The Financial Ladder

Another year, another raise...

2008-04-30T12:03:00.003-04:00

It's that time of year again. I recently received my good performance review, and an average raise, 3.0%. That's the same as last year. But I've found that last years inflation rate was 2.85%, so I suppose I'm a bit ahead of the game. Though with the value of the dollar plunging, I'm not sure how that affects our finances of today compared to last year. We're in the process of buying a house and trying to sell our condo, so the timing is pretty decent. We'll be carrying both mortgages, so everylittle bit helps...

April Net Worth Report...

2008-04-04T16:27:00.004-04:00

It's been awhile since I've posted, so here goes. It's about that time of the month again to compile our net worth, Yaaaay, whoo hoo! You can view a detailed report of our net worth by clicking on the pic on your left.

It seems our net worth has increased by almost 20k since our last post in October of 07'. That's approximately a 3k per month advancement, not bad. We're still saving for a house, so our cash accounts are still large and growing. We're in the process of searching for a home now though.

Uh, let's see. We moved my wife's 401k account at her old job into a traditional IRA. We got bit for that one, she was fully vested, so they took back the company match, lost a little over 2k. My company retirement plan was closed and that money was put into my 401k. That's going to be a lot better since the retirement plan was a basic savings account, it'll do much better where it is now.

I'm keeping the house, car, and personal property assessments the same since they pretty much haven't changed. Nothing new to report with credit cards, they're paid off on time every month, and our other debts are slowing getting paid. That's it in a nutshell. We've been fairly conservative with our spending the past several months, but also fairly liberal on spending. Slowly but surely, climbing the financial ladder...

International Blog Cup!

2007-10-14T09:04:00.002-04:00

Looks like someone decided to create a contest for the worlds best blogs @ the "International Blog Cup." It looks like a public voting system that starts with 32 blogs that have been nominated for the competition. It goes through 5 rounds of voting to find the best international blog. You can see a visual of it on the left, click pic.

Many of the blogs I'm not very familiar with. But maybe some of them are your favorites. Some blogs I know in the running... boing boing, problogger, life hacker, perezhilton, seth godin, and the consumerist. The voting is down to the quarterfinals with 8 blogs. Voting for this stage will be open from 10/10 to 10/15. Go vote!

An International Look At Weekly Food Expenses...

2007-10-14T07:59:00.000-04:00

I'm sure most of you out there are familiar with how much your friends and family spend per week on food. But have you ever been curious what someone from another country spends?

I came across an interesting post that highlights a book called "Hungry Planet - What the world eats." It's written by Peter Menzel, and it shows what families from around the world buy, and how much they spend per week on food.

It ranges from a family in Germany that spends an unbelievable $500 per week, to a Sudanese refugee family spending only $1.23! The post has everything set up pretty well with pictures of the family, and what they've bought. It's worth a look...

A Day Late, And $39 Dollars Short!

2007-10-06T16:42:00.000-04:00

One day late with last months credit card payment and they charge me $39.00! Plus a $10 finance charge to boot. $49 is too costly a mistake for being a day late when I've been a long standing customer. A quick phone call and I was able to get the late fee waived, but not the finance charge. Oh well, I guess that's the price to pay for convenience, easier budgeting and various rewards...

October Net Worth...

2007-10-02T18:50:00.000-04:00

My, my, how time does fly! It's been almost 2 months since my last post! I'm going to try to at least keep our net worth posts consistent. I can't believe I missed a month. One missed net worth calculation missed in the past 1.5 years, not bad I guess.

With our son being 5 1/2 months old now, it's been kind of busy around here. Plus we've been doing a little updating to our condo to help the resale value. Doing a little painting here, replacing a vanity mirror there, we hope to put it on the market sometime in the near future.

With my wife back to work part time, we've been doing surprisingly well the past couple of months. We've made a 6.57% ( $10,835.43 ) increase since our last net worth which was early August. That comes to a new net worth of $175,636.87. I think it could be due to the record amount of overtime I've been putting in this year. Though I'm not sure how much longer it will last, things have been getting a bit rocky at my wife's job since their business hasn't been doing so well as of late. We'll just have wait and see...

