October 2006 Score Card — Part II: Net Worth

Posted by Sun on November 2, 2006
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Summary:

October turned out to be another solid month as we saw an increase of $16,810.66 in our net worth. Excluding house and car related assets and liabilities, the total net worth at the end of October is $401,089, up 4.37% from September, thanks to a record-setting month of stock markets. The reason I excluded house and cars from the calculation is that I don't know the fair values of them, especially the house. Including them will probably skew the picture of how we otherwise did in saving and investing.

Year-to-date, our nest egg grew from $294,299 at the beginning of 2006 to the current level, or a little more than 36%.

Details:

Credit card debt: The credit card debt, at $34,568, is much higher than the level of September due to another $9,000 0% balance transfer I tood from a Discover card in early October. Among the $34,568, more than $32K are 0% BTs. The BT offers from Chase, however, will expire next month and I will need to pay off all the remaining balance in the middle of this month. The Discover offer will expire next July. Going forward, if there is any 0% BT offer from Chase, I probably will pay the $75 transfer fee and take the offer.

Cash: The increase of nearly $19K in our cash reserve is largely due to the cancellation of the weekly 4-week T-Bill purchase, which completed in October. However, I have restarted the purchase starting this week after seeing a nice rebound of the interest rate. Therefore, the size of our cash will be smaller in the next net worth update. Right now, we have $63,885 in several savings accounts.

Taxable accounts: At the end of October, we have a total of $181,170 in our taxable accounts, consisting of 12 mutual funds, 5 individual stocks, and 6 ETFs. The increase of about $7K in our taxable accounts in October is again mainly due to the price appreciation of our LFC holdings, which alone contributed to more than $3K of the $7K gain.

Retirement: We also saw a net increase of more than $9K in our retirement accounts (401(k)s and Roth IRAs) to a total of $$174,626 on October 31st. In addition to the regular contributions to our 401(k)s, we also added $2000 to our IRA accounts. Starting November, most part of our IRA assets will be at Vanguard instead of Scottrade. to complete the maximum amount allowed for 2006. At the end of last month, we have about $165K in our retirement accounts (401(k)s and Roth IRAs) and the total market value increased about $8K as compared to August. Both my wife and I contributed the maximum amount allowed every month into our 401(k) and IRA plans so we can reach the contribution limits by the year end.

529 plans: The total value in our daughter's 529 accounts increased about $450 in October to $4,947, a small but nice addition, percentage wise.

Bonds: Our bond value at the end of October is $11,027, in I bonds and EE bonds. With the renewed purchase of 4-week T-bills, this portion will see some increases in next update.

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