No net worth increase for me in September. My net worth dropped 3.62%. I’m actually surprised it wasn’t worse, given the current state of the economy. As expected, it was my investments that took the hit – my cash accounts are slowly growing. It’s tough to look at my spreadsheet and see 10% losses in a number of my investments. Overall, my investments dropped around 9.5%. Ouch! I just have to ride this one out, I think.
In October, I’m working on being an even better saver. I’m closely tracking my grocery spending. I’m actively looking for better CD rates, rather than keeping my money with one brokerage firm. I’m afraid to diversify too much, simply because I don’t want to have to keep track of money at too many different places, but I’m putting money into CDs at ING Direct and possibly at HSBC as well. I should also see a small raise in my paycheck sometime this month. All of that will help. And I fully expect October to be a much better month.
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.
