October 2008 Report - Found Money

Here is our October networth report. Its titled found money because we got our PERS statement in the mail and it had something on it that I don't remember from before, even though it was probably on there the whole time. It actually had a balance showing on the form. So I have added 2 more assests to the networth, Greg's PERS and Susan's PERS. All the number shows is how much we have put into the retirement account, nothing else. If one of us were to leave State employement, this money would be able to be rolled over into another account.

So for the month:

Net Worth: 168,747.19 MTD: +23.18% +31,749.33
Net Worth w/o House: 73,747.19 MTD: +75.6%
Net Worth w/0 House or IRA: 17,278.11 MTD: +28.1%

YTD:
Net Worth: +42.55%
Net Worth w/0 House: +18.20%
Net Worth w/0 House or IRA: -31.73%

If we wouldn't have had the found money, our net worth would have fallen 1.55% and the net worth w/o house would have fallen 5.07%.

Pooh

To the best kitty ever. We love you and we will miss you!!!!

Ideal Rants at 4am

Why can't I sleep? Its almost 4 am and I'm just starting to get semi-sleepy. Susan and I watched Gone In 60 Seconds starting around 9pm and by the time it was over, I was wide awake. There was no going to sleep at that point.

So anyway, why am I getting into this routine of not sleeping again. Its defenitely not a good routine to be in. It leads to me not wanting to do much at all because I'm tired. But oh well. Guess I'll just turn on another episode of Philly and stay awake a little longer.

The job is the job. I haven't ever really just loved my job and that really did continue this week. Its hard to believe that I have been there 8 3/4th years. Only 16 more to go? I had hoped Disney would make the job a little bit better for a while, but it just kind of made it worse. I just don't understand some things that go on up at that place and I guess I never will. I don't know why my name keeps on getting mentioned for all these "fantasy" jobs, but the jobs never materialize. I also don't know why I have been promised a raise for close to a year now and yet still nothing has happened. I don't know if now is a good time to push that issue or not, but I might go ahead and push it. We will just have to see what happens.

We are looking at going ahead and starting a 403(b) account. We just have to decide on the funds and the amount we want to divert each month. They defentiely don't make it easy. I'm sure the companies do that on purpose in order to try to confuse you in order to hide their fees. Its just crazy!!! Its a whole lot easier to head to Vanguard, all the information is just there!!!!
I'm leaning towards Fidelity at the moment, but we are still looking.

So anyway, I need to go to bed. Aunt Bo, sorry we missed you on the last day, and hope you are feeling better.

Susan, I love you!!!!

Ron Paul

After listening to more financial TV in the past 2 weeks than I have in my entire life, I will have to say Ron Paul was about the only person making sense during this whole "financial crisis." Its nice to hear someone actually try to make sense during the whole panic deal. Its funny that it was on CNBC because they basically acted like they didn't even hear him. He basically stated that he didn't like seeing his economy turned into a socialist state. He also said he didn't like how Bush used 9/11 to take away our personal rights and the right to privacy. Again, things that actually make sense!!!

Debate

I think they forgot to invite the Republicans this year.....

September 2008 Net Worth Edition

Susan and I decided to help someone with some debt, so that slowed us down a little bit this month on the savings. We have decided to just pay it off at the end of October as long as the Vanguard account will stay above the 10K mark by doing that. The account we are paying has 9480.19 left over at the end of September. We did pay a 425 payment in September to the account. We also scheduled a 3180.38 dollar payment to pay today. That will bring the balance down to 6299.81. The Vanguard account has 14,223.49 in it right now, so if we can make 2100 from solitaire this month, we should be able to payoff the account as well as get back to accumulating money in the Vanguard account. My new current goal is to get the Vanguard account up to 30K by the end of February. Once we do that, we will start investing. I wonder how much money we are actually not losing not being in the market right now...LOL. Its pretty ugly out there, but this is probably about the most perfect time we could possibly ask for to enter the market. We will see what it looks like 5 months from now....