We've Been The Victims Of Credit Card Fraud!

2007-08-14T10:53:00.000-04:00

Son of a B#$@^!!! I didn't think it could happen to us. All the nice little safety precautions we take to protect our credit cards and credit account information. Several nights ago we received an automated message from my wife's bank that there has been some unusual activity on her account. We logged online to find that someone had made a $3,000 transaction several states away, earlier on in the day!

They also TRIED to use the card again for another $600 transaction, but the alert had already been made, so the credit company wanted the merchant to call in that purchase for identification. We were stunned, nervous, and pissed! Luckily everything was handled quickly and smoothly. We took care of the matter online and on the phone. That money was credited back onto our account, and closed immediately.

We then issued a fraud alert to all three credit bureaus over the phone. We don't really understand how it could've happened. My wife's card wasn't stolen, we haven't been on vacation out of state for a while, and we hadn't made any online purchases recently. A co-worker seems to think that the magnetic strip on the card had been taken with a recent purchase.

We just received the new card with a new account number in the mail. It's been sitting on our desk for a few days now without being touched or activated. I'm not one to say credit cards are evil, but they can be a pain in the ass sometimes...

August Net Worth...

2007-08-05T18:31:00.000-04:00

I'm baaaaaaack. Covered in baby spit up, and diaper ointment, I'm finally sitting down at the computer to run the numbers on our latest and greatest net worth as of August 3rd. The month turned out WAY better than I thought. Our net worth increased 3.09% or $4,941.59, for a grand total of $164,801.44. You can view the entire balance sheet for the year by clicking on the pic to the left.

I'm acting surprised because the wife was out for about 3 weeks on disability due to surgery, and going back to work 4 days a week as opposed to 5 because of the birth of our new son. I think working some overtime, being a little more frugal, and selling some ad space helped out for the month of July. Let's perform a brief review of the balance sheet. With our cash savings slowly increasing to a decent amount, we've recently been house browsing online. Not very happy with a lot of houses and prices we've been seeing, we've decided to wait a bit longer before we get serious at house hunting.

Looks like my 401k will be nearing the 20k milestone soon, I can't believe it's only been a few years since I opened it up. The ROTH IRA seems to be moving with the market which has been down as of late. The company pension plan is crawling along as usual. Our condo and personal property, which consists of jewelry, will always stay static unless we get professional appraisals. I don't feel good about putting my own price tag on things like that. With overall spending down, we've had lower credit card bills to deal with.

As usual, we continue to pay the set payment for any loans we have outstanding so we'll have more money to save for a house. And partly due to that, our emergency fund has increased to a plump 50k. Well, that's all to report for now. Everything has been good on the home front. The wife and baby are both happy and content. Climbing the financial ladder slowly but surely...

July Net Worth Snapshot...

2007-07-02T18:17:00.001-04:00

Looks like it was another rough month. Our net worth increased 1.96% for a dollar total of $3,070.19. My wife was feeling upset that she had to go back to work after maternity leave after about 6.5 weeks. A about a week and a half after she returned, she got a gallbladder attack so bad that she had to have it surgically removed! That meant she would be out of work for another 3 weeks. Well, she said she wanted to spend another few weeks with the baby, now she is! But that also means more disability pay which is something like 60% of the past 15 months salary.

We did pretty well saving and banking a nice amount of cash for our saving account. That's thanks to some nice overtime and some more ad space sold. Nothing more to report than that. Retirement accounts creeping up, while our debts are inching down. You can see a more detailed view of last months progress by clicking the pic on the left. Climbing the ladder slowly, but surely...

Stressful Times...

2007-06-11T16:13:00.001-04:00

Not much to report on the financial front. I've been working on a fairly large project at work that means many hours of work, but many hours of over time as well! The past few weeks has been sort of stressful. Our new son has some wise words from an infants perspective that applies to all ages. (click pic for sage advice) I've found myself scanning the realty sites looking for houses.

