My Financial Journey

My All Time Investment Performance January 2026

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 10:53:14 +0000

Well 20 years in the books and I could not have ever dreamed things would have turned out this well. After 20 years of investing I’ve achieved every single one of my financial goals well ahead of schedule. A lot of this has been due to the outperformance of my portfolio. 2025 was not a good year for me losing to the SP500 for only the 2nd time in the last 9 years and lowering my all time performance. That being said my all-time individual stock portfolio has returned 19.37% annualized returns vs the SP 500’s 9.87%.
Outperforming by 9.5% doesn’t seem like much but when compounded over 20 years its absolutely insane. A single $10,000 investment when I started this blog 20 years ago would have grown into $65,702. Meanwhile $10,000 invested in my stock portfolio would have grown into $345,067! If this experiment was carried out another 20 years that $10k in the SP500 would be worth $431,683 and $10k in my stocks would be worth $11.9 Million dollars!!!!!!
I have no illusion that this performance will continue forever though to be perfectly honest I think I will be able to keep it going for a few more years.

My best and worst stocks in 2025

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 08:51:40 +0000

In annual tradition I will list my best and worst individual stock performers for 2025.

Best Performers
Netflix +44.75%
Shopify +38.12%
Apple +31.40%
Chipotle +23.85%

Worst Performers
Ethereum -10.94%
Bitcoin -6.37%
Cloudflare -4.30%
DataDog -2.15%

Nothing too exciting other than Netflix was once again one of my top performers which just goes to show you the power of long term buy and hold. I first purchased Netflix 20 years ago on Dec 8th, 2005 for 37 cents a share. It immediately tanked and I bought some more the following June for split adjusted 28 cents per share. Netflix closed the year at $93.75 and hit a high of $134.12 earlier in the year. Making that first purchase worth 253x what I originally paid for it and 20 years later the best performing stock in my portfolio was Netflix. Winners win and often for a very long time.

My Investment Holdings January 2026

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 12:49:20 +0000

As is now annual tradition I will list my investment holdings as of the year end. As usual I did not do much of any trading. In all of 2025 I made exactly two trades. I used my early retirement cushion to buy a large chunk of Tesla in March when everyone was worked up about Elon & Trump & tariffs and this buy is now already up 80%. Also just this last month I decided to finally take a stake in Google and trimmed some Chipotle and Netflix to do so.

My All Time Investment Performance January 2025

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 09:35:08 +0000

Time sure flies and I now have 19 full years of investing under my belt. Things have turned out better than I could have ever imagined and I’ve blown through every single goal I set for myself. I did the hard part of starting early, living well below my means, and consistently investing without freaking out and doing something stupid. The vast majority of my money went into SP 500 index funds and I experimented with a small portfolio of individual stocks with some of our IRA contributions.
That small amount of individual stocks has grown to something almost unfathomable as I’ve now averaged over 19% annualized returns over 19 years. Meaning that $10k over that period of time has grown 30x in value to $300k. I always viewed this as more of a fun experiment and never put in a significant amount of money and never jeopardized our normal index fund plans. If this portfolio went to $0 I was still going to be ok.
Luckily for me I’ve now owned some of the best companies in the market in some cases for almost two decades and have gotten outsized returns. I’ve owned Netflix since 2005 ($3.75), Starbucks ($12.41) since 2007, Chipotle ($0.85) since 2008, Amazon ($5.87) since 2010, Apple ($11.45) since 2011, Tesla ($2.50) since 2013, and Shopify ($3.20) since 2016. Buying great companies, led by amazing founders, and held for decades has turned out to be a good recipe for success. That being said I still feel luck played a large role in this and this is why probably 90% of my contributions have been into index funds.

My Best and Worst Stocks in 2024

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 08:08:17 +0000

In annual tradition I will list my best and worst individual stock performers for 2024.

Best Perfomers
Netflix +90.25%
Tesla +62.56%
Amazon +46.33%
Shopify +44.02%
Cloudflare +35.70%
Apple +34.90%
Chipotle +34.30%

My worst performing stock
DataDog +24.17%

Well what a weird year when the worst stock in my portfolio actually returned 24% and every single stock in my portfolio bested the SP500 for the year.

Investment Holdings January 2025

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:08:40 +0000

In annual tradition I list all of my investment holdings. This is a fairly static list as I only make a few trades per year and in some years have actually not made a single trade. That being said I did make a handful of trades earlier this year where I got rid of a few stocks (Starbucks, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners,Monday.com, and Crowdstrike) and all of that money plus some additional money went into Tesla.
Clearly I have had strong conviction about Tesla and it has rewarded me handsomely. That being said there is risk that it accounts for over 41% of my retirement nestegg. I am ok with this, but this is something that I plan to possibly mitigate as I completely stop working as the risk/reward profile probably doesn’t make sense as it will always be a volatile stock. I also already sold over 9% of my Tesla holdings in late December to fund a few years of my early retirement fund so as of right now I have 4 years of early retirement funds where I don’t need to worry about fluctuations in my portfolio as much.
Another item I added as 400 North which is a Commercial Real Estate property I bought 2 years ago to learn a little bit about real estate. I never included it before as I’ve never included real estate I own in any of my networth calculations as I don’t view real estate as something that is easy to sell or would be sold in many cases.
That being said after owning the property for 2 years me and my partners actually have it under contract to sell in a few months so I’ve included my initial investment amount in my retirement nestegg as it seems like we will make money on this property. It’s actually selling for an amount where I will make nearly 5x my initial investment, but for now to be safe I will leave it as if it’s only worth my initial investment as the deal could fall apart and I’m not sure I plan to use this money for my retirement nestegg. I will actually walk away with almost 9% of my nestegg in cash at closing before taxes, but I might roll that over via 1031 into another property so we’ll see how I decide to value it or not.
The smart thing would be to take that money and pay taxes on it and fund another 3 years of retirement, but I might continue to try to learn about real estate and purchase a property on my own that could be used for other ways in retirement.
Really at this point going forward I will probably no longer do much buying and slowly trim down the portfolio to keep my cash savings at 3-5 years of cash and trim down for various purchases. In fact this year alone we withdrew and SPENT 8% of our nestegg with some longer term projects (solar panels, vacation land, backyard patio, vehicles). This is almost shocking to type and is the hardest part about early retirement is that I’ve spent my entire working career saving money, buying investments, and living very frugally and now I’m to the point in my life where I need to start figuring out how to spend the money to bring me and my family the most enjoyment and it goes against every gut feeling I’ve acquired over the years that got me to where I am today. Selling great investments to spend the money has required some mental gymnastics on my part. I’ve always treated our investment accounts as one way roads where the money goes in and grows and almost feel like I’m breaking the law now that I’ve tapped into them for the first time in my life.

MY ALL TIME INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE JANUARY 2024

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 14:17:48 +0000

Well a bit of a bounce back this year after last years pullback that halved our nestegg. We greatly exceeded the performance on the SP500 this year which is the 11th time in 17 years and the 6th time in the last 7 years we’ve accomplished that. Overall any individual years performance is nothing to get too excited about, but we now have a 17 year track record to look back on. Long term performance is greatly skewed by recent performance, but we have now exceeded the total return of the SP500 by 375% over 17 years and this is entirely driven by the outperformance of our individual stock portfolio that has now exceeded the SP500 by over 1400%!!
We still however are not at all-time highs as our nestegg lost 45% of its value last year and while 50% plus returns are amazing - we needed closer to 100% returns to get back to what we gave back last year. This is why looking at anything in a short time window of a few years really isn’t really going to tell you much.
Also despite our insane outperformance by picking individual stocks we continue to contribute 100% of our money to index funds and high yield stable securities and have done so now for close to 10 years. I feel like we have gotten very lucky with our individual stock investments and I’m not convinced I’m the second coming of Warren Buffett so we continue to follow the original plan of having the vast majority of our investments be in index funds which is what I would recommend to anyone.
We do however currently have 60% of our money in individual stocks and this simply due to the fact that our stock portfolio has now averaged 17.75% annualized returns over 17 years which has turned a relatively small amount of investment into an insane amount of value. We will continue to let these investments do the bulk of the heavy lifting and over time I do see more and more of this money being converted over to index funds, but for now I still feel very confident about our long term investments and will let them run for the foreseeable future.
I also realize at this point the only meaningful thing I can do to our portfolio is to screw it up by thinking I’m smart and taking risks that if they pan out wouldn’t meaningfully change our lives anyway. With this being said if all of our individual stocks went to $0 we would still be doing pretty ok. Also almost all of our individual stocks are actually now pretty big household name companies with many sources of revenue and global reach so I feel like as time goes on our individual stocks are becoming more and more stable (if you totally ignore last years 68% drop for our stock portfolio :P )

My Best and Worst Stocks in 2023

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 08:32:19 +0000

In annual tradition I will list my best and worst individual stock performers for 2023.

My Best Performers
Bitcoin +154.96%
Crowdstrike +147.21%
Tesla +129.86%
Shopify +118.33%
Cloudflare +93.54%
Ethereum +92.82%
Amazon +77.04%
DataDog +68.37%
Chipotle +66.79%
Netflix +65.07%
Monday +57.26%
Apple +53.94%

Obviously a very good year overall for the entire market and a great year for some of my larger positions. I do have a few newish positions (only 3 years old) that had some strong performance with the cloud stocks (crowdstrike,datadog,cloudflare, monday) and the crypto that were high fliers this year, but what is even more telling for me is the massive performance by stocks I have literally held for over a decade in Tesla, Shopify, Amazon, Chipotle, Netflix, and Apple all coming in with 50% to 130% returns. Many of these are huge companies who have been growing rapidly forever and have made me loads of money already and here they are still in some cases almost 20 years after I bought them still propelling me rapidly to new nearly new highs.

Investment Holdings January 2024

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 07:36:55 +0000

In annual tradition I list all of my investment holdings. I do not do much buying or selling, but the percentages do change with market fluctuations though this year there really are not any drastic changes. The only real difference is my cash is now moved into SGOV primarily to try to get a slightly higher return. I did some very minor cleanup of my portfolio and sold some very small positions resulting in 0.4% of my portfolio.
I am long term buy and hold and honestly feel very comfortable with all of my positions. I am very hands off and that is by design, investing should be easy and I literally spent less than an hour total managing my portfolio this year and most of that was figuring out a good spot to store our cash. Despite doing nothing meaningful my portfolio grew over 61% this year. Passive compounding is the best!

My All Time Investment Performance January 2023

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 12:20:25 +0000

As I mentioned in last years review, I really came to realize that all-time investment performance is heavily dictated by the most recent years performance. It’s just the nature of compounding. A really good or really bad year now will greatly influence my all-time performance, just because I am now dealing with much larger numbers. A 50% swing one way or another when your portfolio is worth $1M vs $10,000 moves the needle a ton and dwarfs all of the moves that were made in all of the years leading up to it. So bottom line one shouldn’t get too confidence or discouraged looking at long term annualized result as its greatly influenced by recent returns, which is kind of goofy.
So in that vein my all-time annualized stock return fell from 22.65% to 15.33% - which honestly is still quite spectacular and honestly higher than I had expected. The calculated risks that I talked about last year have at least in this short period of time looked like dumb decisions - keeping nearly half of my nestegg in a stock that is down 69% in the last year. Trust me I would love to have the few extra million that I had on paper last year, but this is a marathon and not a sprint and I still feel like long term I will outperform the market with these calculated risks.
I do however and have always acknowledged that I think I am probably more lucky than skilled and going through another one of these downturns will probably make me re-evaluate my investment allocations going forward. Not so much because I think that the approach is wrong from a profit maximizing standpoint, but from a risk/reward standpoint taking added risks and them paying off does not meaningfully affect my life where as if it turns out I am indeed just a lucky moron and I am completely wrong on most things going forward it can affect my life.

My Best and Worst Stocks in 2022

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 11:53:57 +0000

In annual tradition I will list my best and worst individual stock performers for 2022.

My best performers
Starbucks -14.98%
Chipotle -17.93%
Vanguard Institutional Index Fund -21.25%
Vanguard PrimeCap Fund -23.59%
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners -23.91%

Well obviously it was a rough year if I have to celebrate the investment holdings that didn’t lose more than a quarter of their value in the year. I really only had 3 investments hold up better than the market and overall it was a brutal year, but not to be unexpected

Investment Holdings January 2023

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 07:00:30 +0000

In annual tradition I list all of my investment holdings. I do not do much buying or selling, but the percentages have changed quite a bit in the last year due to market fluctuations. Last year TSLA accounted for almost 40% of my nestegg and now it only accounts for 24% and earlier this year it was over 50%!! As a result I have become much more diversified and well poorer :-)
The other big change I would say in the last year is the amount of cash I have on hand. Now this is not primarily cash from selling - though I did take advantage of some tax loss harvesting at the end of the year, the vast majority of this money is money from a side business I started, some inheritance, and some crypto cash that I have as a start to my cash cushion. It’s very hard not to invest it given that many of my stocks are down 70%, but it is money that can be used for short term security or other short term needs. Historically this is money I would have never counted in my nestegg, but I think at this point in my life is something that I should track as it is something I would potentially leverage should I decide to stop working.
The other item I have not included in this list is in the last year I did invest $90,000 into a commercial real estate purchase with some other investors purely with the intention to learn. Now I hope I make money on the deal, but real estate is so hard to value that I will consider this money a 100% loss until some day when it sells. With leverage I personally view RE as a huge liability as if shit hits the fan you can lose like 5x your original investment where as the worst stock can only lose you 100%, but again I know there are tons of tax advantages and other benefits to real estate and while I’ve flirted it with it my entire career, I’ve always shied away because of the effort involved and the difficulty accessing the equity. I am not sure if this investment is going to change those opinions, but I was in a position in my life where I decided to give it a try.

I lost $2 million dollars

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 14:49:55 +0000

Well every goal I set for myself on this blog I not only met, but in many cases vastly over achieved. As you can see from my last post I brought up that I made the comment in my 2018 report that

My goal some day is to lose $1 million dollars in portfolio value.

Well in January of this year I made a post letting everyone know that I had indeed accomplished that goal and now in the same year I’ve now managed to lose a second million dollars in portfolio value!

I lost $1 million dollars

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 15:32:37 +0000

Well this is another goal of mine which sounds counterintuitive, but in my October 2018 Retirement Nestegg Report I was commenting about how losing $100k in a month was a non event for me and then made this statement

My goal some day is to lose $1 million dollars in portfolio value.

Well today after a few weeks of carnage it occurred to me that I may have lost about $1 million dollars on paper and sure enough my portfolio set an all-time high on Nov 4th of 2021 and now today just 79 days later my portfolio has fallen more than $1 million dollars below that ATH. Mission Accomplished!!

My All Time Investment Performance January 2022

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 11:36:52 +0000

Well time keeps flying by and somehow these ridiculous numbers keep getting better and better each year. I am fully aware that one bad year which we are probably due for can and will greatly reduce these returns and I do feel like I am more lucky than I am skilled, but I now have 16 years of returns and have beat the SP500 10 of 16 years and my stocks have over double the annualized returns of the SP500 over the same period of time.
Doubling the annualized performance sounds cool and all, but if you stretch that over 16 years you see the absolute insane impact of doing that has over the long term. Over the last 16 years every dollar that I put into individual stocks has turned into $25.20 where as had I just only invested in an index fund would be worth $3.51 which is over 7x the amount of returns. The longer this continues and the bigger the numbers get the more exaggerated this will become.
Like I mentioned above I am not sure what to think of this. I feel like I have been EXTREMELY lucky and just a couple different decisions would have drastically changed the outcome of this experiment. I do think I have a certain knack for see what changes are coming in the world and having the conviction to stick to my intuitions even when everyone around me is calling me an idiot for talking about electric cars or streaming internet video. That being said I am well aware that none of the things that I was convinced about were necessarily a lock to become reality and Tesla could have gone bankrupt a couple of different times and Netflix could have been taken out by a competitor.
I am now to a point in my life where I need to make some decisions on whether to put it into cruise control and just ride the market averages or do I have a big enough cushion of excess money where I can continue to take calculated risks and if they blow up in my face I am still going to be perfectly ok. Ultimately I think the longer time goes I will probably fall into the latter camp of continuing to take calculated risks knowing that I can survive a few mistakes without meaningfully blowing up my future plans in life. I still have 40% of my nestegg invested in Tesla stock which is a very polarizing, speculative, and volatile company, but I strongly believe in the mission and the leader so this is one of those calculated risks. I don’t see it happening, but even if Tesla were to go to $0 I would still be in a very good situation.
This ability to have this huge cushion of money that is a big safety net is allowing me to take on some additional risks. I finally toyed with crypto this year and put $500 in to learn and fully expected to lose all $500. That $500 has now turned into a few hundred thousand dollars and I actually now am doing some side work in the crypto space for one of the top people in the industry. I also yesterday decided to take the plunge into real estate and put an offer in on some land to build a self storage facility with another friend who is a real estate investor.
For someone who had no experience in crypto and no experience in real estate these types of moves would be terrifying and honestly something I probably would have never done if I didn’t have the huge safety net of a nestegg. It’s allowing me to just explore and learn new things and new areas that ultimately very well could each result in even more money, safety, and ultimately freedom to use the rest of my life to continually explore and do things that I will truly enjoy or are interested in.
I still have my day job for now that pays me extremely well and gives me my summer months off and provides me with 7 weeks of vacation, but as time goes on and these other numbers continue to grow and other opportunities continue to blossom it probably does not make any financial sense for me to keep my day job anymore which is kind of a crazy thing. Not so much that I do not need to work any longer to provide for my family, just that I am probably costing myself money by using my time and effort at my day job. I know this is always the toughest thing for every FIRE person to do come to the realization of, especially when my current job 99.999% of people would kill for. Working 9 months year with an additional 7 weeks of vacation, crazy 401k matching, bonus, relaxed work from home schedule, etc and at the end of the day a point is coming here likely soon where I will say no thanks and this is coming from a guy with 5 young children to care for and put through college.
It’s definitely a major mind shift that is so hard to do when you spent your entire life finding ways to earn and save money and get a great job with great benefits and constantly hoarding away money for the future and now that future is here and to be perfectly honest its a lot scarier than I thought it would be. Turning off the spigot of cash and perceived security of a stable day job might honestly might be one of the hardest things I will do even though I know deep down I will look back and think you idiot you should have done that much earlier!! I think this is where the side work and the real estate investments will maybe finally push me over the edge where I feel confident enough that I’m not in any way hampering my or my families future by turning off the spigot of money from the day job.
Anyway long post as I don’t get out here as often as I used to and the end of the year is where I reflect and contemplate my life more. It’s been an awesome journey so far and I am genuinely excited for the next phases of my life. This blog has been invaluable to me and I honestly learn so much myself just by going back and reading older posts. Everything has gone better than I could have ever dreamt and now I just need to finish up the final few chapters of this journey.
Crazy stupid investing results below

My Best and Worst Stocks in 2021

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 13:42:01 +0000

In annual tradition I will list my best and worst individual stock performers for 2021.

Ethereum +407.64%
Moderna +143.11%
DataDog +80.93%
Cloudflare +73.05%
Microsoft +51.21%
Costco +50.67%
Tesla +49.76%
Apple +33.82%
Intuitive Surgical +31.76%

So one thing that probably pops out that I have now delved into the crypto sphere and while Ethereum is up 407% this year I am actually up much more as I put a trivial amount of money in at the beginning of the year to learn about it and have somehow managed that everything I bought with it has gone up a ridiculous amount and I am up like 600x my initial investment which was just a few hundred dollars. I still consider this entirely speculative and educational and would not be surprised to have all of it go to $0 as a chunk of it is in ETH, but also have some NFTs that in theory one could currently sell for a few hundred thousand

Investment Holdings January 2022

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 13:12:13 +0000

In annual tradition I list all of my investment holdings. These do not change much during the year and I am really not contributing too much to my retirement accounts anymore and I rarely sell. That being said some of my largest holdings have grown quite a bit. Tesla now accounts for nearly 40% of my retirement nestegg which I guess is what it is. It’s not something I would feel comfortable trimming at this point in time.

Retirement Nestegg Report February 2021

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 22:13:02 +0000

Fidelity Taxable - $6,269.64(+1.91%)
Taxable Account- $321,579.08(-11.96%)
Private Stock $90,000(+9.10%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $119,508.74(+4.05%)
My Roth IRA – $994,281.98(-7.54%)
Wife Roth IRA – $538,331.17(-3.18%)
Wife 401k - $5,707.48(+2.74%)
Traditional 401k – $710,184.88(+4.1%)

Roth/(Traditional+Taxable) % = 55.01% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $2,785,862.97(-3.54%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $111,434

Monthly Contributions $933.84(401k)
SP500 Performance +2.61%
My Monthly Investment Performance -3.57
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -6.23%

Retirement Nestegg Report January 2021

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 18:09:52 +0000

Fidelity Taxable - $6,151.99(+2.09%)
Taxable Account- $365,281.89(+10.11%)
Private Stock $82,500(+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $114,856.07(-1.13%)
My Roth IRA – $1,075,403.21(+6.39%)
Wife Roth IRA – $556,011.00(+4.63%)
Wife 401k - $5,555.36(-0.39%)
Traditional 401k – $682,218.00(+0.73%)

Roth/(Traditional+Taxable) % = 56.49% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $2,887,977.52(+11.45%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $115,519

Monthly Contributions $933.84(401k)
SP500 Performance -1.11%
My Monthly Investment Performance +4.55%
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +6.10%

Early Retirement Congratulations

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 21:33:51 +0000

This morning I got great news that a very close friend of mine just put in his retirement resignation at the ripe age of 42. My friend Berny and I have worked together for many years across multiple companies and Berny was actually the first person to somehow come across my blog many many years ago and find out my secret identity.

He kept it to himself but eventually revealed to me that he knew my secret and had been following my blog. We shared a mutual interest in investing and personal finance and were able to freely bounce ideas off each other, share information, and have friendly competitions with our portfolio size and performance. I can’t tell you how invaluable it is to have someone that shares similar ideas and goals that you can have conversations with about money.

Retirement Nestegg Report December 2020

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 13:32:39 +0000

Oof. Wow what a year. I don’t even know how to put into words how crazy this year was. Obviously everything going on with a global pandemic and all of the horrible things that everyone has had to deal with this year has been at the forefront of everything 2020. One would logically think that 2020 would have been a horrible year to be an investor and once the pandemic hit I would have agreed 100% with that statement and I’m not sure many experts would have disagreed either.

My All Time Investment Performance January 2021

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 13:25:57 +0000

Another post that I am not sure what to make of the numbers. I’ve always had a smaller percentage of my retirement nestegg allocated to individual stocks. I know that individual stocks are loaded with a lot more risk and the track record for even the professional money managers is very very poor when it comes to individual stocks. Most of the highest paid investment fund managers cannot beat the market over time.
Despite this I have always enjoyed learning about companies and what the future holds and overall I think I was blessed with a pretty laid back demeanor that helped me from getting too high or too low with the various fluctuations in the market. Ultimately I think this is why so many investors fail - even the highly educated well paid ones. They let their emotions get the best of them and make decisions based on emotions instead of logic.
I have 15 years under my belt now and I see the same themes happen over and over and over again in the market. The market as a whole completely overreacts to ever new bit of news and individual investors swing widely from always seeming to throw money into far fetched get rich quick investments when it seems that there is no way the stock or market could be pushed any higher and then when things inevitably catch up with reality and stuff starts to slide the other direction they sell out completely until the next get rich quick bubble forms.
What I think is missing from a lot of investors is the long term perspective and an educated idea of where the future is headed. Like I mentioned above people get so caught up in the short term fluctuations and don’t take a look at the longer big term picture that is much easier to see and predict.
People also repeatedly think that things are going to stay the same and that is one thing that will never happen. So they always always greatly underestimate the new companies thinking the veteran industry leaders will crush them whenever they want. But the David and Goliath story plays out again and again when the little known upstart with a good idea and a lot of ambition ends up crushing the industry behemoth who is too slow to react or can’t react as they are afraid to disrupt themselves. Netflix vs Blockbuster, Tesla vs the auto industry, Amazon vs brick & motor retailers, etc.
All in all yes any of these stories could have turned out differently had the current #1 took the innovation seriously, but they don’t and they won’t again in the future. Just like it’s obvious you should pour money into the market every time there is a 30% correction - but people don’t. Ultimately it’s always fear that gets the best of people and companies. Fear of change, fear of disruption, fear of losing money, fear of losing out on making money.
Anyway as you can see below somehow the last 15 years I’ve managed to crush the market returns with my individual investments. Now the big caveat there and something I didn’t fully realize until this year is your long term track record is really only as good as your most recent returns. Big numbers have a huge effect on overall performance. Just last year my long term annualize performance was 13.92%, three years before that it was 10.72% which still outperformed the SP500 over that same period of time, but not nearly as impressive.
If next year is a down year my returns will drop significantly. Which means I shouldn’t get too big of a head after one year of spectacular performance. I feel very confident that I will never see another year like this year the rest of my life. So I should really evaluate going forward how much of my money should be individual stocks despite the fact that I currently look like I’m the next Peter Lynch.

My best and worst stocks in 2020

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 12:08:13 +0000

In annual tradition I will list my best and worst individual stock performers for 2020. As you can see from the list below which I cut off at only stocks that I have owned that have doubled for me it was a crazy year.

Tesla +720%
CRWD +256%
TWLO +228%
ZM +193%
DDOG + 181%
SHOP 177%
TTD +170%
NET 122%

Obviously Tesla led the pack and I did do some portfolio rebalancing this spring during the pandemic and bought a few new stocks all of which went bananas. Many of them were up more than the figures above, but I only listed the returns since I bought them in March.

Investment Holdings January 2021

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 11:51:30 +0000

TSLA	34.07%
VPMAX	12.34%
VIIIX	12.11%
SHOP	8.22%
NFLX	5.97%
AMZN	5.79%
WOLFRIVER	2.99%
CRWD	2.84%
AAPL	2.57%
CMG	2.27%
DDOG	1.65%
NET	1.59%
SBUX	1.58%
COUP	0.62%
OKTA	0.60%
TDOC	0.54%
FUBO	0.51%
TWLO	0.44%
BIP	0.41%
ZM	0.38%
ISRG	0.36%
TXRH	0.33%
DOCU	0.32%
TTD	0.32%
$$CASH	0.30%
COST	0.29%
MSFT	0.28%
VFIAX	0.20%
FSLY	0.12%

MyFinancialJourney.com - 15 years later

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 07:53:00 +0000

I know I’ve done a few retrospective blog posts recently, but 15 years ago today I created this site and wrote my first couple blog posts. At the time I was a young kid with grand plans for the future and trying to learn everything I could about personal finance and investing. I was really inspired by 2 million, All Financial Matters, PF Blueprint and a few other of the first personal finance bloggers, many of whom no longer write or even operate their sites.

Retirement Nestegg Report November 2020

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 08:27:27 +0000

Well another all time record high for our nestegg and near all-time high for gains and percentage. It’s bonkers that a gain of $430k and 21% in a single month is not an all-time record, but no just a few months ago in August the increases were even higher. As usual a large percent of these gains were driven by the performance of Tesla stock though the market has a whole had an impressive 10.76% gain now that the election is behind us. What’s even more impressive is I wasn’t even aware that the gains this month were anything special until I did this report. Looks like yesterday was a down day so I likely surpassed the $2.5M milestone yesterday - which equates to $100k forever retirement income which is more money than we will ever need.

Retirement Nestegg Report October 2020

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 07:55:42 +0000

Another down month for my retirement nestegg and another month of underperformance by my investments. My nestegg however is still up over 60% YTD, so I think I will be ok. This has been my best year ever on every metric and volatility is to be expected. Long term the trajectory looks great.

Fidelity Taxable - $5,117.72(+0.87%)
Taxable Account- $202,311.18(-8.18%)
Private Stock $82,500(+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $77,484.52(-6.34%)
My Roth IRA – $695,775.93(-7.36%)
Wife Roth IRA – $394,484.57(-7.46%)
Wife 401k - $4,874.69(-1.90%)
Traditional 401k – $580,366.73(-2.51%)

Retirement Nestegg Report September 2020

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 09:43:15 +0000

Well after last months insane month I should not be surprised at all to see my accounts dip a little bit this month. Ironically my first month back to work and my net worth dropped by over $150k, while the 3 previous months where I was not earning income my net worth increased by over $828k.

This means nothing per say especially in those types of short term freak occurrence time frames, but it does put into perspective that I’ve put myself in a situation where working for money is trivial compared to the massive snowball of previously saved and invested dollars that are going to work for me every single day regardless of what I decide to do when I get out of bed.

Retirement Nestegg Report August 2020

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 07:34:01 +0000

Well an all-time record month for our retirement nestegg in every single category. Our nestegg hit an all time high north of $2.3M which was an increase of over $430k over last months all-time high. Our nestegg grew by 23.41% and our individual stock holdings grew by 31.33% compared to the market returns of 7.01% just this month. This now puts our investment gains north of over $1M year to date.

Retirement Nestegg Report July 2020

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 09:58:31 +0000

Well another banner month for our retirement nestegg with us hitting four different $100k milestones in a single month including punching through the multi-million dollar mark.

Things are obviously down a bit from that all time high, but hard to get upset at all about putting on over $200k in a single month and have now put on $634k YTD. Our individual stocks have returned just under 100% YTD and things are coming together better than I ever could have expected. My original goal was to hit $1M by age 40 and we actually hit the $2M mark.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - $2M

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 09:17:48 +0000

Well today our nestegg hit $2M about 30 minutes into a new trading day where just the prior day it had just hit $1.9M.

This was a direct result of TSLA continuing its meteoric climb. This has been very rewarding as there has never been a stock where I had a stronger conviction on. There have been many bumps in the road and lots of naysayers - just like all there have been with all of our big winners (Netflix, Amazon, etc), but it is very rewarding (mentally and financially) to take the long term view and ignore all of the nonsense that has zero affect on the long term picture.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.9M

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 18:28:34 +0000

I’m not even sure what to say anymore. I don’t think I could have imagined what has happened this year in my wildest dreams. My nestegg has put on just under $660,000 in value this year while there is a global pandemic and the market indexes as a whole are down for the year.

My individual stocks driven by Tesla, Shopify, Netflix, and Amazon are just absolutely crushing the market as a whole. My individual stocks are currently up 106.85% YTD meanwhile the SP 500 is currently at -1.41% YTD for a market outperformance of over 108% in just over 6 months.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.8M

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 10:12:45 +0000

Well the insanity continues and just 5 days after we hit the $1.7M milestone our nestegg has hit $1.8M. In fact in less than 3 trading days our nestegg has grown by over $130,000 (actually closer to $150k by the time I finish this blog post).

Two big take aways for me are - you can’t time the market as no one in their right mind could have predicted what has gone down in 2020 and secondly compound growth is incredibly powerful. It took me a very long time and lots of sacrifice and saving to accumulate $100,000 by age 30, and now in 2 trading days with zero effort from my side to accumulate an even larger amount while both my wife and I are off for the summer and have no income coming in.
Very powerful.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.7M

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 09:38:37 +0000

Well the ridiculousness continues. An hour after I published my monthly report my portfolio gained another $30k plus to hit the $1.7M milestone. Cheers

Taxable Account Ally- $133,152.83
Taxable Fidelity - $5,418.79
Private Stock $72,000
Traditional Rollover IRA - $70,799.23
My Roth IRA – $546,259.52
Wife Roth IRA – $324,992.38
Wife 401k - $4,602.43
Traditional 401k – $544,780.32

Roth/Traditional % = 51.12% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $1,702,005.50
Retirement Salary (4%) $68,080.22

Retirement Nestegg Report June 2020

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 08:45:28 +0000

Well another nice month with the market being up 1.84% and my nestegg growing by 11.77%. Wait What?? This is getting ridiculous with my individual stocks returning 17.81% just this month and 68.31% in just the first 6 months of the year compared to SP 500 which is actually down 4.04% YTD for a market outperformance of 72% YTD!!

Just this month our nestegg grew by over $176,000 in a single month. Clearly this cannot and will not go on forever, but it also does not need to.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.6M

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:24:54 +0000

Well another $100k milestone. 2020 certainly has been a crazy year and just reinforces that no one in their wildest dreams can come remotely close to predicting what will happen to the economy/stock market and you are an absolute idiot if you think you can time the market. Stay invested with a long term focus and let time work in your favor.

The market was actually down about 7% since my last milestone, but my individual stock performance was able to outperform the market and bag another $100k milestone. These are getting less and less impressive as time goes on as my nestegg has grown large enough that only 6% increases will result in another $100k. This in theory could happen in the matter of only a few days. I think once we hit $2M it will require me to go to 250k increments as I honestly will not even be able to follow my portfolio close enough to catch the 100k jumps here pretty soon.

Retirement Nestegg Report May 2020

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 07:20:55 +0000

Well another banner month for my retirement nestegg to finish at an all time monthly high after putting on another 95k. Year to date so far this has been my best investing year ever with my individual stock portfolio returning 42.36% YTD compared to the SP500 YTD total of -5.77% for an outperformance of over 48% YTD!!

In even more important news as June approaches I now enter my summer off time period from work where I take an unpaid absence off work to spend time with my family for the summer months! This is the whole point of everything on this blog and all of the steps I started taking over 15 years ago to give me the freedom to worry about the important things in life instead of money.

Retirement Nestegg Report April 2020

Fri, 01 May 2020 09:51:34 +0000

Wow what a month for my nestegg. Nearly $250,000 increase in a single month and my individual stock performance was tremendous returning nearly 30% for the month! All in all this gets me back to the beginning of February before the pandemic started - which is pretty amazing and totally unexpected and also represents an all-time month end high for my nestegg.

This totally reinforces that if you try to time the market you are an idiot. I’ve been actively investing for 16 years now and have been through financial crisis in 2008 and if you asked my opinion I would have said stocks for sure would have continued to fall and stagnate based on the repercussions of COVID and would have been very confident in that statement. The next logical thing you would think would be to pull the money out of the market and wait until things got better right? WRONG!!

Retirement Nestegg Report March 2020

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 09:41:50 +0000

Well another exciting month for the stock market and some more wild volatility. My nestegg has held up a little better than the market, as the SP500 fell 12.51% this month. My contributions were higher than normal - part of this is the timing of a 401k matching that hit my 401k this month and me taking advantage of some of the recent market downturn to purchase more of my favorite companies.

Retirement Nestegg Report February 2020

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 09:16:44 +0000

Well February was an exciting month. My nestegg hit two new milestones in the same month going north of $1.4M and $1.5M in the same month and then the last week of the month dropping over $200,000 from the high to actually finish down from the prior month.

My individual stocks still outperformed the market by a wide margin, which is actually surprising since they have done so well for so long and I have many high fliers that would expect would fall harder/faster than the market in general. I also added a new account over at M1 Finance that I am testing out so you will see a new taxable account in my report going forward.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.5M

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 10:29:58 +0000

Well it happened. Two interim reports in the same month. Just 15 days after my nestegg passed $1.4M it is now north of $1.5M. It is going to get to a point here shortly where it will be hard for me to keep track of $100k milestones as they will happen so quickly and I may have to start doing $250k reports once we hit $2M.