So with the addition of the 9480.19 in liabilites, we did have a good month overall. This will be our largest net loss ever, but its for 2 people that Susan and I love, so that makes it worth it.

Net Worth: 136,997.86 -5947.28 -4.16%
Net Worth w/o Home: 41,997.86 -12.40%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: 13,838.88 -12.09%

YTD:
Net Worth: +15.73%
Net Worth w/o Home: -32.69%
Net Worth w/o IRA: -46.71%

We also paid for a good bit of Disney this month and actually went on the trip. It was well worth it!!!! We had a great time. We will probably look into going for a quick trip (4-5 days maybe) in either February or April while we still have the annual passes. Maybe we can do it as part of a celebration for having 30K in our Vanguard account and finally having our entire Emergency Fund.

Anniversary

Thank you to Susan for being the best wife!!! Thank you to the 2 best years of my life!!!

I love you Mrs. Honey.

Disney Edition

Susan and I are in Disney this week. I will have to say its been a blast, but I do miss the beach.

Some of the things have changed, which is weird, but still a good thing. The Toy Story Mania ride is EXCELLENT!!! But the wait times are terrible right now. We did finally stay in line when it said 60 minute wait and it really only took 30 minutes to get to the ride. Its worth the wait though. Best ride so far!!!! Its Buzz Lightyear's Rescue Spin on crack!!!! Of course, this took the space of what was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which I do miss. We have done the ride 4 times now and Susan and I are 2-2, with Susan winning the last 2.

The Block Party that took over the parade at Hollywood Studios is by far the best parade ever!!! It really gets the crowd into the act and is a whole lot of fun. We have done it twice now and both times it was a LOT of fun. We had to do it the second time because we weren't close to Mr. Potato Head the first time, and Susan had to get a ton of pictures of him.

Wishes is still the best fireworks by far.

The weird thing is that the best food by far was at Yak and Yeti at Animal Kingdom. It was so good that we canceled one of our other reservations so that we cook book Yak and Yeti again. Highly recommend it!!!

Anyway, about time to head to eat again.

August 08 Networth Update

Another decent month. It could have been better, but we paid for most of the Disneyworld trip, so we lost about 2000 worth of potential gain. Anyway, we stayed above our 3,000 mark each month, so I'm happy. At least everything is back to going up per month :-)


Net Worth: 142,945.14 +3,280.81 +2.35%
Net Worth w/o Home: 47,945.14 +7.35%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: 15,741.48 +27.03%

YTD
Net Worth: +20.75%
Net Worth w/o Home: -23.16%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: -39.38%

Another big milestone of a gain 0f 20% overall net worth gain for the year. Now, can we hit 30%? Also, can we get the other net worth numbers above a positive number for the year?

Disney and Guilt

Two words I have never put together before.

For some reason I am having guilt while booking the trip to Disney this time, and the sad thing is, this should be the first time that I have absolutely no guilt booking Disney!!!! This is the first time, ever, that I have the money, not putting it on a credit card, and I'm taking my lovely wife. But when I start looking at how much money it is, I feel guilty. I attribute this to my lovely wife!!! She has changed me forever!!!

I have to remember that we aren't only working now to retire, we are working so we can have fun as well. Some of this fun will be a trip to Disney. A trip that I will more than likely never forget. I can't wait to watch Wishes with Susan. Its been something I have looked forward to ever since I met her. So why the guilt?

I read a number the other day, and this is not helping. The number was 24....for every dollar that you spend today, if you were to invest that dollar and let it sit there for 40 years, at an average of 8% interest, that same dollar would then be worth 24 dollars. That number can play with your head if you let it. So we are looking at spending somewhere near 4,000 to go to Disney. Mutiply that by 24 and it comes out to 96,000. So it comes down to if a trip today is worth 96,000 40 years from now. I have to say yes, but a twinge is still ringing in my stomach. I don't get it....I want to go so bad, but still......

