End of April Update

by Sean

Another month, another bit o’ progress….

Mar31′06 Apr30′06 Change
Assets
Liquid Assets
Checking $735.77 $41.89 ($693.88)
Cash 1,250.00 420.00 (830.00)
ING Orange Savings 707.00 1,050.74 343.74
HSBC Savings 1,000.00 1,003.22 3.22
Total Liquid Assets $3,692.77 $2,515.85 ($1,176.92)
Semi-Liquid Assets
Firstrade ROTH $165.48 $185.10 19.62
Firstrade SIMPLE 3,426.23 3,603.90 177.67
Wife’s 457 29,537.96 29,998.20 460.24
Wife’s Rollover IRA 13,504.21 13,583.66 79.45
Semi-Liquid Assets $46,633.88 $47,370.86 $736.98
Illiquid Assets
Our Home $54,000.00 $54,000.00 $0.00
Our Vehicles 5,750.00 5,750.00 0.00
Illiquid Assets $59,750.00 $59,750.00 $0.00
TOTAL Assets $110,076.65 $109,636.71 ($439.94)
Liabilities
Credit Card Debts
Chase $8,499.92 $8,268.57 ($231.35)
American Express 3,250.00 2,000.00 (1,250.00)
MBNA 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total Credit Cards $11,749.92 $10,268.57 ($1,481.35)
Other Debts
Home Mortgage 39,872.68 39,829.83 (42.85)
TOTAL Liabilities $51,622.60 $50,098.40 ($1,524.20)
NET WORTH $58,454.05 $59,538.31 $1,084.26

A few thoughts:

  • A 1.58% increase in retirements accounts. Sure, it’s no 6% January, but I’ll take an annualized 21% gain any month. I’m thinking we’d be up a little more overall, but the wife’s damn 457 never gives me fully up-to-date info, consistently a couple days behind.
  • A 12.6% drop in those bad ol’ credit card balances. What more can I say?
  • Oh-so-close to sub-$10,000 credit card debt and $50,000 total debt. If I’d have known, I may have upped a payment just to bump those damn credit cards into four-digit land… ;)
  • Assets are down, but liabilities are down even more, so I can’t complain too much.

As an aside, a good chunk of cash flowed through our hands in the last few days via our new home – a building permit, a few small deposits for a contractor or three, all sorts of miscellania. Obviously, several financial transactions are about to take place which should change a few numbers in this view a fair amount, hopefully not in a negative way. But because of a few other items not mentioned (don’t want to jinx things until they are finalized) it probably won’t affect the bottom line in any truly substantial way.

All in all, while not a spectacular month, $1,000 net worth increase is nothing to sneeze at… progress is progress!

[tags]report card, net worth, debt, goals, assets, liabilities, firstrade, ing, hsbc, credit cards, chase, mbna, american express, mortgage,ira,roth[/tags]

{ 3 comments }

James Paden May 1, 2006 at 9:04 pm

I notice you’ve got a Firstrade IRA. I’m looking for a Roth IRA and I’m not sure where to get it from. Perhaps you might have some insight as to why you chose Firstrade or didn’t choose others?

Sean May 1, 2006 at 11:43 pm

Oh, I can tell you exactly why I use Firstrade James: no charge mutual fund purchases. I’ve paid a total of exactly $6.95 in trading commisions across our three Firstrade accounts so far, for a purchase of a handful of shares of iShare MSCI Brazil Index (which, in retrospect, I should have bought lots of – up almost 80% for the year I’ve held it!).

Everything else, meaning the five mutual funds I hold in our Firstrade accounts, cost me absolutely zero to get into, and continue to cost me zero when I add additional funds to them.

Financial Freedumb May 1, 2006 at 11:58 pm

Congrats on the debit decrease! Hit below 50k next month! I’ve never heard of firsttrade…I’ll look into it…I’ve used Scottrade for my Roth IRA.

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