The Sun's Financial Diary

From what happened to our net worth so far this year, 2006 will turn out to be a great year, though we still have one month to go.  Compared to what we had when 2006 began, our net worth at the end of November has increased nearly 44%. Unless the stock markets take a big [...]

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 [...]

Last night, when I finished the final calculation of our October net worth, I found that we had a net increase of $106,792 in the first 10 months of this year. That was really a surprise as I never expect we can do this well. So exactly where did those gains come from? Here's a [...]

 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 [...]

Ok, it's reporting time and it begins with the monthly expenses.

Summary:
The daily living costs of October was $1697, slightly higher than that of September when we spent $1649. The increase is about 3% (equivalent to the annual inflation rate ?) However, there are some one-time expenses that I think will not repeat [...]

As the closing bell sounded on Wall Street, the month of October came to an end, at least financially. How did we do this month? 
Well, I don't have the exact number yet, but considering that the Dow kept setting new record highs this month (up from 11676 to 12080), we definitely got some help from [...]

This is the last item on the September 2006 score card: asset allocations of the taxable accounts.
In addition to investing regularly in our retirement accounts (401(k)s, Roth IRAs), I also have some stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds in taxable accounts. Right now, these accounts serve as supplements to our retirement investments. When it comes [...]

One of my mutual fund holdings, Columbia Strategic Investor Z (CSVFX), lost more than $2.60 in NAV on September 20th. At that time, I thought it must be due to income distributions. But I forgot to check my account from their website and didn't take the distribution into consideration when calculating my September net worth.
Last [...]

Ok, now it's time to take a look at how we did in investing in September.

Summary:
September was another good month for us in terms of nest egg growth as we added $14,728.45. Excluding house and cars (both as assets and liabilities), the total number is $384,297, up 3.99% from August. Year-to-date, our net worth growed [...]

September was just the second time in as many months that I recorded our monthly expenses. Though the history is kind of short, I can still see some patterns of how and where we spent our money. One problem, however, is that since I didn't have a budget ahead of the spending, I really can't [...]