Do You Care About Finances When You're Busy?

I try to. But not as much as I should. This has been a very very busy month for me and I haven't done much in the area of personal finance.

Granted, I've gotten a lot of things on "cruise control" but I haven't spent the time to find out new things and be proactive.

However, on that note, I think I have all my tax information, so I'm going to attempt to do my taxes soon and that will be my personal finance focus for the next few weeks.

Cramer's Stock of The Year - NYX

First a disclaimer. I own this stock. Cramer owns this stock in his charitable trust. Don't buy this stock because I said so. Don't buy the stock after you read this. Do your own homework.

Now the story. Every year, Jim Cramer picks his stock of the year. I didn't buy his stock of the year last year, but it ended up doing something ridiculous like going from $36 to $88. I don't even remember the name of it.

So this year, Cramer picked his stock of 2007. And it is the NYSE Group (NYX). This stock isn't for the weak stomachs though. Cramer says: "If you're comfortable taking a few risks to make more and more mad money, NYX is for you."

Cramer feels that the earnings estimates for this stock are way to low and once the NYSE completes its transition to electronic trading, the cost savings would be incredible. Currently the stock trades at about $105. In the past two weeks it was as low as $93. I had bought in at about $99.

Cramer's price target? $240

We'll see in a year.

Certain Costs Of A Car That I Could Live Without!

When I was in college, I drove a used 1987 Honda Accord. It had 180,000 miles on it, but it ran great. During college, I was working a lot, had some money, so I upgraded to a new 1997 Chevy S-10 pickup. And after about 3 years of working in the real world (and 165,000 miles on the S-10) I upgraded to a used 2001 BMW 530.

And the following things happened:

Gas went from 87 octane to 87 octane to now 91 octane. $$

Oil changes went from $19 to $19 to $79. Granted I need them less frequently in the BMW. $

Insurance has stayed consistent as I have gotten older, the age discount has evened out with the increased car value.

But the one that really gets me: TIRES!

Tires on the Accord were like $50 each. I had some meaty truck tires on my S-10 that ran about $90 each. But I'm buying tires this week on the BMW that are $140 each. If I went with the Continental Brand that BMW recommends, they would be $220 each. $$$$$

Not only do they cost more, but I could swear they wear down faster than any tire I've ever owned.

Okay, I understand that I love my car, and I'm happy to be in a BMW 530, so I'm not necessarily complaining. Mostly, I'm just trying to evaluate whether all these extra costs are worth it. Because in all honesty, my 1988 accord was pretty nice and much cheaper. I'm still 2-4 years away from purchasing another car, but I wonder if I'll remember how much these costs are and buy a car that is more practical.

Can I be happy again in a used Honda Accord?

Wedding Costs Are Too Much!

I've spent the last week trying to get a handle on securing some of our wedding vendors for our wedding this July.

Everything is expensive. I don't know what else to say.

December Net Worth Update! + $2,612

Well, we squeeked through Christmas month with a gain of $2,612. I'm actually pretty happy with this. You can see the details below:

Assets
Cash savings - $33,410
Ameritrade brokerage account - $6,924
Vehicles - $41,695
Engagement ring - $12,000
Rental deposit - $200
My 401k - $19,813
Fiance 401k - $33,920
Traditional IRA - $5,155
Roth IRA - $4,491
My profit sharing - $8,897

____________________
Total $166,505

Liabilities
My credit card debt: $3,100
Fiance credit card debt: $2,785
Student loans and ring debt: $13,479
My car loan: $17,188
Fiance car loan: $24,861

_____________________
Total $61,413

Total Net Worth $105,092

So what happened this month:

1) We racked up some credit card debt. Some was due to Christmas, some was due to going to the USC vs. UCLA game and the Rose Bowl. We'll spend the next couple months getting this back under control.

2) We continued our normal retirement contributions. We save a lot every month, probably about $1,200 or $1,300 a month. This is going up in January to about $1,500 a month to stay in line with our retirement goals.

