Personal Finances – July, 2010
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This was a decent month for me financially. It wasn’t great, but it was better than others. We took a couple of trips as the summer is starting to wind down and it will be back to school for my girlfriend in a few weeks. Our first trip was to the Renaissance Faire just over the Wisconsin border. That wasn’t too pricey of a trip. Maybe $30 for each of us with admission and food included. We then took a trip to Wisconsin Dells which wasn’t too expensive (around $140) since we stayed at a friend’s house for the night. Good fun that theoretically was paid for by my moves in the stock market!
One of my stock positions was up 25%, so I sold all but that gain and have my initial investment back. The extra 25% is still paying me dividends and is continuing to grow in value. It was only a $100 gain in the stock, but it’s now money that I didn’t have originally that is continuously making me money now. It would have taken me over two years to make that gain if the stock went nowhere and I was collecting the dividends. I won’t be collecting as much now, but it was a trade that was well worth it! I am also up in one of my positions in another stock after I bought it again on the way down. That’s going to be another win!
I also received $50 in cashback rewards from my credit card, which I could have used to get rewarded even further with gift cards where I would get an extra $5 or so, but I decided to pad my checking account instead. The Best Buy Reward Zone was even kind to me as I received $20 in rewards that are going to be applied to Halo Reach when it comes out in September.
Overall, my cash position is down a little after I added money to my Scottrade account, but my investments are up, which I am all about, and my liabilities are down! I also realized that I could pay off my car right now if I wanted to sell all of my stocks. It is something I have been thinking about, but I am going to wait to see how my job goes with the winter coming up.
$1,716.83 Total Income
$1,600.00 Monthly Pay Checks
$1.41 Checking Account Interest
$0.31 Savings Account Interest
$25.87 Dividends ($86.01 / qtr.)
$89.24 Prosper Loans
$1,223.86 Total Expenses
$200.00 School Loans
$192.00 Car Payment
$450.00 Food & Utilities
$130.00 Gas
$72.00 Cell Phone
$50.00 Entertainment
$129.86 Insurance
$492.97 Net Monthly Cash Flow
$116.83 Passive Income
9.55% Passive Income % of Expenses
$8,886.77 Total Assets
$562.83 Checking Account
$311.10 Savings
$54.24 Scottrade Account
$46.73 Prosper Account
$24.23 ChaCha Account
$0.00 Paypal Account
$1,759.93 IRA
$84.45 401k Vested
$6,043.26 in Stock
$1,133.91 Loans on Prosper
$18,211.84 Total Liabilities
$11,374.16 School Loans
$6,139.90 Car Loan
$697.78 Credit Card
-$9,325.07 Net Worth
$4.91 from Magpie Advertisements
$3.75 from Sponsored Tweets (Great if you use Twitter!)
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3 Comments on this post
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nutinfancy said:
that is tough. to see the end of a note in sight. No. Don’t liquidate your positions to pay off that loan. It was made to be over time for a reason. The reason is to give you options for your other money. Yes it costs more, and yes you pay interest, but don’t get out of the market to pay that off. Certainly you could invest more without having that bill (the car payment). But ask yourself this? Is the time value of that money (repaying the loan) better or worse than the return on investment of investing in a stock. Divesting yourself of divedend paying stocks to pay off a car loan…. I suppose that takes calculus which i don’t posess. Your wealth proposition is so market driven it is truly hard to tell.
August 6th, 2010 at 10:52 pm -
tom said:
Good Idea, maybe the stock will be more valueable then too, the economy and stock market kinda sucks right now anyway.
August 13th, 2010 at 11:46 pm -
Z1 guy said:
You have a way with words, but remember by and large, english is a tool for hiding the truth
September 1st, 2010 at 12:17 pm