Once again this report was driven by a large run up in my individual stocks namely Tesla, Shopify, and Netflix.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.4M

Tue, 04 Feb 2020 08:49:22 +0000

Well still not in the same month, but just 21 days after my last 100k milestone report our nestegg cracked through the 1.4M milestone. In fact my nestegg grew by over $61,000 since yesterday’s month end report.

The market was actually down over both my last two milestone reports, but my nestegg has now put on over $200,000 in less than 2 months while the market is down about 5% during that period. This is due to my individual stocks having a very good performance driven primarily by Tesla. In fact as I write this report in pre-market trading Tesla is on pace to add another $40,000 to my nestegg alone today.

Retirement Nestegg Report January 2020

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 11:34:03 +0000

Well a flat and slightly down month for the market to kick of 2020 and my retirement nestegg had its best performance in history. It increased by over $105,000 and my investments crushed the market. Most of this can be explained away by the performance of Tesla stock over the last month, but a number of my other individual stocks have also had very nice performance. This has me starting out 2020 besting the market with over a 17% lead. Now granted as we have seen Tesla has and will continue to be a volatile stock so I won’t put to much weight in a single months performance but overall investments like Tesla over the long term have allowed me to have market beating returns over in my investing history. It’s also cool to have a month where my nestegg increased by a value that was greater than I was able to accumulate the first 30 years of my life.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.3M

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 10:16:53 +0000

Well it wasn’t in the same month, but we’ve actually hit our next $100k milestone in less than a month since we hit the last one. On Dec 16th we hit $1.2M for the first time and now just 28 days later we have hit $1.3M.

What’s even more impressive is the market is up about 2% during that time but our nestegg grew over 8% due to some very strong gains by some of our individual stocks such as Tesla, Shop, NFLX, and Amazon.

My All Time Investment Performance January 2020

Sat, 04 Jan 2020 07:30:39 +0000

Well I have been investing for 14 full years now and must say I’m very happy with the performance of my individual stocks. I think most of this has been luck as I’ve owned some of the best stocks of the last 20 years (Netflix, Amazon, etc), but also think I can take a tiny bit of credit of having some foresight on those companies and not buying into the noise in the financial news.
I’ve actually only invested $149k in individual stocks and yet they were worth over $688k. On the flip side I’ve invested over $302k in index funds and they are worth $554k. Had I not toyed around and gotten “lucky” with my individual stocks my life plans would be a little different right now.

My best and worst stocks in 2019

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 07:54:27 +0000

I actually only had 10 stocks beat the market this year and 12 stocks that trailed the market, yet my overall individual stock performance almost bested the market by over 10% points for 2019

Shopify led the way with a banner year almost tripling in value in 2019 and has now grown to become my 3rd largest individual holding.

Chipotle made the list for a 2nd year in a row and is completing its massive comeback after being on my biggest loser list in 2015,2016, and 2017.

My Investment Holdings January 2020

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 08:38:00 +0000

Retirement Nestegg Report December 2019

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 12:45:41 +0000

Well the conclusion to a stellar year for my retirement nestegg. It increased in value by over $317,500 in 2019, which is absolutely mind boggling. Granted it was a great year for the market overall and somewhat of an anomaly, but the fact that I had to do zero work or use any brain power and we got $300,000 richer in a year is sort of bonkers.

The stock market was up over 28% this year and my investments were up even more than the market for the year. My contributions on the other hand were the lowest they’ve been in about 10 years as I’ve decided to let the portfolio do the heavy lifting here (working out ok so far).

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $50,000 Retirement Income

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 10:10:03 +0000

Another neat milestone is that our estimated retirement income today has now surpassed $50,000 per year using the 4% rule.

For those of you that don’t know the 4% rule it is based off of a bunch of studies of what would be an absolutely safe withdrawal rate from a diversified stock & bond portfolio that would survive even the worst downturns (retiring the day before the great depression) and still have the retiree never run out of money.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.2M

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 10:38:10 +0000

Well it took 8 months to hit my next 100k milestone this time, but today my retirement nestegg hit a valuation of $1.2M. Despite the really good market performance my nestegg has actually grown slower the last two milestones than it did the previous 4 milestones. I actually went ahead and added a new column to my table to track the time between milestones.

Part of this is probably because I am not contributing nearly as much to my retirement accounts these days. Previously I was doing a little bit more of the heavy lifting and now I’m sort of doing the bare minimum and letting the nestegg do the heavy lifting on it’s own.

Retirement Nestegg Report November 2019

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 12:54:36 +0000

Another all-time high for my retirement nestegg and creeping up on the next 100k mile stone and also getting close to having $50k in forever retirement income which is another cool milestone.

Taxable Account- $61,881.46(+3.68%)
Private Stock $72,000 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $42,332.64(+1.14%)
My Roth IRA – $282,435.80(+3.51%)
Wife Roth IRA – $180,800.01(+2.72%)
Wife 401k - $4,618.79(+3.43%)
Traditional 401k – $537,941.57(+3.94%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.19% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $1,182,010.27(+3.02%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $47,280

Retirement Nestegg Report October 2019

Mon, 25 Nov 2019 11:06:23 +0000

Well a very good month for my nestegg and a new all-time high. The market was up over 2% and my investments were up quite a bit more - driven primarily by the big run up in Tesla this month.

Taxable Account- $59,684.60(+10.11%)
Private Stock $72,000 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $41,856.11(-1.82%)
My Roth IRA – $272,855.47(+6.31%)
Wife Roth IRA – $176.012.04(+6.47%)
Wife 401k - $4,465.82(+2.84%)
Traditional 401k – $517,536.16(+2.84%)

Retirement Nestegg Report September 2019

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 08:20:43 +0000

Overall a pretty flat month for my retirement nestegg and a pretty bad month for my individual stock performance. My individual stocks now trail the market for the first time this year. Overall I think as time goes on my individual stocks will slowly fade as more and more of my money tilts towards index funds that I do not need to try to put any effort into, but for now I won’t make any drastic changes.

Holy crap I'm 40! My 30s financial review.

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 07:23:17 +0000

Dang time flies. It seems like just a couple years ago I was starting the blog and my career and I swear just last year I was writing my holy crap I’m 30 post.

Well the bad news is time flies and the good news is well nearly everything has gone exactly according to plan.

Here are things that I accomplished in my 30s

Had two more children to bring the total to 5
Added over $345,000 in contributions to our nestegg
Grew our retirement nestegg by over $1 million dollars
Able to have my wife stay home with our children
Remained debt free other than mortgage and student loans at very low rates
Built our dream house with basketball court
Resisted the Tesla urge and still driving a crappy car
Achieved a 7 figure retirement nestegg at age 38
Started partial early retirement at age 39 (summers off)

Obviously the huge amount of contributions we made in our 20s and 30s got us to where we are today. Ultimately though living well below our means allowed us to do this basically on 1 income for the vast majority of our 20s and 30s while supporting 5 kids and to be perfectly honest it wasn’t all that difficult.

Retirement Nestegg Report August 2019

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 19:45:23 +0000

I’ll save the commentary for an upcoming holy crap I’m 40 post, but overall slight decrease in the nestegg and zero care in the world by me as I was busy not working and spending time with my family which I think is probably going to be a more common theme going forward. I honestly didn’t check my portfolio more than once this month and well turns out its still here and still pretty big so that’s about all I need to know at this point in my journey.

Retirement Nestegg Report July 2019

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 13:30:09 +0000

Well another all-time high and my last financial report in my 30s. I’ve now been tracking my nestegg for 164 straight months on this blog and time has flown by. I’m now to the point in my career and financial journey where I want time to slow down and now my focus in life is more about enjoying life than trying to build for the future. The last 164 months were a blast, but I’m really looking forward to the next 164 months.

Retirement Nestegg Report June 2019

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 08:55:12 +0000

Well this month basically reversed last months drop and I’m basically back to where I was at the end of April. My 401k contributions have been dialed back as I will be taking most of the summer off and want to conserve our cash flow without much income coming in. Other than that it’s business as usual.

Taxable Account- $55,020.46(+12.35%)
Private Stock $72,000 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $43,935.23(+12.35%)
My Roth IRA – $270,194.45(+9.10%)
Wife Roth IRA – $173,063.52(+8.88%)
Wife 401k - $4,295.39(+7.02%)
Traditional 401k – $499,855.11(+7.04%)

Retirement Nestegg Report May 2019

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 22:35:30 +0000

Well a little bit of a rough month for my retirement nestegg as it decreased nearly $80,000 this month. I feel pretty good about the fact that my nestegg is big enough to lose $80,000 in a single month. Some day I hope to lose much more in a single month :)

While my retirement nestegg might not be headed the right direction this month, my overall retirement journey made a pretty big leap forward as my employer approved me going part-time this summer with the idea that I will be taking a significant portion of the summer completely off. This will allow me to enjoy the summer with my kids and well yeah is the whole point of why I save and invest. I have the flexibility to choose enjoying life and not having to worry about money and that is an amazing feeling.

Retirment Nestegg Report April 2019

Wed, 01 May 2019 11:47:07 +0000

Another all-time high, but subpar performance by my individual stocks this month probably primarily due to Tesla. My 401k is now within spitting distance of $500k which is kind of neat as it’s only taken 12 years at my company to amass that amount despite not coming remotely close to maxing it out most of the years I have worked there.

Taxable Account- $55,083.31(-2.75%)
Private Stock $72,000 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $42,232.86(+3.55%)
My Roth IRA – $271,799.61(2.66%)
Wife Roth IRA – $172,249.14(+2.36%)
Wife 401k - $4,287.24(+4.02%)
Traditional 401k – $499,050.59(+4.45%)

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report $1.1M

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 09:15:49 +0000

Well it took a bit longer to hit this milestone than maybe I expected. In fact it this was the longest between 100k milestones since I went from $500k to 600k. At this point in my nest egg’s life the market is much more in control of that than I am so I shouldn’t get too worked up about how fast or slow I hit milestones. The work has been done and now I’m just the captain of a big growing ship with tiny rudder which I guess was the whole point.

Retirement Nestegg Report March 2019

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 07:54:34 +0000

Small growth in my retirement nestegg and some slightly less than stellar investment performance - especially in my 401k which seems strange given I’m in index funds there for most part. I got a boost of over $9k in 401k contributions this month due to an annual matching contribution that hit my account this month. Next 100k milestone should be just around the corner.

Taxable Account- $56,643.55 (-3.59%)
Private Stock $72,000 (+6.67%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $40,785.98 (+6.15%)
My Roth IRA – $264,756.03(2.10%)
Wife Roth IRA – $168,278.22 (+1.13%)
Wife 401k - $4,121.42 (+1.69%)
Traditional 401k – $477,798.06 (+2.20%)

Retirement Nestegg Report February 2019

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 07:12:44 +0000

Another strong month for my retirement nestegg and performance of my investments with my nestegg getting close to setting new all time highs.

Taxable Account- $58,750.59 (+4.45%)
Private Stock $67,500 (+0.90%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $38,421.40 (+14.11%)
My Roth IRA – $259,315.26(+4.36%)
Wife Roth IRA – $166,401.38 (+5.73%)
Wife 401k - $4,053.1 (+3.42%)
Traditional 401k – $467,530.19 (+4.16%)

Roth/Traditional % = 40.09% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $1,061,971.92 (+4.58%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $42,478

Retirement Nestegg Report January 2019

Sun, 03 Feb 2019 16:25:03 +0000

Well the last three Januarys have been pretty good to the retirement nestegg. My portfolio all of the losses from December and bounced back up into 7 figures.

Taxable Account- $56,249.81 (+3.22%)
Private Stock $66,900 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $33,670.55 (+9.16%)
My Roth IRA – $248,483.35(+10.76%)
Wife Roth IRA – $157,384.69 (+12.29%)
Wife 401k - $3,918.97 (+12.07%)
Traditional 401k – $448,846.25 (-0.32%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.97% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $1,015,453.62 (+9.10%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $40,618

MY ALL TIME INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE JANUARY 2019

Fri, 04 Jan 2019 08:06:40 +0000

MFJ Returns By Year

Year	SP500	MFJ Nestegg	MFJ Stocks
2006	15.79%	14.37%	14.20%
2007	5.49%	5.50%	7.25%
2008	-37.00%	-47.98%	-37.00%
2009	24.46%	32.75%	35.78%
2010	15.06%	24.60%	36.94%
2011	2.11%	-5.53%	-2.29%
2012	16.00%	18.12%	10.25%
2013	32.39%	50.20%	68.58%
2014	13.69%	8.91%	7.91%
2015	1.38%	7.34	14.34
2016	9.54%	3.32%	-4.57%
2017	18.24%	23.31%	27.49%
2018	-6.24%	4.56%	15.60%

MFJ Cumulative Returns By Year

Year	SP500	MFJ Nestegg	MFJ Stocks
2006	15.79%	14.37%	14.20%
2007	22.15%	20.66%	22.48%
2008	23.05%	-37.23%	-22.84%
2009	-2.69%	-16.68%	4.77%
2010	11.97%	3.82%	43.47%
2011	14.33%	-1.92%	40.19%
2012	32.63%	15.85%	54.56%
2013	75.58%	74.01%	160.55%
2014	99.62%	89.51%	181.16%
2015	102.37%	103.42%	221.48%
2016	121.68%	110.18%	206.79%
2017	162.52%	159.17%	291.12%
2018	146.13%	170.99%	352.14%

Annualized Returns since 2006

SP500 +7.17%
MFJ Nestegg +7.97%
MFJ Stocks +12.31%

MY BEST AND WORST STOCKS IN 2018

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 08:37:41 +0000

While my individual stocks did not have as many high flyers at last year they actually had one of their best performances in history with 16 of my 22 individual stocks outperforming the market. I did have one of my new holdings more than double this year in Alteryx. It also helped that two of my largest holdings in Netflix and Amazon had banner years which really gave my performance a super boost.

MY INVESTMENT HOLDINGS JANUARY 2018

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 07:56:13 +0000

In annual tradition I will list all of my current investments. These really do not change significantly from year to year as I don’t do a lot of buying and selling and well now as my portfolio has grown so big the amount of money I am putting in towards new investments tends to be sort of insignificant.
One thing that sticks out is that Tesla now accounts for 12.80% of my retirement nestegg which is up from 7.95% it was last year. Overall I guess this is a good thing as my individual stock investments greatly outperformed the market this year and so it only makes sense that some of my individual stocks are now accounting for a larger percentage of my nestegg.
Some people might view this as more risky as individual stocks can be quite volatile and well Tesla kind of fits that definition. That being said volatility doesn’t bother me and long term gains are all I’m really concerned about.
The larger my portfolio gets ironically the less volatility affects me as unless you are right on the absolute edge of your magic number and are relying 100% on your portfolio for income there really is not that much risk when it comes to volatility.
If your portfolio is safely above your retirement number or if you have means to gain income from other sources than your portfolio then significant downswings really shouldn’t concern you. This is why I’ve always had a very hard time comprehending why you would ever have an investment portfolio that was less than 100% stocks as you are just throwing away money by diversifying with bonds.
The devils argument here is that if the extra gains really don’t help you or aren’t needed then really no sense in risking money you need for money you don’t need. That being said the extra long term gains in my mind are a larger safety margin then eliminating short term volatility.
Guess time will tell

Retirement Nestegg Report December 2018

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 07:14:33 +0000

Well a sort of rollercoaster month to finish off a rollercoaster year for my nestegg. At one point I was down well over $100,000 from last months report and finished the month down $85,000. Similarly this year I at one point was up over $200,000 YTD but finished the year up with a $40,000 gain for the year after subtracting out my contributions.

Ultimately this year has been a good baseline for me to realize that I’ve passed a certain point where the numbers really don’t mean much anymore. I lost $100k roughly this month and it really didn’t phase me. Likewise being up $100k in a month really doesn’t elicit much more than a that’s pretty cool feeling. Ultimately it doesn’t drastically affect my mood or financial situation that much.

Retirement Nestegg Report November 2018

Sun, 02 Dec 2018 12:49:15 +0000

Nothing too exciting this month other than getting the other comma back.

Taxable Account- $59,408.30 (+4.79%)
Private Stock $66,900 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $34,152.12 (+8.72%)
My Roth IRA – $247,004.26 (+2.36%)
Wife Roth IRA – $153,971.98 (-0.61%)
Wife 401k - $3,990.60 (+2.01%)
Traditional 401k – $450,300.67 (+2.81%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.48% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $1,015,727.93(+2.28%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $40,629

Monthly Contributions $2,097.08 (401k)
SP500 Performance +1.79%
My Monthly Investment Performance +2.06% (+0.27% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +2.11% (+0.32% vs SP500)

Retirement Nestegg Report October 2018

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 10:46:19 +0000

Well my nestegg fell about $60,000 this month, but my investments outperformed the market. While it was a pretty big drop for the SP500 of almost 7% and my nestegg fell over 5.5% this is really nothing but a normal fluctuation. I believe at one point this month I was down over $100,000 and it feels pretty good to be able to lose $100k in a single month on paper and not really bat an eye. My goal some day is to lose $1 million dollars in portfolio value.

Retirement Nestegg Report September 2018

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 07:33:16 +0000

Well not a great month for my nestegg as it fell over 2%. Most of this was driven by the large drop in Tesla stock on the last day of the month.

In other news news I approached my employer about not working in the summers this month and will be waiting to hear their response. To be honest I’m not optimistic they will agree to my terms but I want to get this rolling well ahead of time as I plan on not working next summer regardless of what my employer responds with and may need to come up with a plan B.

MFJ Interview

Fri, 14 Sep 2018 09:50:53 +0000

Andy over at Marriage Kids and Money did an interview with me this last week as part of his 30-something millionaire series.

You can read the interview here https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/how-to-become-a-millionaire-in-your-30s-interview-6-balance/

Retirement Nestegg Report August 2018

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 08:42:55 +0000

Another all time new high for my retirement nestegg as it increased in value $60k this month and my investments bounced back to significantly outperform the markets already strong returns. I also had a birthday this month so this will be my last 12 months in my 30s and which means I need to get to work putting plans in place before I’m officially super old and lay the ground work for a very enjoyable 40s and beyond.

Retirement Nestegg Report July 2018

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 17:03:51 +0000

Well the odds caught up with me a month and my stocks seriously underperformed the market - almost by 10%. That being said year to date the market is up 5.33% and my nestegg has returned 15.09% and my individual stocks have returned 24.95% so not all is lost.

As I get closer to financial independence though I need to take a serious look at my allocation and see if the risk is worth the reward. So far it has been over the last 10+ years, but I also probably don’t have a clear picture of the risk I am taking on to get that reward.

Advice to a 26 year old MFJ

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 16:06:31 +0000

Back in my July 2017 report I got a few comments from a reader Dan who asked me what advice I would give a 26 year old MFJ. My first thought was holy crap people still read this blog and my second thought was holy crap I’ve been writing this blog for a long time and was actually 26 when I started it. So it seemed like a pretty good idea for a blog post.

Retirement Nestegg Report June 2018

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 11:15:11 +0000

Well the first time I finished a month in 7 figures and another great month for my individual stock portfolio which is now beating the SP500 by over 30% in the first 6 months of the year and carrying my nestegg to new heights. Fun to have that extra comma back in the month’s report.

Taxable Account- $57,596.45 (+10.06%)
Private Stock $66,900 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $30,747.16 (+3.46%)
My Roth IRA – $260,607.33 (+5.49%)
Wife Roth IRA – $168,960.37 (+7.54%)
Wife 401k - $3,903.56 (-0.01%)
Traditional 401k – $441,745.38 (-0.10%)

Retirement Nestegg Report May 2018

Thu, 31 May 2018 16:37:29 +0000

Well only 1 day in the double comma club, but it still felt good. Overall another strong month for my retirement nestegg growing $40k during the month and reaching 7 figures for the first time ever. Overall my nestegg investment performance is outpacing the SP500 by over 12% points led by my individual stock performance besting the market by over 23%. Big numbers get bigger and strong investment performance throws gas on the fire.

Welcome to the two comma club

Wed, 30 May 2018 19:10:10 +0000

Well today was a special day for me and my now 12 year old blog. I officially joined the double comma club and achieved another goal set forth on this blog. My $1,000,000 retirement nestegg by age 40 goal. I really thought was a bit of a stretch, but turns out I’ve had stellar returns and actually achieved this goal at the age of 38.

A couple of things stand out for me with this accomplishment. First I added $100,000 to my nestegg in less than 5 months which is the quickest I’ve added $100k. Makes total sense and with the power of compounding these 100k milestones will come quicker and quicker to the point where I will add $100k in a month eventually.

Retirement Nestegg Report April 2018

Tue, 01 May 2018 08:24:41 +0000

Overall a pretty boring month. I love how boring is now an increase of $33,000 in a month. My individual stocks carried me this month outperforming the market by a little under 6%. It’s earnings season so we could see some volatility and if things go well maybe flirting with the 2 comma club again. I received a large bonus at work which is where the big 401k contribution came from this month. Other than that not much to report.

Retirement Nestegg Report March 2018 (almost joined the 2 comma club)

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 08:55:45 +0000

Well as with February March was a very interesting and exciting month. I actually came within $1,000 of hitting a $1M nestegg during the month and ended up the month $74,000 lower that that intra-month high. We’ll see if I regret it or not, but I did have an opportunity to at least temporarily hit the double comma club by making a contribution during the month, but ultimately decided to see if I could hit it all natural and well that back fired :-)

Retirement Nestegg Report February 2018

Sat, 03 Mar 2018 19:07:04 +0000

Well as much as the end result for this month was not very impressive, what happened during the month was actually pretty impressive. At one point this month I was down just under $100,000 from my month end total at the end of last month and ended up only having my nestegg be down $2k.

The other impressive area was once again my individual stock performance which bested the market by over 6% after besting it by over 10% last month. My individual stocks are besting the market by over 17.5% YTD!

Retirement Nestegg Report January 2018 (+$89,900)

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 08:45:03 +0000

Holy cow. What a month. I am not even sure how this makes sense. At one point this month my nestegg was up over $100,000 and ended the month up just under $90,000. The market was up 5.62% this month, but my nestegg grew by almost 10.5% and my stock investments returned 16.17% beating the insanely large market returns by over 10.5%. I honestly would be pretty happy to thrilled if this was my report at the end of 2018 and the fact that I am writing it after just one month sort of blows my mind.

Netflix My first 100 bagger

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 13:44:57 +0000

Well something else interesting happened today. The value of one of my Netflix purchases exceeded 100 times my original purchase price back in 2007. I purchased 28 shares of Netflix for $19.72 back on June 22nd of 2007. Today after a previous 7 to 1 split I have 196 shares at a cost basis of $2.81 per share and today the stock price is north of $286 per share netting me 100x my original money. In addition the value of all of my Netflix holdings (4 purchases amounting to $1800) has exceeded $100,000 with $98,200 of that coming in investment gains. Pretty sweet.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - I broke $900,000

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 11:30:50 +0000

The run continues - another 100k milestone just 7 months after my last milestone and what’s even crazier to me is that my nestegg has increased in value more than $43,000 in just 8 trading days in 2018 with no contributions! The next milestone will be kind of a special one as I will officially reach the double comma club and at current trend/pace will potentially reach it quite a bit ahead of my original planned schedule of getting there before age 40.

My All Time Investment Performance January 2018

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 13:43:23 +0000

MFJ Returns By Year

Year	SP500	MFJ Nestegg	MFJ Stocks
2006	15.79%	14.37%	14.20%
2007	5.49%	5.50%	7.25%
2008	-37.00%	-47.98%	-37.00%
2009	24.46%	32.75%	35.78%
2010	15.06%	24.60%	36.94%
2011	2.11%	-5.53%	-2.29%
2012	16.00%	18.12%	10.25%
2013	32.39%	50.20%	68.58%
2014	13.69%	8.91%	7.91%
2015	1.38%	7.34	14.34
2016	9.54%	3.32%	-4.57%
2017	18.42%	23.31%	27.49%

MFJ Cumulative Returns By Year

Year	SP500	MFJ Nestegg	MFJ Stocks
2006	15.79%	14.37%	14.20%
2007	22.15%	20.66%	22.48%
2008	23.05%	-37.23%	-22.84%
2009	-2.69%	-16.68%	4.77%
2010	11.97%	3.82%	43.47%
2011	14.33%	-1.92%	40.19%
2012	32.63%	15.85%	54.56%
2013	75.58%	74.01%	160.55%
2014	99.62%	89.51%	181.16%
2015	102.37%	103.42%	221.48%
2016	121.68%	110.18%	206.79%
2017	162.52%	159.17%	291.12%

Annualized Returns since 2006

SP500 +8.38%
MFJ Nestegg +8.26%
MFJ Stocks +12.04%

My best and worst stocks in 2017

Sat, 06 Jan 2018 09:34:26 +0000

Well as with my portfolio in general I had some high flyers when it came to my individual stocks. I had 3 stocks more than double and 11 stocks outperform the market out of my 27 individual stocks. Overall it doesn’t take too many winners to wipe out a lot of losers and well I sure had a lot of big winners this year. Looking at this list I feel very good about their prospects long term even given the large run up in 2017. Panera was bought out so that is no longer part of my portfolio. It is also interesting that some of my biggest winners this year are pretty massive companies and have been winners for me for quite a few years (Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Tesla).

My Investment Holdings January 2018

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 09:00:22 +0000

In annual tradition I will list all of my current investments. These really do not change significantly from year to year as I don’t do a lot of buying and selling and well now as my portfolio has grown so big the amount of money I am putting in towards new investments tends to be sort of insignificant.
As I look at my holdings at year end one thing that sticks out to me is that my largest holdings have grown as an even larger percentage of my portfolio. I think I can interpret this two ways. One would be that I have my money in the right spot as my larger holdings did better than some of my other holdings. The other and probably just as likely scenario is that darned thing called compounding. Larger number get larger. I think I am seeing this in my portfolio as my largest holdings will continue to grow by a disproportionate size in my portfolio just by the fact that they were larger to start with. Compounding truly is incredibly powerful and I am starting to see it in more and more areas in the world and realize that simply by having a larger base you have incredible advantages over things that are smaller. Size matters big time.
I have no plans currently to modify my investments despite the continued growth of many of my large investments. My top 4 investments are diversified mutual funds in my 401k which are pretty much tracking the market. The fact that they have grown to be a larger portion of my overall nestegg kind of solidifies that previous statement about compounding as I have many other investments that outperformed them but fell in overall percentage due to the effects of larger numbers getting larger.
My largest individual stock holding at the end of the year was Tesla closely followed by Netflix. Each of these is less than 8% of my nestegg and I feel very very strongly about both of these investments going forward. The next holding is a private bank located in my hometown and then Amazon rounds out the top 4 of my individual stocks that account for almost 29% of my portfolio. I feel very good about my allocation right now. One thing that is kind of strange is I actually have 1.78% ($15k) in cash right now due to the fact that Buffalo Wild Wings was bought out. Panera was another stock that dropped off my list from last year due to acquisition.
Overall I don’t see this list changing in any significant fashion in 2018

Retirement Nestegg Report December 2017

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 09:25:08 +0000

Well 2017 sure was a banner year for my nestegg. It grew by over $187,000 this year and $156,000 of that were investment gains. It is very likely my portfolio brought in more wealth than our day to day jobs this year despite our incomes being at an all-time high as well.

It was another banner year for the stock market and my investments outperformed the market which led to these outsized returns. This was nice given my relative underperformance in 2016.

Retirement Nestegg Report November 2017

Sat, 02 Dec 2017 12:03:40 +0000

Another all time high for my nestegg and I honestly don’t know what else to say as this is a broken record every month. Big numbers keep getting bigger. Big numbers are fun.

Taxable Account- $47,357.73 (+1.51%)
Private Stock $63,100 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $27,847.19 (+11.92%)
My Roth IRA – $190,958.18 (+3.56%)
Wife Roth IRA – $118,368.95(+0.87%)
Traditional 401k – $398,398.59 (+3.37%)

Roth/Traditional % = 36.56% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $846,030.64 (+2.95%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $33,841

Retirement Nestegg Report October 2017

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 08:40:14 +0000

Another month and another all-time high. Starting to sound like a broken record. My actual investment performance hasn’t been too hot the last few months, but I’ve still added $30,000 to my nestegg. I don’t anticipate the market to continue like it has, but I am currently 5 months ahead of the pace that I need to be to hit my $1M by age 40 goal

Taxable Account- $46,653.20 (-2.20%)
Private Stock $63,100 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $24,882.10 (+2.21%)
My Roth IRA – $184,403.31 (+3.98%)
Wife Roth IRA – $117,349.78(+1.15%)
Traditional 401k – $385,396.30 (+2.49%)

Retirement Nestegg Report September 2017

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 19:58:20 +0000

Not a great month for my investing performance, but another all-time new high for my retirement nestegg report. As I mentioned in my last report my wife is now working so not only do we have two incomes but she also has some sort of teacher retirement account that I will have to add to this report at some point. I believe we only get to see it’s value like once a year and there is no way to view it online so maybe it will be easier to pretend it does not exist.

Retirement Nestegg Report August 2017

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 13:33:54 +0000

Well a pretty boring month for my nestegg but a pretty exciting month for me overall. My family and I took a 2 week out West to see some national parks and the eclipse and it was a pretty amazing experience. It makes you appreciate time alone with your family away from all of the other distractions of daily life and makes you truly appreciate what is important in life. It also makes me want to reach financial independence like tomorrow so that spending time like that is not restricted to just one two week stretch during the year.

Retirement Nestegg Report July 2017

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 16:28:07 +0000

My retirement nestegg grew very modestly this month and my investments greatly under performed the market as a whole, especially my individual stocks. This will certainly happen as my portfolio has much more volatility than the market and so my downs are usually much worse than the market and my ups have historically been much greater than the market anyway. I feel like I have the right mindset and these swings do not bother me much. Having 6 figures removed from my nestegg would be a normal ebb and flow for me and does not matter in the long term horizon.

Retirement Nestegg Report June 2017

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 08:34:16 +0000

Well for the first time since last October my retirement nestegg didn’t grow for a month and my investments especially my individual stocks under performed the market for a month. This has been an incredible run and in the last 18 months my retirement nestegg has grown over $300,000 dollars which is just mind boggling. Obviously with having my nestegg invested 100% in the stock market there will be ups and downs and if I had to guess there will likely be some downs coming, but if you had asked me the same thing 18 months ago I would have told you the same thing. $300,000 plus later I’ve learned that trying to time the market is a fool’s errand so just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - I broke $800,000

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 20:08:35 +0000

Well another 5 months and another $100,000 added to my retirement nestegg. To be honest I’m a little dumbfounded how fast my nestegg is growing and the best part is it is almost entirely by market gains with no effort on my part. In fact since I wrote our monthly report exactly one week ago my portfolio has added another $16,000. I’m not expecting it to continue but at this pace the double comma club isn’t too far off and I am well ahead of my projections to hit a $1M nestegg by age 40.

Retirement Nestegg Report May 2017

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 08:57:09 +0000

Starting to sound like a broken record, but another month of all time nestegg highs and another month of investment performance that greatly exceeded the market. Obviously this can’t go on forever and eventually Tesla may slow down its meteoric climb for a bit, but in the meantime I guess I’m not complaining since I am not really contributing anything of significance to my nest egg so the crazy new highs every month aren’t causing me any anxiety due to me having to make purchases.

Retirement Nestegg Report April 2017

Mon, 01 May 2017 09:00:51 +0000

Well another record setting month for my retirement nestegg. An all-time new high that is almost $30,000 higher than last month’s total. My portfolio performance greatly outperformed the market as a whole and my hypothetical safe withdrawal rate from my nestegg broke through the $30,000 a year threshold. I did also have a larger than normal 401k contribution due to my annual bonus hitting this month as well, but with the size of my nestegg the real performance comes from the nestegg itself and the contributions themselves these days are hard to move the needle much.

Retirement Nestegg Report March 2017

Sun, 02 Apr 2017 17:52:15 +0000

Another record high for me this month and despite very flat performance by the market as a whole, but my individual stock performance greatly exceeded the market this month, which is good because overall they haven’t been too hot the last year or more. Compounding is still cool and big numbers keep getting bigger. Look forward to this trend continuing.

Taxable Account- $46,806.77 (+3.94%)
Private Stock $63,100 (+5.17%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $28,825.18 (-0.54%)
My Roth IRA – $167,658.53 (+2.30%)
Wife Roth IRA – $98,951.59 (+6.90%)
Traditional 401k – $332,169.12 (+1.63%)

Retirement Nestegg Report February 2017

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 13:43:00 +0000

Taxable Account- $45,034.40 (+0.66%)
Private Stock $60,000 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $28,980.84 (+2.24%)
My Roth IRA – $163,891.10 (+3.12%)
Wife Roth IRA – $92,566.97 (+3.07%)
Traditional 401k – $326,841.20 (+2.84%)

Roth/Traditional % = 35.75% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $717,304.51 (+3.58%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $28,692

Monthly Contributions $1,371.16 (401k)
SP500 Performance +3.72%
My Monthly Investment Performance +3.38% (-0.34% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +2.68% (-1.04% vs SP500)

Retirement Nestegg Report January 2017

Wed, 01 Feb 2017 12:41:46 +0000

Well another new year and another new high for my nestegg and the best part is this time it was actually my portfolio doing the work. My investments soundly trounced the market this month after falling behind most of last year. Let’s hope this trend continues.

Taxable Account- $44,740.58 (+2.73%)
Private Stock $60,000 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $28,346.37 (-3.01%)
My Roth IRA – $158,937.29 (+0.83%)
Wife Roth IRA – $89,806.94 (+5.54%)
Traditional 401k – $310,689.53 (+2.84%)

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - I broke $700,000

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 16:44:30 +0000

Well this is more like it. Only 5 months after surpassing the $600k mark I have now surpassed the $700k mark. Part of this is cheating due to the fact that I now include some private stock that was not previously included in my 600k report, but I will take it. It is also interesting that the DOW broke 20,000 for the first time today and the first time I broke $100,000 the DOW was at 10,000 so while the DOW has doubled in size my retirement nestegg has septupled in size. Given the size of my nestegg and the size of my contributions I should now expect to be breaking through new $100k barriers at least once a year in up years going forward and it will only get easier from there.