Anyway, Disney is booked!!! I just have to look past the money and have a good time (shouldn't be that hard around September 25th when I'm trying to go to sleep before getting on a plane the next day).

So, 39 days until Disney!!! Let the countdown begin.

July Net Worth

We managed another gain in the net worth this month. It wasn't huge, but at least it was a gain!!!

Net Worth: 139,664.33 +3,357.45 +2.46%
Net Worth w/o Home: 44,664.33 -18.78%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: 12,391.95 -42.81%

YTD:
Net Worth: +17.98%
Net Worth w/o Home: -28.41%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: -52.28%

We finished paying off the house this month, hence the huge swings in the numbers without the house included considering that's where the money was stored to payoff the house. Next month should see all three numbers rising as we start sticking more and more money into the Vanguard account. We should easily be able to meet our first goal of saving 10K in the Vanguard account. After that, we will start working on the 10K FAN list which keeps getting shorter as more things break and therefore gets replaced earlier than expected.

After the 10K FAN list is done, the next goal is to reach 30K. Right after that will be to finish off the 30K FAN list, and then we get to start investing. That will be exciting!!!

Debt Free, Why Not to Payoff all Debt

Here is the major reason why to not payoff all of your debt...

THINGS WILL START BREAKING!!!!

Today is July 24th, 23 days after paying off the house, let's take a look....

1. Have a blowout close to August GA on the interstate, have to replace tires and brakes.
2. 3 days after that, one of the said tires decides to eat a drill bit.
3. 5 days after that, go to turn on the windshield wipers, they don't work...
4. And now 2 weeks later, Susan goes to put some shirts in the dryer. Yep, dryer won't turn back on. Just makes a noise that pretty much says, Buzzz, wrong answer.

June Net Worth

These numbers will look completely different next month, but this month was a weird month. We had a lot of money sitting in our checking account waiting for the moment we could payoff the mortgage. At one time, we had over 17K in our checking account. Not something I want to repeat anytime soon. That kind of money needs to be in the Vanguard account!!!

Net Worth: 136,306.88 +3,304.80 +2.48%
Net Worth w/o Home: 54,992.04 +6.61%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: 21,667.96 +40.56%

YTD:
Net Worth: +15.14%
Net Worth w/o Home: -11.86%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: -16.56%

Not too bad of a month with the stock market doing what it did. Susan's retirement account lost close to 3K again this month, but that's ok, we are about to get rid to buy in 5 months, so we could use some good losses so that we can buy cheap cheap cheap!!!!

La Casa Extravaganza

Today is house EXTRAVAGANZA day!!! Yep, Susan and I put the check in the mail to Chase about 5 hours ago now. The mortgage is now a part of our past (or will be as soon as Chase processes the check). It was actually very surreal. I just don't completely feel it yet, but I'm sure I will when July 30th rolls around and we get to actually keep that paycheck.

So we just went from having 17,000+ in our checking account to just have over 3000 in our checking account...LOL. We just went from 10K in our Vanguard account to 5K in our Vanguard account.....but its all good, because that 5K will only get bigger from here!!!

Here's to actually gaining interest instead of paying interest from now on!!!!!

May Net Worth

Very good month!!! We had a nice gain this month.

Month:
Net Worth: 133,002.08 +8848.75 +7.13%
Net Worth w/o Home: 51,580.66 +5.91%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: 36,165.48 +10.89%

YTD:
Net Worth: +12.35%
Net Worth w/o Home: -17.33%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: -40.64%

We are well above pace to gain 20% this year. Hopefully we can get up to 30%.

The big change coming up in June will be paying off the house. It probably won't happen June 30th, but it should be done by July 10th!!! Then some of the other Net Worth numbers should start improving. That Net Worth w/o Home or IRA really needs to get into the positive before the end of the month. It shouldn't take that long as soon as we are done paying off the house. I would think within 3 months that will be a very positive and happy number.