We're not 100% ready to buy a house, at least I'm not, but it's good to see where the market is at this point. I'll probably applying for a few pre-approvals and qualifications within the next several weeks just in case we spot a good deal. There are also a few things around the house that need to get done to make this place a little more appealing to any potential buyers.

The next net worth might sting a bit compared to the last one. The wife finally went back to work part time last week, and the disability checks will be a few weeks apart. I'm hoping the extra O.T. and recently sold ad space will help ease the pain a bit....

June Net Worth Snapshot...

2007-06-01T19:29:00.000-04:00

Today's net worth snapshot falls on our new son's 6 week birthday. Six weeks later also means that my wife will be going back to work next week! But a month and a bunch of poopy diapers later, we finally seem to be getting back on track this month with our net worth increasing 2.87%, for a dollar total of $4,374.81.

Two big differences between this month over last month was that we finally started to receive disability checks for my wife's maternity leave, and there were no big credit card purchases. Seems the stock market helped the retirement accounts a bit and the loans are being paid down slowly but surely. We'd like to save as much as possible because we'd like to purchase a house within the next several months to a year.

With my wife going back to work part time until September, it should be slow going the next several months. Oh, and the breast feeding wasn't working out too well for us, so that was stopped about 3.5 weeks ago. We'll have to shell out extra money for formula in the next several months. I believe we save a bit of money on formula by using power instead of liquid though. That, and various coupons I've found through out the net.

That's it for now. Looks like it's my turn to feed the baby...

Advertising Cold Call...

2007-05-18T21:44:00.000-04:00

Last month I mentioned that online advertising spending is supposed to grow to an estimated $19.2 billion dollars this year. The financial services sector in particular will increase by about one third to about $2.4 billion. Since last year I've been experiencing some of this growth by way of google adsense, adbrite, paid text links and posts.

But for the past several months during my daily roams around the pf blogosphere, I would see other sites with a lot more paid text links than my site probably would ever have. I also noticed how eager certain marketing companies are in paying for a text link on a personal finance blog, even my little ol' blog.

I looked into text link advertising networks like linkworth and text link ads. But I figured I'd have to split the profits with them, and I wouldn't wind up with much. Perhaps I could make my own deals and make 100% profit? So I set out on a bold and shameless journey to solicit from some of the companies that were advertising on various blogs.

The first round of e-mails didn't do so well, I didn't receive many responses. After putting together a better sounding sales pitch, and increasing the number of potential advertisers, I finally started to see positive and money making opportunities. I'd estimate I get a response from 30% of the e-mails that are sent out. Most I wind up making agreements with.

I also like the challenge, and the art of negotiating a deal. I'm curious to know if there are any other pf bloggers out there that have done something like this? Have you thought about it, and do you think you will perhaps give it a try? I think the money's there, go for it. I figure I have nothing to lose, and a few extra bucks to gain...

Time For A Raise!

2007-05-10T16:21:00.001-04:00

Yep, it's about that time of the year. Unfortunately it's nothing special, another 3.0% raise this year. Seems as though I'm with in average range for this year. They expected raises to be from 3 to 4 percent last year. I've also found that it's slightly under last years average inflation rate of 3.24%. For some reason I'm not complaining as much this year, I feel more content...

May Net Worth Snapshot...

2007-05-03T12:49:00.001-04:00

Whew, what a month it's been! With the preparation and arrival of our new son, comes a multitude of challenges. From emotional to physical, from financial to intellectual, it's going to be interesting for the rest of our lives.

Well, as to be expected, last month was a bit difficult financially. Our net worth has minutely increased by 0.19% for a dollar total of $294.00. (Click balance sheet on left for more details) The disability money we were expecting to help out while my wife was on maternity leave never showed! The first check was 2 weeks late.

Now we find that we have to fax in a letter explaining the situation so they can stop payment on the check if it's out there, and put a trace on it. After that process, they'll mail us another check which should take another 2-4 weeks! Our 2nd check was mailed out yesterday, so we're hoping that one shows up on time. Due to less savings and paying taxes last month, there was a slight decrease in our cash funds.

