The Sun's Financial Diary

May 2009 turned to be another solid month for our net worth as the stock market recorded its third straight monthly gain. After reaching the lows on March 9, which now seems to be the bottom of the stock market, the Dow has gained nearly 30% as of May 31, the Nasdaq almost 40%, and [...]

On top of the 9% gain in March, our net worth grew strongly in April, due to the robust rebound in the stock market, even though we took out cash last month to pay taxes. Without house and vehicle related items, our net worth at the end of April showed a gain of $58,504.90 to [...]

It seems we had a pretty good month in March. For the first time this year, our net worth actually went up by a rather significant amount with the help from the big rally in the stock market. Excluding house and cars, we had a total of $486,449.83 on March 31, an increase of $40,196.76, [...]

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 [...]

After the 5.31% rebound in the last month of 2008, our net worth took a hit again in January, thanks to the 8.57% plunge (the S&P 500) of the stock market. On January 31, 2009, our net worth totaled at $452,236.08 without items related to house and cars. That’s $20,524.23 (4.34%) less than a month [...]

So far I have looked at how I traded stocks in 2008 and my passive income last year. Now it’s time to examine the progress on building up our net worth. Before I get to the details, one thing is for sure: It’s not pretty, as I have already shown through my monthly net worth [...]

American households really took a hit in the third quarter of 2008.
Federal Reserve released its third quarter Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States today. According to the report, U.S. households lost $2.8 trillion in value from July to September to a total of $56.539 trillion. That’s a 4.7% decline from the second quarter. [...]

Another month, another loss.
We ended the month of November with our paper fortune taking yet another hit, though the scale of the loss is much smaller than the one we had in October. For the month, our net worth declined $17,011.73 (3.65%) to a total of $448,925.10, the third straight monthly decline.

Here’s a quick look [...]

Because of the vacation in September and October, I haven’t posted an update of our net worth for two months. I ran a quick check before I left for vacation in September and the numbers were not looking good, but still acceptable. However, after I left the country at the end of September, things on [...]

Our net worth actually rose a little bit last month!
What I remembered of the stock market in August was that it was as volatile as it has been lately: up 100 points one day, down 200 points the next. So it’s hard to tell how the stocks and mutual funds we invest in did for [...]