Monthly Update

Pay off car loan - 63.7% (Up 1.9%)
Pay off student loan - 12.3% (Up .4%)
Short term fund - 28.2% (Up 11.6%)
E-fund 2 - 47.4%

Kind of a rough month again in terms of car depreciation. I also took money from my emergency fund to cover the insulation and ventilation for my attic, which should prevent the ice dams on my roof next year. I'm almost finished with my taxes and things are looking pretty good so I can put that money back soon. Now to decide how to use my refund. I can't quite finish my taxes because I'm waiting on one last 1099. Nothing like waiting till the last possible moment (Monday) to send it out. Blah. And it's for like $40 worth of dividends. I guess at least I can estimate my refunds pretty well 'cause that amount won't affect my taxes much.

Blippy

Hm, any fans of Blippy out there? I'm not really seeing the benefit of having a website that tells me Chrisbaker spent $41.73 at Wal-mart. Congratulations? I suppose I would see more of a benefit if it posted an itemized receipt but still, for the most part I have better things to peruse. It would be neat if it went a step further and combined it all and posted that you could get CD XYZ for $12 at Wal-mart or $12.50 at Best Buy. But we already have websites that do that, so yeah, no benefit for me. We'll have to see if it morphs into anything more useful.

Bonds and a Credit Limit Increase

I decided I was sick of getting a measly 1.4% interest on my savings so I put $200 worth of my emergency fund into a GNMA bond fund available at Schwab. This will satisfy me for now while I do some more research. Bonds are a little more complicated and thus far I've stayed away because I haven't wanted to take the time to educate myself and understand. I do understand the value fluctuates as well as the earnings on them, so that's part of the complication. Now that I think about it, I don't really understand how stocks work either, except that most people have to stash either a huge portion of their income in other more conservative investments OR they can rely on stocks (single companies or stock funds) to get where they need to be in retirement. I'm in boat B, saving what I feel comfortable saving but realizing that I need to take on the riskier investments to optimize my chances of success. And I'm comfortable with that. I realize I don't quite understand them, and the value may fall, but if I wait long enough and diversify well enough, eventually I will bounce back.

Onto the credit limit. Penfed just waived a $13k credit limit in front of me. I took it. I expected it to show my revised $20k credit limit immediately but it hasn't shown up yet. I thought since I was pre-approved, it was automatically applied if I accepted it. We'll see. I also took the opportunity to change my address so I hope that didn't mess things up. I don't need the extra room apart from the fact that my overall utilization these days is somewhere around 25% because I moved my car loan to a credit card. This would help bring the utilization level down a few notches.

Increased Retirement Savings

I increased my contribution rate by 1%. Not much, but heading in the right direction is always good. I previously contributed enough to collect the whole match. I had done this in early 2009 but then I found my home and got worried about making ends meet, so I notched it down again.

I have to say, at this point in my investment education, I feel like I've seen most everything at least once. But I still subscribe to a couple of magazines. This is a good example of why. I read an article about how two featured folks weren't contributing enough for their later years and it motivated me to make a change in the right direction.

2010 Goal

After mulling over it, I've decided my one and only goal for this year will be to pay off my car. This is $3800 at 1.99% until 2011. It will be a little bit of a push since I normally pay around $2600 a year. The challenge will be to come up with the extra without busting into my savings.

If I accomplish that my net worth should grow a minimum of $6000, provided the stock market doesn't take a big dump. I'll also be able to invest the $3800 I have in savings for the car (just in case). This will also cover my goal of working towards a back-up emergency fund.

Note to self- start Roth IRA in 2011.

Yay for a renewed sense of optimism! Hope y'all are feeling it too :)

Monthly Update

Pay off car loan - 61.8% (Up 1.9%)
Pay off student loan - 11.9% (Up .1%)
Short term fund - 16.6% (Up 7.2%)

Back to slow mostly steady progress on the car and student loans. I'm having a little trouble with the whole short term savings. I thought I would be able to put away more than $50 a pay check but lately I'm struggling to find more than $50. The dog spaying is next month. I'll just make it if I put away $50 from my next three pay checks. Then after that I will have two-ish months to find $$ for the tree trimmer. I think that will be tricky. Must batten down the hatches.

I'm still mulling over goals for this year so I'll post later on that. Happy new year to any readers!

Oh yeah, my net worth took a little dip because I got the annual mass depreciation on the car. I forgot that was coming..