My Best and Worst Stocks In 2016

Thu, 05 Jan 2017 08:23:33 +0000

Here are my best performing stocks for 2016. As with my portfolio in general no real fireworks this year. No individual stock doubled this year and in general my bigger winners were smaller positions in my portfolio so their impact wasn’t felt as much. As with most stocks I own I feel really good about this bunch of winners and expect most of them to make the big winner list in the future. 3D systems has made the biggest winners or losers list every single year since I purchased it in 2012. Up huge in 2012(+90.40%) and 2013(+172.91%), down huge in 2014(-63.79%) and 2015(-73.63%), and now on the winners list in 2016(+52.93%). Unfortunately for me that adds up to -61% returns for me on 3D Systems :-(

My All Time Investment Performance January 2017

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 07:45:39 +0000

Continuing on my tradition from previous year’s I have calculated my cumulative investment returns from 2006 until now against the SP500.
As I mentioned in recent posts 2016 was a very underwhelming year for my investments and it is reflected in these statistics as well. My NestEgg is now underperforming the SP500 index over the 11 years that I have been investing. Returning a little over 1/2 percent less per year than the SP500 index. My stock returns are still besting the SP500 by a few percentage points which means my 401k has really been lackluster which kind of surprises me as I wouldn’t have expected to have significantly lower returns in there using basically series of Vanguard funds over the years and if I look at my performance that is not reflected so I am kind of at a loss right now.
Vanguard 401k Returns

My Investment Holdings January 2017

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 11:04:09 +0000

Retirement Nestegg Report December 2016

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 13:56:26 +0000

Overall a pretty disappointing year for my Retirement Nestegg. My investments greatly underperformed the market and the market was up a nice amount this year. Overall this is an anomaly based on my previous 10+ years of investing and will not cause me to make any rash changes to my investment philosophy. It is still frustrating though especially when my account is large enough now where even average investment performance probably would have pushed me over the $700k mark.

Retirement Nestegg Report November 2016

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 13:57:14 +0000

Well another all-time high for my nestegg, but another month of disappointing performance by my individual stock holdings. Overall this year my stocks have trailed the market quite significantly in part to under performance by some of my key holdings like Tesla, Chipotle, Under Armour, Netflix and others. Overall I am not too concerned but it does get frustrating watching the market beat me month after month in 2016. The good news is I have about half of my portfolio in market index funds so not all hope is lost and so far over longer periods of time I still have outperformed by quite a significant margin with my individual stocks, but this is not one of those years. Luckily though I feel as confident as ever that the aforementioned under performing stocks will greatly reward me in the future.

Retirement Nestegg Report October 2016

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 10:22:36 +0000

Taxable Account- $41,179.18 (-5.75%)
Private Stock $60,000 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $28,325.27 (-8.74%)
My Roth IRA – $145,046.18 (-1.68%)
Wife Roth IRA – $82,327.47 (+0.89%)
Traditional 401k – $282,527.68 (-2.24%)

Roth/Traditional % = 35.43% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $639,405.78(-2.06%)
Retirement Salary (4%) - $25,576

Monthly Contributions $1,371.16 (401k)
SP500 Performance -1.94%
My Monthly Investment Performance -2.27% (-0.33% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -2.30% (-0.36% vs SP500)

Retirement Nestegg Report September 2016

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 10:57:07 +0000

Taxable Account- $43,689.79 (-3.71%)
Private Stock $60,000 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $31,038.00 (-3.99%)
My Roth IRA – $147,529.06 (-1.26%)
Wife Roth IRA – $81,598.29 (-1.29%)
Traditional 401k – $288,999.95 (+1.31%)

Roth/Traditional % = 35.43% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $652,855.09(-0.33%)
Retirement Salary (4%) - $26,114

Monthly Contributions $1,371.16 (401k)
SP500 Performance -0.12%
My Monthly Investment Performance -0.54% (-0.42% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -1.91% (-1.79% vs SP500)

Financial Goal Checkup: My very own basketball court

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 11:38:11 +0000

About 9 years ago I posted a kind of an unique financial goal on this blog - I wanted my very own full court basketball court.

In roughly 5 years time I want to have enough money put away so that I can build a house out in the country with a full court outdoor sportcourt basketball/volleyball/tennis/etc court. – MFJ 2007

Well I am here to report on the progress of this not often mentioned financial goal I had for myself. Well the good news is that I saved quite a bit of money for that house out in the country starting in 2007. In fact I ended up saving $180k+ in cash for our move to the country, new house, and of course basketball court.

The path forward to two commas ($1M by age 40)

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 08:00:29 +0000

I’m sure I’m not unique and I’m sure every financially savvy person has contemplated the day when their net worth / account balance will surpass the magical $1,000,000 mark. When I started this blog in 2005 I put together a goal of having saved $100,000 in money for retirement by age 30, because as we all know saving the money while you are young allows compound interest to kick some butt on your behalf.

Retirement Nestegg Report August 2016

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 10:51:28 +0000

Well another all-time high for my retirement nestegg and some slight out-performance by my investments. I also broke through the $600,000 mark in the middle of last month

One thing new this month is that I have finally decided to include some private stock that I own in my retirement nestegg report. Historically I have not included this for a number of reasons. First it is not a very liquid asset where I can get an updated value each month - I really only get value on it once a year at the annual stockholders meeting when I get word of recent stock transactions and the book value of the bank. It also historically was a decent chunk of my portfolio so it would have skewed my investing returns - now it is less than 10% so it would not have a very big affect on calculating my performance.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - I broke $600,000

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 22:02:12 +0000

Today I officially broke through the $600,000 barrier for the first time in my life. It actually took me 16 months to add another $100k onto my retirement nestegg which is longer than it took me to go from 400k to 500k and 300k to 400k, which is not exactly how this compounding thing is supposed to work. That being said the market has only gained 3-4% while my nestegg has increased 20% in the same time.

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2016

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 10:11:16 +0000

Another all-time high for my nestegg and some out performance by my investments of the SP500 index. Overall a good month and I’m getting close to another milestone as I approach the $600k mark - which honestly is taking longer than I had anticipated. Overall my investments have not been doing that hot this year so I’m hoping that as things turn around I’ll bust through 600 and hopefully 700 in the relatively near future. Roughly a 15% increase without any contributions results in about 100k of returns. With my contributions going forward I should expect to be breaking through new 100k barries at least once a year going forward and then likely a couple times a year. Got to love compounding.

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2016

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 09:29:54 +0000

Well kind of a mixed month for me. The good news is that my retirement nestegg is at an all-time high, the bad news is that my investments under performed the market quite a bit this month and this year in general and the only reason I hit an all-time new high is that I contributed $26,000 into my taxable account.

The $26,000 was part of $50,000 emergency savings that I had sitting on the sideline to absorb any unforeseen house expenses and be available for other unexpected purchases. Now that we are in our new house and the bulk of the construction costs are now completed I figured it made more sense to get a chunk of that money into the market as $25,000 should be a pretty good safety cushion for an emergency.

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2016

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 13:58:23 +0000

Well not a super great month for my investment performance, but did get some overall growth. One item that caught my eye was that in the first 5 months of the year I have contributed nearly $32,000 to my retirement accounts when you add in my employers generous matching program. When I look back at one of the first goals this blog had was to save $100,000 by the time I was 30 and now that I am now just 5 or 6 years later I am saving almost half that amount in a single year.

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2016

Tue, 03 May 2016 16:26:12 +0000

Taxable Account- $20,366.02 (+1.02%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $29,574.73 (-5.11%)
My Roth IRA – $141,085.04 (-2.20%)
Wife Roth IRA – $77,048.21 (-1.31%)
Traditional 401k – $262,576.57 (+1.87%)

Roth/Traditional % = 42.91% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $530,650.57 (-0.14%)
Retirement Salary (4%) - $21,226.02

Monthly Contributions $1,405.93 (401k)
SP500 Performance +0.27%
My Monthly Investment Performance -0.41% (-0.68% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -2.04% (-2.31% vs SP500)

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2016

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 11:40:08 +0000

Well a pretty good month for my retirement nestegg. It grew by about $46,000 in one month which is nice. I had the benefit of having over $8k in contributions to my 401k due to receiving a bonus at work this month. This is in addition to the $8k I had last month due to a chunk of my 401k matching hitting as well. Overall it was a wise decision to take my current job 9 years ago due to the very generous bonus and 401k matching programs. I really have not put a ton of effort into my 401k the last 9 years and it has grown to over a quarter of a million dollars!

Retirement Nestegg Report - February 2016

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 14:04:25 +0000

Taxable Account- $17,432.54 (-10.30%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $30,722.07 (+3.38%)
My Roth IRA – $135,692.92 (+1.86%)
Wife Roth IRA – $73,732.62 (+0.35%)
Traditional 401k – $228,140.00 (+1.02%)

Roth/Traditional % = 42.91% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $485,720.15 (+0.84%)
Retirement Salary (4%) - $19,428.81

Monthly Contributions $8,089.68 (401k)
SP500 Performance -0.41%
My Monthly Investment Performance -0.84% (-0.43% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -0.49% (-0.08% vs SP500)

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2016

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 22:31:51 +0000

Well a rough month for the market and a rough month for my nestegg and stock performance. I added $3750 to my Roth IRA to take advantage of some of the bargains out there and hopefully next month I can report back more carnage to my nestegg portfolio.

Taxable Account - $19,423.73 (+18.02%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $29,718.28 (-6.63%)
My Roth IRA – $133,211.06 (-9.21%)
Wife Roth IRA – $73,477.54 (-10.51%)
Traditional 401k – $225,832.92 (-6.42%)

The Long Term View of My NestEgg

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 07:35:14 +0000

When I started this blog in 2005 I wasn’t exactly sure why I was doing it. I knew it was for me to learn about myself, but I think one of the big things I remember thinking at the time was it would be a vehicle for me to be able to look back in time and see how the day to day, month to month, and year to year gyrations of the stock market mean nothing in the grand scheme of things and how the people who promote the gyrations and the people who listen to and react to those short term gyrations are foolish.

Best and Worst Stocks in 2015

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 07:18:02 +0000

Here are my top stock performers for 2015

Netflix +135.45%
Amazon +118.67%
Starbucks +46.70%
Arista Networks +19.30%
IPG Photonics +18.39%
Under Armour +18.39%
Costco +12.58%
Panera +12.42%

Obviously Netflix and Amazon knocked it out of the park this year. It goes to show you that the same stocks can carry your portfolio over time. Netflix and Amazon are some of my biggest winners historically and yet here they are leading the charge again this year. Though Netflix and Amazon were top losers for me last year and I wrote this in last years report about Amazon - looks like Jeff was listening

My All Time Investment Performance January 2016

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 12:17:25 +0000

Continuing on my tradition from last year I have calculated my cumulative investment returns from 2006 until now against the SP500. I actually had to make some corrections to my calculation as I had missed the SP500 dividends in the annual return for some years so my outperformance was not quite as big as I had previously stated.
Overall my nestegg returns are still besting the SP500 though not quite as handedly as before. One item of note is my individual stock investments have crushed the SP500 over the years but my overall nestegg has just barely edged it out. This basically means I’ve underperformed the index with my 401k investments - which is kind of disappointing.
75% of my 401k today is in index/lifestyle funds, but in the past I’ve probably tried to be too smart and like most people cost myself returns versus just doing the smart/easy thing and sticking it all in an index fund. This is something for me to keep on an eye on.
On the other hand my stock performance has been so good it probably makes sense for me to just quit my job so I can cash out the quarter million dollars I have tied up in my 401k.

My Investment Holdings - January 2016

Sat, 02 Jan 2016 07:41:50 +0000

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2015

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 16:21:19 +0000

Well another year in the books and another year of growth for my nestegg. Overall my nestegg grew by over $80,000 this year and topped the half-million mark in April.

My investments outperformed the SP500 pretty handedly this year with my nestegg investments besting the SP500 by almost 6% and my individual stock accounts besting it by almost 13% which is excellent - especially in a flat year like 2015. **note earlier version of this post incorrectly listed SP500 return without dividends

Retirement Nestegg Report - November 2015

Tue, 01 Dec 2015 12:36:43 +0000

Well a little bounce back after last months drubbing and I am getting closer to breaking an all-time new high and my investments are still doing quite well against the market for the year. We have started house construction and there are numerous costs hitting our budget this year related to that, yet we are still on pace to put about $50,000 into our investment accounts which will be an all-time high for us - so I feel pretty good about that.

Retirement Nestegg Report - October 2015

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 15:36:46 +0000

Well my individual stocks took a drubbing this month - pretty sure this has to be the worst monthly performance ever compared to the SP500. Lots of my biggest stock holdings were beat up this month. Bank of Internet down 38%, Solar City was down 31%, Buffalo Wild Wings down 20%, Tesla Motors down 17%, etc. Ouch I guess I suck at individual stock picks and should sell them all change strategy and only invest in index funds - or maybe individual stocks can be volatile in a very short period like a month and they will make me very wealthy some day. Guess time will tell.

Retirement Nestegg Report - September 2015

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 08:55:34 +0000

Taxable Account - $22,033.72 (-3.26%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $35,791.96 (-3.64%)
My Roth IRA – $148,510.84 (-2.87%)
Wife Roth IRA – $81,413.76 (-3.63%)
Traditional 401k – $222,077.53 (-2.33%)

Roth/Traditional % = 45.24% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $509,827.81 (-2.83%)
Retirement Salary (4%) - $20,393.1124

Monthly Contributions $1,716.64 (401k)
SP500 Performance -2.71%
My Monthly Investment Performance -3.16% (-0.45% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -3.21% (-0.50% vs SP500)

Retirement Nestegg Report - August 2015

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 08:50:27 +0000

Well there were a few exciting days during the last month. There was the flash crash where stocks fell for like 30 minutes and the media ran with it for the entire month. With the volatility in the market I thought it was a very good time to get some more money into the market and I added $8,000 in contributions to our Roth IRAs this month. I was not able to get it all invested, but did take advantage of a few of the dips to buy some more Solar City and Tesla stock. Overall this month my accounts fell some, but I was still able to outperform the SP500. I still have another $1k I can contribute this year to my Roth IRA as well as about $3k in cash so hopefully we have some more precipitous drops in our near future. Overall for the year including 401k matching I have been able to add just under $42,000 to our retirement accounts this year, which I found really encouraging as I feel like this has been an expensive year for our family with the new baby, building a house, and some other family emergencies.

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2015

Sat, 01 Aug 2015 09:28:58 +0000

Another month of new records for my Retirement Nestegg. An all-time new high and the largest single month increase in the nearly 10 year history of my blog. Granted compound interest has a lot to do with the feat, but still my individual stock portfolios returned 11.75% last month and outperformed the SP500 index by 9.78%! A $37k increase fueled by $34.5k in investment gains is pretty remarkable and it almost blows my mind what might be possible a few years down the road as compound interest continues to work its magic.

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2015

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 09:07:07 +0000

Well despite the market being down over 2% last month my retirement nestegg still grew by a few thousand dollars thanks to some pretty extreme out performance by my individual stock investments. My stocks this month outperformed the SP 500 index by 4.35%!! Which is pretty impressive and impactful seeing as how over half my nestegg is invested in individual stocks.

Taxable Account - $19,931.18 (+2.59%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $35,651.20 (+3.02%)
My Roth IRA – $ 138,459.05 (+2.44%)
Wife Roth IRA – $80,140.79 (+1.51%)
Traditional 401k – $234,905.52 (-1.53%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2015

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 07:17:12 +0000

Another month of nice growth and out-performance of the SP500. My nestegg finished above the $500k mark for the first time in history. It’s funny to me how as the numbers in my accounts get bigger and bigger that a $15k jump in a month seems like a very ho-hum thing and just a few years ago $10k in a month would have had me dancing in the streets. I look forward to my first $100k increase in a month.

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2015

Fri, 01 May 2015 13:28:37 +0000

Another month another report - not much to say this month. Slight outperformance of the market and some small growth of my nestegg.

Taxable Account - $18,280.5 (+14.04%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $34,341.22 (-5.93%)
My Roth IRA – $130,426.54 (+3.54%)
Wife Roth IRA – $75,467.36 (+3.89%)
Traditional 401k – $232,898.10 (+0.96%)

Roth/Traditional % = 41.88% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $491,413.61 (1.99%)
Retirement Salary (4%) - $19,656.55

Monthly Contributions $1,807.71 (401k)
SPY Performance +0.85%
My Monthly Investment Performance +1.61% (+0.76% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +2.93% (+2.08% vs SP500)

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - I broke $500,000

Thu, 16 Apr 2015 08:54:43 +0000

Well it took a little longer than last time, but compound interest is still working its magic with my retirement nestegg. Today I officially broke through the $500,000 mark for the first time. This milestone came 14 months after the $400k milestone which was actually slower than it took to go from $300k to $400k, but this market is not exactly the magical market that existed in 2013.

The more I update those tables below the more I question why I used a stupid metric like the DOW as an indicator, I think the only reason I chose it was because of the nice symmetry for when I first broke through $100k and the DOW also being at exactly 10,000 - anyway you get the idea that my nestegg is growing faster than the ridiculously dumb and outdated DOW index :-)

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2015

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 09:36:24 +0000

Another big contribution month for my 401k due to company bonuses getting paid out this month. Overall a pretty boring month - no $40k swings or anything like that - though I expect/hope there will be some of those coming up in the future one way or the other. Volatility is the investors friend.

Taxable Account - $16,030.31 (-3.15%)
Traditional Rollover IRA - $36,508.31 (-1.48%)
My Roth IRA – $125,964.81 (-1.95%)
Wife Roth IRA – $72,647.36 (-4.11%)
Traditional 401k – $230,681.99 (+0.79%)

Retirement Nestegg - February 2015

Sun, 01 Mar 2015 09:42:49 +0000

Well another all-time high by a long shot this month. My nestegg increased by almost $39k this month! This was in part by crazy strong returns for the stock market and the fact that I also contributed $14k to my accounts this month.

The big contributions were due to two reasons. First I received a very large federal tax refund which I decided to invest entirely in Tesla Motors stock in my taxable account. I know I need to adjust my allowances - I filled out my W-4 nearly 9 years ago when I started my job and I’ve had a handful of kids since then.

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2015

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 12:30:59 +0000

Well another all-time high and I finally put some good distance between the SP500 and myself when it comes to peformance. Last year I trailed the SP500 by 2.5-3.5% and this month I made up a lot of that ground already. It’s earnings season and a number of my big stock holdings (Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Starbucks) had some great reports and good increases in stock prices this month. Let’s hope this trend continues into February.

Expenses Cut in 2014

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 08:02:14 +0000

I’ll admit it I have become comfortable when it comes to personal finance. I did a lot of research and hard work when I was in my 20s. I soaked up all of the personal finance information I could. I was as frugal as they came and I setup my future self very well by saving $100k before I turned 30 and continued to save money into my 30s.

My All-Time Investment Performance January 2015

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 07:58:58 +0000

Continuing on my tradition from last year I have calculated my cumulative investment returns from 2006 until now against the SP500. The good news is that I am still pretty handily beating the SP500, especially when it comes to my individual stock investments, but the bad news is that I trailed the market by a few percentage points this year. Given my massive outperformance last year I can’t be too upset about trailing by a few points.
During the 9 years I have been tracking my investments closely enough to calculate returns the SP500 has produced annualized returns of 6.47%. During the same period of time all of the investments in my Retirement Nestegg have produced 7.36% annualized returns which is nice to be beating the market. But where I am really proud of is that my individual stock picks which now make up more than half of my portfolio have returned annualized returns of 12.17% which is nearly double what the SP500 has returned. If I am able to keep this up financial independence is not too far around the corner

Best and Worst Stocks in 2014

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 08:21:36 +0000

Here are my top stock performers for 2014.

BJ’s Restaurant (BJRI) 61.92%
Ambarella (AMBA) 59.05%
Under Armour (UA) 57.93%
Tesla Motors (TSLA) 47.17%
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) 39.20%
Apple Inc (AAPL) 37.96%
Bidu Inc (BIDU) 31.19%
Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) 28.96%

Looking at the list I will point out that BJRI had made my list the last two years as a loser and it’s nice to see my patience and long term timeframe pay off with it being my biggest winner this year. Ambarella is a newer stock for me having first purchased last October and is riding the wave of video.

My Investment Holdings - January 2015

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 13:58:23 +0000

In annual tradition I will list all of my investments in my retirement nestegg. In general these do not change much from year to year and I can say as much about this year. Most of the changes are due to stocks that are up and down as I do not shuffle my stocks much and my new purchases these days aren’t enough to move the needle much.
The first four items in the list are my mutual funds from my 401k and the rest of the stocks are in my IRAs and my new taxable account. I feel really good about my investment choices long term and I expect to outperform the market going forward over the long run.

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2014

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 07:47:16 +0000

Well another close to another year and more nestegg growth - though not quite as spectacular as 2013. Overall my investment performance trailed the SP500 slightly this year, but after last year’s insane outperformance I can’t be too sad.

One thing I am proud of is that I contributed the most I ever have to my retirement accounts in a single year by a significant margin. It’s sort of funny how writing out a check for $131,000 for some land would give me the financial freedom to start concentrating on my retirement accounts again. This year I contributed $43,456 to my nestegg, which is nearly $17k better than last year and $13k better than my previous best year (2008).

Retirement Nestegg Report - November 2014

Sat, 29 Nov 2014 13:59:35 +0000

Another all time high for my retirement nestegg and my investments outperformed the SP500 index this month. In addition I have finally bumped up my 401k contribution starting this month to due a little catchup before the end of the year. I have been horribly lacking in this category only contributing 5% of my salary the last 4-5 years as we turbocharged our house/land purchasing funds. I look forward to maxing out my 401k in 2015 for the first time in what seems forever.

Retirement Nestegg Report - October 2014

Sun, 02 Nov 2014 12:11:54 +0000

Our nestegg grew this month slightly but our investments trailed the SP500 significantly for the 2nd straight month. Well I have now maxed out both my wife and my Roth IRAs for 2014. We will now focus on building up our our taxable investment accounts as well as finding ways to save in the cost of constructing our new house. I’m trying to convince my wife that despite me having zero woodworking experience that I can build use kitchen cabinets, tables, and other things for our house. So far I have not been so convincing.

Retirement Nestegg Report - September 2014

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 07:04:28 +0000

Well this month my nestegg shrunk and my investments under performed the SP500 index. I have a few more contributions to make to max out my wife’s Roth IRA and then I am going to start working on increasing my taxable account. I have not maxed out my 401k in a number of years and just put the bare minimum in to get my employers matching money.

While my individual stocks that I invest in my IRAs and taxable accounts are much more volatile it has been impressive how much they have outperformed my 401k which is primarily invested in index funds. On top of having more control I do at some point want to access my retirement nestegg to say retire and that will hopefully be long before age 59.5 so growing up a sizable taxable account will give them ability to make that jump when the time comes.

Retirement Nestegg Report - August 2014

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 20:47:43 +0000

Well another new all time high for my retirement nestegg and good performance by my portfolio. It’s amazing the growth of my nestegg the last few years and this has been an amazing time to have a good chunk of money invested in the stock market. I really wish I had more invested :-)

Taxable Account - $5,953.96(+2.16%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $ 34,038.64 (5.66%)
My Roth IRA – $119,793.68 (+8.54%)
Wife Roth IRA – $$67,215.02 (+8.24%)
Traditional 401k – $202,494.53 (+4.22%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2014

Sun, 03 Aug 2014 12:15:15 +0000

Taxable Account - $5,828.28(+6.15%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $32,215.25 (-7.11%)
My Roth IRA – $110,364.18 (-1.51%)
Wife Roth IRA – $62,098.14 (-0.23%)
Traditional 401k – $194,298.56 (-1.90%)

Roth/Traditional % = 42.60% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $404,804.41 (-1.87%)

Monthly Contributions $758.84 (401k)
SPY Performance -1.51%
My Monthly Investment Performance -2.05% (-0.54% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -1.85% (-0.34% vs SP500)

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2014

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 09:40:50 +0000

Well a pretty good month for me. My investments crushed the SP 500 index and my retirement nestegg grew by almost $25k in just one month which I think is a record for me and is more than my retirement nestegg was worth when I started this blog in December of 2005 and did my first nestegg report. Compound interest is a beautiful thing.

Taxable Account - $5,490.86 (+7.68%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $34,681.76 (+13.71%)
My Roth IRA – $112,056.67 (+8.44%)
Wife Roth IRA – $62,243.25 (+9.60%)
Traditional 401k – $198,046.80 (+3.17%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2014

Mon, 02 Jun 2014 10:28:00 +0000

Well nothing too exciting this month - I gained some of the lost ground to the SP500 the last few months and I made $4000 in contributions to our Roth IRA accounts. The good news is I didn’t have any five or six figure purchases this month so I feel a little bit more frugal than I did last month :-)

Taxable Account - $5,099.04 (+2.99%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $30,500.70 (-1.23%)
My Roth IRA – $103,334.94 (+7.92%)
Wife Roth IRA – $56,790.05 (+5.32%)
Traditional 401k – $191,961.67 (+2.52%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2014

Thu, 01 May 2014 12:57:53 +0000

Ouch a very rough month for my retirement nestegg and for the 2nd month in a row my portfolio badly underperformed the SP500. To top it off I also finally made a land purchase so $131,000 came out of my savings account and went to buying some dirt. Also last month we purchased a new minivan for $15,000 so cash savings is flying out the door and my investment accounts are dropping as fast as they went up. Bottom line is I feel a lot poorer this month than I did last month.

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2014

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 09:27:57 +0000

Well I guess things can’t keep going up forever and I can’t destroy the SP500 every single month. After breaking $400k for the first time earlier this month my portfolio took a little dip backwards and my investments greatly under-performed the market this month. The only saving grace was that my employer’s very generous 401k matching and bonus program both hit this month so about an extra $8k went into my 401k this month that makes the month not look quite as bad as as it actually was.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - I broke $400,000

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:32:38 +0000

Well I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I’d be writing this post so soon, but today my retirement nestegg topped $400,000 today. It was less than 9 months ago that I broke $300,000 and $200,000 16.5 months before that, and $100,000 28 months before that and five years before that I started investing.

Once again the power of compound interest is becoming crystal clear as you follow my retirement nestegg.

Retirement Nestegg Report - February 2014

Sat, 01 Mar 2014 08:54:59 +0000

Well another great month for the stock market and another great month for my retirement nestegg. Once again my investments outperformed the SP 500 and my retirement nestegg is inching up on $400,000 - which is absolutely mind boggling since I just hit $300k in July! This also marks the 100th monthly report in a row that I have done for this blog.

To put the power of compound interest into perspective - my first monthly report was filed in December of 2005 and my nestegg was at $24,616.93 and that had represented over 3 years of savings to that point. This month my retirement nestegg grew by $21,177.32.

What am I saving money for?

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 15:22:14 +0000

This seems like kind of a horse after the cart type of moment, but I’ve more recently started to wonder what I am saving all of this money for. My retirement nestegg has grown exponentially and overall I think I have done a pretty decent job of saving a significant portion of my income for retirement.

I’ve set goals and have met them and I have toyed with setting new goals for myself. For example I set that $1M for 40 goal 2-3 years ago and never wrote a post as to what, why, or how I was going to do that. Part of the reason was that I didn’t know really the why and well the how part really relied on my investment returns which as we know, tend to not be a linear/stable thing you can project over a short period of time like five years.

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2014

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 09:52:39 +0000

Well I we started out 2014 with a down month for the market and to be honest that kind of excites me. Again I am young and am contributing so a bad market benefits me tremendously. Also as you can see I put over $9000 of new money into my accounts this month so have money to deploy should things start falling.

Once again I have bested the SP500 by a significant margin and while the time period is still short I am very excited at the prospect that I will be able to get market beating returns with my individual stocks and this will increase the already amazing power of compound interest. We will see - everyone feels like a genius during a bull market like we have had for the last 4-5 years, but overall things are going pretty well for me so far and its possible I have the right long term mindset to be able to beat the odds that so many investors face when trying to get above average returns.

Whoops I saved another $100,000 and didn't even try

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:32:31 +0000

Probably one of the more popular things I’ve done on this blog was set the goal of having saved $100,000 in retirement accounts by the time I hit 30. I ended up falling just short of that goal, but overall it was a great exercise.

Since then I have really been in cruise control (probably not a great thing) and I thought I had been doing a horrible job saving for retirement as I was saving fairly aggressively for a new house - in fact that was the reason I fell short of my original goal to save $100k by age 30.

My all-time investment performance January 2014

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 13:34:47 +0000

I figured this is something I should be doing now that I have enough history to take a look at my investment performance over the long term versus the market. Since I have made the decision to invest solely in stocks in my IRAs I need to take a look to see if that decision is paying off or worth the trouble. I do track this with each monthly report as well as each yearly recap - but I have never taken the time to look at my investment performance since the beginning of time.
Now granted this year is very much in my favor so don’t anoint me as the next Peter Lynch just yet, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised to see how well I am doing when you stack it all together.
Since I started tracking my values on this blog in 2005 my investment performance for all of my investment vehicles (401k, Roth & Traditional IRAs) has resulted in a total investment return of 74.01% over the last 8 years for an annualized return of 7.17%. Meanwhile the SP500 over that same period of time has returned 29.81% or 3.32% annualized return. So my performance has been over double that of the SP 500.
Now since the vast amount of my 401k is an Vanguard Index Lifestyle fund that is closely tracking the SP 500 you will wonder how I outperformed the market so well. Well about half of my retirement nestegg is in my and my wife’s Roth IRAs which are invested 100% in individual stocks trying to beat the market. Over the same 8 year period of time my individual stocks have returned 160.55% total investment return or just under 12.72% annualized returns or over quadruple the returns of the SP 500.

My best and worst stocks in 2013

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 12:47:40 +0000

Here are my top 13 stocks in 2013

Netflix (NFLX) +312.14%
Tesla Motors (TSLA) +300.00% (bought in Jan 29)
3D Systems (DDD) +172.91%
Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD) +104.60%
BIDU 89.03% (bought May 10)
Middleby (MIDD) +91.06%
Priceline (PCLN) +90.09%
Under Armour (UA) +84.09%
Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) +83.37%
Boston Beer Co (SAM) +81.81%
Sina (SINA) +74.23%
Amazon (AMZN) +62.40%
Ambarella (AMBA) +57.74% (bought Oct 25)

Yowzers - you can certainly see why my investment performance crushed the market this year. First off we have Netflix which is my most successful investment ever having originally bought in at $19.72 for a 1766% return 18 bagger for me. It’s been a volatile stock if you look at it in short term bursts and just two years ago it had fallen from $300 a share to $55, but if you look at the long term chart it’s been pretty rewarding for those investors that ignored the short-term noise. It also goes to show you that just because a stock is up 50%,100%,1000%+ from when you purchased it, it still may be the best spot for new money.

My Investment Holdings - January 2014

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 11:58:31 +0000

Well unlike other years there has been some change in my investment holdings not necessarily what I am invested in, but as I have grown more confident in my stock picking ability (scary thing) I have begun to weed out positions I have felt less confident in or only owned a small position in and have reduce the number of stocks I own from 40 stocks to 30 stocks and have become much more concentrated in the stocks I feel much more confident about.
Now I am still certainly a long-term buy and hold investor and of the 10 stocks I sold I owned just about every one of them 5+ years and well given my investment performance this year I think things are headed in the right direction.
I will admit to one completely boneheaded moron move. In my 401k you will notce I own VTINX which is the Vanguard Retirement Income Fund - which basically owns cash and bonds and safe investments. Going into 2013 I was feeling smart (scary thing) and you know the market has been on a crazy run since 2009, so I knew the top was coming so I moved $20,000 of my 401k money into this basically cash fund as a hedge that I could then move into an all stock index fund when the market inevitably had its pullback. Yeah the market had one of its best years ever returning nearly 30% and I had $20k sitting in cash as a young person investing for a retirement 20+ years down the road. I’ve said it before - you are an idiot if you think you can time the market and there is a 100% chance you will hurt your investment returns. Unfortunately I didn’t listen to myself. In the grand scheme of things it probably only cost me $2-3k, but I am a moron and learned another lesson.

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2013

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 11:15:29 +0000

Wow another year has already passed and this sure was one of the most exciting years for my retirement nestegg growth. My retirement nestegg grew 62% in 2013 or $140,370.78!! If you take out my contributions for the year my investments made me $113,682.25 this year!

That is absolutely insane as my portfolio which just sits there and takes extremely little work on my behalf is now making more than my salary in my 40 hour a week day job. It also more than the $100,000 goal I had set for myself to save by age 30 in just one year with no contributions on my part! Compound interest is an amazing force!

Retirement Nestegg Report - November 2013

Sun, 01 Dec 2013 12:25:29 +0000

As usual another new high and another significant out performance by my investments of the SP500 index. This really cannot go on forever as I’ve had many years worth of gains just this year alone. Let’s hope for another financial apocalypse sometime soon. In related news I have finally I believe secured a piece of land to build our house on. After many years of searching we have a signed purchase agreement for 15 acres of land and will likely be building next year. Poor financial decision, but not everything is about dollars and cents and hopefully with this out of the way in 2014 I can concentrate more on our finances going forward. Meanwhile this cruise control thing has worked out pretty good for us.

Retirement Nestegg Report - October 2013

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 18:18:08 +0000

Well I sound like a broken record - another great month for my retirement nestegg report and another great month for investment outperformance of the SP500. Seriously this cannot go on forever and I actually at this point would much more prefer the stock market head south, but have to admit its fun watching my retirement nestegg grow by $2k just about every day.

Taxable Account - $2,540.76 (+0.16%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $26,409.36 (+13.63%)
My Roth IRA – $97,307.85 (+8.89%)
Wife Roth IRA – $52,222.36 (+2.62%)
Traditional 401k – $164,972.78 (+3.66%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - September 2013

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 06:36:17 +0000

Well another great month of retirement nestegg growth and another great month of market outperformance by my investments. My nestegg had over $16,000 just in investment gains this month which I think is the second highest ever for me (July 2013) and my nestegg has grown $105,000 or 47.6% since my report last Septemeber

What does all of this mean? It means I am a financial genius - or it could be that the stock market has gone bonkers the last 3-4 years and I’ve ridden a few lucky stock investments to unforeseen highs and it could all come crashing down by next month :-) Bottom line month to month or year to year performance doesn’t really tell you too much but given the trend of the last few years I think I am headed in the right direction.

Retirement Nestegg Report - August 2013

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 12:53:34 +0000

Well another nice little bump in my retirement nestegg this month and what has to be my best investment performance ever versus the SP 500. I outperformed the market by over 4% this month and my individual stocks outperformed by nearly 7%. This performance was driven largely by the performance of Netflix, Tesla Motors, and 3D systems all of whom were up significantly this month and are stocks that have grown to be major players in my stock portfolio.

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2013

Thu, 01 Aug 2013 10:58:22 +0000

Well another great month for my retirement nestegg. I broke through the $300k mark and my investment performance was stellar on top of the already great market return this month. Compound interest FTW

Taxable Account - $2,688.14 (+33.53%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $21,012.14 (+6.35%)
My Roth IRA – $81,790.62 (+7.95%)
Wife Roth IRA – $45,830.05 (+6.36%)
Traditional 401k – 153,633.65 (+5.26%)

Roth/Traditional % = 41.84% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $304,954.60 (+6.41%)

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report – I broke $300,000

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:23:27 +0000

Taxable Account - $2,022.45
Traditional Rollover IRA – $21,071.82
My Roth IRA – $80,604.97
Wife Roth IRA – $46,118.18
Traditional 401k – $152,115.57

Total Retirement Nestegg - $301,932.99

Well seems like it wasn’t that long ago when I broke $200,000 and well it wasn’t. Just 16.5 months ago I broke the $200k barrier and 28 months before that I broke the $100k barrier and 5 years before that I got started investing. This is a pretty vivid example of the power of compound interest. The ball is rolling and most of the heavy lifting was done on my part by setting that initial goal to have contributed $100k to my retirement accounts by the time I reached age 30. It is also worth noting that in only 8 trading days this month my nestegg grew by over $15k.