38 Dollars

Amazing how 38 dollars can be frustrating. 2 days ago, we had a negative mortgage balance once we added together everything I had listed money wise that will come in the next 31 days. Unfortunately, I had a number slightly wrong. Ok, not so slighty, by about 250 dollars. So after discovering that today, the negative number has now turned into a positive 38 dollars.

JUST MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!! We had plenty, no more thinking about what I have to do per day in solitaire to get to a zero mortgage balance, no more thinking except for the what ifs we threw in there, no more nothing, except now we have 38 dollars.

This is the mortgage that will not die!!!!

Going to Disney

As of lunch today, we are going to Disney September 27th!!! Woohooo. Let the countdown begin:

T - Minus 113 Days to go!!!!

JOB

Tonight's word is job.

Sometimes I really don't enjoy my job and today was one of those days. Its not that I don't like what I do, because I do, its that sometimes I don't like situations that Dr. G ends up putting me in. Today for instance....I get a text message from Melanie asking if I can attend a meeting at 11am today. I said sure, no problem, figuring it was something to do with Dr. G but not really that worried about it. She sends a text back, its a meeting with the Vice Chancellor and some of the higher ups dealing with TeleHealth. These higher ups would be the doctor over medicine, the doctor of the private practice plans, the head of the Delta Health Alliance, the CIO, and my personal favorite Dr. K. I have never met Dr. K and have no real need of hopefully ever seeing him again. Dr. K would be one of the vice chancellors and not one I've had the pleasure of meeting before. The meeting kicks off by Dr. K basically looking at me (since I didn't know about the meeting, I wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion) and saying I know who everyone else at the table is, but I don't know you. So much for just being a fly on the wall and not saying a word during the meeting. I then explain my role as head of the FCC Pilot Project (the one actually doing the work) and that I work with Dr. G. I wanted to hurt Dr. G even more now. I knew I wasn't suppose to come to this meeting!!!!!

Anyway, as a result of the meeting, I do have a meeting with the CIO in the morning now. Will this meeting actually result in a job offer? We shall see. Will there be any talk about anything at all...we shall see. Am I ever going to get any sleep tonight.....

4 Figures

We hit 4 figures on the imaginary balance for the mortgage as of yesterday!!!! We are now down to 9916!!!!

Not too much longer now!!!! We have started making the next FAN list. Of course there are 2 trips on the list, one for Disney and one for Ft. Morgan.

We are very close now!!!

April Net Worth

Well, we actually turned a profit this month, so hopefully all the negative months are gone for a while....

Net Worth: 124,155.33 +1.39%
Net Worth w/0 House: 48,704.32 -11.94%
Net Worth w/0 IRA: 13,901.77 -38.06%

YTD:

Net Worth: +4.88%
Net Worth w/o House: -21.94%
Net Worth w/o IRA: -46.46%

Now that we have paid the major tax bills, all categories should start showing positive again.....

:-(

I think Susan finally passed her stuff onto me....Bad Susan!!!

20K

Today is the magical day. We are under the 20K mark in imaginary land!!! After a couple (ok 4) days of not so good solitaire (the survival tournament messed me up on how to plan and I finally remembered again) I have turned it around and cashed out 900+ in 3 days. Which gets us to the magical number of being officially unoffically below the 20K mark, we are now sitting at 19,989!!!!

Go us!!!

I'm thinking we could pay this thing off the last week of July. I mentioned to Susan if there was any way to go ahead and send the last 5,000 from the Vanguard account and she basically said she didn't know how we couldn't....LOL. So if we can stay at a pace of paying 5,000 per month through July, then add the 5,000 from the Vanguard account that last week of July, we will be done!!! Totally debt free!!!!

Mortgage, Work, and Such

The mortgage is defenitely coming along. In imaginary land, we are at the 21.5K level, in the real world, we are out 26.8K. The 26.8K will be coming down by well over 2000 tomorrow once we get the other Paypal payment into the credit union account. Should be able to make close to a 2300 dollar payment. That will be nice and get the mortgage down to 24.5K level.

