January 2009: Good News, Bad News...The Good
For the past three January's my net worth has dramatically increased due to my annual bonus. I wrote a post about this year's bonus season here: PART II: How Much Will Your Bonus Be This Year? To summarize, my bonus this year was $44,000, and it was paid in January.
The Bad (Sort of...)
My lovely wife was finally laid off. I say 'finally' because all signs were pointing in that direction. Her firm, which began with 52 employees is down to only 18, and likely to suffer more.
While this is certainly 'bad' from a net worth growth perspective, I'm hopeful that there is a silver lining, giving her a chance to take care of some minor health issues, study for a career related exam, and soon kids may be in the works (scary!).
This weekend I will be performing an expense audit to ensure we are operating as lean and mean as I am comfortable with. Most importantly, we need to ensure we are operating with positive monthly cash flow - a stalwart of building long term net worth.
Net Worth Summary
Checking: No material change here.
Savings: Savings increased dramatically for a couple reasons:
1) After maxing out my 401(k) for the year, the net balance of my bonus was deposited into my savings account
2) I sold my position in the mutual fund I owned in my brokerage account to capture the tax loss carryforward savings. For a full explanation on how tax loss carry forwards work, check out this post (one of my most read posts): Tax Loss Carryforwards = Huge Tax Savings Ya' Jerk!
3) My investment partner and I have been thinking about going in on another investment property, so I've been keeping cash on the sidelines for the right time. The DJIA is down about 9% YTD, so I look like a genius for the time being.
Brokerage: As I just mentioned, I cashed out of my position, taking a loss.
Roth IRA: No changes here, but you can see that 9% drop that I was referring to.
401(k): As you can see, I was able to max out my 401(k) for 2009 via my bonus check. I feel extremely blessed/lucky that I can do this. I split the funds between a Roth and a Traditional 401k. I wrote a post about the differences here: Roth 401k Vs. Traditional 401k.
My company also matches my contributions as follows: 50 cents on the dollar up to 5% of my salary. I have to be honest here, I've done the math on this, but it appears that my company's contribution of $6,125 YTD, is more then I calculated. I have to contact HR to figure out what's going on here.
Real Estate: Still held at cost. Tough month here though, we had to use $2,000 from the partnership account to fix a leaky rough. We will likely do a distribution from this account this month.
Liabilities & Expense Reimbursement: Standard revolving credit card debt. As you can see we have a net positive here if you include my expected business expense reimbursements.
With my net worth up almost $35k or 16.1%, why can't every month be like January?
How did you guys do in January? Up? Down? Sideways?
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