3) We continued to pump a lot of money toward our wedding fund. We have a little over $13,000 saved for our wedding thus far. We think it will cost about $30,000 total. We should get there by July when we get married.

And that is about it! Not too shabby for a Christmas month. I'm hoping that next month will be a good month because I don't think we have any big expenses coming up. Hopefully the stock market does well.

I know February should be a great month because I get a bonus that month and we should get our tax returns back by then.

Judge Your Personal Finances Like A Company Would!

If you do any investing or follow the stock market at all, you will often hear a company report its earnings every quarter and also every year. Often investors are looking for a couple of indicators including revenue and net income.

I started wondering if I could judge myself the same way. So here is a base effort, to be updated once numbers are final for 2006:

Revenue - My base salary increased 9% from where it was at the beginning of the year. Once I do my tax return, I'll have a better idea of what my other revenue was including: bonuses, capital gains, interest and dividend income. I'll post an update once this is done. I also have to add my fiance's results into this.

Analysis: While 9% is not bad, I felt I could have done better. I imagine my final revenue number will actually be about 11% higher than the previous year. When setting goals this year, I would like to see this number increase by 15% or more next year.

Net Income - I don't know my own net income, but my fiance and I started the year with a combined net worth of $34,514. As of November 30th we are at $102,480. So our net income for the year was $67,966. We don't have any numbers from 2005 to compare to. But as a percentage of net worth, our net worth increased by 197%.

Analysis: I'm extremely pleased with this part of our financial picture. This was a big year for us. I think if a real company reported net income numbers like this, they would be rewarded by getting a bump in their stock price.

Kudos To My Fiance! But Now I Have A Problem.

She is pretty great. She put a lot of effort in this year to get Christmas presents accomplished and spent a ton of hours wrapping and decorating. I pitched in on decorating and Christmas cards and slightly on presents but she mostly made it happen. So kudos to her! (I'm not trying to brown nose, just honestly think she did great).

Which brings me to my problem. She didn't shop for her gifts from me. And rightly so. So I'm hitting the stores this weekend to buy her gifts.

The good news: We agreed to spend only $100 on each other.

The bad news: We agreed to spend $100 on each other, and every idea I had to get her something cost more than that.

In any event, I have some good ideas that I'm going to try to make happen this weekend.....wish me luck?

Christmas Spending = Impossible To Track!

I posted at the beginning of the month about trying to track spending on Christmas stuff. It is just too hard for me. So far I haven't spent too much, but it seems like everytime I go to the store, I spend a few bucks on something and I'm losing count.

My fiance and I have agreed to not spend more than $100 on each other, which is forcing me to be creative instead of just spendy. By keeping out spending on each other under $100, we can spend more on other people. I constantly bug her about the $100 limit to make sure she isn't going over. I guess I saw my Dad fall victim to this game too many times while growing up. Mom and Dad would agree not to buy each other anything, but then someone would break the rule and the other person would be mad.

But in thinking about Christmas spending, there were expenses I didn't realize were out there; such as:

80 stamps for Christmas Cards : .39 cents a piece
Christmas Cards: Probably $30 for 80 cards
Christmas decorations (seems like we buy more every year) : At least $100
Small presents for Co-Workers - $15 each but multiplied by 10 or 12 people, it adds up.

I think that next year, I will try to have a savings account set up to use exclusively for Christmas and then once that money is gone, I will stop spending.

Orange County Housing Market Update!

The LA Times reported the latest housing numbers here in Orange County again and the year over year change in Orange County's median housing price was 0%. However, I'm not quite sure that tells the whole story. Things in Southern California look like they might get a little hairy as two counties out here (Ventura and San Diego) both posted significant declines (-8.2% and -6.9%, respectively. And here is what the monthly Orange County median price looks like as tracked by me:

November : $616,000
October : $625,000
September : $626,000
August: $633,000
July : $639,000
June: $646,000

Now I understand that a drop in prices is normal from summertime because that is a high demand season, so I'm willing to keep an open mind that these prices will recover by summer, but for now, I really think that prices won't recover. We shall see!

