February 2009 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth

I was very surprised when I finished calculating our net worth at the end of February. With major stock indices losing more than 10% for the month, our net worth, with everything considered, only saw a moderate loss of $5,955.99 (1.32%) over a month ago to a total of $446,280.10 on February 28th.

Details of each category are as follows:

• Credit card balance(—–): The biggest progress we made last month was to reduce our overall credit card balance by $10,096.93 (60.26%) to $6,659.45 after I paid off the remaining  balance on my Citi Driver’s Edge card. There will be no more credit card arbitrage for, at least in a foreseeable future.
• Cash(–): Even though we returned more than $10,000 borrowed money (at 0% APR of course) from our checking account, our cash position, surprisingly, didn’t take much hit. It turned out that the overall cash level was only reduced by $3,707.79 (4.04%) in February to a total of $88,030.89. Our savings got a boost last month after my wife received her annual bonus. Now that’s something really nice to have in this economy
• Taxable accounts(-): We did relatively well with our taxable investments even though we were not able to produce a positive result. Somehow, we only lost $319.36 (0.19%) on paper last month to a total of $170,771.77 in our brokerage and mutual fund accounts. We did add new fund into our brokerage account at Scottrade last month to take advantage of the slumping stock prices, in addition to our regular monthly investments. Our hope is that once the stock market recovers, who knows when, we will benefit from the purchases we made now.
• Retirement accounts(—): On the other hand, we were not that fortunate with our retirement investments, losing $11,526.88 (6.57%) in February to $164,045.38 in our IRA and 401(k) accounts. Since we only contribute to our IRAs quarterly, new contributions to our retirement accounts were very limited last month.
• 529 plans(–): Our daughters’ 529 accounts kept getting smaller and smaller each month, despite our sizeable new contributions. Last month, the accounts shrank by another $725.39 (5.32%) to $12,919.47.
• Bonds(+): Even though the stock market performed poorly, we didn’t jump on the bond bandwagon with increased investments. Instead, we maintain our regular purchase of $100 I-bond per month. At the end of February, we had a total of $15,160.80 invested in I-bonds, up $170.34 (1.14%) from a month ago.

Comparing to the same period a year ago, our net worth dropped $104,462.73 (18.97%).