My net worth in January actually ended in a better place than I thought it would, based on some tentative calculations I did mid-month. My net worth dropped a total of 2%. This is mainly due to current market conditions, but I also spent more money this month than I would have liked. Much of that is due to infrequent expenses, such as 6 month insurance bills coming due, and the fact that I had to buy a very overpriced plane ticket, but some of it was just me spending money where perhaps I should have been saving.
Clearly, I can’t control the market, but I continue to hope for an upswing, and in the meantime, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve decided to really tighten my budget and see if I can save a bit more every month.
One of my 2008 goals involves increasing my net worth by a significant percentage. Clearly, this drop doesn’t help, but I remain optimistic. It’s just one month. Let’s all hope that next month is better.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
