My Financial Journey

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.

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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.
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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.

My Roth IRA - $11,080.30 (-2.52%)  
Wife Roth IRA - $13,984.38 (-1.68%)
Old Employer Traditional 401K - $11,807.45 (-1.05%)
Old Employer Roth 401K - $12,797.47 (+12.20%)
Current Traditional 401k - $617.67 (new)

Roth/Traditional % = 75.29% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $50,287.27 (+2.77%)

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Well it was another good month for my retirment 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.

My Roth IRA - $11,366.56 (-0.30%)
Wife Roth IRA - $14,223.81 (+9.56%)
Traditional 401K - $11,933.34 (+2.00%)
Roth 401K - $11,406.00 (+6.27%)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $48,929.71 (+4.52%)

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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.

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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 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.

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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.

My Roth IRA - $11,373.40 (+6.95%)
Wife Roth IRA - $12,083.91 (+3.26%)
Traditional 401K - $11,234.37 (+3.61%)
Roth 401K - $8,364.84 (+20.95%)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $43,056.42 (+7.39%)

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