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2013

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 18:59:33 +0000

Well after last month’s huge increase gave a little bit back this month. Overall I trailed the market, but my individual stocks beat the market again this month. Not sure how my 401k did so bad as it is nearly entirely in index funds and actually has larger cash cushion so the market going down I expected some out performance, but it’s only one month and probably some sort of anomaly. I am still in a rough situation as I have an extremely large cash cushion for purchasing land and a house and the land search is going very badly, so I have historically low mortgage interest rates finally starting to go up, the market is at all-time highs, interest rates on cash are non-existent, and my retirement savings is in limbo because of all of these unknowns.

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2013

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 06:49:49 +0000

Well pretty sure this month set all time records for biggest increase dollars and percent and out-performance of the SP500. Set an all-time high for my retirement nestegg and am coming very close to breaking through the $300,000 mark. It’s crazy what a tare the stock market in general has been on and in my portfolio as well I have had some crazy high fliers such as Tesla Motors which nearly doubled in value last month alone!

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2013

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:29:57 +0000

Well another very good month for my retirement and a great month for my investments as they all soundly beat the market and my nestegg is getting closer to the $300k milestone. Was less than a year ago that I crossed $200k - compounding is fun to watch.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $18,752.86 (+3.32%)
My Roth IRA – $71,411.42 (+5.79%)
Wife Roth IRA – $40,983.62 (+6.11%)
Traditional 401k – $145,610.04 (+2.51%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2013

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 07:37:22 +0000

Well another new record for my nestegg. The stock market sure is on a roll lately and my nestegg reflects that. Unfortunately I lose to the SP500 this month, but I have beat it in three of the last four months and short term fluctuations like that don’t bother me. I also had quite a few contributions this month which may have skewed my performance metrics as I got a large chunk of matching 401k since my company paid out our annual bonuses this month and I finished maxxing out my wife’s Roth IRA for 2012. In other exciting news I will be putting an offer in on some land to build a house - we will see how it goes but its the first time we’ve gotten serious enough to put an offer in on land so my massive savings efforts the last few years might finally come to fruition. We hope to be able to pay cash for the land.

Retirement Nestegg Report - February 2013

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:24:19 +0000

Well another month another all-time high and another milestone reached. My retirement nestegg is now worth over a quarter of a million dollars. It’s great to see the power of compound interest and the increased frequency of hitting new milestones. I remember starting out and seeing fellow financial bloggers having nesteggs well into the 6 figures and thinking man I can’t imagine how long it would take to save up that much money or build a nestegg that large and now I have reached that level and now those people are approaching or surpassing 7 figures. Once you get the snowball rolling it’s a powerful thing.

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2013

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 09:42:42 +0000

Well 2013 is off with a bang. The SP 500 gained over 5% this month alone and my investments actually did a little bit better than that (thank you Netflix). My retirement nestegg also hit an all-time high and I’m starting to creep up on the 1/4 million dollar mark which is exciting. I also maxed out my Roth IRA this month for 2012 and today will be making a contribution to max out my wife’s Roth IRA for 2012 so things are good on the contribution front again after lapsing for a stretch while saving for land/house I have yet to buy.

My best and worst stocks in 2012

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:45:45 +0000

Here are my top 10 stocks for 2012

IPG Photonics (IPGP) +96.78%
3D Systems (DDD) +90.40% (bought in April)
Lululemon Athletica (LULU) +63.37%
Stratasys (SSYS) +62.94% (bought in April)
Amazon (AMZN) +44.93%
Middleby (MIDD) +36.34%
Under Armour (UA) +35.18%
Brookfield Assett Management (BAM) +33.73%
Netflix (NFLX) +33.63%
Apple (AAPL) +31.40%

Well certainly an interesting list for 2012 and not a large trend like there are some years. Came pretty close to having IPGP become a 2 bagger for me in a year and my #2 and #4 best stocks this year I only purchased at the end of April. I guess its nice to see some validation from Amazon with a nearly 45% return in 2012 after I made this statement in last years analysis of my individual stocks

My Investment Holdings - January 2013

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:11:45 +0000

Well not a whole lot of change since last year. I did do some reshuffling in my 401k moving most of my funds to a Vanguard target retirement fund. As far as my stocks I haven’t really made any major changes from last year. It was kind of a weak year for restaurants and I’m pretty heavy in that area so that explains some of my short-term under-performance. New guys to the list are a couple 3D printing companies DDD and SSYS. Other than that its the same old same old.
Anyway here is the list 47 total investments, 5 mutual funds, 39 stocks, and a cash position.

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2012

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 22:37:29 +0000

Well always fun to end the year with all-time new high for my retirement nestegg. 2012 was a big year for my retirement account. I broke 200,000 for the first time, I started contributing to my Roth IRAs again (after taking a hiatus saving for a house), and I had my 4th child. My investment performance wasn’t exactly where I’d like it to be, but I know investing lots of my money into individual stocks I will get some wild swings during shorter periods of time (1 year) and overall my confidence is growing with my ability to pick individual stocks over the long term.

Retirement Nestegg Report - November 2012

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 12:20:52 +0000

Going through a bit of a dry spell with regards to my investments. The good news is I have started contributing money to my Roth IRAs again and hopefully taking advantage of what I am considering bargains on some of my individual stock investments. Assuming I am right with some of those assumptions I will hopefully see some large increases in my retirement nestegg in the next 5-10 years as those investments play out.

Retirement Nestegg Report - October 2012

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 07:23:31 +0000

Well this month was a rough one and my investment performance trailed the SP500 and my individual stocks got crushed by the market this month. Many of my large holding had rough earnings seasons and this greatly affected my performance this month. The good news is this is just a one month event and does not change my long-term outlook on my investing philosophy or any of my investments. In fact quite a bit this year and even more so this last month I have been concentrating my individual stock investments into fewer and fewer stocks and putting more and more money into what I consider my best ideas. I still own 39 individual stocks and even my largest holdings account for less than 5% of my total retirement nestegg so I do not think I am taking on any additional risk I just feel like after being in the stock market for 5-6 years now and having gone through a pretty good recession I feel much more comfortable in my allocation decisions - I guess only time will tell.

Retirement Nestegg Report - September 2012

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:17:12 +0000

Another good month for my retirement nestegg - another all-time new high and another month of outperforming the SP500. I will soon start making contributions for my Roth IRA accounts for this year and hope to start amping up my retirement savings again. Still no luck on finding land but feel comfortable that $160k is an ample cash reserve for making a down payment. Should be expecting child #4 before next months retirement nestegg report and am back down to the normal 1 income going forward for the foreseeable future. The one year of having two incomes was pretty awesome and allowed us to top of our house savings - now back to business as usual and hope to start super charging our retirement savings again.

Retirement Nestegg Report - August 2012

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:47:42 +0000

Well I got back some of the performance losses from last month and my retirement nestegg hit a new all-time high. My whole financial situation is still sort on hold as we look to buy some land so I am hesitant to make my Roth IRA contributions or increase my 401k until we know exactly what is going on with regards to a land purchase so this means my retirement nestegg is growing at a much slower pace than it should be and has been for the last couple of years.

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2012

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:31:13 +0000

Well a pretty boring month overall for my nestegg, but what has to be one my worst months ever as far as investment performance vs the SP500. A number of my individual stocks got hit pretty hard this last earnings season and in general as I have grown to feel more comfortable I have been consolidating my stock investments more and more into a smaller set of companies so there is bound to be some more volatility with this approach, but I am hoping also better long term gains.

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2012

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 08:48:50 +0000

Traditional Rollover IRA – $16,083.72 (+0.90%)
My Roth IRA – $54,310.82 (+1.71%)
Wife Roth IRA – $28,788.40 (+3.09%)
Traditional 401k – $107,748.14 (+3.93%)

Roth/Traditional % = 40.16% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $206,931.08 (+2.98%)

Monthly Contributions $715.28 (401k)
SPY Performance +3.64%
My Monthly Investment Performance +2.63% (-1.01%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +1.98% (-1.66%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2012

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:44:59 +0000

Well this was an exciting month and pretty good timing for me as with all of my recent contributions I have a good chunk of money to throw into individual stocks and went through most of the $10k I recently contributed this month.

I also made a pretty drastic strategy change with my 401k account. Doing these monthly reports have made me realize that my strategy of picking actively managed mutual funds trying to beat the SP500 just was not working over the longer term in my 401k and so I completely re-balanced my 401k where now the vast majority of my money is in a vanguard target retirement fund, another chunk is in a vanguard index fund, and I actually moved another chunk to a vanguard bond index fund since I thought we had been on a nice run up lately and wanted to have a more stable cash-like cushion should things turn south where I could then move it into the stock market if the opportunity presented itself. It’s not something I am contributing to on a regular basis and accounts for about 15% of my 401k right now.

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2012

Tue, 01 May 2012 08:34:07 +0000

Well the good news is that my retirement nestegg grew again this month, the bad news is it was only because I contributed nearly $8,000 to my retirement accounts. That being said it felt good to max out my and my wife’s Roth IRAs again and give me some more cash to invest into the market. My performance overall and vs the SP500 was lacking this month, but that is to be expected on a short term period like a month.

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2012

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:40:56 +0000

Another month of nice growth for my retirement nestegg report. My first monthly report north of $200k and I cleared that hurdle by a good margin. Performance on a whole trailed the market some as my 401k performance as usual trailed and my individual stock as usual bested the SP500. It may be time for me to think about just moving all of my 401k money into a standard index fund and just worry about beating the market with individual stocks.

Comments Fixed

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:57:14 +0000

Sorry to all of you that tried to leave me a comment in the last 8 months or so - just realized my spam plugin was blocking all comments - I just thought I turned unpopular :-) Anyway you should be able to leave comments now. Sorry for the troubles.

Retirement Nestegg Report - February 2012

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:30:11 +0000

Well I gave a little back in the last two days so I will have to wait before I have a retirement nestegg report over $200k. A good month for my retirement nestegg growth but a good chunk of that was due to an extra $5400 that my company deposited in my 401k as part of my matching funds. My performance actually trailed the SP500 slightly this month. One item that I am considering is restarting contributions to our Roth IRAs which I have not contributed to since 2008! Our house/land fund is getting sufficiently big and I think it is time to start increasing our retirement savings again and I’d like to get some good contributions in before the April 15th deadline for 2011 contributions. Hopefully the market starts heading south again since I will not be a more active buyer of stocks going forward again.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - I broke $200,000

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:06:19 +0000

Traditional Rollover IRA $17,604.34
My Roth IRA $52,623.89
Wife Roth IRA $25,600.70
Current Traditional 401k $104,658.75

Total Retirement Nest Egg $200,487.68

Feel kind of dorky doing this 2 days before the end of the month but wanted to celebrate a mini milestone the day after it happened. Just 28 months ago I wrote my post celebrating that I had broken 6 figures for the first time and as of yesterday I broke $200,000 for the first time.

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2012

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:12:37 +0000

Well a really good month for my retirement nestegg growth and my investment performance against the SP500. I had been on a bit of a losing streak (4 months in a row) - but I snapped out of that slump with a pretty good result this month. It probably had something to do with the fact that Netflix rebounded nearly 75% this last month alone :-)

As I’ve mentioned earlier I really don’t track my stocks or my portfolios that closely and I really only do these monthly reports for my own benefit so I can look back at periods like 2008-09 or the end of 2011 where things may have looked so doom and gloom and be able to take that data point and pull it out into a longer term view and show just how trivial those movements are in the long term and how there is no reason to get excited over these short term fluctuations. I don’t alter or judge my investment strategy just because it performs poorly for a few months or a year or two. I look at the larger picture and tune out all of the short term noise and look at where I want to be 20 years down the road and what investments are going to take me there.

My best and worst stocks in 2011

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:15:58 +0000

Below are the top 8 best performing stocks I owned for the entire year in 2011 and their performance.

MAKO Surgical Corp (MAKO) +65.64%
Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) +58.82%
Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD) +53.96%
Starbucks (SBUX) +43.20%
United Health Group (UNH) +40.35%
Panera Bread Company (PNRA) +38.80%
Whole Foods Market (WFM) +37.54%
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) +36.49%

It definitely looks like restaurants, food, and medical care was in for 2011 looking at my best performing stocks. Also noticed that this performance is quite a bit different than last year where I had 3 stocks that were up at least 100%. Overall though I feel very good about having these good performers last year and it shows you that despite the market being relatively flat if you find the right companies you can make significant performance gains no matter what the market is doing. Looking at these stocks I really feel good about the whole group long term and while some like MAKO, GMCR, and CMG may have some pretty lofty valuations currently I think they are all good long term companies that are pretty well run. MAKO and GMCR are probably the riskiest of the bunch.

My Investment Holdings – January 2012

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:30:15 +0000

It’s been a year since I last updated my investment holdings so I figured January every year would be a good time to do this. In general my investments will not change much from year to year as I pretty much only buy stocks and do not sell very often, but I do make changes occasionally or tidy up my holdings so this will be a good place to see what changes have happened in my portfolio in the last year and what my current portfolio allocation looks like based on new investments and individual positions market changes.
In the last year I have actually entirely sold off about 10 stocks. I did have many small positions buying small increments when I had free trades with Zecco and the market was falling so nicely in 2008-2009. When Zecco announced they were getting rid of free trades I decided to use all 10 of mine up and clear out some smaller speculative positions before I transferred my accounts away to TradeKing. I also had a few companies get bought out and have made a few decisions to cull positions I maybe no longer felt as strongly about, but in general it is extremely rare for me to sell a stock.
Looking at my current allocation I feel pretty good about it - in fact I feel like in the last year I have done a good job refining my portfolio to reflect my ever evolving investment philosophy and knowledge base and for the first time I really feel somewhat comfortable that I might know what I am doing (scary scary thought).
My four largest positions are the mutual funds I hold in my 401k, after that I feel very good about my 15 biggest stock investments that account for over a third of my retirement nestegg. If there was one stock that I felt the absolute best about going forward it would definitely be Amazon which is currently my 7th largest position. I just feel that they do so many things right, have so many long term trends going their way, have a visionary leader, and innovative company spirit, and an absolute focus on making their customers happy. I think they will one day dwarf competitors such as Walmart and Apple.
Anyway here is the list 47 total investments, 5 mutual funds, 42 stocks, and a cash position.

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2011

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 08:00:30 +0000

Well another year in the books and a bit of a bummer the second half of the year with regards to my nestegg growth and my investment performance vs the SP500. As you will see in some follow up posts - I had two of my largest stock positions from 2010 really tank in 2011 (Netflix and Dolby). I guess the good news is despite this somewhat worst case scenario I have found out that I am diversified enough where it did not do any irreparable damage to my portfolio.

My savings account is now bigger than my home mortgage.

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 07:30:06 +0000

Kind of a weird scenario happened last month. The amount of money that my wife and I have saved up for building our next house has actually surpassed the amount of the mortgage on our existing house. We have been living in our first house now for a little under 6.5 years which also ironically is pretty close to how long I have been writing this blog and now I am to the point if I wanted to could have my house paid off free and clear with a couple clicks of a mouse button.

Retirement Nestegg Report - November 2011

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 09:58:18 +0000

Well another month where I trailed the SP500 (3 in a row). This does not give me cause for concern as over the long term I have been beating the market and up until the last three months I had a really good string of wins on my side - again broken horse but Netflix was one of my largest positions and has taken a serious hair cut here in the short term. While my portfolio was relatively flat up until a few days ago I was down about $15-$20k from last month but the market has been rallying a lot in recent days and brought me back near last months total. Goes to show you that short term gyrations (days, weeks, months, years) really mean nothing and you should not react to them or fear them.

Retirement Nestegg Report - October 2011

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:56:30 +0000

Well for the second month in a row my investments have lost out to the SP 500 index and for the second month in a row I am going to blame Reed Hastings :-)

Traditional Rollover IRA – $15,201.22 (+15.08%)
My Roth IRA – $47,947.32 (+6.71%)
Wife Roth IRA – $21,609.15 (+11.21%)
Current Traditional 401k – $89,233.16 (+11.13%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.98 % (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $173,980.85 (+10.21%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - September 2011

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:42:35 +0000

Well I had a hunch this month was going to be ugly and well I was right. Overall the market fell 7.42% on top of the 7.79% that it fell last month so things are getting pretty exciting as far as being able to invest money at lower cost basis, but the bad news is this month I broke my streak of of seven straight months of besting the SP500 index and well I broke it in stunning fashion losing by 3.48% overall this month and my stock portfolio losing by 5.60% just this month. There is a pretty logical explanation for all of this and his name is Reed Hastings :-) My best performing stock and also my largest individual stock holding Netflix fell about 50% just in the last month which has has a significant impact on my portfolio’s performance this month.

Retirement Nestegg Report - August 2011

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:01:52 +0000

Well a pretty exciting month for my retirement nestegg - though it ended up not finishing up quite as exciting as it looked like it might. I think at one point this month my retirement nestegg was down almost $40,000 from its overall high, but ended up making most of it back as stocks rallied the second half of the month. What does this mean for me? Well nothing really - other than I thought I might have some magical power over the stock market as the last time I mentioned about wanting to stocks to fall we had the crash of 08/09 and two months ago I wrote something similar and down we headed.

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2011

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:18:08 +0000

Well another negative month for my retirement nestegg total, but again another month where my investment performance easily outpaced the SP500. These month to month results really mean nothing but all of these individual monthly one ups on the SP500 are really starting to translate into long term outperformance of the SP500 which is every investors benchmark and one that most investors fail to beat so I feel pretty good about that and makes me kind of glad that I didn’t follow my own advice by investing strictly in index funds (which is the smart thing that essentially everyone should do).

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2011

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:42:07 +0000

Another negative month for my retirement nestegg report, but my investments beat the market pretty handily again this month. Heading the wrong direction from the $200,000 milestone but like I said last month I really don’t mind that at all as long as it means the market as a whole is headed south it will give me an opportunity to pick up some additional investments at less expensive values, but doubt we will get an opportunity like the crash of 2007-2009 anytime soon - though one can only hope. Here is my monthly report.

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2011

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 08:39:09 +0000

Well my retirement nestegg went the wrong way this month - which amazingly is the first time since August of 2010 that my retirement nestegg shrunk from month to month. To be fair though during that same period of time the SP500 only went negative twice and was flat once so it’s not like I’m necessarily an investing genius. Like I’ve always said its fun to see your accounts growing each month, but I would very much welcome my accounts getting slashed in half like they did a few years ago as it has provided me as a young buyer with lots of time on his hands an opportunity to really get some bargain deals on stocks and has really super charged the growth of my retirement nestegg. It makes it so much easier to “beat the market” when things are going down and super volatile than it is when the market is doing nothing but going up.

Holy crap I've made a lot of money in the stock market

Mon, 02 May 2011 07:16:16 +0000

I’ve started to become more aware of how good my investment performance has been of late, but one thing that kind of solidified it for me was not only comparing my performance against the SP500, but then also looking at my investment returns in actual dollar figures. I don’t know why but while I think its cool to have great investment returns and see my nestegg grow by so much each month, I really wasn’t all that blown away by what was happening. Then for some reason I decided to break down my investment returns in actual dollar amounts and for whatever reason kind of blew me away.

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2011

Sun, 01 May 2011 09:07:58 +0000

Well another strong month of growth for my retirement nestegg and another strong month of investment returns bla bla bla. Seems to be a reoccurring theme each month and makes these monthly posts pretty monotonous. I am closely sneaking up on the $200,000 figure for my retirement nestegg and both my 401k and my individual stock accounts are each getting close to $100k a piece. So potentially lots of neat little milestones next month if I have another month like this one.

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2011

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:14:00 +0000

Another very strong month for my retirement nestegg report despite the fact that the SP500 was slightly negative for the month. Once again my investment performance, especially my individual stocks have greatly outpaced the SP500. I also had a rather large 401k contribution this month due to a rather large bonus I received at work. I also got my annual raise (4%) which bumps up the contributions somewhat.

I have not contributed to my individual stock accounts since 2008 since we are saving for a house, yet those accounts are growing so fast that they are still outpacing my 401k where I am contributing about $15,000 a year. Maybe making me rethink that logic, but at my current contribution rate through work it is guaranteeing I am getting 100% match of my 401k contributions up to 9.5% - so in reality I am contributing 5% of my salary to get 14.5% total contribution which is pretty kick butt and hard to pass up and rely on my continued stock picking prowess to beat the essentially 100%+ match I get through work. What I should be doing is stopping saving for that stupid house.

Retirement Nestegg Report - February 2011

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 07:57:11 +0000

Well another positive month for my retirement nestegg as it grew $13,000 this month. You can really see the power of compounding - if this amount of growth had happened a few years ago I probably would have fallen out of my chair as it would have nearly doubled my retirement nestegg, but now it just gets a yawn out of me. My investment performance was really strong this month and made up for last months sub-par performance. Also I had a fairly large amount of contributions this month due to the fact that my employer contributed $4800+ to my 401k as part of their annual contribution. My employer is very generous and matches 9.5% of your salary in your 401k if you contribute 5% on your own.

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2011

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:25:33 +0000

Here is my monthly financial report. Nothing two exciting this month - nestegg grew by 1.94% and my investment returns trailed the market. Netflix became my first official spiffy popped for me this month - it went up $27.84 on January 27th and my initial purchase was for $19.54 on 6/22/07. In honor of that I finally took the plunge and became a Netflix subscriber. Anyway here is my report.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $12,729.57 (-0.27%)
My Roth IRA – $46,157.02 (+2.86%)
Wife Roth IRA – $26,230.54 (+0.48%)
Current Traditional 401k – $80,458.73 (+1.91%)

My best and worst stocks in 2010

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:35:51 +0000

Below are the top 5 stocks that I owned for the entire year in 2010 and their performance during the entire calendar year

Netflix (NFLX) +218%
Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) + 141%
Under Armor (UA) + 101%
IPG Photonics Corporation (IPGP) + 89%
Whole Foods Market (WFMI) + 84%

Obviously Netflix had a tremendous year, but I had three stocks that at least doubled in 2010 and two others that were really close. I actually had another handful of stocks that were up 60-70% - like I’ve mentioned before the stock market returns were really remarkable this year and last year. Of the 5 stocks above I sold 25% of my shares in Netflix and the other 4 I have not sold and do not plan no selling anytime within the next 5+ years.

My Investment Holdings - January 2011

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 07:27:16 +0000

Back in March of this year I listed my top 15 investments for the first time. I figured this time around I might as well list my entire portfolio and what percentage of the portfolio each investment takes up. I figure this might be useful for me to look back on in the future and occasionally I will get a comment or an email asking what I am invested in (especially since I have been beating the market lately)
A couple comments about what’s happened since I put out my last list. #1 Netflix completely exploded. It became my first 10 bagger and despite the recent pullback and me selling $2400 worth of stock when it hit $200 a share it is still my largest individual stock investment despite me only putting $1000 into the stock.
The second thing would be that I sold some of my stocks and have 4.59% of my retirement nestegg in cash trying to time the market kind of. Because the market has been on such an incredible tear and because some of my stocks like Netflix have very lofty PEs and because I am not planning on putting a boatload of new money into the market until we figure out what we are doing with the house I thought it would be to sell small portions of some of the stocks that really ran up so I would have some money on the sidelines to take advantage of a stock market pullback should one occur. So far this has been a really bad decision and of the stocks I have sold only Netflix has pulled back - the rest have continued their journey upward. I am not too concerned about this as even in the case of Netflix I sold only 1/4th of my position and overall this cash on the sidelines is not hurting me too much. Whether or not I will be able to redeploy it at better values will be a learning lesson for me.
Anyway here is the list 57 total investments, 4 mutual funds, 52 stocks, and a cash position.

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2010

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:53:16 +0000

Well the end to another exciting year for my retirement nestegg. I don’t listen very often, but whenever I do turn on a tv or a radio I hear about how horrible the economy is and how bad the stock market is doing and how investors are so nervous and many of them are not putting money into the stock market because of the horrible returns and as I listen I think to myself are these people nuts?!?

My Financial Journey - 5 year anniversary

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:32:45 +0000

Wow - I can’t believe its already been five years since I started this blog. It really seems like its only been a year or two but looking back at where I started and where I am today its pretty obvious that some time has passed.

As I look back to those first couple posts back in December of 2005 - it amazes me how far I’ve come and how a few simple blog posts five years ago greatly affected the financial success I have achieved so far. In my 1st Retirement Nestegg Report I reported a total value of $24,616 and just 7 days ago I reported my November 2010 Nestegg report with a value of $155,708. Such tremendous progress, yet it happened step by step with lots of small mundane actions over the last 5 years that resulted in nestegg growing by 732%.

Retirement Nestegg Report - November 2010 (My First Ten Bagger)

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 07:43:37 +0000

Well another really good month for my Retirement Nestegg - my investments crushed the market again and I got to celebrate my first 10 bagger with Netflix. I purchased Netflix at 19.72 on June 22, 2007 and as of today the stock sits at $205.90 for a total gain of 944%.

I did go ahead and trim 25% of my Netflix holdings two days ago at $200 share and did do some small trimming of positions that have had really big runups lately and have very lofty valuations.

Retirement Nestegg Report - October 2010

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:00:57 +0000

Just a quick update this month. Highlights are that I broke $150,000 for the first time and my investment performance trailed the SP500 this month - but I’m cool with that as last month I crushed it so I was due to not beat it again - for the year though I am still considerably ahead of the SP500.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $12,126.26 (-0.70%)
My Roth IRA – $40,869.11 (+3.03%)
Wife Roth IRA – $23,939.76 (+5.22%)
Current Traditional 401k – $74,171.88 (+5.13%)

Ten Baggers and Spiffy Pops

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 10:23:56 +0000

The investing great Peter Lynch in his book One up on Wallstreet tried to correlate investing success to baseball by referring to successful stocks as “baggers”

Here is the definition of a Ten Bagger from Wikipedia

Ten bagger is an investment term coined by Peter Lynch in his book One Up On Wall Street. This refers to an investment which is worth ten times its original purchase price, and was adapted from baseball where “bag” is a casual term for “base”, and extra-base hits like doubles, triples, and home runs are colloquially called two-, three-, or four-baggers.

Retirement Nestegg Report - September 2010

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 07:50:39 +0000

Well another really good month for both my retirement nestegg and for my individual investment performance. My individual stock portfolio outperformed the SP500 by over 5.5% this month. It’s almost scary how much many of my stocks have gone up recently and I keep thinking to myself that something has to give as I have quite a few stocks that are up 50%,100% or more just this year. Netflix and Chipotle being two stocks that just don’t seem to want to stop. I am up over 700% on my first purchase of Netflix and my entire position is up over 600% in a relatively short period of time.

Retirement Nestegg Report - August 2010

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:40:19 +0000

Well the market was down 4.5% this month and while I don’t really care about month to month fluctuations it was very nice to see that my nestegg was only down 2% this month. I am very glad I took the time to break out my performance of my investments and compare it to the market in general because I’m finding out that whatever system I have with regard to individual stocks is actually paying off for me with regard to the extra time and risk put into it. Also by always comparing my performance to a relative benchmark I can take a look at a relatively bad month overall for the market that probably would make a lot of people upset and feel very happy that I handily beat the market this month.

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2010

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:49:27 +0000

Here is my monthly nestegg report.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $11,377.09 (+5.42%)
My Roth IRA – $35,095.10 (+5.61%)
Wife Roth IRA – $19,764.27 (+5.80%)
Current Traditional 401k – $65,220.90 (+9.30%)

Roth/Traditional % = 41.73 % (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $131,457.36 (+7.42%)

Monthly Contributions $605.84 (401k)
SPY Performance +6.90%
My Monthly Investment Performance +6.93 % (+0.03%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +5.63 % (-1.27%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2010

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:47:07 +0000

Well things are headed down again and I have to admit I am sort of hooked back into the market and have been doing a lot of research on possible investments again. Funny if you read my posts from the turn of the year I had pretty much said I was in cruise control and would only be looking at my investments a couple times a year. Well that certainly hasn’t been the case and I have been doing a lot more research and been buying a few new stocks as of late.

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2010

Sun, 30 May 2010 21:10:57 +0000

Well another volatile month for the stock market and I think I read somewhere that this was the worst May for the stock market since 1962. This is good news for young people like me as long as we can keep our jobs as this will likely allow us to buy the stocks that will fuel our investment performance over the next 30 years at very discounted prices. I believe the last downturn I did a very good job of keeping my cool and sticking with my plan and taking advantage of the depressed stock prices. I also had the luxury of seeing how fast things grow in a recovery and how all of that keeping your cool when the world is ending really pays off. I can’t tell you how many investments I have had grow 100%,200%,500% or more in the span of only a year and countless others that I had considered purchasing do the same. I am proud of how I handled the last downturn, but really feel I will have a leg up for future downturns. Anyway here is this months retirement nestegg report

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2010

Sat, 01 May 2010 15:40:57 +0000

Traditional Rollover IRA - $11,906.58 (-1.03%)
My Roth IRA - $36,947.37 (+4.14%)
Wife Roth IRA - $20,901.23 (+7.81%)
Current Traditional 401k - $67,360.15 (+2.73%)

Roth/Traditional % = 42.19 % (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $137,115.33 (+3.51%)

Monthly Contributions $605.84 (401k)
SPY Performance +3.04%
My Monthly Investment Performance +3.05 % (+0.01%)
My Monthly Individual Stock Performance +4.27 % (+1.18%)

My Top 15 Holdings - March 2010

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 07:38:45 +0000

I’ve never really discussed any of the investments that I have before, but on occasion I do get asked what I am invested in and thought this might be useful for me as a learning tool as I look back in time. This list is probably something I will only update once a year as it probably won’t change much.
Anyway these are my top 15 holdings in my various retirement accounts as of March 2010 and the percentage of my portfolio that is invested in them. Currently these top 15 holdings make up 75%+ of my portfolio - although I do have about 45 other smaller investments that make up the remaining 25%. As you can see the top 3 holdings are mutual funds that I hold in my 401k account - the rest with the exception of UMBIX are individual stocks. I in no way condone this type of investing and highly recommend that most people just stick their money in a low cost no-load index fund or lifestyle fund.

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2010

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:00:00 +0000

I am actually kind of stunned at how fast my nest egg has been growing of late. It wasn’t too long ago I just passed $100k and now I’m 1/3rd of the way to $200k. In fact just 13 months ago my retirement nestegg was sitting at a measly $59k and the best part is the market is doing all of the hard work for me. My contributions have slowed down pretty considerably lately since we are saving for a new house and yet my nestegg is ballooning. This is directly related to the extra money I invested when the market was tanking and just shows the power of consistently investing money in the market over time and over the long term - good things are likely to happen.

Retirement Nestegg Report - February 2010

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:03 +0000

Another strong month this month. Part of this is due to the fact that my company put in their year end 5.5% contribution into my 401k (this is on top of the 4% they match with each paycheck). I also had some very strong performance in some of my larger stock holdings. One thing that I am going to start adding to these reports just as a reference point is the gain of the SP500 during the month. This won’t be entirely useful as I don’t subtract out contributions when calculating my gains, but I still think it would be a good reference to have. Anyway here is my report.

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2010

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:34:00 +0000

Well the market turned a little south this month, but my retirement nestegg actually grew at a pretty good pace this month. This was entirely due to the fact that I am now fully vested in my company’s 401k matching money. My company has a very generous 401k matching program where they match dollar for dollar up to 4% of your salary and that money is 100% vested from day 1 of employment and is deposited in your 401k account with each paycheck. They also contribute another 5.5% of your salary in matching funds regardless of whether or not you contribute to your 401k at the end of each year. This is the money that is not vested until 3 years of employment - Friday was my 3 year anniversary so this resulted in about $10,000 being added to my 401k balance!

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2009

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:26:45 +0000

Well 2009 has come to an end and my retirement nestegg is at an all-time high. Despite things being so horrible and everything being in shambles with the economy my retirement nestegg grew 76% this year and to be honest other than these reports I barely noticed or barely cared. In fact I am to the point now where I can go a month or more without even looking at a stock market ticker or knowing whether the market went up or down, and to be honest I think this is a really good thing.

Retirement Nestegg Report October 2009

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:39:53 +0000

Short and sweet this month. Pretty flat - although down about 4% from my interum nestegg report where I broke $100,000 for the first time.

Traditional Rollover IRA - $10,334.01 (-3.37%)
My Roth IRA - $30,592.09 (+1.54%)
Wife Roth IRA - $16,801.79 (+4.59%)
Current Traditional 401k - $39,156.17 (+0.06%)

Roth/Traditional % = 48.92 % (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $96,884.06 (+0.09%)

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report - I broke $100,000 !!

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:26:32 +0000

Traditional Rollover IRA $10,782.36
My Roth IRA $31,604.25
Wife Roth IRA $17,183.87
Current Traditional 401k $40,916.17

Total Retirement Nest Egg $100,486.65

Well as you can see from above nestegg report I broke through the 6 figure mark for the first time in my life. What does this mean in the grand scheme of things - pretty much nothing, but it is a fun milestone to know that the value of my retirement nestegg reached $100,000 shortly after I turned 30.

Retirement Nestegg Report - September 2009

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:49:48 +0000

My retirement nestegg report for this month. Slowly but surely approaching a six figure retirement nestegg account.

Traditional Rollover IRA - $10,694.27 (+3.89%)
My Roth IRA - $30,126.74 (+4.66%)
Wife Roth IRA - $16,065.05 (+4.41%)
Current Traditional 401k - $39,132.26 (+9.73%)

Roth/Traditional % = 48.10 % (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $96,018.29 (+6.53%)

Holy crap I'm 30 - my 20s financial review

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:00:17 +0000

Well it seems like just yesterday I was in high school math class learning about exponentiation when a light bulb went off on my head about the power of saving money with compound interest on your side and now I’m 30 - holy crap time flies.

Since this is a pretty historic milestone in my personal finance journey as well as my life in general I thought it would be a good time to sit back and look at the good and bad from the last decade. Some of the items I list may or may not be entirely financial at first glance, but I’m certain they have all affected where I stand financially today.

Retirement NestEgg Report - August 2009

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:28:56 +0000

My retirement nestegg report for this month.

