Personal Finances – September 2009

I’ve decided to bring back my personal finances posts mainly for my own use to keep track of my finances better, but also for my readers to see my progress in getting out of the rat race. It could be beneficial to somebody else, so I think it would be appropriate to share as long as I don’t get too personal with it.

The past few months I haven’t made a whole lot of progress to getting out of debt as I would have liked. We took a vacation in August to Cozumel which was fun and much needed, but it also set me back a little bit in achieving my financial goals. After this month I should be all caught up with paying off cost of the trip as well as some frivolous spending I’ve done the past few months.

Since I made my last finances post, I bought and sold some shares of Caterpillar for a nice ten percent gain and used those profits to add onto my position in Nordic American Tanker. It was a pretty stupid move taking such a quick gain in Caterpillar. I have learned yet another lesson: never turn an investment into a trade. That’s one of Jim Cramer’s many rules he uses to run his portfolio in his charitable trust. You can get a 14 day free trial to Jim Cramer’s Action Alerts Plus where you can trade side by side with him and even make the trade before he does.

I’m looking forward to the next couple of months when I can actually bank some money and put some into the stock market. Christmas is just around the corner though, so that could put a ding in my finances too, but I’m not worried.

Prosper finally got back up and running again, and my portfolio of loans I purchased is once again compounding to earn more passive income for me. I was taking money out of my account every month while they were in a dark period waiting to get some legal stuff taken care of to allow their members to buy, sell, and trade their notes. About six to ten of my notes were charged off due to delinquent activity, so I’m still in the red overall, but I decided to be more conservative with the notes I bid on now. Investing with Prosper has become a big part of my passive income in my income statement, and created some assets for my balance sheet.

Everybody should plan out their own income statement and balance sheets to better understand where they stand financially and if they are living within or beyond their means. Here is my summary of mine for the month:

$1,876.88 Total Income

$1,800.00 Monthly Pay Checks
$1.38 Checking Account Interest
$0.01 Savings Account Interest
$17.80 Dividends ($53.40 / qtr.)
$57.69 Prosper Loans

$1,224.97 Total Expenses

$188.00 School Loans
$192.00 Car Payment
$450.00 Food & Utilities
$100.00 Gas
$82.00 Cell Phone
$50.00 Entertainment
$130.00 Insurance
$32.97 Personal Loan

$651.91 Net Monthly Cash Flow
$76.88 Passive Income
6.28% Passive Income % of Expenses

$5,577.74 Total Assets

$414.89 Checking Account
$7.60Savings
$88.05 Scottrade Account
$61.64 Prosper Account
$14.80 ChaCha Account
$2.98 Paypal Account
$35.60 OneSeason Account
$3,329.79 in Stock
$1,104.41 Loans on Prosper

$22,662.52 Total Liabilities

$13,112.65 School Loans
$8,063.40 Car Loan
$884.12 Credit Card
$602.35 Prosper Loan

-$17,084.78 Net Worth

Related posts:

1. Personal Finances – April 2009
2. Personal Finances – March 2009
3. Personal Finances – February 2009
4. Personal Finances – January 2009
5. Personal Finances – Beginning 2009