Across the board, it seems like PF bloggers who post their net worth are seeing a loss this month. My investment and retirement accounts dropped by 7.61%. It’s a bit disheartening, to be honest, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to change anything. For the most part, my investments are designed for the long haul. I won’t need my retirement accounts for years, so I will continue my normal contributions.
I finally became eligible for the matching in my TSP this last pay period, so that was an exciting moment. It’s almost like getting a 5% raise, if you think about it. Just a 5% raise that I can’t touch for a number of years.
I showed a very solid increase in my cash accoints, which means that my plans to spend less and save more are going well. I do have a few big bills coming up this month (car insurance, for example), but because I’ve been using YNAB and setting aside a small amount of money every month in preparation for the bill, so I’m not concerned.
The plan for this month? Just 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.
