November financial snapshot

Below is a monthly snapshot of our investments, major debts and net worth for November 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 full balance sheet provided on the right which includes these values.]

• After taking a beating for the majority of October the stock market rallied during much of the month of November. Because of this and our record-low expenses we were able to have our best month for the year.



• We were able to make the final contributions to our Roth IRAs to max these accounts out ahead of schedule as hoped for when putting together our October financial snapshot.



• We made our regular transfers ($800 total) to EmigrantDirect, the primary holder of our cash reserve. Our goal is to have $9,600 in emergency savings (residing in ING Direct and EmigrantDirect accounts). To do this we will need to set aside $2,707.28 during the month of December. This should be possible because we no longer have the Roth contributions to worry about.



• 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 an added bonus, we were able to pay off the balance transfer #1 and finished reconsolidating student loan #1 in November.



• We increased our net worth by 12.42% in November by adding a record $7,844.67 to the stack (beating the previous record set in July). We now need only $3,992.76 in net worth gains in December to meet our goal of having $75,000 in net worth 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 292.3% increase in our net worth.