The Sun’s Financial Diary

As 2006 is winding down, it’s time to look back and examine what we did, how we did this year and where we will be when 2007 begins.
In the first part of this year-end review, I summarize the moves we made in 2006 that affected us financially.
Mutual fund investments
In 2006, we continued our regular investments [...]

Last Friday, I received my last paycheck of 2006. The statement shows that for 2006, I have

Contributed $12,600.12 in the 401(k) plan
Paid $14,128.85 of federal taxes
Paid $7,363.68 of Social Security taxes
Paid $2,570.03 of NJ state taxes

In addition, my employer has matched $1,930.77 in my 401(k) plan (the free money). 2006 is the first full year [...]

Since most of the cheap stuff I bought in the past two months were from Buy.com and some items are still on sale over there, I initially wanted to wait a while before listing them on Amazon.com. Well, since Amazon offers free listing (which is one feature I like), I didn't really wait too much [...]

I have posted a lot of deals in the past month or so time that I felt were good for a little amount of money. Actually, not just I think those are good buys, I bought most of them myself as well. Here's a list of my recent purchases:

Canon PC160 Personal Copier, $5 AMIR (after [...]

Yesterday, when I was visiting InvestorTrip, I was asked what mutual funds I hold. Actually, my mutual fund portfolio currently has 12 holdings, all of them are actively managed funds. The reason I don’t have any index funds in my taxable account is that when I started investing in mutual funds, I didn’t really expect [...]

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 [...]

JLP at AllFinancialMatters today named this Diary the Blog of the Week. It's nice to be recognized by a successful blogger in the personal finance arena.
If you are a new reader coming from AllFinancialMatters (as well as all other places), I welcome you to the Diary and hope you enjoy your stay. A good [...]

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 [...]

It has been a little over four years since I opened my Scottrade brokerage account and started trading stocks. Back then, I was so excited about making quick money from the stock market that I kept the Scottrade trading window open from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm almost every day and didn't really do any [...]

The nine items I bought on Buy.com last month were all gone (I bought ten and one was returned later after I found their rebate has conditions that I have to sign up their service to get the rebate). I sold six of them till last Saturday, and three more this week: a 4-port USB [...]