This month was a great month for my net worth. It increased by a whopping 8.22%!
Ok, so that was mainly due to a very generous gift from a family member that is being tucked safely away.
Aside from that though, my investments are continuing to rebound. It’s slow going, but it’s at least moving in the right direction. My cash accounts took a bit more of a hit this month, thanks to vacation, but those were planned expenses.
With this generous gift, my net worth is up 7.68% from the beginning of the year. My goal for the year was to increase my net worth by 20%. I thought it was a tight goal, but possible. With the markets as they are, I just don’t think it’s possible to make that goal. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to try though!
I also made my full Roth IRA contribution for 2008 this month. Sadly, it is already worth less than when I invested the shares. But it’s money I won’t need for years, so I’m not too concerned. Just got to keep on keeping on.
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.
Wow! Great job! And already funding your Roth for the year is huge! Congratulations.
20% is a good goal to have. 12 months is always too long to tell whether it is going to be tight or not but either way, it should convince you to figure out how to meet your goal, regardless of external conditions beyond your control.
Setting a 30% goal is forcing me to figure out how to earn more money, whether active or passive.