5 Things You Probably Don't Know About Me!

I've been tagged by One Million and Beyond to list out 5 things that you probably don't know about me. Although I have some things listed about me on my "About Me" page, I'll list some other things here. So here goes:

1) I'm tall. I stand about 6'6. I also weigh 265 pounds. It makes it difficult to find fashionable clothes sometimes. While I absolutely love being tall, one time I received 6 staples in my head after running into the top of a door. (There was no drinking involved, just plain clumsiness).

2) I am a Southern California native. I spent one year of college in Rhode Island, in a year that was considered one of the worst snowfall years on record. It was cold. With that and some other reasons I finished my last 3 years of college in Southern California.

3) I like to travel, even if it is just for a weekend. I haven't gone international yet, but will be this summer. I did a lot of roadtrips as a kid from California, through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. I don't mind going to the same places twice as I find new things to do. As a matter of fact, I'm currently writing this from our hotel in Chicago (a place I've been 3 times now in the last 5 years).

4) I have attempted to eat a 72 ounce steak at the Big Texan Steak Ranch. After being put up on stage at the restaurant, I completed the entire meal with the exception of 11 ounces of steak. Because it is free if you finish, I had to fork over $54. I felt bloated for about 3 days.

5) I really like Chinese food. My work is located in a primarily Asian neighborhood and my firm does a lot of work in China requiring some employees to speak Mandarin. Because of this I spend a fair amount of my lunches eating at Chinese places. This isn't Panda Express either, it is places where menu's sometimes aren't in English.

I think a lot of bloggers have already done this, so I won't tag anyone else to do it!

Oh Those Joneses! Do They Save For Retirement?

They are hard to keep up with! And believe me, I feel like we are trying hard sometimes too. Granted, we are doing pretty good for ourselves. But we also save a LOT for retirement. And sometimes I feel like the Joneses aren't.

It can be frustrating sometimes to see people we know buy things all the time. And the only thing I can wonder is: "For sure that was a great purchase, but what is your 401k balance?" or something lame like that.

In any event, it just gets a little frustrating sometimes.

Increasing 401k Contribution from 1% to 3%!

In some past posts, I've written in detail about how we are saving for retirement. Well, in light of my recent raise, I'm increasing my 401k contribution from 1% to 3%. I know. It isn't much. But I'm still trying to max out my Roth IRA for the 2006 year. I have until April 15th to do this and I'm sure I'll get there by March.

Because my fiance and I are are getting married in 2007, we will be over the married income limit to contribute to a Roth IRA. So once my Roth IRA is maxed for 2006, I'll up my 401k contribution from the now 3% to about 10% or 11%.

Taking Advantage of Warranties! Thanks Sony, Epson and Motorola!

I've had pretty good luck recently with using the warranty for a couple things I own. But first, let me say that I never ever ever ever buy the extended warranty or the optional product protection plan that they always try to sell to you. This is where places make money and they aren't going to make money on me!

I recently bought an electronics item for $100 and they offered me a 3 year warranty beyond the stated 1 year warranty for $20. That is a 20% price increase. I told them no. Even if the thing stops working in a year, I'll probably want to buy the next generation one. If if lasts longer than a year, then I scored!

But recently, I've had really good luck using the standard warranty that comes with most products.

I have sent in the following products recently under a one year manufacturer warranty:

-Razor cell phone
-Sony Digital Camera
-Epson Photo Printer

And I have gotten a replacement back within about 2 weeks, with the exception of the phone which took 2 days. It works great!

I highly recommend using this if you have a broken product. All 3 of the above items were gifts that I didn't have a receipt for but it was replaced anyways. I didn't have to pay for shipping on this stuff either!

So kudos to Sony Epson and Motorola for making the warranty process great!

Yard Sale Money Making!

I guess only in the warm weather of Southern California can you hold a yard sale in December. But that is what my mom did yesterday. So I took just a few items from our house and some old clothes. I ended up making $9. My mom made over $100 dollars and so did my mom's neighbors.

