The end of July sees our intrepid family digging an even deeper hole.
First off, how about a bunch of numbers, which I’ll follow up with a little commentary:
| Jun30’06 | July31’06 | Change | |
| Assets | |||
| Liquid Assets | |||
| Checking | $127.85 | $43.18 | ($84.67) |
| Cash | 30.00 | 5.00 | (25.00) |
| ING Orange Savings | 1,561.59 | 1,806.34 | 244.75 |
| HSBC Savings | 1,010.88 | 1,014.83 | 3.95 |
| Total Liquid | $2,730.32 | $2,869.35 | $139.03 |
| Semi-Liquid Assets | |||
| Firstrade ROTH | $162.16 | $163.80 | $1.64 |
| Firstrade SIMPLE | 4,407.76 | 4,375.94 | (31.82) |
| Wife’s 457 | 28,650.62 | *27,817.87 | (832.75) |
| Wife’s Rollover IRA | 13,057.73 | 12,939.41 | (118.32) |
| Total Semi-Liquid | $46,278.27 | $45,297.02 | ($981.25) |
| Illiquid Assets | |||
| Our Home | $54,000.00 | $54,000.00 | $0.00 |
| Our Vehicles | 5,750.00 | 5,750.00 | 0.00 |
| Gifted Property | 45,000.00 | 45,000.00 | 0.00 |
| Total Illiquid | $104,750.00 | $104,750.00 | $0.00 |
| TOTAL Assets | $153,758.59 | $152,916.37 | ($842.22) |
| Liabilities | |||
| Credit Card Debts | |||
| Chase | $7,684.83 | $7,409.50 | ($275.33) |
| American Express | 526.77 | 556.05 | 29.28 |
| MBNA | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Total Credit Cards | $8,211.60 | $7,965.55 | ($246.05) |
| Other Debts | |||
| Home Mortgage | $39,743.88 | $39,700.07 | ($43.81) |
| Low Energy Loan | 17,328.56 | 17,216.26 | (112.30) |
| Line of Credit | 0.00 | 2,417.14 | 2,417.14 |
| Total Other Debts | $57,072.44 | $59,333.47 | $2,261.03 |
| TOTAL Liabilities | $65,284.04 | $67,299.02 | $2,014.98 |
| NET WORTH | $88,474.55 | $85,617.35 | ($2,857.20) |
And, as always, a few notes of interest:
- Debt not Really Debt. OK, It Is…
The American Express balance again catches me with a little unreimbursed business expenses. So, it’s not really debt. But then again, technically it is, so in the interest of complete disclosure… - Get Out of ING Already!
Despite a chaotic month in the market, our retirement accounts ended up pretty well where we started, with the big exception of one of our funds in the wife’s deferred compensation account at ING that, for whatever reason, lost more than 10% for the month. That slice of the market (small cap growth) certainly didn’t have a good month anyway, but the particular fund did substantially worse than average. Of course, it’s also the only fund the ING Retirement offers that fits the area I’m trying to diversify into. Consider this my kick in the pants to get those monies transferred into an account with some choices already! (*And as always, ING Retirement Plans’ website offers up info a day or three old – today (7/31) it’s info from July 28th. Yet another reason to drop them – how hard could it possibly be to have this info updated at the end of trading for the handful of funds that they offer in their plans???) - Tapped ‘dat, err, Line of Credit
As expected, our line of credit was finally tapped this month – though really not too hard consider everything that got done. My guess is it’ll get tapped quite a bit harder in the months to come. But I’m not all that bothered by it, since even if we spend a fairly large amount renovating we’ll still have a very nice home for a ridiculously low price, even for the area. (A large amount being relative; I’m thinking we’ll spend around $50,000 on renovations in the end – but let’s see you east/west coast’rs getting anything liveable for the $90k total we’ll end up spending for our home!
) I’m not really sure how I’m going to integrate these renovations into the value of our home, since we’ve already increased our property value by, most likely, many thousands of dollars. For now, the house will remain on our quasi balance sheet at what it was initially valued until everything gets done, and then I may go about trying to figure out a new meaningless number… 
- No Progress? Sure There Was!
Despite the fact that no big progress was made towards eliminating that credit card debt on Chase, just like last month it’s in lieu of taking out even more on our line of credit. Chase is locked up at a ridiculously low rate “for the life of the balance”, so I’m not feeling particularly driven to get it paid off rapidly, only to have to turn around and tack on extra to the not-as-ridiculously-low-rate line of credit. That said, I’m also in no hurry to add any more to that Chase total, even if I could use one of their lock-in-the-rate-for-life balance transfer checks. Yes, I know, I’m not being entirely consistent here. I’m sure I could pay a little less interest going that route, but personal finances aren’t entirely about the logic – I simply don’t trust credit card companies to use them like I did in the past!
So, how was the month financially overall? Well, it looks worse on paper than I think it actually was. Sure, the total value of our assets dropped, but any home value increases weren’t taken into account. And I think substantial ground was made there – at least there better have been with the work we’ve been putting into it! That said, I’m still not at all thrilled about the idea of our total debt climbing despite my fairly nonchalant commentary – like I’ve said, I don’t believe in the concept of good (personal) debt, just bad debt and worse debt. Nothing will thrill me more than when we can complete this work and I can focus on making smaller numbers out of those big one!
[tags]debt, renovations, report card, balance sheet, credit card, ING, Chase, credit, line of credit[/tags]
