August financial snapshot

Below is a monthly snapshot of our investments, major debts and net worth for August as they compare with the previous month and some thoughts.

[Please note: checking accounts, credit cards without balance transfers and house/car values are excluded from this table for simplicity. The net worth calculation shown is based on our balance sheet provided on the right which includes these values.]

• As July was the best performing month for the market thus far this year which greatly pushed our net worth higher, August was probably one of the worst which erased most of the gains made in July and thus, we remained fairly stagnant.



• We continued to make contributions to our Simple IRA and 401k plans in which we should reach the maximum allowed by the end of the year as planned.



• As stated in our July financial snapshot, our goal was to contribute up to $650 to each of our Roth IRAs in August for a total of $1,300, but unfortunately we were only able to meet the minimum of making $900 in total contributions. The $900 minimum each month will allow us to max out both accounts by the end of the year which is one of our 2005 goals. In September it will only be possible for us to again contribute the $900 minimum as we need to make up for the increased expenses incurred during the month of August.



• We increased our net worth by 4.70% in August effectively adding another $2,397.91 to the stack. No where near the growth we saw in July when we increased our net worth by $7,132.56, though there was a nice upswing in the markets that helped us reach that point. We now need to average $5,395.52 in monthly net worth gains for the remaining 4 months of 2005 to meet our goal of having $75,000 in net worth assets by the end of the year which is one of our 2005 goals.



• Since the creation of this blog back in January we have seen a 195.20% increase in our net worth.