In the month of January, my net worth dropped 1.92%. Not really what I wanted to see, especially as I’m updating this while fighting what I think is the beginning of a nasty cold.
Looking at the details, it looks like it’s mostly my investments that dropped, specifically retirement. Conveniently, I’m not retiring for 30 years or so, so it’s a loss that’s easy enough to shrug off right now. Or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself. In terms of cash, I just about broke even, which isn’t too bad, though I would have liked to put a bit more cash into my savings. February should be a much less expensive month, unless I buy plane tickets for one of the two trips I’m planning later this year.
Going to pick the contest winners today, so watch for an update!
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.
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