My Financial Journey

Well a couple of changes with my accounts this month. You’ll notice that my previous employer Traditional and Roth 401ks are no longer in the detail and that there is a new Traditional IRA Rollover account. I rolled over the money from my previous employer this month. The traditional part is in the Traditional IRA Rollover account and the Roth part I just put in my normal Roth IRA account. My previous employer actually had excellent investment options – some actually better than I can get on my own, but I rolled it over just because even though the expense ratios were top notch I just wasn’t sure what other fees were being assessed or what new fees might show up in the future. Guess I am a control freak when it comes to my financials so I rolled it over.
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Well I managed to stay positive this month (barely) completely due to contributions and finally getting matching funds from my previous employer. This month isn’t exactly 100% precise as I don’t know exactly how much of the matching funds is mine anymore due to it only being 20% vested so I took a stab at it. Hopefully by next month this money will show up in Rollover IRAs and I will be back on tracking it to the penny (as if that matters). Anyway here are the figures for this month. Hopefully next month I break through the $60,000 mark.
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Heh – another great month for my retirement nest egg. Up over 7% this month and creeping up on the $60,000 mark. It’s amazing how fast your accounts grow when you make regular contributions and just let the magic of the stock market do its thing. It’s been an amazingly long run of stellar stock market returns. In fact I think the last 5 years have been one of the longest consistent bull runs ever. Guess that means odds of things heading south for a bit are slightly higher.
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Another pretty good month for my retirement nest egg. The stock market sure has been on a good tear for a long time now, which honestly kind of stinks. While it’s nice to see your accounts going up every month, I certainly wouldn’t mind being able to buy stuff on the cheap at my age if we went through a couple years of downturn. One thing to note is for the last two months I have missed my Roth IRA contributions. This is due partly because I decided to splurge and pay off my HELOC. I’m hoping this month I’ll be able to squeeze some money into my Roth IRA accounts, but if not either way I plan on still maxing them both out by the end of the year (this is the first year I didn’t max both accounts out on Jan 1 – again due to me wanting to eliminate my HELOC first). Anyway here are the numbers.

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Well another positive month. A good chunk of the gain was due to deposits again, but all of my accounts except my Roth IRA had positive investment gains also. One thing to note is that I missed for the first time in my life my planned deposit to my Roth IRA account. I really got it in me for whatever reason to pay off my HELOC entirely and put a good $5000+ of my resources in the last month to paying off my HELOC entirely. This drained my cash reserves quite a bit so I did not feel safe making my monthly Roth IRA deposit because it might get my checking account too low and I get really nervous if it ever dips below $3,000. I also have a 0% credit card that I have been carrying a balance on that comes due in July and has about $5500 on it (primarily due to me putting all cash towards HELOC, paid over $10,000 in HELOC within the last year). Note- I have never left a balance on a non 0% credit card and never will. I don’t see the extra $5,500 being a challenge to pay off before July, but I may forgo another Roth IRA deposit this month just to be sure. Anyway here are the numbers.
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Well it was another good month for my retirment nestegg. Gained over 4.5% and am inching closer to the $50,000 mark. It’s amazing how fast my nestegg continues to grow as just last December it was only at $24k and hopefully in two years time it will be close to $100k. Just goes to show you that if you stick to a plan of continually contributing to your retirement accounts it starts adding up. I mean when I started saving and investing I thought it would take decades for me to reach six figures and everytime I saw a blogger who had a net worth or retirement account that was over $100,000 I always thought wow that guy must make a lot of money to be able to save that much money. Turns out you don’t need to make that much money, those guys were probably just a couple years ahead of me and had the same rigorous saving mentality. Anywho here is where I stand as of today.

My Roth IRA – $11,366.56 (-0.30%)
Wife Roth IRA – $14,223.81 (+9.56%)
Traditional 401K – $11,933.34 (+2.00%)
Roth 401K – $11,406.00 (+6.27%)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $48,929.71 (+4.52%)