Our retirement funds seem to have been following market and did pretty well, they're all up for the month of April. Credit card debt is up much higher than normal due to being used to pay taxes. Well, that's it for now, I'm looking forward to next month since I expect it to get slightly better when we start getting the disability checks on a regular basis, but who knows...

Newest Addition To The Financial Ladder...

2007-04-22T09:19:00.000-04:00

I'm proud to announce that we have a new addition to the financial ladder. Our new bouncing baby boy started climbing with us on April 20th, 2007 @ 5:09 pm. Mommy and baby are both doing well and are in good health. The first financial related question he makes me ask is, what does a natural birth and a 3 day stay at a hospital cost nowa days?

That's not a subject I normally think about when discussing new babies with family or friends. Is there anyone out there willing to share what it cost them to give birth in a hospital, and what the actual cost was? Hopefully both of my wife's insurance companies will soften the hit a bit...

Child-Care Woes and an Imminent Birth...

2007-04-12T09:41:00.000-04:00

I mentioned in a previous post that while my wife and I are at work, my wife's aunt will be watching our child. After further discussion with my wife, I found out that nothing in life is free! Turns out We'll be paying our aunt to watch him. So for approximately 6 hours a day, and about 4 days a week we'll be shelling out $30 a day for child-care.

That comes to about $5,800 a year including vacations. I came to the conclusion that it's only fair, she'll have her two grandchildren to watch as well our newborn. Plus, she'll be spending time, food and energy while she's not 100% healthy. A little research also shows me that daycare center child-care is much more expensive, so we have a good deal.

Speaking of baby, the wife visited the doctor the other day. Turns out if he's not born by next Thursday, they'll induce her that night! So we're possibly looking at an April 20th birth. I'll be taking off of work for about 2 1/2 weeks to help/bond with the baby. Now that a "countdown" has begun, she's scared and I'm nervous. She's also having false labor pains, which usually indicates the birth is near as well, so who knows...

Bigger Online Advertising Budgets = More Money For PF Bloggers?

2007-04-05T13:59:00.001-04:00

Seeking Alpha reports online advertising spending is expected to be approximately $19.2 billion dollars in 2007. An online market researcher named "eMarketer" expects the financial services sector to increase it's online advertising spending by over 33% to $2.4 billion this year alone, and $3.52 billion by the year 2010. It's now one of the biggest online advertisers online.

Could this mean more money for the personal finance, investing and real estate bloggers out there? We do offer a large audience of the type of clientele they're looking for. They are willing to pay big money to the larger personal finance sites out there like yahoo finance, cnn money, aol's market watch, and msn. CNN Money’s display ad rates are $92 - $143 per thousand impressions (cpm)!

We may not get as much of the pie as the big shots out there, but it's there for the taking, and I'm a bit hungry..

I Have a Bigger Salary Than The Co-Founders Of Google...

2007-04-04T08:07:00.001-04:00

For the third year in a row the CEO and co-founders of google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin received a salary of $1. Interesting, and here I am thinking that I'm underpaid. Their main compensation comes from returns on their ownership of google. As major shareholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to the stock price appreciation and performance. Shares of google stock closed Tuesday at $472.60 each. Guess this helps out in between the pay checks...

Taxes, Insurance, a Baby, Oh My!

2007-04-03T16:08:00.000-04:00

Taxes are finally finished and on their way first class. It was an interesting year with us having to actually PAY this year instead of receiving a refund. I adjusted my W-4 earlier on in the year to keep more, and pay less taxes through out the year. Though I may need to do some more fine tuning on it since we'll be shelling out about $1,600 for the year of 2006.

It should be interesting next year with our little tax deduction on the way ;-) Which brings to the heart attack the other day when my wife called me on April fools day to tell me she had the baby! Of course she really didn't, but It was the best scare I had in a while. In reality, she's now dilated 2 centimeters. Could be any day or week now. Oh, and I can't forget insurance on top of the taxes this month. I'm looking at having to pay out several hundred dollars for auto and home insurance this month. Whoa is me...(Que the violins)

Your Personal Finance Skills and Some Sound Advice...