Traditional Rollover IRA - $10,294.48 (+2.81%)
My Roth IRA - $28,785.64 (+1.79%)
Wife Roth IRA - $15,386.78 (-2.53%)
Current Traditional 401k - $35,662.31 (+2.65%)

Roth/Traditional % = 49.01% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $90,129.21 (+1.47%)

Carnival of Personal Finance #218

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:01:19 +0000

Well it’s been a really long time since I’ve participated in a carnival of any sort. Partly because I felt I hadn’t written anything of good enough quality in a long time. On a whim I decided to submit my $100,000 in principal by Age 30 - Final Recap to the carnival of personal finance just because well it was actually an article and it well the post was sort of nostalgic for me back to a time where I wrote a lot more and was a lot more active in pf community. Anyway as luck would have it the article was actually chosen as an Editors Choice for the carnival. Head over to Budgets are Sexy to see my article and as usually many more high quality articles in the Carnival of Personal Finance #218 - Chuck Norris Edition - thanks again to Budgets Are Sexy for hosting as it really is a lot of work to host.

$100,000 in principal by Age 30 - Final Recap

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:39:14 +0000

Well 3.5 years ago I wrote this original post where I set a goal for myself to have saved $100,000 in principal by the time I reached age 30. By principal it meant money that was contributed to my retirement accounts only and not the current value of the accounts. This allowed me to have complete control over whether or not I reached my goal as I would not have to worry about market fluctuations (like those ever happen anyway :-) ). It seemed like such a steep goal because at the time I barely had $30k put away for retirement at the time.
The whole purpose of the goal was to put me on a solid track for saving for retirement. I understood the power of compound interest at an early age and knew the cost of waiting to save for retirement. $100,000 is really not an important number and there is no science behind it, I just knew that if I had roughly $100k put away by the time I reached age 30 I would be on a very good track where if I were to sluff off on retirement savings to do other things (build dream house, pay for kids college, etc) that it would not hurt my retirement as bad because I had done the grunt work up front and had 30+ years and the power of compound interest on my side.
Over-simplifying things, but if I had $100k in my accounts at age 30 and never saved another penny and it earned 10% annually in the stock market for the next 35 years I would have over $2.8 million in my retirement account at age 65. Again over simplifying things, but that is the general concept. Save as much as you can as early as you can and get time on your side and saving for retirement will seem easy, especially compared to those that wait till they are 40 or older to start saving.
Below are the final results of my goal. I’ll provide more detail after you review the results.

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2009

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:00:32 +0000

My retirement nestegg report for this month - funny how people say the economy is horrible and you’d be an idiot to put/keep money in the stock market today and yet I’m very close to nearing an all-time high for my retirement nestegg. Had I listened to the naysayers and took my money out when things were ugly I’d be sitting on $55,000 in the bank earning next to no interest. Instead just 6 months later I’m sitting at nearly $89k :-) The stock market is for the long-term and you should never react to short-term fluctuations (talking years here) in the market. If you can accept the good returns when the market is humming then you have to also be able to accept the poor returns when the market is not. They key is to always stay in the market if you want to create any kind of long-term wealth accumulation in the market.

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2009

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:24:23 +0000

My retirement nestegg report for this month -

Traditional Rollover IRA - $8,914.80 (-7.67)
My Roth IRA - $26,538.91 (+1.36%)
Wife Roth IRA - $14,259.01 (+0.50%)
Current Traditional 401k - $30,536.53 (+1.71%)

Roth/Traditional % = 50.84% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $80,249.25 (+0.25%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2009

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:00:20 +0000

My retirement nestegg report for this month -

Traditional Rollover IRA - $9,655.62 (+2.28%)
My Roth IRA - $26,182.21 (-1.23%)
Wife Roth IRA - $14,189.15 (+1.84%)
Current Traditional 401k - $30,023.11 (+9.50%)

Roth/Traditional % = 50.43% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $80,050.09 (+3.56%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2009

Mon, 04 May 2009 16:01:21 +0000

Well not quite as good of month as last month, but pretty darn good. I guess I will take 17 or 18% gains every month. I’m really going to be disappointed when things return to normal and I’m not having 15% swings in either direction each month. The last 2 years in the stock market sure has been a lot of fun!

One thing I will mention in this months report is that I pretty much have all but abandoned making my $100,000 by Age 30 goal. It was within my grasp, but I made a conscious decision late last year to start saving up for a new house and that has trumped my retirement saving here in the short-term. I still will come close by my 30ths birthday ($90k+), but am afraid I will not actually meet my original goal and I am ok with that.

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2009

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:00:24 +0000

Well I’m pretty sure this is the biggest single increase I’ve ever had in a single month by far! At this rate I will be retired in no time! In all seriousness this just proves my previous points about how getting in and out of the market to try to time it is a fools game and there is no way you can get back in in time to not lose your butt in the process. If you don’t believe me check out the unfortunate mishap that happened to 2million. Not saying we won’t go much lower from here, but just shows you how volatile things get when things get ugly in the stock market.

Switching my High Yield Savings to SmartyPig

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:43:51 +0000

I am currently actively saving for a house my wife and I want to build in the next few years. I have about $20,000 saved up at ING Direct and am adding to it at a rate of about $1,000 per month. I have been a happy ING Direct customer for a number of years and I think everything about their service is top notch and I have never had a problem with them. The only issue is they have been slashing their interest rates at a torrid pace the last few months (as has everyone else).
Normally the difference in interest rates between ING and their competitors is usually pretty negligible where I feel the ease of use of the ING Direct’s site outweighs the few extra bucks I would get in interest. This time however I am accumulating a pretty significant cash savings and as it currently stands SmartyPig’s interest rate is currently double that of ING Direct. So I’ve decided to make the switch for now.
Now SmartyPig and ING Direct certainly aren’t apples to apples. ING Direct is a pretty standard savings account and certainly has a lot more flexibility than SmartyPig. For those of you that don’t know SmartyPig is a goal oriented savings bank where you can’t just deposit and withdraw funds as you please (at least not if you follow the intention of their user interface).
In order to have an account at SmartyPig you have to setup a savings goal. So you enter in an amount you want to save and when you want to reach the goal by and it calculates a monthly contribution that is automatically withdrawn from your checking account once each month. Interest accrues daily, but it is only credited to your account quarterly. In order to withdraw your money you have to close your savings goal and then you can withdraw the money to your checking account via ACH, receive a Debit Card with the balance, or a gift card for the retailer of your choice. Deposits to and from SmartyPig take 3 days before they post to your account, which I believe is 1 day longer than they take at ING Direct. For those of you that are wondering, SmartyPig is FDIC insured and they partner with West Bank to store your money, so you have that peace of mind.
Now granted all of the nuances with SmartyPig may turn some people away, but here are a few ways around their interface that could allow things to work a little more like a traditional savings account. SmartyPig has a minimum goal of $250. So you just setup a goal for $250 and just make a $250 initial deposit. At this point your goal should be reached so it will not require any automatic monthly deposits. Interest keeps accruing on completed goals and you can add money at anytime to a completed goal. Then simply deposit money as you would your normal savings account. About the only drawback is when you want to withdraw money you have to withdraw the entire amount.
I’ll admit even with these workaround SmartyPig may be too rigid for a lot of users, but for my situation where I will only be depositing and likely withdrawing all at once it is not a big deal to me. I setup a trial account with them last July after receiving a SmartyPig gift card and that made me comfortable enough to make this switch. Currently the rate difference alone if all things stay equal will result in $320 extra in interest a year and like I said I am depositing about $1000 a month so the interest difference is enough for me to make the change.
Now granted SmartyPig could and very likely will lower their interest rate on their accounts as well, but they have enough of a cushion right now and seem to be cutting rates slower than the competition so I feel comfortable with the switch for now. If SmartyPig slashes rates and gets anywhere near the ING Direct range - I will simply close my savings goal and go back to ING.
What do you think? For me right now their interest rate makes this a no-brainer in my situation. Am I overlooking something major as right now this seems a little too good to be true given the interest rate environment out there right now.

Retirement Nestegg Report - February 2009

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:30:01 +0000

Another brutal month as far as performance goes. Nestegg value feel by about 8% and as much as I know this is an opportunity for me, it is hard sometimes to see the progress or any forward momentum when your portfolio value is almost half of what it was a year ago.

Of course I’m not alone as I’m pretty much just keeping on track with the market and even guys like Warren Buffett have faired just as bad or even worse. The great news though is that I’m young and I don’t need this money for the next 30 years so while it’s somewhat depressing to see your saving and hard work go up in flames in the short term the odds are in my favor that long term I am still very much headed in the right direction.

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2009

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:33:33 +0000

My retirement nestegg dropped in value by over 12%, which I believe is slightly worse than the market over that period of time. No big concerns at this point other than the fact that my contributions have been a little lacking lately due to the fact that I’ve gotten pretty excited about saving for a house we want to build in the next couple years and have been beefing that fund up lately to the detriment of my retirement contributions. It probably should be the other way around in this market, but both my wife and I are pretty excited to move into our “dream house” sooner than later and by getting a good house fund built up is becoming a priority.

The end of free trades at Zecco and my review of them

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:47:41 +0000

All good things must come to an end. Last night I received the following email from Jeroen Veth the founder of Zecco

Dear Zecco Trading client,

I’m writing to tell you that as of March 1st, 2009, we’re increasing the minimum level of assets needed to earn 10 free trades per month to $25,000. We’re also adding a new way to get free trades: customers who make at least 25 total trades per month will also qualify for 10 free stock trades per month.

Will carrying a credit card balance through month end hurt your credit score

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:00:12 +0000

As I vaguely mentioned in my $100,000 by Age 30 year end recap post my wife and I are starting to save for a house we want to build down the road (probably 2-3 years from now). While I’ve been planning this already for a few years, now that I have a savings account setup and a general timeframe in my head I’ve really started to up my planning and research.

$100,000 in principal by Age 30 - 2008 year end recap

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:08:45 +0000

Well it is time for my annual check up on my $100,000 by age 30 goal. I guess I had a little foresight when setting up this goal as it is based solely on principal (my contributions) and investment performance does not matter. This way everything is under my control and I am not hurt or helped by short-term swings in the stock market. Which is good because currently my contributions are roughly $19,000 of my current nest egg value :-)
The whole idea of this goal was to make sure that I was in a good situation in regards to my retirement planning. You can go ahead and read the original post here, but idea was to give myself an aggressive savings goal that would have me well on my way in my retirement planning. You can see where I currently stand vs my original plan below.

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2008 (+8.54%)

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:30:45 +0000

Well 2008 sure was an exciting year and I certainly learned a lot in the process. As for my retirement nestegg I actually lost just over 5% for the year. That is not the whole story though because I also contributed about $15-$20k this year that is not currently showing up on paper.

I guess if I had just checked my balance at Jan 1, 2008 and and Jan 1,2009 it probably would have been a pretty boring year and to be honest this is probably what most people should do so they don’t’ get caught up in all of the nonsense and excitement that is the stock market that the mainstream media portrays to the average investor.

Retirement Nestegg Report - November 2008(-8.83%)

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:00:53 +0000

Well the carnage continues and it does not look to be slowing down. In fact in the first day of December my portfolio already lost a bigger percentage than it lost in the entire month of November. Regardless I am actually feeling very good about my prospects right now and even today’s monster drop does not make me the least bit nervous. So I’m either blissfully stupid or I have my emotions in proper check.

Retirement Nestegg Report - October 2008 (-18.43%)

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:30:21 +0000

Ok it’s all my fault. From my June 2008 nestegg report

I am really excited to hear of all of this bear market talk and really hope the bear market is hear to stay for a while as at this stage in my life I am plowing a considerable amount of money into the stock market and I’d much rather be buying stocks falling 20-30% than having to purchase stocks who are constantly going up. I’ve often mused that someone my age who is contributing money for their retirement should be rooting for the stock market to get slaughtered and while the market hasn’t exactly gone down too dramatically yet, I’ll be happy to see my nestegg head closer to $50,000 than $100,000 if it means I get to buy some cheaper investments now and make more in the long run.

Either the world is going to end or the market is going to recover. If it's the end of the world, I'm going out fully invested :)

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:46:59 +0000

I wish I knew the origin of this quote in the title - I heard it from someone the other day and couldn’t find the source but I think it pretty much sums up my investing philosophy right now.

I have not changed anything other than maybe scrounging up any extra cash I come across to stick into the market. So far if you look at my results you would say I am a complete failure as in the short term as my retirement accounts have lost almost $30,000 (30%+) in just the last few months. In fact if you include my employers matching contributions (which I don’t for my nestegg reports or $100k by 30 goal) since I started investing in 2004 I have invested just about $100,000 and at last glance my accounts were only worth $69,000. So after 4.5 years of investing and living well below my means sometimes saving nearly half my income for retirement and giving up some of life’s luxuries I have $30,000 less than I started with. If you look at this isolated point in time you could pretty much come to the conclusion that I am a complete dumbass and better come up with something better to do with my money.

Retirement Nestegg Report - September 2008

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:10:04 +0000

Well September was certainly an exciting month to be in the stock market with the overall market falling about 10% in the month of September and people getting excited about all the money they are “losing” in their retirement accounts.

As you can see below my retirement accounts dropped about 6.5% in value this month and overall I’m more excited about the stock market downturn than I am worried about it. Why am I excited? Because markets especially in the short-term are very irrational and fear takes hold when stocks start sinking and generally there are moments of overreaction that present great opportunities for those with a long term time horizon and a level head. In the very least you are a lot less likely to have to pay a hefty premium on the value of a stock. In other words despite the falling stock prices it’s probably much much safer to invest in times like this than it is when the market is chugging on up.

Retirement Nestegg Report - August 2008

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:25:43 +0000

I’m going to keep this short and sweet because I’ve actually got plans to write more posts than this stupid report each month. I’ve upgraded this blog and am going to try to find time to post at least once a week if not more here. See numbers below but my retirement nestegg grew a little under 4% this month.

Traditional Rollover IRA - $12,783.76 (+0.96%)
My Roth IRA - $32,901.67 (+8.08%)
Wife Roth IRA - $16,532.93 (+1.83%)
Current Traditional 401k - $28,595.75 (+1.73%)

Retirement Nestegg Report - July 2008

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:56:41 +0000

I’m getting to the point where I’m probably not going to add a lot of commentary to each one of these monthly reports due to the fact that well not much really can change to your portfolio in one month. The main reason I do this each month still is so that I have a set of data points that I can plot over time so I can come back and look at a bad month like last month and see how insignificant short-term fluctuations in the market are in the overall growth of your portfolio.

Retirement Nestegg Report - June 2008

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:03:23 +0000

Well overall a pretty ugly month if you are concerned with short-term investment performance. On the flip side a pretty exciting month if you are a buyer such as myself. Overall my retirement nestegg dropped by over 8% in just one month, but at the same time the stock market dropped over 9% last month so my investments may have actually made a little ground on the overall market last month.

Update on my $100,000 by Age 30 Salary Goal

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:27:47 +0000

I almost forgot I even wrote a post about this, but in September of 2006 I wrote about my other $100,000 by age 30 goal where I mentioned that I word sort of like to be making six figures by the time I turned 30. At the time it seemed pretty foolish as I was only making about half that and it’s not exactly easy to double your income in just a few years.

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2008

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:06:52 +0000

I apologize for not posting more - I’ve got a ton of posts in my draft folder that are about 90% done and I just never finish them. Hate seeing my history of posts only including my monthly reports, but anyway here is my latest monthly report. Another good month for me and one thing I’ve noticed is that the power of compounding in my investments is really starting to show itself as just a 5% gain in my portfolio results in about a $5,000 increase in my retirement nestegg. A couple more good months and I should be passing the $100,000 mark which honestly just a few years ago seemed unimaginable.

Retirement Nestegg Report - April 2008

Thu, 01 May 2008 18:13:26 +0000

Turned out to be a great month for my retirement nestegg growth, the best part is this months gains were due almost entirely towards investment gains versus me contributing a bunch of money. It just goes to show you that if you were going to try to react to the stock market fluctuations you will only end up shooting yourself in the foot. The market in general had been about as gloomy as it has been since I’ve been investing and last month was no peach as far as the direction my investments were heading, but I’m pretty sure this month has been one of my best performances ever. Regardless short-term glances like this mean nothing in the long-term other than looking back I can track my progress over time and see how insignificant month to month fluctuations really are.

Retirement Nestegg Report - March 2008

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:12:44 +0000

Well the good news is that my retirement nestegg grew by nearly 8% this month. The bad news is I had to do most of the heavy lifting as for the month as I had a negative investment return. I had some pretty big contributions this month, first off my annual bonus ended up being over $10k of which 21% of that went to my 401k. I also made a $2750 contribution for my wife’s Roth IRA at Zecco (see new account below). I also had an abnormal amount of normal paycheck contributions hit my 401k this month so overall I had nearly $6,000 in new contributions this month. Luckily my account is small enough yet where my contributions can offset any negative investment performance and keep my account total growing.

Retirement Nestegg Report - February 2008

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:43:49 +0000

Here is my monthly report. Not much to say - small gains (solely based on contributions). Will hopefully be kicking in some last minute IRA contributions in next month or so to fully max out my Wife’s Roth IRA as well as start on my 2008 IRAs. Want to get back to the point where I am maxing the first day possible. Will be opening my 2008 IRA accounts with Zecco. Hope to start posting a little more frequently as finance has been more on my mind as of late. Anywho here is the February’s report.

Tax Rebate checks really not all they are cracked up to be?

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:00:03 +0000

Something caught my eye on the recently passed stimulus package that will be sending everyone $300-$600 rebate checks this May. In the article it says

The checks are an advance on next year’s refunds, and most, if not all of the money, will be deducted from taxpayers’ refunds in 12 months’ time.

Which if I’m reading that right essentially means the government is just giving you a 12 month reprieve on paying those taxes in and essentially you can expect your 2008 tax bill to be $300-$600 higher because they aren’t actually giving you money (as if the government can *give* you anything) - they are just giving you a 12 month advance that needs to be paid back next year.

Retirement Nestegg Report - January 2008

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:42:02 +0000

Well a down month for my net worth this month and the first one in a long while. Given the general stumbles of the stock market as a whole I don’t feel too bad about it. In fact had I done my report based on today’s results I would actually be well into the black as a number of my major holdings are up double digits today. Ah well - I should really be rooting for more turmoil and stock market declines as I’m doing only buying for the next 20+ years.

I forgot to knock on wood - death of MFJ's pimp ride version 2

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:24:48 +0000

So on January 1 - I’m rehashing my favorite articles for the year and I bring up the post from early last year where I bought myself a new car. I suffixed the article with the comment and I quote “still as pimp as the day I bought it. I’ve also had zero issues with the car since I bought it (setting myself up with that statement)”

So the following morning I’m driving my car to work when I start hearing some clunking coming from my front right tire, my car is pulling right, and my brake lights are coming on. I keep driving to work but the clunking, pulling, etc keeps coming back. The car was overdue for an oil change so I figured I’d suck it up and take it to the shop and see what was wrong. Well long story short - turns out I need two new drive shafts, a bunch of exhaust leaks fixed, something about a resonator pipe, clutch, air filter, you name it. Grand total would be about twice what I paid for the car (I paid $700)
In theory I think I would only *need* to fix the two drive shafts which would come to $387, but when you only pay $700 for a car you never really plan on doing much maintenance work on the car (at least that’s my opinion). SO right now I’m in the market for a new car (in the frugal sense of new car). If I can’t find anything in the short term I may end up biting the bullet on the drive shafts, but unfortunately it looks like I’m probably better off rolling the dice with a new beater.
So was this car a total failure and proves that you can’t consistently spend less than $1000 on a reliable car? To be honest I think my off the top of the head goal is to have the car last more than a year. If I can spend less than $1000 a year in car costs I think I’m doing ok. This is by far the shortest I have owned a car before something major happened, but I still owned the car for almost a year, only paid $700 for it and will get at least $100 back when I take it to the scrap yard. So $600 for 10 months of reliable service still isn’t the worst problem to have. The best part is I am in no way tied to my cars if something bad happens. I am in no way obligated to have to fix them and if something bad like this happens I can just laugh it off - although I really did enjoy this car and am upset that we will be parting ways so quickly.
What do you think? Am I an idiot? Should I be spending more on my cars? I only use my car to drive to work and run errands, my wife has a relatively newer/nicer car (99 Accord).

The best of MyFinancialJourney.com in 2007

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 12:20:07 +0000

I thought this would be a good place to highlight what I consider some of my favorite or best posts of 2007.

Get Rich!! Play the Lottery!! Somebody has to win!!

my thoughts on the lottery.

The true cost of owning a home - or reasons why renting isn’t all that bad.

was true before the housing bubble and is true after the housing bubble.

Save for tomorrow - but don’t forget to live today

$100,000 in principal by Age 30 - 2007 year end recap

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:52:04 +0000

I figured this would be a good time to check up on my $100,000 by age 30 goal. I have a feeling that I’m actually falling behind on this one as I know I have over $3,000 in Roth IRA deposits that I am behind on. I’m pretty sure I have the money to make the deposits and they will likely be deposited in the next couple weeks, but unfortunately they will not make this report.
The whole idea of this goal was to make sure that I was in a good situation in regards to my retirement planning. You can go ahead and read the original post here, but idea was to give myself an aggressive savings goal that would have me well on my way in my retirement planning. You can see where I currently stand vs my original plan below.

Retirement Nestegg Report - December 2007

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:20:21 +0000

A pretty steady and boring end to 2007 for me. For the year though my retirement nestegg grew by $26,362 or 56%, which is what really counts. I sometimes wonder if I should only do quarterly or even yearly reports on my retirement nestegg, just because if you take yourself too seriously when looking at results in the short term you may miss the big picture.
When it comes to investing, especially for retirement you should not be concerning yourself with month to month or even year to year performance of your investments. It is way too easy to get caught up in the moment and make a stupid mistake because you reacted and took action on something short-term that will have no affect on your long term success. A couple of months ago I wrote something to this effect.
Anyway the reason I keep doing monthly reports is because I think I have to patience and understanding not to react say if my entire retirement nestegg dropped by 30% in a couple months. In fact this is the reason I do keep track month to month so that 20 years from now I can look back and see that those couple months of negative progress were nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Traditonal Rollover IRA -$12,061.94 (-3.05%)
My Roth IRA - $30,690.40 (+0.76%)
Wife Roth IRA - $14,913.20 (+3.28%)
Current Traditional 401k - $15,509.23 (+10.01%)
Roth/Traditional % = 62.32% (tax free)
Total Retirement Nest Egg $73,174.77 (+2.43%)
My Contributions for 2007 $23,786
SPY Performance for 2007 +5.49%
Investment Performance for 2007 +5.50% (+0.01%)
Individual Stock Performance for 2007 +7.25% (+1.76%)
Total Investment Return +$2,576.67

Retirement Nestegg Report - November 2007

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:48:51 +0000

I want to apologize for missing last month’s report. I believe that is only the 2nd time since I started blogging 2 years ago that I missed a report. Two kids are more than 2 times the work of 1 kid :-)

Note the percentage change below is over a 2 month period instead of the normal one month period.

Traditonal Rollover IRA -$12,441.28 (-9.10%)
My Roth IRA - $30,460.08 (+10.69%)
Wife Roth IRA - $14,439.44 (+1.80%)
Current Traditional 401k - $14,097.38 (+26.35%)

Five money saving tips for renting cars.

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 07:52:01 +0000

My family and I are going to be making a cross country trip next week to attend a wedding and due to the fact that we have a 2 year old and a 3 month old we decided it was probably better to rent a van than cram everyone into my wife’s Accord. I spent days calling around, doing searches on the internet, etc. and in the process think I learned a thing or two that I will share with my readers.

2008 401k contribution limits

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:52:57 +0000

The IRS has announced that the contribution limits for 2008 will remain unchanged at $15,500, which sort of sucks. Apparrently the cost of living hasn’t increased for people who contribute to their 401ks :-) See details below.

Many of the pension plan limitations will change for 2008 because the increase in the cost-of-living index met the statutory thresholds that trigger their adjustment. However, for others, the limitation will remain unchanged. For example, the limitation under Section 402(g)(1) on the exclusion for elective deferrals described in Section 402(g)(3) remains unchanged at $15,500. This limitation affects elective deferrals to Section 401(k) plans and to the Federal Government’s Thrift Savings Plan, among other plans.

Retirement NestEgg Report - September 2007

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:40:25 +0000

Quiet month for the blog but another good month for my retirement nestegg. Every month I am amazed at how much my account grows especially when I look back just a few months earlier and see myself hitting $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 etc. In fact due to the fact that I have some contributions to catch up on before the end of the year I think I might pass $70,000 as early as next month and might even have a legitimate shot at $80,000 before the end of the year depending upon how the market performs.

Retirement NestEgg Report - August 2007

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:27:55 +0000

Quick report this month, despite the fact that “market is crashing” and we should all have our money hidden under the mattress because the end is near, all of my accounts managed positive investment gains this month. :-) Bottom line - don’t try to time the market because you do not have a clue where it is going in the short run (long run though my money is on up :-) )

Traditonal Rollover IRA - $13,245.15 (+0.32%)
My Roth IRA - $27,067.79 (+3.08%)
Wife Roth IRA - $14,183.87 (+0.38%)
Current Traditional 401k - $9,288.94 (+23.99%)

Why thinking you are smart enough to know where the market is going is so dangerous.

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 07:17:02 +0000

I wrote an article last week that talked about some of what I perceived as over-reaction and irrational thinking by some of the best minds in the personal finance world. Now granted some of the situations I pointed out weren’t exactly off your rocker moments, but I still think at some level they fell into the trap of reacting to the markets recent performance when things started heading south (read the comments and this post to get Dave’s full story). Again I think these guys are financial wizards and a great place for sound financial advice, but just wanted to point out that we are all susceptible to thinking we can time the market or know where it is headed and can make more money by selling or deferring buying when the market is in a little slump. So I’m going to hopefully point out a few things here that show you why if you want the best possible returns you won’t be selling just because the market looks bleak at the current moment.
According to one of the Motley Fool stock letters that I subscribe to

The market is going down and some personal finance bloggers have lost their minds

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 08:58:56 +0000

I’m sorry I have not been posting as often as I used to but with the new baby, new promotion, and weddings I’ve just not had the time to sit down and write every day. Anyway I’ve been keeping my pulse on most of the personal finance community and one thing that really surprised me is how some of the personal finance bloggers I admire most are reacting to the latest market movements and advocating or adjusting their investing strategies because of short term market fluctuations and the worst part is they are reacting in my opinion counter intuitively.

How I increased my income 60% or more in just 8 months....

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 13:38:34 +0000

This post was spurred on by Lazyman’s recent post about how he increased his income 62% in 14 months. That got me thinking hey I’ve done pretty well for myself lately, maybe I can top him :-) So here goes.

Last November I was working for a consulting company and was pretty sure I was underpaid. Not seriously underpaid, but I knew I was a valuable employee and had the standing to ask for a raise. Long story short I got a $4880 (8.5%) raise. It was a little less than the $15k I was asking for so a couple months later I started looking for a job. I was extremely successful at this venture and got tons of job offers (man I was a wreck back then). I ended up taking a job on the lower end of the job offers because of the great benefits and work environment. Regardless it netted me another $11,000 (17.75%) in base pay, not to mention I’m eligible for 20% of my salary in bonuses each year and 9.5% 401k matching. Then 5 months after taking this job I got a promotion and another $7300 (10%) raise and am now eligible for 30% of my salary in bonuses. All in all that’s a 40% increase in base salary in 8 months.

July 2007 - Retirement Nestegg Report

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 07:14:37 +0000

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.

The happiest baby on the block - testimonial

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:33:47 +0000

I’m not sure if everyone is aware of this so I figured I do a little post about this book/dvd. At our hospital The Happiest Baby on the Block (ref) is pretty much required viewing before you go home and for good reason. Essentially this video shows you a method on how to calm down a crying/screaming baby and I’ve got to say it works as advertised.
In fact just an hour ago our daughter was screaming uncontrollably
and all the normal stuff (nuk, bouncing, walking) was just making her more mad. Well I finally realized I should be trying the methods shown in the video and sure enough within seconds she stopped crying immediately and has been asleep ever since. It’s almost like having magical powers over your baby ;-)
Seeing as how there isn’t a big plot-line to the video I’ll go ahead and spoil it for you. The book/video are the creation of Dr. Harvey Karp a pediatrician and child developmental specialist who over the years has come up with an almost sure fire way to calm a crying baby. The book/video explains how to implement the 5 S’s (Swaddle, Side, Shooshing, Swinging, and Sucking) and talk’s about what Dr. Karp refers to as the 4th trimester and the “Calming Reflex”.
Essentially the idea is that new babies are so immature that they are essentially fetuses on the outside of the womb and have a rough time adjusting to their new surroundings. The idea is to mimic the feels/sounds that they were used to in the womb the last 9 months.
Swaddling your baby - essentially means wrapping up your baby very tightly in a blanket and restricting the movement of their arms. This provides continuous contact and very much mimics what they were used to in the womb.
Side - From my memory I believe you are suppose to hold your baby on their left side. I’m not exactly sure the reason behind this, but trust me this works. The swaddling usually just gets them more fired up right away but turning them to their side as a noticeable effect.
Shooshing - This is one where you make a “shoosh” sound very loud and close to your babies ear. Apparently the womb is very loud and so they are actually comforted by this. Rule of thumb is to shoosh just as loud as the baby is crying otherwise they won’t pay attention to you. As they calm down you can lower the decibel level on your shoosh. This is the equivalent to colicky babies who are only calmed down by the hair dryer, vacuum cleaner, etc. Another idea is to put the radio station between stations and play the static for your baby. I forget the actual example but I was surprised to find out the decibel level in the womb, but “shooshing” is usually the silver bullet once they are swaddled and on their side.
Swinging - For this you Dr. Karp after putting the baby on their side simple “jiggles” the babies head (Note: never ever shake your baby). It’s a very gentle jiggling motion that I believe was compared to as jello on a plate. Other methods include putting your baby swaddled and on their side in a swing (at the highest speed). This again mimics the motion they are used to in the womb as mom moved around.
Sucking - This one is kind of obvious as involves giving your child a pacifier (nuk, dad’s knuckle, etc). This is a very common method used by just about everyone to calm their baby down as I believe it causes some kind of internal release of chemicals that calm your baby down.
The above S’s I believe are actually in chronological order. You should always start with swaddling and then move your way up the chain. Sometimes it only takes one or two S’s other times it takes all 5. Some of them take practice to perfect, but when done correctly the results are pretty amazing and a sleeping/happy baby = sleeping/happy parents. :-)

It's a girl

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:08:32 +0000

My wife and I were blessed with our second child last Tuesday a beautiful baby girl. Mom and baby are doing great and I’ve been enjoying some time off with the family. Now I just need to wait for the SS card to show up so I can start creating some accounts for her (529, ING Savings, Investing, etc.) I also need to get my butt in gear and start working on our will and estate planning. Anyway here is our beautiful little girl.

I got a promotion!!

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:11:05 +0000

Well I have only been at my new employer for just barely 5 months, but yesterday I got called into the CFO’s office and was told that I would be getting a promotion and a 10% raise. My previous manager decided to leave the company and this opened up an opportunity for me. I never applied for the position and in fact didn’t even know if this position was being replaced, so I was quite surprised to hear about my promotion.

June 2007 - Retirement NestEgg Report

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 11:02:54 +0000

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.

Another Financial Goal: My very own full court basketball court

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:00:21 +0000

If you follow my blog you know I have a goal of having $100,000 in principal put away by the time I reach 30, I have also talked about how I would like to make $100,000 per year by the time I reach 30, I’m currently working out plans for other goals, such as when I should reach $1 million dollars and possibly how much money I need to retire early (in my 40s). This goal however is going to seem somewhat counterintuitive to those goals. In roughly 5 years time I want to have enough money put away so that I can build a house out in the country with a full court outdoor sportcourt basketball/volleyball/tennis/etc court.

401k Vesting Question

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:03:46 +0000

I left my previous employer in January of this year and have been waiting to receive my matching funds from last year (deposited June 15th of this year). I was looking at the company’s 401k rules and see that I am only 20% vested after my 2.5 years of service. So basically what I was expecting was that I would get 20% of my matching funds for the previous year seeing how I am not longer an employee. It appears however that I got 100% of my matching funds.

My first two bagger

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:40:13 +0000

I was just perusing over my portfolio this weekend and realized that I have my first two “bagger”. In investing the term “bagger” was coined by Peter Lynch, which refers to an investment that has multiplied in value. He actually often used terms like 6 or 10 bagger, which he grabbed from the game of baseball where “bags” or “bases” that a runner reaches are the measure of the success of a play.

How to do a Roth 401k rollover

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 10:39:09 +0000

Seeing as how the Roth 401k has only been around for a little over a year and a half, there isn’t a lot of information out there about rolling these things over. I have a Roth 401k at a previous employer and while the fees and funds are very acceptable at the previous employer I just want total control over my choice of investments and want to consolidate some of my accounts, so I will be rolling over my Roth 401k into my existing Roth IRA.

Retirement Nestegg Report - May 2007

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 07:34:52 +0000

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.

A great personal financial quote from Jimmy John's

Wed, 09 May 2007 13:48:39 +0000

I ran across this quote today when I was eating lunch at Jimmy John’s hanging on their wall. I had never heard this quote before, but I don’t know that there is another quote that so accurately sums up the concept of saving for retirement.

If you do the things you have to do when you have to do them SOMEDAY you will be able to do the things you want to do when you want to do them.

Retirement NestEgg Report - April 2007

Wed, 02 May 2007 06:34:46 +0000

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.

Net Worth: How I stack up

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 06:55:26 +0000

I was perusing around CNN this morning and they had a little calculator that would compare my net worth with the average net worth of other’s around me. I’m really not a big net worth guy, but figured I’d check it out to see where I stand. Since I took my new job my income is somewhere around $80,000 when you add in bonuses and side jobs I do. Here are the results.

Festival of Under 30 Finances #21

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 06:46:05 +0000

Welcome to the April 20, 2007 edition of festival of under 30 finances. There were a number of high quality entries and I did my best to pick out the articles that I best thought fit the spirit of the carnival. I had to exclude a few articles due to them having nothing even remotely close to finances for people under 30 and did have a couple duplicate submissions where I just picked the article I liked better.

When I think I want to retire

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 07:16:29 +0000

I will be hosting the Festival of Under 30 Finances this Friday and as part of the Festival I asked the submitters a question

“At what age do you want/plan to be financially independent (IE you don’t have to work full-time if you don’t want to) and what is your plan to get there.”

I figured I’d take a quick stab at the question myself. As you may or may not know I have a goal to have put away $100,000 in principal by the time I reach age 30. I’ve been making pretty good pace with that goal and I see myself reaching it, but it really doesn’t say much about my long term aspirations and goals. Theoretically speaking I could quit saving completely at age 30 and if I waited till I was 60 to retire and got 8% return on my money - I would have over $1 million dollars at age 60. Certainly $1 million dollars won’t exactly let me live the life of luxury in retirement, but I could probably survive. I however don’t plan on stopping my retirement savings once I reach 30 so I can probably shoot a little higher.

Stop crying me a river - you took on the risk now deal with the consequences.