Work has defenitely been going crazy until today. I pretty much refused to do anything today. I had had enough. There had been 4 days in a row (yes, including Sunday) that I busted my butt. I love getting phone calls at 4pm on a Friday asking me to come up with a grant and to somehow spend 500K. The crazy thing is we will be able to offer 2, if not 3 new services to our hospitals. We will have the Telestroke program, the TelCardiology program, and hopefully the TeleRadiology program. I have a meeting with Radiology next Thursday to talk that one over. Not to mention I have also been working with Medicaid to get our two programs to join together. That will bring out FCC total up to 5.8 Million. If nothing else, that will look good on a resume :-)

March Net Worth

Yet, it happened. With the adjustment for the tax situation, we had a negative net worth for March. We will also probably have a second month of it in April.

Here are the numbers:

Net Worth: 122,456.89 -1,291.89 -1.04%
Net Worth w/o Home: 55,310.09 -12.43%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: 22,442.37 -24.74%

YTD:
Net Worth: +3.44%
Net Worth w/o Home: -11.35%
Net Worth w/o Home or IRA: -13.57%

At the start of the month, we are down another 5,576.92 because of having to pay the taxes. I am adjusting for the quarterlies as well, so April should be the last month of losses.

20K

Well, as of tomorrow, the mortgage will officially be below the 30K mark. We will actually be looking the 20Ks in the face :-) Even with sending the IRS an insane amount of money, we should be able to pay the mortgage off in September, or October at the latest. It would be kind of nice to pay that very last payment on Susan and I's second anniversary, but it would be even nicer if we can figure out a way to pay it even earlier. We have come up with some crazy numbers before....it would be nice to have another 11K month in solitaire, more than ever, but I don't know if that will ever happen again without some people leaving the site. Believe me, I'm not complaining, I just use to be able to win more. But dang, I'm still averaging close to 100 dollars a day, so again, I'm not complaining at all!!!!

Feb 19 - Mar 23rd Results

Solitaire has been very good to me.....especially the past week or so with the Survival tournament going on, even if it is a 3 card survival tournament that keeps on throwing back down to the bottom (just means more money, so its not a bad thing :-))

Feb 19 - 0
Feb 20 - 0
Feb 21 - 50
Feb 22 - 200
Feb 23 - 140
Feb 24 - 110
Feb 25 - 440
Feb 26 - 70
Feb 27 - 190
Feb 28 - 20
Feb 29 - 200
Total for February - 2770

Mar 1 - 50
Mar 2 - 200
Mar 3 - 30
Mar 4 - 0
Mar 5 - 20
Mar 6 - 0
Mar 7 - 30
Mar 8 - 90
Mar 9 - 120
Mar 10 - 70
Mar 11 - 200
Mar 12 - 150
Mar 13 - 150
Mar 14 - 150
Mar 16 - 120
Mar 17 - 100
Mar 18 - 50
Mar 19 - 250
Mar 20 - 150
Mar 21 - 100
Mar 22 - 200
Mar 23 - 100

When One Penny Makes Me Feel Good

Wooohoo, I won a penny. Exactly one cent. $0.01

So how did I win that impressive amount of money? On a little site called updown.com. Basically its a stock trading simultation that gives you one million dollars in play money that you get to invest on how you see fit. So Susan and I signed up for it this past month. You earn money if you end up beating the stock market. The amount you win is based on how much you beat the S&P 500 by and how long you have been a member of the site.

Well, I did actually beat the market. Not that I gained money, I actually lost money over the month, just not as much money as the stock market did....LOL.

So I made one penny, and I'm pretty darn happy about it.

February Net Worth

Did a little bit of correction this month. We have our tax information so I needed to go through and make corrections to our tax liability so everything wouldn't show up in April. So anyway, I put 6000 on the liability side of the equation for February to make things work out semi-decently.

Even with that we managed to eek out a very small gain for the month.