2007-04-02T09:08:00.000-04:00

Times Leader brings to light an interesting study on peoples financial skills, and puts forth some sound advice to help you with YOUR financial skills. The people of Harvard, Princeton and the Federal Reserve came together to compile a report: The Age of Reason: Financial Decisions Over the Life cycle.

After reviewing the financial records of tens of thousands of borrowers, they've basically found that the average person's financial decision-making skills reach it's peak at the age of 53, and then gradually decline.

"We find that younger adults and older adults borrow at higher interest rates and pay more fees than middle-aged adults. For the young, the lack of experience outweighs the sharp mind. With older folks, dimming faculties undermine even a lifetime of experience."

They mention a few simple principles you can keep in mind when making some big financial decisions. Here are some of them:

If you plan on hiring any type of financial consultant..

Get objective advice. That means relying on advisers who have no stake in whether you do what they suggest. A broker who earns sales commissions has a financial incentive to urge you to buy and sell, even if that’s not in your best interest.

Consider hiring a “fee-only” adviser who is paid a flat or hourly rate instead of commissions.

Fees matter. Sales commissions, annual account maintenance fees and other “incidentals” add up.

Or if you are a "do it yourselfer"...

Don’t rush. Whether you are young or old, assume that investments, loans and other financial choices are commitments you will stick with for years, so you have nothing to lose by taking a few weeks to make decisions.

Read all sales materials, prospectuses and other disclosures. Be sure you know your options if things don’t turn out as you expect. Suppose interest rates change or you have a financial crisis? Would you be able to reverse a decision?

I'm not crazy about reading those prospectuses. If you don't either, try a place like morningstar.com or my favorite yahoo finance. If you would also like to see how your financial skills rate, I found a little "financial IQ test" @ MSN.

April Net Worth Snapshot...

2007-04-01T11:19:00.000-04:00

It's quiet...too quiet. This is the sound of the calm before the storm...the financial storm. I'm done paying last months bills, and haven't started paying this months yet. Thanks to the timing of a few financial helpers, this is another net worth record for us ($152,120.85).

This month our net worth has increased by 5.99%, for a dollar total of $8,601.65. You can view the blance sheet on the left, click to enlarge. There are a couple of transactions I made last month that stand out. I sold our I-bonds, and made a contribution towards our Roth IRA. I've had the bonds since Oct 05, and they've done pretty well since then, an appreciation of approximately 6.3%. I wanted to use the money for the roth contribution, and for an upcoming tax payment.

We did pretty well on the saving front due to a extra paycheck, auto insurance payment break, some overtime, and a record amount of blog advertising for the month. There was an interesting increase in my companies retirement plan for an unknown reason, almost $2,000. I'm not fully aware of how the plan works, so I can't explain it. My wife's 401 (k) still remains stagnant. She recently became eligible at her fairly new job, but they say they are making a transition to a new financial firm and they recommended she wait. It's been a little too long, so she plans on lighting a fire under a few peoples butts as soon as she's done with her maternity leave.

Thanks to not having to spend too much last month, our credit card bills have been lower than normal. As usual, all student, auto, and mortgage loans slowly being chipped away. Emergency reserve continues to grow, and is now around a healthy 42k. That's something like one year worth of expenses.

Unfortunately I don't have a positive outlook for next months net worth. Taxes, insurance, a baby, oh my!

That Stork Is Getting Closer...

2007-03-27T10:56:00.000-04:00

As of tomorrow my wife will be 36 weeks along in her pregnancy. It will also be the first day of her maternity leave. The doctor said that she would not let my wife go past 39 weeks in the pregnancy due to the size of the baby...he's in the 85th percentile for his size! So that will be about 3 weeks of leave before the baby, and 6 weeks after. If she delivers by C-Section, it will be an extra 2 weeks. So at the moment she's looking at about 9 weeks of maternity leave time.

She'll be receiving approximately 60% of her work salary during that time. After her time is up, she'll be going back to work part time for a little while. So needless to say, it's going to be financially interesting during the next several months. Thankfully we will be having my wife's aunt watch the baby while we're at work. That was a load off of our minds in many different ways. We'll be climbing the ladder a bit slower, but it'll be worth it.