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:02:35 +0000

As you may have noticed I run some advertising on my site. I try to keep the obnoxious factor to a minimum and generally only accept sponsors from sites that won’t offend me or my readers. Well this last week I received a sponsorship offer from a website that is all up in arms about Argentina defaulting on a bunch of its loans to the international community. They have an online petition and are selling it as Argentina is stealing from teacher’s retirement funds. I ended up turning down the sponsorship offer and here’s why.

Hosting Festival of Under 30 Finances AND a financial question for my readers/submitters

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:15:20 +0000

I will be hosting the Festival of Under 30 finances next Friday April 20th. If you have some good financial advice for people under the age of 30, you still have until Wednesday night at midnight to submit your article to the festival.

The Festival of Under 30 Finances is a little unique in that it runs every other week and it usually includes a question that the host asks, to which the submitters can take a stab at answering. My question for next week’s carnival is “At what age do you want/plan to be financially independent (IE you don’t have to work full-time if you don’t want to) and what is your plan to get there.”

Save money on going out to eat - make the same exact dishes at home

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:27:28 +0000

As we all know going out to eat is very expensive and if you are trying to pay down debt or increase your retirement savings its probably smart to limit your dining out experiences. My wife and I don’t go out to eat very often, but when we do there are certain places and dishes that we really enjoy. The good news though is that you may not have to give up your favorite dishes just because you are living on a budget.

Festival of Frugality #69

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 06:45:31 +0000

This week’s Festival of Frugality is being hosted over at The Digerati Life. My article on Frugal lawncare - Part II Overseeding is in the festival.

Here are some other articles from the carnival that I thought were especially good.

The Joys of Frugal Living by Dawn at Frugal For Life - Great collection of why living frugal is more about living your life how you want and not how others think you should live. Frugal living is fun and if you haven’t been to Frugal for Life I highly recommend the site, it is the holy grail of Frugal living.
Throwing a Birthday Party fit for a Princess on a Budget by Frugal Upstate - obviously Frugal Upstate doesn’t truly understand the “needs” of his little princess because according to Yahoo he should have blown $1000 on princess’s birthday bash. This is a great example of how to raise kids and how not to raise kids. I would bet my 401k that the kids at Frugal Upstate’s party had just as much if not more fun than the kids at I’m raising a needy little brat’s party. What’s more important here is that it just shows that 6 year olds don’t need or even want big fancy expensive things to be happy, it’s the parents who set the expectation and the parameters of what they “think” they need to be happy. This a perfect contrasting example of how a truly rich person throws a party versus how someone with a high income throws a party.

My revolutioniary idea to improve Bank savings accounts

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 06:57:04 +0000

This may already exist, but I don’t think so as I have never seen it. My idea is to allow banks to let you “tag” money in checking or savings account for a certain purpose. Currently if you want to distinguish money for a certain purpose, say Christmas spending money you go and open an entirely different savings account to do so. This results in another statement being mailed to you and more work and expense for the bank to keep track of this new account.

Carnival of Personal Finance #95 Recap

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 07:20:47 +0000

This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance is being held over at AccumulatingMoney. Each host usually puts their personal touch on the carnival and this week is no different. AccumulatingMoney actually put all the articles in a grid which is sortable by column (if you are using IE). It’s even AJAXY so no post backs :-) The geek in me love’s this touch and then you don’t have to worry as much about people complaining about where their article got placed in the carnival. My article on Save for tomorrow - but don’t forget to live today is included in the article

Cash Plus Rewards - The jig is up no more 5% back on all purchases at Wal-Mart

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 07:15:07 +0000

Late last week I received a letter for both of my Chase Cash Plus Rewards credit cards stating that I would no longer be earning 5% back for my purchases made at superstores, warehouse clubs, and discount stores. This really sucks because my family and I do almost all of our shopping at Wal-Mart and it was just amazing how fast we racked up the rewards. Nearly all our Christmas shopping, home supplies, etc getting 5% back was a big deal.

Frugal lawncare - Part II Overseeding

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 07:55:56 +0000

In Part I I talked about organic fertilizers that can often be found much cheaper than the chemical versions. In Part II I am going to talk about over seeding.
Overseeding is probably the #1 thing you can do to a lawn to make it look great. Overseeding is simply planting grass seed over the top of your existing lawn. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but in this article I am going to go with what I did to my lawn last spring as I had just incredible results. My lawn went from bare patches, lots of weeds, and dead areas to people asking me if I had my yard sodded.

Save for tomorrow - but don't forget to live today

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:29 +0000

I recently received an email from one of my readers (Doug) and I thought I would share it with you as it really hit home with me and I think it might with many of my readers. Doug was kind enough to give me a few compliments, which made my day, but in the end it was I who really learned something. It’s a little long, but please read it in it’s entirety as it is probably one of the best pieces of writing you will see on this site.

My Financial Journey Best of March 2007

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:03:18 +0000

March was another good month for My Financial Journey. Here are some of my favorite posts from the previous month.
March 5 - How to go about frugal landscaping - Part II
March 9 - I just don’t get it - what is the big deal about gas prices?
March 13 - Million Dollar Kids - Give me a break
March 17 - Frugal cure for a sore throat (92 comments and 4800+ diggs)
March 21 - What not to do with your tax return
March 23 - When lightening strikes
March 29 - My Financial Journey’s pimp ride version 2

Vehicle Cost per year - My Ford Escort

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:55:11 +0000

I recently sold my original pimp ride so I figured it would be good to break down the costs of the vehicle.

Purchased
1990 Ford Escort
Purchase Date: 10/2004
Mileage: 90,000
Cost $1000
Sales Tax $50
Repairs: $463 (tie-rods, timing belt)
Maintenance (oil-changes) - $100 (5)
Insurance Costs: $575 ($115 every 6 months)
Total Expenses= $2288

Sold
Sold: 04/2007
Mileage 129,000
Money Received - ($125)

Stats
Total Cost - $2163
Total Miles driven: 39,000
Total Months owned: 30
Cost per mile: 5.5 cents per mile
Cost per month: $72.10
Cost per year: $865.20

Retirement NestEgg Report - March 2007

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 07:40:46 +0000

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.

My Financial Journey's pimp ride version 2

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:05:11 +0000

A couple months ago I talked about my pimp ride. Well I’m sure some people might call me a hypocrite, but I actually went ahead and replaced that car last weekend. Now before you go ahead and start saying “I told you so” you can’t buy crappy cars like that and expect them to be a reliable vehicle that you need to drive every day, I’ve got a couple things to point out.

Forever Stamps & Stamp Price Increases

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:38:12 +0000

This post was written by Matthew Paulson from Getting Green. If you enjoy this post, consider reading some of his other articles.

I’m a rather young individual, and the lowest price that I can remember for stamps is 29 cents. In just over a decade, the price of stamps has increased nearly 25%. The price of postage appears to be ready for its next increase. In February, the Independent Postal Regulatory Commission recommended that the price of stamps increase to 41 cents. Last week the post office governing board agreed with the IPRC’s recommendation and starting in May, the price of stamps will be increasing once again.

When lightning strikes

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:08:01 +0000

Just wanted to give you a heads up as to why I didn’t post the last two mornings. This has been a pretty exciting week for me and I’ve probably beaten the odds on a couple of things. First my article on How to cure a sore throat almost instantly was picked up by Digg and Reddit early this week and ended up as the #1 story on both sites for a good day or so on Monday and Tuesday. Then on Wednesday my house got struck by lightning, which in turn fried our television, my wireless router, and all the internal phone lines, which means I don’t have access to internet at home which makes it tough to blog.
Edit: 3/26/2007 - still no internet at home - will play electrician tonight and have something for tomorrow on my thoughts on helping our kids out on their college education.

What not to do with your tax return

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:45:40 +0000

I just got a call the other night from a friend of mine. We were talking and the conversation ended as he and his wife were going to go pick up their taxes from their tax accountant. One hour later I got a phone call from the same individual asking me questions about the best computer and digital camera to buy. Turns out his accountant told them that they would be getting a refund and they were busy spending the money before they even officially filed their taxes. They were going to buy a new computer, digital camera, PDA, and possibly a new tv. I have no idea what they got for a refund, but my guess is that their expenditures are probably going to outweigh their tax refund.

Carnival Recaps & March Madness Update

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:18:13 +0000

This week I participated in two carnivals and still have one post in the Personal Finance March Madness contest.

The Carnival of Personal Finance #92 was hosted at LazyManAndMoney this week. My article on million dollar kids - give me a break! made the Honorable Mentions Category right below the Editors choice. As usual many good articles. Below are some of my favorites

Consumerism Commentary’s The true cost of owning a home (I agree and have written a similar article)
FIRE Finance’s - why market timing doesn’t work (day traders are fools. Might as well be buying scratch offs)

The Festival of Frugality #66 was hosted today at The Frugal Duchess. My now famous article on the Frugal cure for a sore throat is found at the very bottom (must have saved the best for last). Here are some articles that caught my eye.

Welcome new visitors and Cayenne pepper lovers

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:50:52 +0000

My article on How to cure a sore throat has been finding it’s way onto the sites of Reddit, Del.icio.us, and others, which means I’ve got a bunch of new people visiting my site. For those of you who are new to MyFinancialJourney.com here are some of my more popular articles to give you a feel of the content you might run across this site if you stick around.

Saving money on books

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 07:58:36 +0000

Now this is going to be one of those, “no kidding you dufus why are you even posting this - it’s pretty obvious” kind of posts, but honestly I always forget about it and well it just saved me money this weekend. I actually don’t read books, for whatever reason I can’t just sit down and read a book. I usually get bored out of my mind after the first chapter and the only book I know that I have “read” since school (even then it was slim pickings (cliff notes)) is “The Little Book that Beats the Market” by Joel Greenblatt. The only reason I finished that book is because it was maybe 100 pages long, the pages were very small, and it actually was 90% substance instead of having to read 200 pages of fluff to get to the good stuff. I don’t know if I have ADD or am just an unintelligent caveman who can’t read books, but I just don’t read books.

Frugal cure for a sore throat

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:13:58 +0000

I’ve been sick for most of the week and last couple days I have had a really bad sore throat. I had been sucking on cough drops and other common things to try to relieve my sore throat, but it kept getting worse and worse, to the point where I could barely manage to swallow. As a kid I had tonsillitis and strep throat probably on average 5-6 times a year, but back then it was taboo to take your tonsils out so I spent a fair share of my time at the doctors office and on amoxicillin and other antibiotics. Well I hadn’t had strep in a long time and was worried that this had to be strep again. I was just dying so as usual I went to the internet to find a solution.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and I am only posting this because I heard such great things about it and had such wonderful results myself, please consult with your physician before trying this magical elixir.

Sad part is most people won't get the joke

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:55:12 +0000

Got a kick out of a recent dilbert. It’s hilarious because it’s so true, although I’ve got this nagging feeling that 90% of the Dilbert audience doesn’t truly get the joke. The reason is because the average person probably doesn’t even know what a managed stock fund is, what high churn means, or even what front-load means. So let me break the cartoon down for you.

Part 1 - You go ahead and work your butt and have some extra hard earned cash. You are smarter than the average individual so you actually decide to save/invest some of it so you go to speak to a “financial adviser” about doing this.

Ask the readers - How do you come up with that magical retirement number?

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 08:05:18 +0000

One thing I’ve taken a little slack for is right now my only public goal is that I want to have $100,000 in principal deposited by the time I reach age 30. This is a good goal and has been pretty popular with many of my readers, however as a couple of you have pointed out - it’s a short term goal and really says nothing about how, when, and how early I can retire.

Carnival of Personal Finance No. 91

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 07:56:42 +0000

The Carnival of Personal Finance #91 is being held over at The Sun’s Financial Diary this week. My article on I just don’t get it - what is the big deal about gas prices is down towards the very bottom.

As usual a ton of articles were submitted. Here are a few that I enjoyed

My Money Blog’s review of Prosper (Took a very good objective look of Prosper - turns out it’s not all sunshine,roses, and 10%+ returns)

Million Dollar Kids - Give me a break

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:20:10 +0000

Sorry for another rant, but I’ve been spending a little more time at yahoo lately and have been actually reading their finance articles and it’s amazing how far from reality some of these articles are. Ok maybe they aren’t crazy because they can find lots of people to interview for them that back their articles up, but they are are far from reality for people who have common sense.
This latest article, talks about the cost of raising kids. I’ve always been one to think that the figures out there for the costs of raising kids were completely out of whack. Yes you can spend that much (if you try), but just like anything (cars, house, landscaping), if you are smart about it you can probably get better results with spending a fraction of the the money.
Maybe I’m the weird guy, but does any of these quotes from the article stand out as completely crazy?

Quick Finanical Tip - Don't check your investment accounts daily

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 06:30:22 +0000

This is one tip that I think that is especially hard to follow, especially for new investors. It can be fun to check your stock, investment, retirement portfolio every day or every hour to see how much money you “made” or “loss” that day. While it can be fun, it can start playing with your emotions and your judgment. When you buy an investment it should be for the long term and you should accept the fact that in the short-term (especially if you invest in stocks and mutual funds) that your investment will go up and down for no good reason (sometimes significantly).

Electronic tax filing results

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:34:35 +0000

I’ve been filing my returns electronically for the last 4-5 years and each year the process gets smoother and smoother. This year I filed by taxes electronically last Sunday. My state return showed up in my bank account on Wednesday and my federal return showed up on Friday. I was impressed to file and get my money back in the same week. Maybe I hit a dead spot, but either way it with that fast of a turnaround it makes me think that things are getting more and more automated so even in peak times I would think turn around should be pretty fast if done electronically.

I just don't get it - what is the big deal about gas prices?

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 07:21:02 +0000

If there is one thing I don’t understand is, how much people care about gasoline prices. If a news story came out today that said tomorrow all gasoline prices are going to jump by 10 cents, there would be lines wrapped around the block waiting to fill up for gas. I mean it would be great if people were actually that concerned about their finances, that the extra $1.20 (12 gallon gas tank) it was going to cost them just was unacceptable, but it’s not it’s something else and I don’t get it.

March Madness Update

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:04:59 +0000

If you followed the last couple days you know that I am participating in Free Money Finance’s March Madness. So far my 4 submissions have been fairing pretty well, but I think I suffered my first loss or two. All my games in round 2 were very close.

In my first game in round 2 Reasons why you should not save for retirement barely eeked out a victory by 2 votes over The Digerati Life’s Walking In A Winter Wonderland for $1,300

What are your thoughts on Wal-Mart?

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 07:20:37 +0000

Me and my family do a lot of our shopping at Wal-Mart, in fact we almost do all of our shopping at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart seems to be a very controversial store when it comes to its reputation. Some people love Wal-Mart and other people hate it. I have some family members who refuse to even step foot in the store, while other families members do most of their shopping at Wal-mart like me.

No Credit Needed is famous

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:00:54 +0000

NCN over at No Credit Needed has hit it big time. Not only has been mentioned in the NY Times a couple weeks ago and linked to by a number of high profile websites, he just did an interview for Oprah’s radio show. Then to top things off he’s being interviewed by a television station out of Atlanta. Rumor has it he’s also dating Jennifer Aniston (just kidding NCN’s wife).

NCN has had a great few year blogging and has managed to dig himself completely out of over $11,000 in debt and is now worth over $43,000 more than he was just 22 months ago before he started blogging. He’s got a very inspirational story and does all he can to help his fellow bloggers have the same success he has had. He has a couple related sites and deserves all of the attention he is getting. Go check out his sites.

Carnival of Personal Finance #90 Recap

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:19:03 +0000

The Carnival of Personal Finance #90 is hosted at Map Girl this week and uses a circus theme. My post on 20%+ guaranteed return on your money in 2 easy steps. is in SideShow One. As usual there are tons of entries in the carnival of personal finance and map girl did a good job of ranking them so that you can get to the good articles without having to completely weed through the 90 or so entries.

Festival of Frugality #64 Recap

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 07:12:46 +0000

The Festival of Frugality #64 is being held at Getting Green this week. Getting Green is a newish blogger to the personal finance community but hit the ground running and posts a number of high quality articles each day, so after reading the festival be sure to check out his other posts.

My article about How to go about frugal landscaping - Part II is up toward the top.

Some of the other articles that I really enjoyed are

Free Money Finance March Madness Round 2 - Don't let jim bully me around ;-)

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:35:15 +0000

March Madness has hit the personal finance world over at Free Money Finance and the four posts I submitted to the tournament all made it through the first round (granted one of them had a bye).

In the 2nd round I believe Reasons why you should not save for retirement won a close battle with The Digerati Life’s Walking In A Winter Wonderland for $1,300.
Then Get Rich!! Play the lottery!! Somebody has to win drew a tough 2nd round post in Blueprint for Financial Prosperity’s 25 Steps To A Wildly Successful Personal Finance Blog, but is currently pulling out the upset. I think jim’s (BluePrint) article is a very good article and I have referenced it to many new bloggers who come to me with questions, however I think my lottery post takes a pretty neat look at the true odds of winning the lottery and if I hold out to win this battle royal it will be quite an accomplishment for my little underdog blog. Anyway the voting is open in this round until Wednesday afternoon so get out and vote (even if it’s for jim :-) )
Edit: He’s even bringing the big guns out now and is out on the campaign trail

How to go about frugal landscaping - Part II

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 07:04:01 +0000

In Part I of this series I talked about some high level things you can do to save you money and increase your chances of success when going about landscaping. In this part I am going to talk about where to get some of the supplies you will need and how to save money on them.

Mulch
Mulch is an important part of most frugal landscaping plans. Mulch is not only a cheaper alternative to things such as gravel or stones, it is a lot less likely to cause you issues if it creeps out of your landscaping and into your lawn which it most likely will do. Think 2 inch rock in lawn mower versus piece of tree bark. Mulch is also much better for your plants and flowers as it is a natural material which will help retain moisture (less watering) and slowly break down and release nutrients for your plants and shrubs.

A lottery winner that isn't a complete disaster yet

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:19:57 +0000

There is a recent article on CNN profiling Brad Duke who won the $220 million dollar power ball in 2005, unlike most lottery winners it looks like he has a somewhat solid plan for his money and didn’t just go blow through it in the first few years. He has a plan to grow his $85 million (that’s what he got after taking lump sump and paying taxes) to $1 billion dollars by 2014 and has currently grown it to $128 million while still giving over $1.3 million to his charitable organization, taking all his friends on a trip to Tahiti, paying off his mortgage, and giving each family member $12,000 per year (maximum gift without tax consequences).

My Financial Journey Best of February 2007

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:51:48 +0000

February was a good month for My Financial Journey and here are some of my favorite posts from the previous month

February 1 - Asset Allocation - If you are young why wouldn’t you be 100% stocks?
February 12 - The true cost of owning a home - or reasons why renting isn’t all that bad.
February 14 - How to go about frugal landscaping - Part I
February 17 - Clothes as an investment??
February 19 - The fine line of Frugality
February 23 - Pay off Debt or Invest for Retirement
February 27 - 20%+ guaranteed return on your money in 2 easy steps.

$100,000 in principal by Age 30 2006 Recap

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:14:28 +0000

I just realized I never checked in on my progress for 2006 for my $100,000 by age 30 goal. I know I was ahead of schedule, but figured it would do me good to get a detailed list of goals vs actuals. Plus it will make it easier for me to keep track of my progress in 2007

The gameplan


Year	Age	Roth IRAs	Traditional 401k	Roth 401k	Total Contributions
2004	24.5	$6,000	$1,146	$0	$7146
2005	25.5	$8,000	$8,268	$0	$16,268
2006	26.5	$8,000	$0	$9,380	$17,380
2007	27.5	$8,000	$0	$11,424	$19,424
2008	28.5	$10,000	$0	$9,710	$19,710
2009	29.5	$10,000	$0	$10,281	$20,281
Totals	30	$50,000	$9,432	$40,795	$100,227

The Actuals

Retirement NestEgg Report - February 2007

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:48:34 +0000

Well another good month for my total retirement nest egg as I broke the $50,000 barrier. It was due entirely to contributions though as my investments all were in the red this month, partially due to yesterdays little dip. As much as it’s fun to see me break the $50k mark I’d love it if yesterdays trend continued for a while and we went into a major bear market as I’d love to pick some more investments up on the cheap. One thing to note is that I now have a new retirement plan on the list as I recently switched jobs. Anyway here are the numbers.

Personal Finance March Madness Round 1 - Reasons why you should not save for retirement vs 13 Personal Finance Helpers

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:33:40 +0000

FreeMoneyFinance is having his March Madness battle royal tournament of personal finance articles. If you aren’t familiar with the concept read below

Here we go with the first round of Free Money Finance March Madness (if you wonder what’s going on in these posts, see my article announcing March Madness and/or click on my March Madness category link and scroll down to read all the posts involved in this subject.) I’ve listed each “game” (one post versus another) in segments along with the wording provided by the author when the post was submitted. Be sure to comment which one you like the best out of each set of two as commenters have the chance to win a free book. Here we go:

Festival of Frugality #63 Recap

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 06:57:28 +0000

The 63rd Festival of Frugality is hosted over at Stingy Students. Stingy went with a stars of Food Network theme. I’m a pretty big fan of the food network, especially Alton Brown (partly because his food is usually very practical and you learn a lot in the process). Some of the other chefs are fun to watch, but you probably won’t find me even know where to get half of the ingredients they use. Anyway my article on the Fine Line of Frugality is located under Ina Garten.

20%+ guaranteed return on your money in 2 easy steps.

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:35:24 +0000

Step 1: Rack up some debt on your high interest credit cards

Step 2: Start paying your credit cards off.

Ok I know what a lame post, but to be honest if you have credit card debt and
your credit score is less than stellar it’s probably pretty likely that you are paying 20 or even 30 percent on your credit cards. This is the primary reason that people who get themselves into credit card debt have such a hard time pulling themselves back out of debt. So if you already accomplished Step 1 before reading my blog, the smartest thing you can do with any possible extra money is to put it towards paying those credit cards off.

The Carnival of Personal Finance - Celebrity Edition

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:25:12 +0000

This week’s carnival of personal finance is being held over at the binary dollar. I’ve talked in the past about how much work goes into hosting a carnival, especially now that they have grown to be so big and you get so many submissions. So when you do something creative like Binary Dollar did this week, you really deserve some credit.

This week’s carnival is all GUI based, in other words there are no words. Just a bunch of celebrity pictures in different categories. Each picture links to a article submitted to the carnival. Dawn at FrugalForLife did something similar with the carnival of personal finance a few weeks back and I love it. The carnivals tend to get pretty boring, especially due to their frequency and the large amount of submissions. I think it’s great when the host thinks outside of the box like this and makes things interesting.

Great quote on frugality

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 07:02:39 +0000

I ran across this quote in one of My Two Dollar’s articles a little while back and think it does a great job of summing up the attitude that frugal people have towards money (at least for me)

We save money for what is important to us, not what is important to other people. And that allows us to live a comfortable life on our terms, not on other people’s. We do not make a lot of money, lest you think that. We are just very careful what we spend it on.

New webhost

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:57:30 +0000

FYI -

I just moved my site to a new hosting company. If you see anything out of whack please let me know. While I wasn’t having problems before, hopefully this means a faster snappier site for you.

Thanks,
MFJ

Personal Finance March Madness

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:38:03 +0000

FreeMoneyFinance is getting into the March Madness spirit by starting his own tournament featuring the 64 best articles in all personal finance land. Each personal finance blogger is allowed to submit 4 articles to the selection committee and the top 64 will get put into the bracket. From there it’s head to head competition until only one article remains. The winner gets all kinds of goodies and not to mention bragging rights for an entire year.

Pay off Debt or Invest for Retirement

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:00:45 +0000

I recently had a reader who wanted me to write an article on whether it’s better to pay down debt or invest. Seeing as how I was recently profiled over at No Credit Needed I figured now was as good as anytime to tackle this subject.

What’s better, paying off debt or investing?
My theory is that I’d rather have less debt because I don’t like owing money even if the interest on debt is less than the return on the investment.

It’s one thing learn something it’s another thing to actually act on the information

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:18:10 +0000

A couple days ago my wife was reading CNN in the morning when she came across an article on a peanut butter recall, we both read the article and seeing how she is thinking about starting her own parenting blog I even mentioned to her that breaking news articles like that could fill some of her content on her blog. I sort of smiled to myself throughout the day as I ran across blog articles like this here, here, here, and probably about 5 other blogs. Well about 3-4 days go by and I’m about to leave work yesterday and my wife IMs me and says “My goodness MFJ do you realize you’ve been eating the bad peanut butter!” Sure enough even though we never purchase Peter Pan, for whatever reason last time we went shopping we picked up Peter Pan crunchy peanut butter and sure enough the product number starts out with 2111. Also turns out that I spent most of last night praying at the porcelain alter, although I doubt it is because I was eating tainted peanut butter as the stomach flu has been going around my family.

Festival of Frugality #62 at LazyManAndMoney is a HomeRun!

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:13:48 +0000

This week’s festival of frugality is hosted at LazyManAndMoney and for being so Lazy he sure did a bang up job on this week’s festival. If you have ever hosted a carnival you know how much work it is and to be able to make it fun and interesting is a real challenge. The theme for this week’s festival is baseball greats. LazyMan broke down all the articles based how on well he thought they were written and categorized them under the best baseball players of all time (Ruth, Williams, Mays, Mantle, and Herb Washington??)

MFJ one year ago (Feb 2006)

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:21:50 +0000

Well my blog has been around for over a year now so I guess I can start highlighting some posts from a year ago. I think this is kind of nice because I can occasionally see what I was thinking a year ago. See if my attitudes have changed, if I’ve learned anything new since then, etc. I probably won’t do this too often as well my blog hit a dry spell for a while last summer, but one year ago this week was a pretty good one for my blog.

The fine line of frugality

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 06:55:27 +0000

I would consider myself a frugal person. I live well within my means and never make a purchasing decision without painstakingly going over the details to make sure I really “need” the item and that I am getting the best absolute price. However always looking to save money can lead you to tread a fine line when it comes to being frugal vs being cheap OR being frugal and being unethical or even worse. I want to discuss some of these borderline issues, give examples of where maybe I stepped over the line, and hopefully get some feedback from my readers as to where they think the line is on these issues.

Clothes as an investment??

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 19:40:58 +0000

Today I went clothes shopping. I bought a lot of new clothes. In fact I spent more money on clothes today than I probably have in the last seven years combined. Now to put that in perspective I can only think of one piece of clothing I have bought in the last 5 years or so (a pair of jeans last year) and well I really only spent $225 today, which for some people may be a casual shopping trip. I never buy clothes, in fact a majority of my wardrobe consists of clothes I wore when I was still in high school. The rest are clothes I’ve received for birthday and Christmas presents from friends and family or received as freebies through work or conferences.

Update to my $100,000 by age 30 goal

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:25:39 +0000

When I originally set my $100,000 by age 30 goal I needed to sort of cheat and I made the goal to have $100,000 in principal (money I contributed) in my retirement accounts by Dec 31 of the year in which I turn 30. My birthday is in August and well according to my original calculations I would need at least those extra 4 months to reach my goal.

Well since I set my goal a few things have changed. I’m actually a little ahead of schedule due to the fact that I’ve gotten some unexpected bonuses and raises part of which was automatically invested into my Roth 401k for me. The other major thing that happened to me was I got a job and am now making more money so I figured I could raise the bar on my goal a little higher. Plus now it’s really $100,000 by age 30, not $100,000 while I’m still 30.

Need some extra money - sue a telemarketer

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:53:02 +0000

I’m always looking for side jobs or easy ways to make some extra money on the side. Turns out that you might be able to make a decent amount of money by suing companies who violate the do not call list legislation, and what could be more fun than suing a telemarketing company. Generally I have a personal aversion to lawsuits and think that it’s gotten entirely out of control in recent history, but in this case I’m all for it.

How to go about frugal landscaping - Part I

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 07:25:38 +0000

Well I just talked about the true cost of owning a home and well if I want to stay happily married I’m going to have to spend some money on landscaping this summer. So obviously I want to figure out the most cost effective way to do my landscaping and still end up with a product that my wife would be happy with. I already start the process of frugal lawn care last summer after the Chemlawn guy stopped by an challenged my green thumb manhood and to be honest my lawn ended up looking great. So while I know next to nothing as I write this article about landscaping I do know that if you aren’t careful landscaping can cost a fortune (we just had some professionals stop by last night with some plans and a quote - thus somewhat like the Chemlawn incident I feel personally challenged to show them I can do a much better job for a fraction of the cost)

I’ve switched to full text feeds

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:03:31 +0000

Not wanting to be left out I too have switched to full-text feeds. To be honest I’m not sure why I even had partial feeds to start with as I hate reading feeds that only give me a teaser and make me go out to the site to get more. So it was pretty stupid for me to be offering partial feeds on my own site. Anyway hopefully this will be a welcome change. Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to make it entirely retroactive so my older feed items are still partial, but going forward you will be able to read my articles in their entirety with your favorite RSS reader. Sorry it took so long.

The true cost of owning a home - or reasons why renting isn’t all that bad.

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 07:46:58 +0000

My wife and I were discussing whether her soon-to-be-married brother and his future wife should really be looking to purchase a home right away. Knowing what I know about the couple and my personal opinion about buy vs. rent I took the side of the argument that the couple definitely should not be looking to buy a house right now. The two of them are fresh out of college and from what I know don’t have a whole lot of money saved up. In fact I think they have some debt and are going even further in debt to pay for the wedding and honeymoon. Now at their age there is certainly nothing wrong with being in debt, especially if the reason for the debt is college education and well as much as I promote being frugal in all aspects of your life, you probably should enjoy your wedding/honeymoon as hopefully it’s an only once in a lifetime experience.

The dreaded check engine light - what to do?

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:50:26 +0000

The check engine light came on in one of our cars sometime last week. Now before someone starts saying “I told you so that’s what you get for driving a POS”, it’s not on my Ford Escort - that one burned out a long time ago :P The light came on in my wife’s 1999 Honda Accord which well it’s worth at least 7 Escorts so I actually go to worry about the car getting wrecked which means I’m going to have to do something about the light.

Good posts on why bonds are important in a portfolio

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 07:34:34 +0000

If you’ve been following my blog lately you’ve been noticing that I’ve been questioning why one would ever have any money in bonds in the long-term due to their sub-par performance vs. stocks. I’ve had tons of great comments and I thought I even summarized things pretty good, but in the end I don’t know that I really had it nailed down. I was still able to shoot my mouth off somewhat about how in the long-term stocks are still the best investment and I really kind of wanted someone to stick my foot in my mouth, well maybe not that harsh but there are two great posts about why bonds are a vital part of an investment portfolio.

Cash Plus Rewards Card arbitrage

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 07:45:18 +0000

Well I had an experience with my Chase Cash plus Rewards card lately that got me thinking. Well you know that bright idea I had with purchasing about 3 playstation 3s at launch and trying to turn them around for a profit on Ebay, well yeah it failed miserably and I ended up returning every single one of them shortly after Christmas. Well here’s where the arbitrage comes in. I bought them at a normal Wal-mart so when I purchased them I got 1% cash back. Well I ended up returning them to a Super-Walmart on which I get 5% cash back on all my purchases because it’s considered a grocery store. Well when I returned them they took 5% off my rewards statement for each one. All in all I lost $72 cash because of my return process.

OT: The Bears still suck

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 07:17:11 +0000

Happy Schnapps Combo - The Bears still suck
(snippet didn't want to get in trouble by posting the whole song)

Well being from Wisconsin and a lifelong Packer fan it was with great joy that I watched the Bears lose in the super bowl last night. For those of you that don’t know the Packers vs. Bears rivalry is one of the oldest and most fierce in all of professional football, and well I got lots of friends that are Bears fans so I’ve lived the experience my whole life….even got the “Bears Suck” t-shirt and cap to prove it. Well I know Packers didn’t even make the playoffs, but I’ll kick the Bears and their fans while they are down anyway ;-)

Asset Allocation - If you are young why wouldn't you be 100% stocks - Comments and Recap

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:26:59 +0000

Well turns out that me suggesting that young people with long investing time horizons invest 100% in stocks stirred up a lot of activity on my blog and to be honest I never could have imagined I would have gotten so many high quality comments on this post. I’ve learned a lot in the process (I think) and I figured it would do good to sort of recap the comments from the other post and give a general idea of what my readers thought (or at least my convoluted interpretation of their thoughts).

Asset Allocation - If you are young why wouldn’t you be 100% stocks?

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 07:45:15 +0000

I know I have had a few people comment on some of my posts that I’m too heavily weighted towards stocks (100%) and it’s sort of common knowledge that when laying out your asset allocation in your portfolio that it is a mixture of stocks and bonds. Even most lifestyle funds for the most risky aggressive young punk classification have some money in bonds. For some reason I can’t get it through my thick skull why someone would put any money in a historically lower performing investment tool for money that won’t be touched for 30 or more years.

Retirement NestEgg Report - January 2007

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 07:31:58 +0000

Well it was another good month for my retirement 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.

Festival of Frugality #59

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 07:01:32 +0000

The Festival of Frugality #59 is up at Thetaoofmakingmoney. I always find the festival of frugality to be full of great new ideas on how to save money and this one is no different. Golbguru did an excellent job of hosting and organizing the carnival into distinct categories. As usual the carnival is huge and for those of you that haven’t had the opportunity to host a carnival yet, it really is a lot of work. Anyway my article is down in the car section, go check it out!!

My first day at new job

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:15:07 +0000

Well today is my first day at my new employer. It was easy finding jobs, but is was difficult deciding which job was the best for me (as you can tell if you’ve followed my blog this month). Anyway today is a new start for me and hopefully puts me a couple steps closer to meeting my financial goals and needs. In fact in the near future I’m probably going to have to revisit my original financial goals as I’m afraid it’s just going to be too easy for me to reach my current set of goals due to the fact that I’m making more money now and well will be stuck contributing to a traditional 401k instead of a Roth 401k so I’ll be contributing a lot more principal now and won’t necessarily be better off for it.

Carnival of Personal Finance #85

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 06:31:06 +0000

The carnival of personal finance #85 is being hosted at FiveCentNickel this week. As usual there are many high quality posts at the carnival. I submitted my article on the odds of winning the lottery and it even made the editor’s choice section. Anyway go check out the carnival and thanks again to Nickel for hosting.

