November 2006 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth

I used to summarize our monthly expenses before calculating the net worth, but last month I was a little behind in recording all the expenses. Fortunately, we paid most of the charges with credit cards, so I am not worried too much about missing transactions. In addition, I was eager to see how we did in accumulating our net worth last month as the stock markets continued to work in our favor. Therefore, for this month, I am rolling out the net worth update first.

Summary:

October, November, and December are my favorites. Not only we have many holidays in these three months, the stock markets in the last quarter usually outperform the early part of the year as well. After an increase of 4.37% in net worth in October, we saw another solid gain of 5.32% in November. Excluding house and car related items, our net worth on November 30th totaled $422,015, up $21,344 from the end of October. Year-to-date, we grew our nest egg more than 43%.  

Details:

Credit card debt: Two of my 0% balance transfer offers from Chase expired last month and I paid off the remaining balances with cash, causing the sharp decline in credit card debt. I still have another offer about $8,800 from Discover, making the most part of the current credit card debt of $10,591. I like balance transfers and never hesitated to take one when the term was right. I probably won't apply for any new cards to get the free loan. But if new offers from Chase come again, I will take them. 

Cash: Our cash reserve dropped $34,132 in November from October after returning the borrowed money. In addition, our T-bill purchases in November reached the highest level, for $3,000 every week. This also contributes to the decline of our cash position, which is at $29,753 at the end of last month.

Taxable accounts: A good month of stock markets added a healthy gain of $13,898, or 7.67%, in November, totaling the value of our taxable accounts (individual stocks, mutual funds) at $195,069 at the end of November. Again LFC is a the biggest contributor as the price increased from $85.15/share to $98.15/share.

Retirement: Relatively, the gain in our retirement accounts was moderate as we added $5,047, or 2.89%, in November to our 401(k)s and IRAs,to a total of $179,674. What bothers me most is that after two months, the transfer of our IRA assets from Scottrade to Vanguard still stuck somewhere and I have no idea how much time they need to get the job done.

529 plans: Compared to October, the value of our daughter's 529 accounts increased by $416 to $5,364, a gain of 5.42% .

Bonds: The total value of bonds/bills in our portfolio is $23,164, more than doubled the amount we had in October solely due to the 4-week T-bill purchase. 

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