very nice business suit. Not happy about that last one (without it, would’ve met my goal plus a bit, and had I known would’ve foregone a few other things until a later date), but then, marriage isn’t permanent bliss either. I’m sure I did something equally unthinking this month (or if not, twice last month), so it all evens out, I suppose! Make it through tax season with a semblance of sanity intact
No time to hit the local clinical psychologist, but as far as I’m concerned, reality still exists, so we’ll call this one met…
So all in all, not too bad goal-wise – a 4.5 out of 6. How about some cold hard numbers, and maybe I’ll throw a little commentary your way about those as well later on:
| Assets/Liabilities | March | April | Diff |
| Assets | |||
| Checking | $440.66 | $172.97 | ($267.69) |
| ING Orange Savings | 55.00 | 155.40 | 100.40 |
| Firstrade ROTH | 100 | 100.05 | 0.05 |
| Firstrade SIMPLE | 747.00 | 998.00 | 249.00 |
| Wife’s 457 | 24,554.58 | 23,936.67 | (617.91) |
| Wife’s PERS | 9,000.00 | 9,000.00 | 0.00 |
| TOTAL Assets | $34,897.24 | $34,361.04 | ($536.20) |
| Liabilities | |||
| Hospital Bill | $669.15 | $570.71 | ($98.44) |
| Credit Cards | |||
| Chase | 19,328.56 | 19,692.12 | 363.56 |
| MBNA | 1,455.53 | 354.81 | (1100.72) |
| Total Credit Cards | 20,784.09 | 20,046.93 | (737.16) |
| TOTAL Liabilities | $21,453.24 | $20,617.64 | ($835.60) |
| NET WORTH | $13,444.00 | $13,743.40 | $299.40 |