Net Worth: 123,448.78 Month: +0.57% Year: +4.42%
Net Worth w/o House: 63,161.10 Month: +1.12% Year: +1.23%
Net Worth w/o House or IRA: 29,817.88 Month: +4.53% Year: +14.83%

Our tax numbers look like this:

We owe:
Federal: 12,519
State: 2,283

Estimates:
Federal: 2,500
State: 400

Overall, it could have been worse. We were expecting about this, so everything will work out fine.

Yep, Its Late

Yep, once again the only time I seem to type on this thing is when its in the middle of the night when I should be asleep but for some reason, I can't.

I know what today's reason is, I can't stop thinking about work. Sad, but true. We had a meeting with AT&T and ITS today about the proposed network. Ok, basically it was Jimmy from ITS and me talking back and forth and enough Dr. Galli to get the idea of what we are trying to accomplish here. The problem is, we don't know what we are trying to accomplish here. We have spread out to 13 sites now, and I don't know where else we are going to go except for Mendenhall and maybe Hardy-Wilson. We shall see. I'm sure there are some little towns down on the coast that we might could go to, but with Gulfport and Biloxi down there, I just don't know.

Anyway, on to life. February 28th is fast approaching and we still haven't heard from Rod the Accountant yet. So it looks like I will just being paying the normal mortgage payment (normal meaning the actual payment, not 3000 extra) and put the rest in the Vanguard account. We will be moving at least 2900 more into the Vanguard account and bring that to just over the 30K mark.

The other thing I decided to do on that front is to go ahead and add a negative 5000 tax liability into February's net worth. I figure I might as well break it down between February, March, and April instead of just everything in April. As a result, we are going to have a really hard time to make a 3 percent increase in our net worth this month. The sad thing is, it appears that Susan's retirement account might actually post a positive gain in the first time in 8 months....We would have had a really nice gain except for the taxes. But what's the use in saying a 5 percent increase in February when it will then show like a 10 percent decrease in April. After I know what the quarterly estimates are, I plan on breaking that down per month and showing that on the liability side of the spreadsheet.....

Anyway, its 1:40am now, I really have to try to go get some sleep.....

Taxes

The taxes were turned into Rod the accountant yesterday. Hopefully we will know something before the end of the week. I'm anxious to start paying off the house again after we know what we owe to the IRS. The balance of the Vanguard account is now at the 26,900 range. So as long as we don't owe more than 16,900 between the Feds, the State, and the estimates, we can get to work on paying off the house again as soon as we get paid in February. If we don't know before the 28th, then the 3000 from the paychecks will go into the Vanguard account and probably push the balance over 30K as long as we get one more Paypal payment from WorldWinner.

The other thing that will be ugly is when we do pay the taxes in April. It will take a big hit on the net worth spreadsheet. In the future, once we know what the estimates will be, I play on dividing the amount out evenly over the three months so that the tax payment will be taken into the account at the end of each month for the net worth spreadsheet. I'm still hoping, even taking taxes into account, that we can still increase the net worth somewhere around 3% per month.

I did have a slight set back Friday, but Susan stopped me. I was ready to order Dish. I find it difficult to stay on task when it doesn't feel like we are paying anything off or accumulating anything. Yes, this will make it difficult once we pay off everything, but then we will be saving for a new house as well as saving for retirement. I do still want to get Dish after we pay off the house, but I can wait until that happens.

February 1 - 18 Results

1 - 50
2 - 250
3 - 200
4 - 50
5 - 50
6 - 50
7 - 0
8 - 0
9 - 50
10 - 50
11 - 0
12 - 150
13 - 150
14 - 50
15 - 150
16 - 0
17 - 100
18 - 0

Not too bad of a start, not going to win anything close to what I won in January, but that's ok, unless I win the 25K Survival Tournament. I'm at the next to last level now (500), and the last level is 1000, so that would bring the total closer.

January 28 -31 Results

28 - 150
29 - 100
30 - 200
31 - 50

Total for the month of January: 4015

Not a bad month, I would have to say. There was a mini-Survival tournament (only a 10K) that did help the total.