It was nice to get rid of some of our stuff. It made me really want to try and sell 1 item per week on ebay or craigslist to start getting rid of things. Don't get me wrong, I think the yard sale was a success, but I think our market was limited to people driving by. On Ebay, the market is huge!

In my college days, I used to sell a bunch of stuff on Ebay to make extra cash. Specifically, I would buy things on Ebay and just resell them. Pretty simple. It was amazing how someone would have a poorly time auction with bad photos. I would take that and turn it into a few dollars profit for the same item!

So I will try it next week and put a link on my blog for the item I'm selling!

Is Your Net Worth Normal?? Check It Out!

Are you in the age bracket 25-34? Well, you should read this then. I posted two days ago about the new Feed the Pig website which is designed to help 25-34 year olds focus on savings. Well check out these stats about the average 25-34 year old:

Numbers in 1985

Median net worth - $6,788
Percentage who have interest bearing savings account - 61%
Ownership of stocks, bonds, IRA's or 401(k)'s - 65%
Average debt - $3,118

Now look at 2004:

Median net worth - $3,746 (despite higher incomes, it declined)
Percentage who have interest bearing savings account - 47% (another decline)
Ownership of stocks, bonds, IRA's or 401(k)'s - 55% (another decline)
Average debt - $4,733 (an increase)

This is amazing! I'm most amazed at the percentages. Forget the net worth and the debt, only 47% of people have an interest bearing account?? Come on! Everyone should have one of these!

Orange County Housing Market Update!

As we haven't bought a house yet and don't have plans to buy one in the near future, I still find it interesting to track Orange County's (CA) housing market. Houses are definitely expensive here. So back in June, I started tracking the median housing prices in the Orange County market. So here is the update for October:

October - $625,000
September - $626,000
August - $633,000
July - $639,000
June - $646,000

So October wasn't much of a change from September. It will be interesting to see the next year.

New website! Feed The Pig!

Awhile back I posted about a website that is sponsored by one of the trade organizations that I belong to as a CPA. That post is here. Well, out of that website, another one has been born.

The trade organization recently launched Feed The Pig. The website is aimed at the younger generation to encourage them to save money or "feed the pig" (making reference to their old friend from childhood, the piggy bank).

There are a couple videos on the site and the pig even has his own Myspace page. There is also a handy bring your lunch calculator and credit card pay down calculator.

Just thought I would share the information as I just came across it in the monthly newsletter I receive. Enjoy!

Net Worth Update! +$2,220

Here is our net worth for December. See details below of what happened this month.

Assets
Cash savings - $31,256
Ameritrade brokerage account - $6,586
Vehicles - $41,425
Engagement ring - $12,000
Rental deposit - $200
My 401k - $19,334
Fiance 401k - $32,491
Traditional IRA - $5,608
Roth IRA - $4,600
My profit sharing - $8,897

___________________
Total $162,397

Liabilities
My credit card debt - $1,828
Fiance credit card debt - $1,296
Student loans and ring debt - $13,779
My car loan - $17,798
Fiance car loan - $25,216

___________________
Total $59,917

Total Net Worth $102,480

You can see definitions of the above in our first net worth report. You can also see our previous month's reports: October, September, August, and July.

So what happened?

1) I previously posted that I thought net worth would be up about $3,000 or $4,000 this month. Well, on the last day of the month we made a deposit with our wedding photographer of $1,427 which brought us down.

2)I cashed in some of our brokerage account to pay off a 0% credit card loan.

3) The Dodgers refunded my playoff ticket money. This had no net worth effect though as I previously had a receivable due from the Dodgers.

4) Last month we had an increase in the value of our cars of $750, while this month, the value declined by over $1,000.

5) Our 401k's performed really well.

6) We started spending. Christmas is right around the corner and just in general we spend more this time of year.

And that is about it. Since I started posting in July, we have squeaked out net worth gains every month, mostly thanks to a strong stock market. I'm hoping this can continue.

