My Financial Journey

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.
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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.

Traditional Rollover IRA - $12,200.55 (+2.73%)
My Roth IRA - $28,467.49 (-4.00%)
Wife Roth IRA (Scottrade) - $13,387.32 (-0.40%)
Wife Roth IRA (Zecco) - $2750.00 (+100%)
Current Traditional 401k - $22,193.94 (+22.32%)

Roth/Traditional % = 56.46% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $78,999.30 (+7.80%)

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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.

Traditional Rollover IRA - $11,876.7 (-1.52%)
My Roth IRA - $29,311.38 (+0.44%)
Wife Roth IRA - $13,946.34 (-0.31%)
Current Traditional 401k - $18,144.51 (+6.95%)

Roth/Traditional % = 59.03% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $73,278.93 (+1.50%)

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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.
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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.
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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%) 15,194.20
Current Traditional 401k - $14,097.38 (+26.35%)

Roth/Traditional % = 62.85% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $71,438.18 (+6.94%)

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Quite 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.

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