My Financial Journey’s pimp ride

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 09:05:51 +0000

Well if there was one thing and one thing only that I could recommend to people really looking for ways to save money to get out of debt or save some extra money for retirement it would be don’t ever buy a new car. In fact I would go one step further and say spend as little money as possible on your cars.
I’ve owned three cars in my lifetime. My first car a 1994 Ford Escort was given to me by my parents after high school and I drove that car for almost 5 years before I totalled it by running into a deer. At the time of the accident the car had nearly 190,000 miles and was running great. Granted some accessories were missing (heater, AC, radio, speedometer), but the car never broke down on me and I think my only expenses were maybe 3 or 4 oil changes in the 5 years that I owned it and I put about 95,000 miles on it. Needless to say it got me from point A to point B and I was happy.
My Beamer
My second car, which may be the worst financial decision I have ever made in my life was a 1990 BMW 525i. I was getting married about a week after I totalled my Escort and I needed a car. My buddy’s dad from work was selling his old BMW and despite it having 160,000 miles I did my due diligence and found out that these cars can just plain run forever, plus it was a pretty cool car. I paid $3000 for the car and drove it for about 5,000 miles before it just shut off one day when trying to get to work. Turns out it was some minor piece that controlled the fuel had corroded and needed to be replaced. $450 later (should have been like $1500 according to mechanic but he just hotwired his own solution instead of following BMWs recommendation to replace all the wiring involved) I was back on the road and running. Well throughout the next few months one of my headlights stopped working, I hit a racoon which broke off some fancy stuff that wasn’t on my escort which in turn shorted out other electrical things like the outside temperature guage, etc. For being a car from 1990 this thing had more electronic gizmos than James Bond’s car. The worst thing is any minor problem resulted in a repair bill that cost me more than I could purchase another car for, so I threw it in storage and bought myself a “new” car. Later sold it for $1900 after spending probably another $400 to make it saleable. Total cost of the car for the year or so I drove it was probably $4500
The return of the Escort
Swearing off buying any fancy cars with too much electrical equipment for the rest of my life I went back to my roots and purchased a 1990 Ford Escort. Had 90,000 miles on it, new tires, new exhaust, and an extra helping of rust. Actually ended up getting it for $900. I’ve been driving this car for 2.5 years now despite my ignorant driving decisions, haven’t had any major problems with it so far (actually I think my muffler has a hole in it now and so I may have to fix it or buy a new one). That’s the great thing about buying sub $1000 cars. You drive them and if they last a couple years you make off like a bandit $400 per year auto expenses for this car. If something major breaks donate the car to charity or sell it for scrap and just go buy another one. Some people may say its riskier to buy old cars like this, but really to me I am diversifying my risk as I have seen plenty of brand new cars broken down on the side of the road and when you still owe $20,000 on the car you are sort of obligated to spend whatever it takes to fix it. Me I’m free and clear to do whatever I want without any major financial ramifications.

An unexpected $4000+ for a couple emails

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:44:36 +0000

Well today was a pretty good day for me. In the span of a few hours I found out that I’d be receiving about $4,000 total that I never expected to receive. The first windfall came when I went out to lunch with a local IT recruiter who I had worked with during my job hunt, but actually ended up turning down the job offers I got through her. What I did do though was email her the names of a couple guys I worked with who might be interested in the jobs I turned down. Well turns out that they both took jobs through her company.
They do offer a $1000 referral bonus for employees of their company who refer new candidates that take jobs, but seeing as how I am not an employee with them I am not eligible…..or so I thought. Turns out she went ahead and asked the owner if she could give me some kind of referral bonus for the candidates I referred as I have been so helpful to their company. Turns out he said I could get $500 for each of the guys I referred. Might help that they are trying to place more people at my “new employer” and well I have a very heavy say in who gets in and who does not.
Unexpected money total: $1000

Get Rich!! Play the Lottery!! Somebody has to win!!

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:00:43 +0000

I don’t go to casinos, I don’t buy scratch offs, and I don’t play the powerball no matter how high the jackpot. That is until tonight, I was just informed that my wife threw in $10 with her family to buy lottery tickets. Now before I go off portraying my wife as a know nothing moron who plays the lottery I can see the occasional “fun” money being spent on what-if scenarios and by all other accounts I don’t think there are too many women in this world that can handle expenses as well as my wife. Me however I feel almost sick that some of our hard-earned money was voluntarily paid into the stupidity tax. I would rather have heard her say that she had just lit a $10 bill on fire to see what would happen.

What kind of car do you drive and why?

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:45:47 +0000

I am curious to see what kind of vehicles my readers drive and why they drive the vehicles that they do. Purchasing a vehicle is usually a pretty major decision/expense and depending upon what kind vehicle you buy, how you pay for it (cash, credit), and how you maintain your vehicle can really affect your overall financial picture.

People like Ramit advocate buying a new car and he’s trying to teach us how to be rich. I think conventional wisdom/opinion in the personal finance community is to buy a used car (of course we all know that knowing what you probably should do and doing it are entirely different things). Being able to drive that brand new shiny hot rod to work every day can be very tempting or even important to some people. So I’m just curious to see what year, make, model, mileage car everyone drives and why.

Cheaper Health Insurance on your own?

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:00:32 +0000

I have pretty good health insurance now that I switched jobs, but my previous employer’s health insurance benefits were degrading pretty rapidly and because they are such a small company I can see them continuing down that road. While talking to one of my buddies at the old company he showed me this site where you can go out and get quotes on various health insurance plans on your own. For those wondering the site is www.ehealthinsurance.com

Retirement Nestegg - Tax Liability Percentage

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:00:52 +0000

I just thought of something that I think would be fun to track as it will make sure I don’t overestimate how big my retirement nest egg really is. I currently have a mix of Roth IRA, Roth 401k, and Traditional 401k retirement accounts that combined together give me that number at the top right corner of my blog. One thing that people often forget when saving for retirement is taxes (the other is inflation). You see any money that is stored in traditional 401k or traditional IRAs you need to pay taxes on when you withdraw it. This means that the government actually owns part of my retirement nestegg.

401k contribution limits (2006-2009)

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 10:04:27 +0000

I always find myself looking for these limits so I figured I’d just put them on my site for a point of reference. Below are the maximum contribution limits for 401k plans each year from now through 2009.


Year	Maximum contribution limit
2006	$15,000
2007	$15,500
2008	$15,500
2009	$?????

I resigned

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:00:46 +0000

Well I went into my HR department yesterday and asked them if I had ever signed a non-compete agreement. She looked through my file and said yes you signed this. I got a copy of what she gave me and turns out it was just a confidentiality agreement that basically said I would not divulge our and our customer’s trade secrets. To make matters even better the agreement is suppose to have my name on the front page and it is just left blank. It does have my signature on the last page, but seeing as how it is suppose to be an agreement between me and the company it requires the owner’s signature also - which happens to be blank.

Job Dilema - Update 2

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:02:56 +0000

Sorry for spending too much time on my job search, but I think this will be of value to me down the road to evaluate this decision and well it very much effects my financial situation and retirement goals. In fact it may somewhat ruin my goals as they may become too easy…again not worst problem in the world.

Well if you have been following my blog lately you know that I have quite a few options available to me. I have actually turned down Company 1 and a few other opportunities have presented me since my previous posts. One of those opportunities is with a client that I have been consulting at for the last 1.5 years and while base salary wise it is not the highest of the bunch, the total compensation bonuses/401k matching/pension/health insurance takes it pretty much to the top. Add in the fact that it is 18 minutes from my home, has very flexible and light hours, and I would be able to use the latest and greatest technology and it is pretty much by far the place I want to work at.

Realistic Rate of Return - Part IV Inflation

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 08:00:42 +0000

This is the fourth post in a series of posts on Realistic Rate of Return. You can view Part I, Part II, and Part III here. In this part I will try to touch on inflation and how it can affect my nest egg’s value as we travel through time. Sorry for the small delay between Part III and Part IV as this post has been sitting in my drafts folder 60% done for oh the last 9 months ;-)

Job Dilema - Update

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 07:00:45 +0000

Well I kind of stopped updating my job dilemma string of posts right now because I really didn’t want to make anything more overwhelming than it already is as far as companies, but figured I’d give an update on the whole situation and maybe apologize for my instability yesterday morning. This is probably more for my benefit than my readers, but I think it will be interesting to look back at my thought process during this point in my life and see how well I made decisions. So anyway here goes.

Apologize if you are trying to leave comments on my site

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 16:43:26 +0000

I was playing around with a new spam filter and it looks like my comments have been broken for about a week now…..sorry will let you know when it is fixed.

Actually if you could leave some test comments on this post that would be great. Thanks!

Job Dilema - Company 4 Overview

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 10:04:39 +0000

Type of Company : Energy Company

My Role : Part of development team, but would have a good say in what we are doing. Would actually being using some fairly outdated technologies for the most part with just a little bit of the latest technology. Also in unregulated arm of Energy holding company so it’s a lot more fast paced and exciting. They are growing like crazy, expected work hours are 50 hours per week

Job Dilema - Company 3 Overview

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:35:07 +0000

Type of Company - Consulting Company

My Role - Consultant, would vary from project to project

Career Advancement - Not really room to move up their corp ladder as it is pretty flat, Administrative and consultants, possibly project manager positions, but not really. Obviously could get boost in pay but it is very dependent upon what client is willing to pay versus for me versus my true performance.

Drive Time - Assured would only get put in positions within 30-35 minutes of my house, currently trying to place me at a place 20 minutes away.

Job Dilema - Company 2 Overview

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:34:56 +0000

Type of Company - Smaller company that develops software for 401ks, pensions, and payroll

My Role - I would be part of a growing development team. Top notch all the way around, would be using latest and greatest, very intelligent people, very developer centric. Top of the line equipment, could wear shorts and t-shirts to work, looks it would be a blast to work there.

Career Advancement - Not sure about moving up, but whatever skills I don’t have already I would have after working here for a few years and I guess would have even better luck at finding a new job if I found it necessary.
Work schedule - Told 40 hours is the norm, the believe that their people can get done what they need to get done in 40 hours.

Job Dilema - Company 1 Overview

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:34:40 +0000

Type of Company - Big Health insurance company

My Role - I would be the top person for a department of 15 people - in fact I would be by FAR the most technically savvy person in this department. So I would have a lot of say in how we solve problems, but the technology is a couple years behind on the programming side and 15 years behind on the database side. Those technologies I would not be able to change.

Job Dilema - My Current Company Overview

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:34:20 +0000

Type of Company - Consulting firm

My Role - I am one of their top people and get to make a lot of decisions as to what I want to work on and how I want to do it. Been at one client now for 1.5 years and really enjoy it.

Career Advancement - Always using latest and greatest technology so I am very marketable as you can see. As far as moving up in the company I have kind of hit the ceiling.

What I want in a job

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:33:29 +0000

As part of my series of what the heck should I do with my career oh my goodness too many decisions multi-part post hosted here on My Financial Journey I figured it would help the one or two readers who try to stumble through this horrible rant of babbling nonsense on which job I should take to know what is truly important to me in a job.

To summarize the most important thing to me when I am looking for a job is what is going to be best for my family. This can have many different implications ranging from:

My Job Search - Tough decisions

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:31:21 +0000

Normally I save this for after I write this post, but its 6AM on a Saturday morning, I can’t sleep, and to be honest I have been a wreck the last few days trying to figure out what to do with my career so I apologize up front for the babbling non-sense that follows.

A while ago I decided that I should start looking for a job, primary reason is that I thought I was pretty severely under paid and being 27 years old with all of those compounding years ahead of me, every extra dollar that I can make at this age is just crucial to the quality of retirement and financial freedom I will have down the road. I’d send a link to my chart about the about the cost of waiting one more year to save for retirement, but as I’ve been called out that is not a realistic chart because I don’t account for taxes and inflation. I agree with that assumption, but I have a delusion that I can beat the market somehow and well it’s a still a good motivator for me to save more than it is a false sense of security that I have saved enough.

My Financial Journey - Best of 2006

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 09:29:55 +0000

Well it seems like this is the thing to do this time of year, so here goes. Here are the “best” posts I made this year.

Reasons why you should not save for Retirement - Probably my favorite article from 2006

Realistic Rate of Return series - I should really finish this up, should be about a 6-part series

Wal-Mart wallet photos for a whole lot less - Great way to get some really inexpensive wallet photos

Carnival of Personal Finance #81

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 09:30:46 +0000

The Carnival of Personal Finance #81 is up at Mighty Bargain Hunter this week. A number of great articles as usual and a great way to start out the new year. Go check it out - you might even find an article from me in there.

Balancing your checkbook….necessary?

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 08:00:19 +0000

I know I just wrote about how I have never kept a budget for my expenditures, well another potentially taboo thing that I just realized that I fail to do is balance my checkbook, at least in the traditional sense of the word. I guess things are a lot different these days with the invention of that internet thing and internet banking, but the only time I have ever had to balance a checkbook was in my high school record keeping class. Which I believe was right after my personal typing class (we actually used typewriters and correction tape and there was no such thing as a Backspace button)

Is a budget really necessary?

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 09:15:40 +0000

I have been out on my own with full-time job now for about 6 years and during this time I have never made a budget. I got married in 2003, bought a house in 2004, and yet I have never ever found the need to create a budget. I even find tracking my expenses in Quicken to be too much of a hassle and I have never made it more than 2 or 3 months in a row before I give up entirely on the process.

Retirement NestEgg Report - December 2006

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 12:00:04 +0000

Well my retirement nestegg grew by 3% this month, which is great, but more importantly my retirement nestegg grew by 90.61% this year. Granted a majority of this gain is due to the fact that my nestegg is so small and a majority of the gains were due directly to my contributions, but it still is nice to see your retirement account nearly double in one calendar year regardless of the reason. One a side note as far as investment performance because my traditional 401k has not had any contributions this year I can easily calculate the investment performance of my 401k investments, which ended up being 15.26%, which bested the market by about 1.5% this year.
My Roth IRA - $ 11,400.40 (-3.33%)
Wife Roth IRA - $12,982.65 (+3.21%)
Traditional 401K - $11,695.58 (+0.78%)
Roth 401K - $10,733.47 (+13.18%)
Total Retirement Nest Egg $46,812.10 (+3.00%)

$100,000 by Age 30 - 2006 annual review

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 08:00:51 +0000

Well 2006 is coming to a close and I figured I would check in on how I am progressing on my goal to have $100,000 in principal (solely my contributions) contributed to my various retirement plans. Here is my contribution table my initial planning post on reaching $100k by 30.


Year	Age	Roth IRAs	Traditional 401k	Roth 401k	Total Contributions
2004	24.5	$6,000	$1,146.68	$0	$7146.68
2005	25.5	$8,000	$8,268.10	$0	$16,268.10
2006	26.5	$8,000	$0	$9,380	$17,380
2007	27.5	$8,000	$0	$11,424	$19,424
2008	28.5	$10,000	$0	$9,710	$19,710
2009	29.5	$10,000	$0	$10,281	$20,281
Totals	30	$50,000	$9,432.78	$40,795	$100,227.78

As you can see I was suppose to have saved up $17,380 this year to stay on pace with my planned projections. Well my final contributions showed up in my 401k account today and I have good news. I actually beat my goal by over $1200. I maxed out both mine and my wife’s Roth IRAs in January last year and throughout the year I have contributed $10,591.60 to my Roth 401k. The reason I came in above target is because I got a raise in Novemeber and because I got a bonus in December, which accounts for the extra $1200. I had an idea I would be getting a bonus and possibly a raise each year, but I never wanted to count on them when doing my projections as they are out of my control, so when they do come it’s just icing on the cake.

Questions to ask your prospective employer in an interview

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 08:00:24 +0000

Well I’ve been doing a lot of interviewing lately and I’m starting to realize now that I’m worried less about the interview questions that the employer will spring on me than I am trying to come up with good questions for the person interviewing me to help me learn more about them and their company.
You see the place I am working at right now really isn’t the worst place in the world so in order for me to make a move I really want to know that the company I am going to is going to be a very good fit for me. So I’ve been asking all kinds of questions about expected work hours, flexible schedules, team environment, etc. Unfortunately I rarely prepare a whole lot when I go into an interview and it often ends up being an “off the cuff” conversation and many times I forget to ask some of important questions.
So what I’ve decided to do is sort of come up with a list of interview questions that I can bring with me to my interviews to make sure I get all my bases covered and can properly distinguish between the various companies that want to hire me. Of course the only reason I’m doing this on my blog is because I want YOUR help in coming up with a comprehensive list. ;-)
Financial Questions

Term Life Insurance for my Wife - failed attempt #1

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 15:29:30 +0000

I recently went ahead and finally got the ball rolling as far as getting a life insurance policy for my wife. Seeing as how we already have one kid and another on the way it is pretty important for us to make sure that our family would be taken care of if anything bad happened to either of us.
EDIT: This is now outdated…there was a typo in the underwriting process and we were able to get the top rate…see more in the comments.
I already have three term life insurance policies out on myself, totaling just a little over $1 million in term life insurance, but for whatever reason I never got a policy for my wife. So I finally talked to a local insurance agent and started the process on getting a $250k - 20 year term policy on my wife. He quoted us at $14.66 for the top health rate, which probably isn’t the absolute cheapest price, but it came in at pretty competitively when I did a quick search online and well we know this guy personally and the insurance company it is through does a ton of charity work in our area so we were ok with an extra $1 or so a month.
Well we just got the results back from the underwriter and despite me asking up front if her being a few months pregnant would affect their underwriting decision and them saying “early pregnancy should have no effect on her risk classification or the testing process. The only time a pregnancy may become an issue is when complications exist.”, well it turns out that it did in fact affect their rating of her and she was rated the 2nd highest health class instead of the first class with the following statement “Reason for underwriting decision: build (pregnancy was taken into consideration)” and thus our monthly premium would be $17.50 instead of $14.66 per month, which to me was unacceptable so I am thinking we will pass.
I guess I could take this policy now for the next 7 months or so until our child is born just to be safe and then shop around at that time and cancel the previous policy, but I was hoping to have this all taken care of right now so that I could start working on our will/living trust and get that all in order and while I could/should still continue on down that road, it means that in 7-8 months I’ll have to revisit and change a bunch of stuff just because of this little term life insurance policy, which not knowing anything about keeping a will/trust up to date I’m assuming will cost me more money with the lawyer. Darn kids I told you they were expensive ;-)

Roth 401k rollover?

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 09:42:29 +0000

One of the great advantages, at least for me is that by contributing to my Roth IRA at work I know that some day when I leave the company I can roll it over to a Roth IRA which is a much friendlier vehicle for someone who may be thinking about retiring early. Well I have only been contributing to my Roth 401k for a year, but I am interviewing pretty hardcore lately and it’s likely that I’ll be leaving my current company in the next month or so.
So me being a personal finance geek, the first thing I start doing is checking up on the logistics of doing this rollover into my existing brokerage Scottrade. Well as it turns out Scottrade does not offer an option to rollover your Roth 401k at this time.So then I decided well I’ve always been wanting to try out FreeTrade - mainly because they offer dividend reimbursement and Scottrade does not, but they also do not offer rollovers from Roth 401ks.
Now it’s not the end of the world because my existing 401k provider has some good investment options and the fees are very reasonable, but I am not sure the logistics on keeping the money with them as if I’m not an employee there may be some sort of premium charged to me to keep my account with them to cover maintenance fees. So maybe this Roth 401k isn’t so great if no one deals with rolling them over right now because they are so new.
I really don’t know if I want to go outside of Scottrade or FirstTrade as based on my initial research a year ago those two were the best. Anyway does anyone else know of a brokerage that “doesn’t suck” and allows Roth 401k rollovers?

Carnival of Personal Finance #79 and compliments

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 16:19:47 +0000

The Carnival of Personal Finance # 79 is being held at A Penny Saved and there are an enormous amount of articles included in this week’s carnival, including one by me on “The pursuit of a perfect savings rate”

As you can see I haven’t been the most faithful blogger in the world and even though I was going more for quality posts than just posting something every day for the sake of posting it (IE: ING raised their interest rates again), I really did get sidetracked for quite a while where I was barely getting more than a post or two a month and really not much of anything with substance lately.

More new exepenses…we are having a baby :-)

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 08:00:24 +0000

Well I just talked about how I’m going to have to start paying off my student loans come next summer, well I’ve got another expense I need to start planning for……our 2nd kid. My wife and I are expecting next July, which means I won’t be able to whack diapers out of the monthly expenses anytime soon :-)
Personally I haven’t found the addition of our first child to really be all that expensive, really biggest expense is those darn diapers, but other than that I can say in my experience having a kid was relatively cheap. Granted he’s only 18 months old so I haven’t even begun to getting into the truly expensive time period, but to be honest all of those articles out there that say kids cost thousands and thousands of dollars a year are just crap. Granted you can make them cost thousands and thousands of dollars a year if you really want to, just like you can with anything else (home maintenance, auto expenses, etc), but if you have a solid head on your shoulders and live smartly kids really aren’t that much of a financial burden.
^^ This is probably one that I’ll be laughing at myself in the future about ^^
Anyway I hope the 2nd child is as financially sounds as our first son Jack. Hopefully he/she will keep their website updated a little more often :-)

Eck…I finally have to start paying my student loans

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 08:00:41 +0000

Well I’ve been out of college completely now for over two years, but the student loan people just finally figured that out. I graduated with my MBA in Dec of 2004, but for whatever reason the student loan company thought I was still a full-time student. Which was nice because all of my student loans were being deferred and the government was still paying the interest on the subsidized loans. Well I got the bad news today that they figured out that I am no longer a student and will have to start making payments come next August.
I have about $50,000 in student loans, that is an accumulation of my under grad loans, my wife’s under grad loans, and my graduate loans. I consolidated them all together a couple years ago when rates were at their lowest, so I was pretty excited about putting off even starting payments as long as possible.
I have all of this student loan money locked in at 2.82%, plus once I actually sign up for electronic payments I get another .25% knocked off my rate, plus once I make payments for 12 consecutive months I get another .25% knocked off. So in reality I’m sitting with $50k of loans at 2.32% on which the interest is tax-deductible. Needless to say I signed up for the absolute slowest repayment plan possible. I think I was able to stretch payments out over 28 years or something like that. I was very fortunate to consolidate when I did, heck had I known I could get money this cheap I probably would have taken out a lot more and just invested it.Anyway my initial payments will be $161 a month starting next August, which means I’ll have to find roughly $2000 a year from my already existing tight budget to start paying these loans :-|

The pursuit of the perfect savings rate

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:46:49 +0000

How do you ever become content with the amount you are saving for retirement?
Sorry if this is just a ramble and I know this isn’t the worst problem in the world to have, but I’ve found saving to be too damn addictive. To me it’s the same as salary, you’ll never be content. You always think to yourself, you know if I was making $10,000 more a year I’d be so content and wouldn’t ever need to make more money than that, I would have all I would ever need. Then all of a sudden you get that $10,000 boost in salary, your lifestyle/expectations adjust and all of a sudden you just need a little bit more to make you content.
Well I seem to have the same issue when it comes to saving. Originally when I was a kid I thought if I could just save $10,000 a year once I started working that I would be perfectly content with my retirement nest egg down the road. Well then I started working and really started saving I actually was saving a little over $16k a year, then $18k, and now $20k. Each and every time I come across an extra sum of money I didn’t have before I can’t help but instantly allocate nearly 100% of it to retirement accounts. Get a new job with a big salary - all goes to retirement. Get a raise - goes to retirement. Get a tax refund - goes to retirement. I know this is a great thing to do and 30 years from now I will understand how smart I was to do this, but when is it ever going to be enough.I’m saving $20,000 a year (all in Roth post tax accounts). Certainly that should make me content? Well I’m looking at switching jobs and its likely that I will end up making about $15-$20k more a year and you guessed it I’m thinking that if I do get a new job, I should probably put a chunk of that into boosting my retirement accounts. Only thing I think that might stop my madness is that even with the IRA increases next year to $5k a piece, the most I can put into my retirement accounts is about $25,000 a year (401k max of $15, IRA max of $5k for me and my wife). But then I should really save/invest some extra money into taxable accounts or my kids college education and well you see if it were up to me I’d save everything.
Certainly $25k a year in savings accounts should be enough, right? Well I am afraid where I am headed. My wife and I live frugally and I think both of us enjoy our lifestyle, it’s not a hard thing for us to save, we actually like it. At the same time if I have been so blessed with excess cash, I should probably enjoy some more of it now correct?
I know I can just decide what lifestyle I want to live in retirement figure out what that is and work my way backwards into a savings rate, but when you look at charts like this, it seems like a travesty to spend money on something as trivial as a TV/Xbox/Car when that money could grow into something so much more down the road, and really I can live without a Tv/Xbox/car just fine. Example lets say I got my eye on a $1000 plasma TV (yeah I know cheapo, but it’s a big step for me). I don’t just see it as a $1000 tv, I instantly start doing the math of what that $1000 could be compounded in the stock market 30 years down the road, and well there is no way I’m paying $20,000 for a damn tv ;-)
Anyway like I said I know it’s not the worst problem in the world, and I don’t exactly pinch every single penny, but how do I rationalize not saving every single extra dollar that I really don’t need?

Roth 401k rollover rules?

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 10:19:01 +0000

I have been contributing to my Roth 401k for the last year and am now considering looking for a new job so that I can make even more money and contribute even more to my retirement. When I leave my current employer I plan on rolling over both my Traditional 401k balance to a Traditional IRA and my Roth 401k balance to a Roth IRA.

Now seeing as how a Roth 401k is so new and so few companies have it I’m guessing I’m probably one of the leading pioneers here. My question revolves around how my Roth 401k rollover will be viewed by Uncle Sam. Seeing as how in a Roth IRA you can withdraw your contributions without penalty, when I roll over my Roth 401k will that just be considered one big contribution OR will they take them time to sort out investment gains from contributions in my Roth 401k and somehow relay this onto my new Roth IRA custodian?

Adjustment to Roth 401k Withholding percentage

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 13:35:04 +0000

Well I just sent in the form to change my Roth 401k withholding percentage from 17.5% to 20%. This change is the direct result of me following my plans laid out in my $100,000 by Age 30 post. Seeing as how I just got a raise this won’t hit the pocketbook as hard as it originally would have and really at the same time because of my raise 18 or 19% probably would have sufficed, but I’d rather just stick with my original plan and worst case scenario I end up with too much money. If anything I’d rather overdo it now as my money this year is worth a lot more money than next year’s (see waiting just 1 more year).

November 2006 - Retirement NestEgg Report

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 08:46:08 +0000

Well another good month for me. In fact over the last two months my accounts have gone up 13.39% or $5,366.88, which probably means I’ve got a few rough months coming up in the near future, but alas at least for now I have broken the $45,000 mark, just two months ago I was happy I had broke the $40k mark. Hopefully by the end of next year I will be in the $70,000 - $80,000 range, unless of course the market tanks which of course would be fine by me too. In fact I really shouldn’t be getting too excited about all of this growth as, assuming my investments are good investments I should be hoping for a huge downturn in the economy and thus my retirement nest egg. It’s a funny game we play, but at my age probably the best thing I could hope for is a recession. Anyway see my progress below.

Carnival of Personal Finance #76

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 22:20:36 +0000

Well we had 47 great entries for the carnival of personal finance this week. I read them all and tried to include a little comment about each submitted article. As far as ordering I just went with the first come first serve as I decided I liked that way of handling things after waiting outside Wal-Mart for 19 hours to get my hands on a couple PlayStation3s ;-).

However I did decide to highlight the one article I thought was the best of all the submissions in my humble opinion. Congratulations to My Financial Awareness for the post of the carnival

Timing the PS3 market

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 12:01:17 +0000

Well for those of you that didn’t know the new video game console from Sony came out last week, it’s called the Playstation 3, and well I’ve got 3 of them in my basement. It meant sitting outside a store for about 19 hours, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to sell the three consoles on Ebay for enough money to make my little adventure worth while.

This is the first time I have done anything like this as far as trying to play the arbitrage game with a hot item, but after watching what happened after the Xbox 360 launch last year, and all the reports of PS3 shortages I figured it might be worth a try. Well after getting home Friday morning from the launch I was pleasantly surprised to see PS3s going on Ebay for quite a bit of money. There were a lot of false bids, but it would be safe to say that they were going for about $6k on average for a good part of that day.

October 2006 - Retirement NestEgg Report

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:29:56 +0000

Well another pretty good month for me, in fact I don’t know if I’ve had this much organic growth ever in a month. Overall my retirement nestegg went up 7.39% and a majority of that was investment gains instead of additional principal added. Again its only one month and means absolutely nothing in the long term, but it’s sure nice to see things growing. In fact I should break the $50k mark sometime early next year.

Got a raise

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:37:30 +0000

Well I had kind of been pushing for a raise at my current job and today I got a raise. It certainly wasn’t anything anywhere near what I was hoping for, but it will give me a little more breathing room and hopefully will allow me to bump up my retirement savings a little bit, although I am going to try to hold back the reigns on me bumping up the retirement savings too much as I have a tendency to try to take every single additional penny and stick it away for retirement.
While not necessarily a bad thing, I think my wife/I deserve to have a little more breathing room in our day to day expenses and hopefully splurge on a few things we normally wouldn’t get (like landscaping or furniture) - hopefully my wife doesn’t read my blog because like I said this raise was very small and there isn’t much extra for splurge spending and I know she has a list :-).

Frugal Advice: Don’t drive on closed roads

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 20:10:42 +0000

Well I’ve always been wanting to write a entry or two on my pimp ride as I think it is one of the main reasons why I have been able to save as much money as I have so far, but I guess I’ll start with a story on how my car or more accurately my driving habits ended up costing me a good chunk of money.

First off I drive a 1990 Ford Escort extra rusty. Bought it two years ago for $900, it like any other car I have driven is not something you’ll lose sleep over if it gets a dent or scratch, in fact I’m quite proud of the dents and scratches that it has. Anyway, I was coming home from the Packer game this last Sunday (don’t want to talk about the game) and in Wisconsin we don’t exactly have a ton of people, which in turn means we don’t have the greatest highway system. Well for Packer games an extra 70,000 people make their way to Northeast Wisconsin, which causes the two main highways into Green Bay (41&43) to get considerably backed up before and after the Packers games. Well ok, compared to any other metro city its not really a back up, but sometimes the traffic slows down to 25 miles per hour. Well I saw this and being a local decided to take a back road the 40 or so miles back to my home town.

September 2006 - Retirement NestEgg Report

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 08:35:04 +0000

Well it’s the first time in a while all of my accounts were going in the right direction for the month. I also surpassed the $40,000 mark this month for the first time. While it’s not exactly a milestone it’s kind of nice to see the progress. Also my investments repassed my principal invested, which means I actually made some money on my investments as a whole :-)

My Roth IRA - $10,634.49 (+4.37%)
Wife Roth IRA - $11,701.88 (+0.77%)
Traditional 401K - $10,843.17 (+1.44%)
Roth 401K - $6,915.85 (+14.46%)

My other $100,000 by Age 30 goal

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 22:06:47 +0000

Kind of funny that even before I knew what the heck I was doing as far as actually have a job or planning out my retirement, I’ve always one financial goal for myself that I’ve kept in the back of my mind, but never put it down on paper err keystrokes and I think I’ve only shared it with one other person. I’ve never really been one to set goals for myself and goals such as saving $100,000 in principal by age 30 for retirement have come as a result of creating this blog and me looking for an excuse to have goals just like all the other bloggers had.

August 2006 - Retirement NestEgg Report

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 19:21:14 +0000

Increased my retirement nestegg about $1k this month, mainly due to contributions to my Roth 401k. Kind of boring, just like it should be.
My Roth IRA - $10,189.68 (-1.23%)
Wife Roth IRA - $11,613.00 (+1.10%)
Traditional 401K - $10,689.42 (+2.01%)
Roth 401K - $6,042.02 (+16.87%)
Total Retirement Nest Egg $38,534.12 (+2.89%)

Applied for Balance Transfer Card too

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 13:58:11 +0000

Seeing as how I just opened a new Chase Cash Plus Rewards Card, I figured if I’m going to do the balance transfer thing I might as well apply for that card right now too so that the ding on my credit score all happens at one time. I believe they group credit requests in a short period of time as one single inquiry, dunno we’ll see.

I just applied for the Citi Platinum Select MasterCard, and we’ll see how that goes. It has 0% interest on purchases AND balance transfers for 12 months, there are no fees even for balance transfers, and you can manage everything including the balance transfer request online. I didn’t get instantly approved, but hopefully I get this card, I just ran my credit score recently and it wasn’t too bad. For those of you that have done balance transfers, how do they determine what kind of credit limit to give you on the new card, I’ve seen some people out there with pretty signifigant credit limits and was just wondering how they went about getting them, the people at Chase wouldn’t budge anything over $10k for me.

2nd Chase Cash Plus Rewards Card

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 13:27:51 +0000

Well I maxed the $300 annual reward limit on my Chase Cash plus rewards card and I was dissappointed to find out that you can no longer get the card online anymore. Well through a friend I found out that you can still get this card by going into the actual Chase branches. I did so this afternoon and have my 2nd Cash Plus Rewards card on the way.The great thing about this card is that it pays 5% back on gas and groceries and 1% on everything else. What’s even better about this card is that it treats every single purchase at my local Super Walmart as Groceries and thus I get 5% back on all my Walmart purchases. Seeing as how I am already a Walmart junky this comes in very handy.
Also when signing up for the card I tried to pin the guy down about the future of this card, and he assured me that while Chase may phase out offering this card in the near future it will grandfather me into my existing program and I will be able to keep using it under these terms even if they kibosh the program. I don’t believe a word he told me as credit card companies can change their terms and conditions any time they want and likely if they are killing the program it wasn’t very profitable for them and they really have very little reason to grandfather the rest of the people in.
I also asked about the initial balance transfer optoins, bt as far as balance transfers go this card really stinks. When the new card comes I will get 0% interest on all purchases for 12 months, but they charge you 3% on all balance transfers and they would only preapprove me with a $10k credit limit. So I guess I will just use my two cash plus rewards cards for all my spending, I should be able to get about $600 a year in free money doing this and if I decide to play the balance transfer game I will use a more friendly company like Citi to do that.
Anyway if you like this card you can still get it by stopping in at a local Chase bank, personally I would probably recommend the Citi cards due to their flexible terms and ease of use (like requesting balance transfer online through web page and no fees), but I do all my other banking with Chase so I had some motivation to try to make things work within the Chase world. Unfortunately Citi does not have any banks that I know of in my area.

$100,000 by Age 30 - 2006 semi-annual review

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 07:30:29 +0000

Well it’s been a while since I set my goal of having $100,000 in principal put away for retirement by Dec 31 of the year I turn 30 in and well I figured I should check up on my progress and make sure I am on track.


Year	Age	Roth IRAs	Traditional 401k	Roth 401k	Total Contributions
2004	24.5	$6,000	$1,146.68	$0	$7146.68
2005	25.5	$8,000	$8,268.10	$0	$16,268.10
2006	26.5	$8,000	$0	$5,230.43	$13,230.43
Totals	26.5	$22,000	$9,432.78	$5,230.43	$37,875.49

Well the first thing I notice when I look at the chart is that my total contributions exceed my total accounts value, meaning I am losing money on my investments as a whole, although I took the Roth 401k contribution number off of my paycheck stub and not out of my actual retirement account and I am sure there are about $750-$1200 that my greedy employer is holding onto for a month or more before they actually deposit the money into my retirement account. The next thing I noticed is that I am right on track to meet my goal for the year of $17,380 - in fact I think I may exceed that mark slightly.

What percentage of your income to do you live on?