I have to admit it, I'm more nervous than excited. My wife has a good amount of experience with babies and children. From being a baby sitter when she was younger, to being a "mother/baby" nurse in a hospital, she's really enjoying the pregnancy experience, and REALLY looking forward to the baby. We're pretty much prepared for the baby, from furniture to butt cream!

I've received some help from various classes we've been attending: Pets & Babies, Breastfeeding, and Newborn Childcare. The instructor of the breast feeding class mentioned that the money we'll be saving by breastfeeding, will come to the amount it may take for a vacation. Oh well, Que sera, sera...

Come Get YOUR Money!

2007-03-18T10:10:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure if you've heard, but the IRS has about $2.2 billion in unclaimed tax-refund money for 2003. There are missing filers in every U.S. state, all U.S. possessions, and in all military services. California ranks #1 among all the non-filing residents with approximately 200,000 for the year 2003.

They've also found that New Hampshire tax filers are most likely to get the largest refund, where the median refund is $709. The biggest potential for even a larger refund are the folks in the military who could be banking about $785 each. They still have the chance if they get their forms in by the April 17th deadline of this year.

This is their last chance, any longer and they could forfeit a refund that belongs to them. My home state of New Jersey had about 56,500 non-filers with the potential of about $690 to be received. I wasn't part of that group, and by the look of my taxes this year, I'm going to actually be paying! Check out how much your states non-filers could be making for 2003, click the pic on the left.

Roth IRA Contribution...

2007-03-14T18:25:00.000-04:00

I'm reluctant to mention that I've made a contribution to my ROTH IRA for the year of 2006. It's because it will only be $1000 as opposed to the potential max of $4000. I'm keeping our goal of purchasing a house within a year or two in mind when I make decisions like these.

With this contribution along with my 401 (k) contributions, this will be approximately 7% of our income put away for retirement. Not bad I suppose, but that's running on partial retirement steam, we could do much better.

And unfortunately my wife's new employer restricted her from letting her open a 401 (k) until she was with the company for 6 months. Now that she's finally reached that time limit, they are in the middle of transitioning to a new retirement planner, so they aren't opening new accounts yet. They expect everything to be completed in another couple of months or so.

Though I guess that isn't so bad since I'm banking that money that's not contributed, it's going towards "the goal." Oh well, better something than nothing I always say...

We Were Almost Caught In The Credit Card Trap...

2007-03-09T08:56:00.000-05:00

With all the hoopla going on about NCN being featured on the Jean Chatzky Show on XM radio, I thought I'd share our near "trapped in credit card debt" experience. A few years back, my wife and I had about 2 years to save for a wedding, honeymoon, and a new home! At that time we were making decent money, a bit higher than average for Jersey. But that still didn't seem like enough for what we wanted.

We eventually decided to stretch it out and settle for a nice wedding and a condo. That's pretty much where the money ended, even with all of the wedding gifts. All of the condo updating like paint, new kitchen cabinets, new electrical, new furniture, etc. was paid for by credit cards. Luckily all the cards were newly applied for, and all of them offered zero percent financing for a year. After everything was said and done, we had gotten into a little over $15,000 in credit card debt! We had NEVER been that far into the hole before. For me it was something like 1 or 2 grand at the most, and my wife about the same.

I have to admit, I felt a little trapped. We had planned on saving for a house for the next five years. With that amount debt, I was afraid we wouldn't make it in time. Me being the over anxious and worrisome type, I wanted to climb out as fast as possible. With any hooks, ladders and ropes I could find! At one point I considered perhaps getting a shot term loan at a place like this, thinking I can pay it off much faster and not have the debt show on my credit report, but I didn't know much about them at the time, so I stayed away.

By staying patient, focused and managing our money well, we were able to climb out of the hole in a little over 6 months. After cutting up the cards, we never looked back. Now all credit bills are paid off every month, with no charges, we maintain a excellent credit rating, and we get cash and valuable rewards by using them. Now here I am, trying to climb the financial ladder...slowly...but surely.