Preliminary November Net Worth Looks Good!

I haven't finished our calculation yet, but we are looking like it will be up about $3,000 or $4,000 this month........

Final numbers coming soon!

Getting Excited About My Raise!

I have a raise coming up which should hit my paycheck on December 15th and I'm getting excited about it. Normally I like to budget my planned spending and saving about six months out, but without knowing my upcoming raise, planning becomes difficult.

I decided that for the new year, first, I'm going to increase my retirement contribution to remain in line with my plan to retire early. This will involve increasing my current 401k contribution from 1% to 3% and increasing my Roth IRA conversion to about $600 per month up from $540. This will just get my 2006 Roth IRA fully funded faster before April 15th. For more details on my retirement, see my previous post.

After that, any leftover from my raise will go straight into reducing my student loan/ring debt of about $13,800. I currently pay about $300 to $350 a month on this loan. It sits on a credit card at about 4.99% interest. The minimum payment due is about $215 a month.

So with my raise, I'm going to start throwing a lot more money at this loan (I hope). I'm currently projecting being able to throw an extra $600 a month at this loan which will get it paid off in a little over a year. My new total payment will be somewhere between $900 and $1,000 per month.

I guess what I'm most excited about is the year 2008......when my loan is paid off and I'll have an extra $1,000 a month to do what I want with.

Keeping Track of Christmas!

I was driving home last night from Target where we spent over $100 on a few gifts, some ornaments and other assorted Christmas items. I thought to myself, I wonder how much Christmas really costs? So I'm going to try to keep track. I don't know how well I will do, but I'm going to give it a shot.

My hunch is that it will be close to $1,500 or $2,000, but we shall see!

Merry Christmas everyone!

$100,000 Net Worth! - Our Retirement!

To continue my detail posting about our net worth of $100,000 that we recently attained, I will now cover our retirement.

I have posted in detail how we want to retire by age 45, or soon thereafter. I did a follow up post here also.

The two biggest wildcards in our dream to retire early are home ownership and starting a family. As those events happen, we will have to revise our plan, but hopefully it is still probable.

So here are some details about our current retirement accounts:

My 401k - My 401k has done well this year. Through September 30, it was lagging, but now year to date, I'm up over 12%. My goal was 10%, so hopefully it holds up through the end of the year. I only contribute 1% of my salary as my company doesn't match and we are focusing on Roth IRA's and my fiance's 401k. I just contribute 1% to keep the payroll deduction going. We'll have a big change coming next year due to marriage and exceeding the Roth IRA income limits. So we'll probably end up increasing my percentage substantially.

Fiance 401k - Where almost 50% of all our retirement money is sitting. Her company matches 50% of her first 6% of contribution, so we contribute 6% here to take advantage of the free money. We reallocated her account back in August to hopefully kick up the performance. So far things are going well. Since we will be Roth IRA ineligible next year, we will switch over to funding 401k's more next year, so we'll bump her percentage of contribution up.

Traditional IRA - This account comes from my fiance from way back. It is help in TD Ameritrade and we have traded stocks in it this year without much success. However, the gains made in our Roth IRA's have just about made up for it.

Fiance Roth IRA - As of this week, we have fully funded my fiance's Roth IRA for the year up to the $4,000 limit. I snuck in about $500 last April that I counted as a 2005 contribution. We hold this account in TD Ameritrade also. We won't be able to contribute here next year, so the balance will only change based on performance of investments.

My Roth IRA - I just opened this account this week. Since my fiance's IRA is now funded, we will start working on mine. We have until April 2007 to fund this up to $4,000 and we should hit it by March. It is also at TD Ameritrade.

My Profit Sharing - The least of my worries is here. I can't do much about this. Basically every year, my work contributes 3% of my salary to this and it is invested. I can't pick investments. The only thing I can do is try to make my work more profitable I guess? However, it counts as retirement money because I can't touch it until age 59.5.

And that sums up our retirement and my posting about achieving $100,000 of net worth.

I'll be back to normal posting this week!