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 07:30:56 +0000

In my balance transfer post I mentioned that I currently put a big chunk of money away for retirement. I’m married, have a mortgage, and a kid, and well things are starting to get a little tight when it comes to my finances. No longer are there piles of money sitting around in bank accounts that I don’t know what do to with. In fact our cash flow is pretty much dead even or even going in the wrong direction the last couple months.

July 2006 - Retirement Nestegg Report

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:40:28 +0000

Well first off I apologize for missing last months report. I just finished up and post-dated the timestamp. You can find that report here. Anyway another dull month for me, but once again at least I’m still headed in the right direction, even if a majority of my gains were due to Roth 401k contributions. I was expecting to get matching funds from my employer for my 401k either last month or this month, but it has not been the case (good thing I decided to leave employer contributions out of any goal setting I did). Unlike some employers who put matching funds in with each paycheck deposit, my employer waits till the end of the year to decide what % they are going to match, during the hiring process they said historically it was $1 for $1 up to 6%, but talking to people last year they said previous year was more like 4%, anyway they decide this in January for your entire previous years contributions. They then don’t actually deposit this money until after the end of the 2nd quarter. Well end of 2nd quarter came and went and no deposit, I’ve sent an email about the matter but it has gone unanswered. Anyway enough complaining about my employer and more about the report.

Balance Transfers

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 07:15:34 +0000

When we bought our house last summer, I ended up taking out a $16,500 Home Equity Line of Credit to satisfy the 20% down rule and eliminate any PMI charges and secure a lower rate on the 30 year fixed mortgage I was taking out. Well I’ve whittled this down to a little under $6,000 in the first year, but I’ve kind of hit a wall now. Basically last two months I haven’t been able to make anything but the minimum payment on my HELOC and well the damn interest rate keeps going up, so I am thinking about playing the balance transfer game to pay off the HELOC for at least the next 12 months go give us some breathing room and save us about $42 a month in interest charges stemming from the HELOC. On top of that technically my HELOC will owe my Roth IRA accounts about $8,000 come Jan 1, so my HELOC still has some bite in it at this point and I’d be earning interest off of some credit card companies money rather than paying the mortgage company hard earned cash each month.

Festival of Frugality #33

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 07:30:50 +0000

Well this is my first time hosting a festival/carnival so please excuse me if I mess something up. Anyway we had 28 submissions to this week’s festival. Enjoy!

David presents How we paid down our debt and saved money at the same time..it can be done! posted at The Good Human

AJ presents More ways to reduce paper posted at Pocket Change

Steve Faber presents Painless Ways to Save Money Around Your Home posted at Debt Free

Chase Cash Plus Rewards Card still around

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 07:00:08 +0000

A couple of months ago it appeared that Chase was ditching the Cash Plus Rewards card that so many people in the PF community loved. This card offered 5% back on grocery & gas purchases and 1% back on everything else. Well I was really disappointed when it appeared that Chase pulled the plug on this card (I think less than a year after they implemented it) because I bank at Chase and well I like to be able to access all of my accounts from one on web page and have on point of contact for my banking/credit cards.
Well a buddy of mine who I work with has a wife who is a higher-up at Chase and it turns out that Chase is still offering the Cash Plus rewards card, but its only being offered by signing up in a Chase branch office (you know this building things where people used to bank back in the 80s and 90s). I have not gone and verified this yet, but my buddy and his wife just went in and signed up for another Cash Plus Rewards card at the local branch.This is very good news because I have reached the $300 annual cap on my existing Cash Plus Rewards card and am looking to get a 2nd rewards card to maximize my reward money. I was just going to go with the Citi Platinum dividend card which has the exact same rewards program, but if I can keep it all with one company I will probably go ahead and do that.

My Credit Score

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:34:44 +0000

Well I went ahead and splurged and paid the $5.95 to get my credit score with my free credit reports and my score currently is an 861. I believe that’s pretty good, although its not as high as it could be (scores range from 400-925). I have nothing negative on any of my credit reports and well there shouldn’t be. I’m guessing my credit score is hurt by lack of history seeing as how I am only 26 and my credit history is only a couple years old…. and possibly that my mortgage is still at about 78-80% utilization. Anyway I guess the score is high enough that should I ever need credit I can probably secure it, but I’m kind of ticked that I’m not in the 900s…oh well.

Free Credit Report

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 12:55:55 +0000

Well it’s been a little over a year since we moved into our house and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to run a free credit report on myself with the three credit reporting agencies. For those of you that don’t know you can request a free credit report every 12 months by going to http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com. You just enter in your Name, Date of Birth, SSN, and address information and you can then go get a free credit report from Transunion, Experian, and Equifax. It really is pretty simple. Once you get to the individual credit reporting sites you may be asked a few more specific questions about your credit history just to further verify it is you, but all in all it is pretty painless and best of all it’s free, so if you haven’t done it go ahead and check it out.

Frugal Tip - Don’t buy shaving cream

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 07:30:18 +0000

Well I recently had a coworker send me an article on the evils of shaving cream and after reading the article I quit using shaving cream cold-turkey and I couldn’t be happier. Not only can I shave quicker and safer, but think of all the money I will be saving by not every having to buy shaving cream or after-shave for the rest of my life. Well ok it’s not that much at less than $2 per can that probably lasts 3-4 months, but still if I can spend less money on something and get better results I’m a happy guy. Besides building lasting wealth is more about small boring monotonous things like this rather than the get rich quick using some glamorous method that you saw on an infomercial or MSNBC.

Hiatus

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:00:14 +0000

Well in case you haven’t notice I’ve been AWOL for over the last month. Well not sure what happened but it got warm and I’ve just been spending time enjoying the 3 months of “not winter” here in Wisconsin and spending time with the family. I’m a computer nerd and probably averaged about 12 hrs on the computer a day, but honestly this summer I rarely touch it outside of work lately. It’s actually been kind of refreshing and I’m sure I’ll be back more once the snow starts flying and instead of golfing or chasing the kid around the yard I’ll inside on the computer delaying shoveling the driveway for the 5th time that day.

June 2006 - Retirement NestEgg Report (Late -10 points)

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 16:56:54 +0000

Sorry about missing this report. Well despite another month of subpar performance I actually made some forward progress solely in part to my Roth 401k contributions.

My Roth IRA - $10,548.22 (-3.03%)
Wife Roth IRA - $11,824.13 (-0.03%)
Traditional 401K - $10,032.09 (-4.54%)
Roth 401K - $4684.31 (46.08%)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $37,088.75 (+1.17%)

Retirement NestEgg Report - May 2006

Wed, 31 May 2006 16:27:51 +0000

Well this is the first months since I started tracking my retirement accounts that I actually had a net loss for the month. Overall my accounts decreased in value over $800 for over a 2% loss. It would have been much worse if I had not have had $1154 in new contributions added via my 401k this month. So in essense the value of my stocks went down over $2000 in a single month. This goes to show you that the stock market is too risky of a place for your money and I am going to sell all of my stocks and stick my money in something safe like a money market account
……just kidding. Despite the fact that if I SOLD all my holdings today they would be worth $2000 less than if i SOLD them just a month ago this is what you should expect if you invest as heavily in stocks as I do. Does it suck to see your account value shrink by so much in such a short time for no good reason…..Yup, does it mean I did something drastically wrong and should pull the plug on the whole operation and try something else….I’d say no.

Frugal Lawncare - Part I

Fri, 19 May 2006 06:13:37 +0000

Well after my go around with the chemlawn guy I think his salespitch actually started working, although not necessarily in his favor. Basically what he got me doing was thinking about my lawn and well my pride as a past golf course worker started to get the best of me. Certainly I was still not delirious enough to actually pay the guy loads of money to spray some crap on my lawn so that it would look good for a week or two until I’d have to have him come back and spray again. It did however make me delirious enough to actually care about my lawn.

April 2006 - Retirement Nestegg Report

Mon, 01 May 2006 16:47:41 +0000

This month wasn’t spectacular, but most of my accounts were on the positive side and my overall retirement nestegg grew by 1.6%, which if that happens every month going forward I will be a very happy man.

My Roth IRA - $11,824.47 (-0.88%)
Wife Roth IRA - $12,193.85(+1.48%)
Traditional 401K - $11,037.15(+1.65%)
Roth 401K - $2,208.19 (+18.6%)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $37,263.66 (+1.63%)

Top three gadgets that can actually save you money

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 16:56:35 +0000

Ran across this article today about gadgets that can actually save you money. I guess the topic of the article got me because lots of times items that are suppose to “save you money” actually cost your more in the long run. Example: hybrid cars. Anyway one item that caught my eye from the article was the Spin-x-dryer. It is a spin dryer that uses centrifugal force to dry your clothes. Supposedly it uses the same amount of energy that your normal dryer uses in the first 15 seconds of operation (I’d like to see some more stats on this as that is kind of a unique statistic), but anyway it seemed pretty cool. On top of that it supposably dries your clothes that much faster, although I am not sure what the capacity on that thing is. Anyway I had never heard of a spin dryer before and well I’ve never bought a dryer and hopefully won’t be in the market for one for quite a while I guess I would at least take a closer look at a spin dryer.
See rest of article here Gadgets that can save you money

Carnival of Investing #18

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 12:16:53 +0000

This week I am participating in the Carnival of Investing #18 being hosted over at BluePrint for Financial Prosperity. I submitted my article on Realistic Rate of Return, which right now is a 3-part post, but I hope to be adding at least 1 or two more parts to the series this week. There aren’t a ton of entries in the carnival at this point due to some confusion as of late with this carnival due to the creator of the carnival (RetireAt30) being MIA. Hopefully he is alright, but in the meantime if you wish to participate in this carnival you will need to email your submission directly to the weekly host as the submission forms over at Conservative Cat and Blog Carnival no longer work. Jim @ BFBluePrint will be accepting entries to this week’s carnival until Tuesday night otherwise if you wish to participate in next week’s carnival it’s probably safest just to contact Kirby on Finance (next week’s host) directly through his contact form.

Why save when you can barter instead?

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 11:25:53 +0000

Check out this pretty interesting article on CNN about a guy who started out with a big red paper clip and plans on trading and bartering his way up to a house. He’s made some incredible progress already and if I had to make a guess I’d say he ends up succeeding. If you are too lazy to read the article, the gist is he trades the paper clip for something he thinks has more value and then takes that item and trades it for something that is of more value, etc. etc. Kind of like value investing is some weird twisted way.

Best Jobs in America

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:54:35 +0000

CNN has an article today that lists the Top jobs in America. The #1 job listed was Software Engineer, which is essentially what I do for a living. I’ve also noticed that a pretty good chunk of personal finance bloggers are also software engineers. Interesting survey and it kind of makes it hard to complain about your job if its ranked #1 in the country, but I still don’t think I’ll be doing this my whole life. While I enjoy the work and it’s good money (although I don’t make anywhere near the average salary listed in the survey), I eventually will want a job with a little more freedom or that is more rewarding.

Realistic Rate of Return - Part III

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:01:44 +0000

In Part I of this series I talked about how important it is to come up with an accurate rate of return when doing financial planning.

In Part II I talked about my asset allocation being 100% stocks and some of my rationale for that and briefly touched on some of expected rates of returns for stocks and some of the reasons why most individual investors can’t attain those rates.

Festival of Frugality #18

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 06:57:37 +0000

The festival of frugality #18 is posted over at Canadian Capitalist . Go check it out there are tons of great articles on how to make your money go the extra mile. There’s also a useless rant about ChemLawn included in the carnival :-)

Realistic Rate of Return - Part II

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 06:49:53 +0000

As I mentioned in Part I in the comments, I am invested 100% in stocks. My rationale for this, which could be flawed, is that stocks have historically without a question been the best long term investment vehicle for your money. Yes there are a lot of up and downs, but over periods of 10-20 years this volatility is less of an issue, so in my mind the risk is mitigated. Like I said I’m young and don’t know everything, but until someone proves me wrong this is the strategy I’m sticking with. In my mind I would be throwing money away by investing in bonds, real estate, gold, etc.

Disclaimer

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 20:36:13 +0000

Any information shared on MyFinancialJourney.Com does not constitute financial advice. The Website is intended to provide general information only and does not attempt to give you advice that relates to your specific circumstances. You are advised to discuss your specific requirements with an independent financial adviser. All content is provided ‘AS IS’ with no warranties, and confers no rights. All Rights are reserved. Some assembly may be required. Batteries are not included. Keep out of reach of children under the age of 6. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery while reading this blog. Discuss your general health status with your doctor to ensure that you are healthy enough to engage in personal finance activity. If you experience chest pain, nausea, or any other discomforts while reading this blog, seek immediate medical help.

Realistic Rate of Return - Part 1

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 06:45:10 +0000

In producing the many excel spreadsheets that I have that tell me how much I need to save to in order to get x dollars x years down the road, I’m always kind of curious as to what I should put in there for my compound annual return rate. Certainly having a realistic and accurate return rate is vital to any kind of financial planning exercise. Especially seeing as how most of my calculations span 30 or more years of investment performance the return rate can drastically change the final numbers. If I were to set my expected return rate too high I would drastically over inflate my numbers and be poorly disappointed with my actual results.

Will my frugality send my kid to the hospital?

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 06:14:53 +0000

Today I had the pleasure of dealing with the door to door salesman for ChemLawn. After analyzing my yard he came up with a list of things that needed immediate attention. There was gaping hole next to the driveway where I drive my car over the corner of the lawn every day after pulling up to get my mail before heading into the garage, a couple of bare spots, gopher holes, and (gasp)…..weeds. After telling me that he could fix all of these problems for me throughout the summer by stopping by every 3 weeks and spraying chemicals all over my lawn for the low price of $65 a time he wanted to know when he could set up an appointment.

March 2006 - Retirement Nest Egg Report

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 06:36:36 +0000

This month was actually another pretty good month for me. Individually I made up a ton of ground on my wife in my Roth IRA account. Before last month she was nearly $600 a head of me in her Roth IRA account, but after strong showing by SHFL and HWAY last month I’m now within $100 of her. Also realized a made a mistake on my Traditional 401k account balance last month as my 401k provider lumps the two together and I forgot to subtract out my Roth 401k to get my Traditional 401k, so I overstated that value $606.23 last month….oops. Anyway here are my monthly totals, it’s great to see that number growing and growing each and every month. Just 3 months ago I was only at $24k!

Our HELOC

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 07:38:18 +0000

I know I don’t include my debt when it comes to figuring out my net worth, and I think my reasons for that are still valid. However by not tracking it on my blog, it is not on the forefront of my mind every day and well I don’t get to hear people’s opinions on my entire financial picture. Anyway part of the reason for not including my Mortgage/HELOC was because they were “cheap” debt that I did not need to worry about and that the focus of this blog was getting me to retirement and I did not see my mortgage debt or student loans getting in my way. They would just slowly get paid off over the next 30 years so when it came to retirement they would no longer exist.

Money Blog Network Forums

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 19:57:54 +0000

The Money Blog Network recently opened up a forum at http://forums.moneyblognetwork.com/ If you are a personal finance blogger check it out, the forums just started but there is already tons of great information out there. In fact after reading a post today, I’m already starting to rethink my philosophy from this post I made yesterday about what to write on my blog - I guess it really is not that important to be completely unique with every post because not everyone out there reads 100 pf blogs a day like I do and what may redundant information to me may not be for readers who only read a few blogs a day.

Writing content for a Personal Finance Blog

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:13:42 +0000

I’ve only been blogging for about 3 months now, so I’m still trying to find the best method to go about maintaining this site. One of the issues I struggle with is what to post and how often to post. While I know its important to post regularly to keep people interested in your blog, I also think that you can go over board with lots and lots of trivial posts. I know I have removed some blogs from my RSS feed just because they post too darn much and I’d never have the time to read every single post.

Carnival of Personal Finance #40

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:21:20 +0000

I’m participating in the Carnival of Personal Finance for the second straight week. Tons of excellent articles being hosted over at All Things Financial. Go check it out!!

Am I saving too much in tax-advantaged accounts?

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 12:17:14 +0000

Kind of feel weird even suggesting such a thought, because as a personal finance nut it is my job to fully take advantage of every possible edge I can use to stretch my dollars. Whether it is signing up for the rewards card with the biggest cash back, putting money in the highest yield savings account, or stashing as much money away as possible where Uncle Sam can’t get his grimy mitts on it. However I am continually wondering if I may be going overboard on my retirement savings, in fact I’m honestly worried that by putting so much money away in my retirement accounts that I may actually be delaying my retirement. Eeek!

Cashed in my hoard of savings bonds

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 16:15:28 +0000

Today I gathered up all of the savings bonds that my wife and I had accumulated over the years and took them to the bank to be cashed in. It’s the first time I had ever tried to cash in a savings bond and well the process wasn’t entirely too painful. We ended having almost $1000 in savings bonds between us and we’ll be using the money to pay off our HELOC instead. I’m also happy because now I don’t have to worry about misplacing or losing the bond certificates, just bugs me not having electronic proof my assets. If you want to know what your savings bonds are worth a good website to use is http://wwws.publicdebt.treas.gov/BC/SBCPrice (actually came up with the same amounts the bank did).

Credit Scores Revamped

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:18:48 +0000

It appears that the three main credit reporting agencies have decided to adopt the same scoring system for determining your credit score. In the past each company had its own method of determining credit scores and each had different ranges of possible scores.

See Article Here

I think this is a pretty good idea as before the credit scores really did not mean anything concrete, you basically were getting three different numbers based on different criteria and to make matters worse they were based on different scoring scales. At least now they have to follow the same formula and an 800 will be the same at Transunion, Experian, and Equifax. Your score however will still be different among the three agencies due to the fact that each agency still keeps its own records on your credit history and this could result in different credit scores.

My First Carnival!

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 07:00:40 +0000

I am participating in my first carnival this week (Carnival of Personal Finance) hosted at Personal Finance Advice. I submitted “Reasons you should not save for retirement” article to the carnival, while it pales in comparison to the quality of the other articles in the carnival, I felt it was one of the better articles I have written so far (I actually proofread it after I wrote it). Anyway you check out the carnival here.

Waiting Just One More Year To Start Investing

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 08:06:20 +0000

How many years do you have till retirement? Thinking about putting off saving for retirement just one more year? Well check out the chart below to see what it will cost you.

In my case I am 26.5 years old and the earliest I can withdraw any money from my retirement accounts is when I am 59.5, so I have 33 years till retirement. If I look at my chart it says that every dollar I invest this year will be worth 23.23 times that when I turn 59.5 (assuming I get 10% annualized growth). So if I invest $1000 this year, it would be worth $23,230 when I retire…..$10,000 invested now would be worth $232,300….you get the idea. Well lets say I decide to hold onto my $10,000 just one more year now that money will only have 32 years to grow and would only be worth $211,100. So I would essentially lose over $21,000 at retirement just by putting it off 1 year.

Reasons why you should not save for retirement

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:36:47 +0000

When it comes to saving for retirement most people are pretty good at coming up with excuses as to why they can’t save for retirement right now. There’s the mortgage, the cost of raising kids, just not getting paid enough at work, need a new car, need to remodel the house, putting it off until they are older, don’t know how to invest, the stock market stinks right now, need to pay off the credit cards, really want to a buy a new (fill in the blank) first. I’ll admit it saving for retirement is not that easy. Especially if you haven’t been in the habit of saving before. It’s kind of like trying to get to the gym and exercise to lose those extra 20lbs you put on. There never seems to be enough time to get around to it and in the beginning it can be pretty overwhelming and you are likely to be fairly unsuccessful starting out so most people either never start or quit shortly after.

Roth 401K Contribution Increase

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:09:50 +0000

Well our HR department sent out the form that allows us to modify our contribution percentage for the upcoming quarter. I went ahead and bumped up my percentage from 14% to 17.5%. This increase is a direct result of the planning I did in this post.

I’ll kind of be curious as to what this does to our disposable income. Obviously it will reduce it by 3.5%, but in the past anytime I made an increase to my savings rate I really did not notice it when it came to our money supply that is used to pay for our living expenses. I think I am finally getting to the tipping point where if I increase it anymore we will eventually start running out of money in our checking account, but hopefully this is not the case.

$100,000 by Age 30 Report Update (Feb 2006)

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 20:28:46 +0000

As you may know I decided earlier this month to set a goal for myself to save $100,000 in principal by the time I am 30. This is a pretty ambitious goal seeing as I have less than 4 years before the goal is suppose to be met and am not even a third of the way there.

As for checkups on this goal I probably won’t do a separate report for this every month as really it’s just tracking principal deposits into my retirement accounts and after the Roth IRA deposits at the beginning of this year there won’t be much excitement, just the bi-weekly 401k contributions. I will probably just do periodic checkups every quarter to coincide with my opportunities to up my 401k contribution percentage.

Feb 2006 - Retirement NestEgg Report

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:39:02 +0000

Seeing as how I solidified my $100,000 by Age 30 Goal and seeing as how the goal is based simply on contributions alone, I think I will release a separate post each month detailing the process on that goal as the numbers will be different than Net Worth Report. I’m also contemplating changing the name of my “Net Worth Report” to “Retirement Nest Egg Report” as I think that better describes what I am tracking.

Taking my own advice

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:07:54 +0000

Well today I took my own advice and transferred about $6,000 that I had laying around in my ING Direct account and used it to pay down my HELOC. Some of this money is spoken for (2007 Roth IRAs), but either way I am better off putting any money that isn’t immediately needed towards my HELOC and then when Jan 1 comes around next year I will simply just write the checks from my HELOC for the IRA contributions.

Wal-Mart Wallet Photos for a whole lot less

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 09:27:14 +0000

I’m cheap or well frugal and I’m sort of proud of it. It’s not so much that I mind spending money, but if I know I can use my own ingenuity to find the same item for less I’m all for it. Besides not spending money on crap I don’t need, I often find ways to get the items I do need for less. I actually find it kind of fun and this is just one example of where I’ve used a little thought and effort on my part to save myself a few bucks.
My wife and I had our first kid this last summer, and with a new kid comes all kinds of expenses you never had before. One of those expenses is pictures. Not only is it your responsibility as a parent to have a freeze frame snap shot of every moment of your newborn babies life from birth to kindergarten, you are also obligated to send these pictures to all your friends and family members at every milestone in your child’s life (baby’s birth announcement, baby’s baptism, baby’s first Christmas, baby’s first Easter, etc.) Well we already purchase dang near everything at Wal-Mart so it was only natural that we decided to get our photos done there too. Wal-Mart’s photo prices are very competitively priced and when I was placing the order online I was going to do the frugal thing and order wallets to save money, instead of spending the extra money sending everyone a normal 4x6 photograph.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Wal-Mart will develop a 4x6 for you @12 cents a picture and will develop Wallets for you at a price of 54 cents for 2 wallets!! That’s right even though it is rather significantly less photo paper and thus less cost for them to print you two wallets vs. the 1 4x6 they charge you an extra 42 cents for it. In other words the per picture cost of a wallet is 27 cents versus the 12 cents for the 4 x 6 which is about 2.5 times bigger than the wallet. This made absolutely no sense to me and after I explained the situation to my wife she agreed that we should just order 4x6 prints if they were going to be cheaper.
Already feeling proud that I wasn’t suckered into Wal-Marts scheme to rip me off on their wallets, I decided that I could do one even better. I quickly copied the photograph I was getting developed into Microsoft Paint.

Credit cards better for my net worth than high yield savings like ING Direct?

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:47:38 +0000

Soon after I got my first job I got my first credit card. Because I traveled a lot for work and ended up putting a lot of company expenses on my credit card, I decided to get an airline miles card so that I could rack up the points. I put absolutely every possible expense that I can on my credit card and its amazing how fast the miles add up.
In fact after only two years of owning the credit card I had racked up over 60,000 miles. I believe that was good for one round trip ticket to Hawaii and plenty of points left over. The only problem is that I have a kid now and my wife and I don’t see my wife and I traveling anywhere anytime soon. Luckily Chase recently allowed me to cash my points in for gift cards as well as airline tickets. So I cashed out all my points and got a load of Home Depot gift cards.

PfBlogs.org

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 20:50:36 +0000

Well after technically only having my blog up for about a week, I noticed getting a bunch of traffic coming from PfBlogs.org. I went to check out their site and they have a pretty awesome collection of personal finance blogs out there all consolidated into once nice website with an RSS aggregator. Anyway besides that extra traffic boost to my site, the site itself is a pretty cool concept and it looks like it is not for profit so you don’t have to be worried about getting blasted with ads in order to get access to the content.

$100,000 by Age 30

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 13:05:53 +0000

Well you might have noticed I put a little progress bar on the right hand side of my blog to track my goal of having $100,000 put away in retirement accounts by the time I reach age 30. Well by putting that stupid little chart over on the side of my blog really got me to thinking about this goal, more as in - can I actually achieve that goal. Up till this point I just thought it would be a nice goal to achieve but by having it staring me in the face every time I look at my blog it makes me wonder if I’m going to make a fool out of myself by trying to achieve what appears to be a lofty goal.
Edit: some of the spreadsheet have been changed since original post as I found out my 2004 401k contributions were much lower than I stated and that my 2005 contributions were actually higher. Actually lowered my contributions by $567
I mean I’ve only got 3.5 years to go from $30,000 to $100,000 and my living expenses are constantly going up which will make achieving this goal even harder. Also I had originally planned on having $100,000 in principal put away (ignoring investment returns), but after switching solely to Roth IRA & Roth 401k, both post-tax I think this goal is now out of my grasp. Anyway I need to know more, so I figured I should do some more detailed analysis on this goal to see if it is possible given my current savings rate and what rate of return I need to achieve this goal.First I am just going to look at reaching $100,000 solely on principal

Roth 401k checkup

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 12:11:38 +0000

Well I have only had 2 months worth of paycheck deductions at the new higher deduction level due to my switching over to the Roth 401K from a traditional IRA (see my posts here and here), but I am pretty sure I am not going to run out of money losing the extra $67 out of each paycheck. In fact I am even contemplating bumping it up a few percentage points more starting next quarter(earliest I can adjust the percentage).

It’s common sense, but I’m an idiot

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:32:30 +0000

My wife and I bought a house this last summer, and we opted not to put 20% down because well I’m not sure we had exactly 20% to put down and the interest rates we so low that I figured I would be better off investing the extra money rather than putting more money down on the house. Well this discussion (paying off mortgage vs. investing) gets debated all the time. Some people argue you should pay off the mortgage as fast as you can because it’s a guaranteed return on your money and you have that sense of security when your house is paid off and you don’t have that payment hanging over your head every month. Other people say your mortgage rate is probably only 5-8% and those payments are tax deductible so you’re likely really only paying in 3-6% and you can certainly do better than 3-6% in the stock market, so you are better off investing the money. Really in many cases its personal preference, and me being the young optimistic investor that I am decided that I was going to go the investing route vs. paying off the mortgage.

Wife’s Roth IRA Contribution

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:58:58 +0000

Well I decided that we aren’t going to run out of money in the near future, so I went ahead and sent my wife’s 2006 Roth IRA contribution off to Scottrade. This means that other than my 401k we won’t be able to contribute anymore money to our retirement accounts until 2007, but it also means that we are being proactive and have already contributed our 2006 contributions before probably a majority of people who do actually contribute to their IRAs make their 2005 tax contribution (sometime shortly before they file their taxes on April 15th).

New site & New Name

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:46:03 +0000

Well in case someone actually read my previous blog you can tell I got a new site and also a new name. Previously my blog was titled “My Financial Goals” and was hosted over at blogspot. Well I really wanted more control over my blog and decided to move to Wordpress and host the blog on its own domain. The domain MyFinancialGoals was not available so I ended up going with MyFinancialJourney.com - which in the end I think I like even better.

Jan 2006 - Net Worth Report

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:24:00 +0000

Well I made some pretty good progress this month. Most of it was due to making a $4,000 contribution to my Roth IRA account. I haven’t deposited my wife’s $4k yet because I wasn’t exactly sure what my cash flow situation was coming off of Christmas/My Wife’s birthday(piano) and I honestly have no idea what taxes are going to be like this year, so I decided to play it safe and hold onto it for a month or two as a cushion so our cash reserves don’t get too low.

Where the heck is the author?

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:00:00 +0000

Sorry I haven’t been very diligent in putting up new content lately. I am actually working on upgrading my blog and will be moving it to my own webhost with its own domain. Hopefully I get this done by this weekend and then I will start posting articles/comments on a regular basis again.

Also I may actually change the title of my blog as MyFinancialGoals is not an available domain name.

About Me

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:06:25 +0000

I am a software developer who for some reason really likes personal finance. I am married and have ~~one child~~ ~~two~~ ~~three~~ ~~four~~ five children. Other than my family and finance I am really into sports. I graduated with a degree in CIS (Computer Information Systems) in 2002 and started working full-time immediately after college while also going for my MBA (Masters of Business Adminstration) which I completed in the fall of 2004. Other than that I’d like to at least initially keep some degree of anonyminity, because I’m likely to make a fool of myself on here :-).

Compound Interest Article

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:33:00 +0000

While I had heard this story in the past and was actually planning on doing a write up on it for this blog, but after reading the blog entry on Personal Finance Advice I decided there is no way I could do a better job. Check out the article here

This is a great example of the power of compounding interest.

“The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest” - Albert Einstein

Disclaimer

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 12:44:00 +0000

Maybe I should have mentioned this right away but I really have no clue what I am doing. I am not an expert, nor even that knowledgeable about investing or saving for retirement. I really have very little experience in financial matters and my career has absolutely nothing to do with financials of any sort (computer programming). Anything that I say on this blog is most likely just my opinion and has no scientific data or knowledge to back it up. Most of what I say will be a culmination of what I have learned so far or just some convoluted idea I came up with myself. If by chance I do state some fact or figure assume it is just some number I made up in my head. In instances where I am actually using valid data or viewpoints I’ll be sure to point that out for you and include the source.

Goals Rough Draft

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:30:00 +0000

Well I have been thinking a lot about some of the financial goals for myself and I think I will just list them all here and decide which ones to fine tune and set for myself on this blog.

Accumulate $100,000 in retirement savings by the time I am 30 years old
I like this goal because one it is a nice BIG round number that would give me a sense of pride and accomplishment.

December 2005 Net Worth Calculation

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 20:00:00 +0000

Note: Hopefully this will get prettier as time goes on

Traditional 401k Account Balance = $10,147.11
Roth 401k Balance = $0
My Roth IRA = $6763.21
Wife’s Roth IRA = $7706.61

Net Worth = $24,616.93

Tracking My Net Worth

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:12:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking about how I am going to track my net worth. A lot of the blogs out there have very detailed records of their financial wherewithal (checking, savings, 401k, IRAs, taxable accounts, Home Equity, Mortgage, Student Loans, etc) Heck My Open Wallet even let everyone know that she has exactly $2.02 in her wallet and this balances out to her Quicken Cash balance. While I commend her for having such an accurate picture of her financial picture, I currently do not have a mastery of Quicken to that degree (just got it around Christmas) and nor do I think it will be necessary to track my financials that detailed as far this blog is concerned. While it is very important to know exactly where your money is and where it is going in order to successfully reach your goals, I’ve tended to shoot slightly more from the hip (at least that’s my perception of myself).

Roth 401K: Cont

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 17:46:00 +0000

Well I didn’t exactly get to my follow up post as quickly as I would have liked to, but here goes. Well I ended up sending the form in and leaving my contribution at 14%. According to my calculations I had figured this would cost me an extra $124 out of every paycheck. Now I have our budget strung pretty tight as it is, but when it comes to saving for retirement I tend to act irresponsible like this and splurge on my retirement. I’ve done this a number of times in the past and I’ve never had cash flow problems yet, somehow there always seems to be enough money left over to pay the bills.

Roth 401k

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 09:09:00 +0000

Well I planned on starting this blog with more introductory articles on the basics investing tools available, but my employer just decided to offer a Roth 401k plan and I have to fill out the form today so I figured I’d blog about my decision process when filling out the form.

For those of you who don’t know a Roth 401k is a new savings vehicle that the IRS is releasing as of January 1, 2006. A Roth 401k is very similar to a Roth IRA in that any money you contribute to the plan you have to pay taxes on. The good news is that because you paid the taxes on the money up front any money you make along the way is tax free and when you withdraw any money from this account after age 59.5 the money is also tax free.

My Investing History

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:40:00 +0000

I figure I would give you a little history about my investments so far. I graduated college in 2002 with a Computer Information Systems degree and got a job as a programmer making $45,000 a year out of college.

While it didn’t happen right away I knew I wanted to start investing my money ASAP possible. I had always figured that if I started putting say $10,000 a year away when I first started working I would never miss the money or have to adjust my lifestyle to accommodate my saving/investing habits.

What are my goals?

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 21:27:00 +0000

Well I suppose seeing as how the title of this blog is “My Financial Goals” - I suppose I should actually talk about what my goals are. Now despite the blog title I really have not been a big proponent of setting goals for myself. I know I subconsciously have ideas of what I would like to accomplish in my life, I have never before actually defined a goal and written it down somewhere. In the past I have always been pretty good about accomplishing my secret subconscious “goals”, but who knows maybe I just forgot about the goals I had failed to attain. So at this point in time I am going to dig into my subconsciousness and put some of these goals I have for myself out on paper…err well electronic storage.

High School Econ and Yoohoo

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 21:13:00 +0000

Well after exponentiation lessons in Math class I really had no reason to think about investing. Heck that was only for grown up people with jobs, I’d have to wait to put my devious plan into action. So really investing did not consume much of my thoughts through high school. Senior year I took an Economics class and while we discussed relevant economic theories I probably was too busy oogling at the girls in the class because I honestly don’t remember much about the theory being taught in the class and really did not understand the stock market at all.

What got me interested in Investing?

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 20:54:00 +0000

What got me into investing? Well I am not exactly sure how old I was, but I know I was in Math class and learning about exponentiation, pretty sure it was still in grade school. Anyway as usual my mind began to wander and I probably was not paying attention to the task at hand anymore, but for some reason I decided to think of exponentiation in terms of money. Again I have no idea why because investing was not something I had ever discussed with anyone before and money really was not an important part of my life at that point. Anyway I took my calculator and punched in a sum of money, something like a 6% rate of return, for 40 years. I couldn’t believe my eyes!! How could such a small amount of money grow into such a large sum, without having to do anything . Well I continued on punching in bigger initial investments, higher rates of returns, over even longer periods of time and soon came the conclusion that if I could somehow find a way to get some bank or something to give me like 5 or 6% return over my lifetime I would be very wealthy. I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t do this and why people didn’t just bite the bullet and put a bunch of money away for the next generation or the generation after that. I mean the number coming out of my calculator for compounding money over 100 years was amazing!!

Welcome

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 17:20:00 +0000

Welcome!!

You must have somehow mistyped, misclicked, or missearched and ended up on my blog page. I am starting this blog to track my financial journey through life. Despite the blog’s title I don’t really have my financial goals set in stone, or for that matter I’m not sure I have even set a whole lot of goals for myself, but well that will be the purpose of this blog.

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