My Net Worth, May

Tuesday, 3 June 2008 at 8:47 am (My Net Worth, taxes) (, , , )

Thanks in large part to my tax refunds/rebate, my net worth went up a fair amount!  Yay!  You can access my page here.

Last month’s net worth: -$9,406
This month’s net worth: -$6,293

For a difference of: $3,113

Reasons for this:

Even though money is only being added to my 401K currently (about $78 each paycheck), the money in all three retirement accounts has grown a little.

Tax refunds+rebate= $2294

$100 owed to me was paid back.

$35 from Revolution Money Exchange.

Didn’t spend too much last month while budgeting.

Permalink Leave a Comment

My Tax Rebate

Friday, 23 May 2008 at 2:02 pm (taxes) (, )

It’s here!  I received an e-mail from my bank this morning saying that I’d received a direct deposit and I opened it to find that I got my paycheck (which I was expecting) and the $600 rebate (which I wasn’t).

Now, I think that the economic stimulus package was foolish, personally.  It’s not going to make a big impact on the economy.  The rising prices of food and other things are probably going to eat up a bulk of that money and I can’t see it do more than slow down the fall of the economy.  I also don’t agree with only giving the rebate to those who fall into certain monetary categories.  It’s a roundabout way of taking money from the rich to give to the poor.

We’re supposed to be a society that encourages its citizens to strive to be the best; we say that working hard will lead to success.  How are Americans supposed to believe that?  Right now, we are penalized for our hard work and success.  We work hard to get raises only to find ourselves in a higher tax bracket and bringing home less money (until we get more raises and the same thing happens again).  Many Americans recently found out that they made too much money last year to qualify for the stimulus check–which means that THEIR money is going us, the ones receiving this money.

Now, don’t get me wrong–I think that getting $600 in my account today was pretty rad; however, I would much rather have gone without it than let my country sink deeper into socialism.

Permalink Leave a Comment

My Net Worth-April

Thursday, 1 May 2008 at 9:00 am (My Net Worth) (, , , , , , , )

I’ve updated my Net Worth since it’s the first of the month.  For some reason, it won’t show up as a picture on my side bar, so I have a link to my page under the blogroll.  I may end up moving it to a more prominent spot.  Right now you can access it here.  My net worth has risen $1,978 in the last month to -$9,406.  This is for a few reasons:

1.  Last month I didn’t take into account my 401K from my current employer.  At this point, I’m only contributing 3% of my salary (they match 50% up to that point), so it’s less than $800, but it’s still something.

2.  I contributed $1000 to a traditional IRA and it’s already gained more than $20 in interest.

3.  I changed my car loan agreement with my dad, lowering my interest rate to 6% and extending the length of the loan.  My car loan total is a little misleading because I have down the entire balance plus the interest I’ll be paying, assuming I pay exactly $88.71/month (until November 2010), $5000 November 2008, and $500 November 2010.  So my balance is lower than indicated, but I don’t keep my amortization schedule sheet on hand to determine exactly what my balance is each month.  I might start doing that in November after I pay the big lump sum.  My student loan balance is calculated for me, so that is correct.

Soon I should be receiving my $600 tax rebate and my over $1600 tax refund, which will be nice.  I’ve thought about changing my withholding, but I haven’t yet worked a full January-December year yet, so I think that I’ll wait until next year to look at that.

This month I’m also going to track what I spend, which I’m looking forward to and dreading all at once.

Permalink Leave a Comment