Vacation

So it was decided today that both Susan and I need a vacation. This was after a 2pm lunch that she and I had together. I have just gotten back from DC where I spent 3 days locked up in a hotel room. We ventured out twice for lunch and each time it was so dang cold it knocked all my thoughts of wandering out to see various sights while on the trip. Susan is just having a lot of work stuff going on. Not so much work work stuff, but stuff that work keeps putting on her. Its just time for a break.

So, of course, my first thought was Disney. All my family knows my love of Disney, and Susan is also very aware. I actually went twice during our short time of dating, yes both times without her. Both trips were planned before I knew she existed. In fact, the first, was right after our first official date. We went to lunch and I was leaving with my parents the next day to head to the House of Mouse. I had already planned the February trip with Amanda and go stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge as well. So 3 months into us dating, I was heading back to Orlando. I would never have thought it would change so much without her there. It was quite a shock and probably when I realized that I truely did love her. All I could think about the whole time was how much I wished she was there with me. But anyway, back on subject. Disney, of course, is way too expensive for us right now. We have taxes due, not to mention we will get back to paying off the house sometime in March or April, so Disney simply isn't an option (it still didn't stop me from pulling up there site and getting a quote before I came to this conclusion).

So the next thought is the beach. This option is still available. It will probably cost a little under 2000, but we could do it. It would be fun and very relaxing and, of course, there is Bob's.

The next option would be to go back to Irmo to see Lauren and Ed and the kids. The kids are great. Edwin doesn't like me much (clearly I stole his Boo from him), but the little one can steal my heart with the simple word "up". It took Ian 2 days to warm up to me, but with those big eyes looking up and the simple word "up", that's all it took. So, that would be a good option as well. We would probably end up flying, which would be in the neighborhood of a 1000 for both of us, that plus food, we would be looking at around 1300.

Tonight, as I can't sleep because I stayed in bed too long this morning....I have thought of a fourth option and the more I think about this, the more I like it. I was thinking we might just could stay at home. Take the 3 days off, take 500 out of the bank, go to the grocery store and let Susan go crazy at the grocery store as only she can and then just watch movies, or whatever. If we want to go somewhere, we go, if she wants to cook, she has that option, if she doesn't want to cook, we go out to eat, if we want a day trip to Memphis, we go on a day trip to Memphis, if we want to get cable or satellite for the occasion, we get cable or satellite. We just do whatever. I'm really liking this plan, and I plan on brining it up to Susan when we both get up in the morning. Maybe she will like it as well.....

Anyway, back to bed, I need to try to get some sleep!!!

The Majestic

I know better than to put on a movie I like at 11pm at night because that leads me to being away at close to 3am in the morning....blah!!!

Anyway, the taxes have really reared their head again. After thinking and thinking and thinking about the taxes, I finally decided, after talking more with Susan, to go ahead and just start saving as much as we can until we know what the final tax bill is going to be. As soon as we know, you will know. If its really as ugly as 18,000 plus a quarterly estimate due on top off that, well, I won't be happy. But it will be what it will be. Right now we are approaching the 26,000 figure in the Vanguard account and with the February paycheck, that number should be going over the 30K mark. What is going to be painful is when we have more in the Vanguard account than what we owe on the house. That is going to hurt. To actually have enough money to payoff the house and not be able to because its just an interest free loan from Uncle Sam. Yuck!!!!

So where does this leave us......we are sitting at 34,712.32 dollars left on the mortgage. So very close, yet so very far. Hopefully we will just have to be sidetracked for February, but it might run into March as well.

The other thing I plan to do is start showing the tax liability broken down each month on the net worth so that there isn't a dramatic decrease in the net work every time we have to pay quarterlies. This will start being reflected as soon as I actually know what that number is. We are waiting on one 1099-MISC form from where Susan did some side work.

It will be nice to fianlly know what the numbers are, so that we can plan better. It will also be nice if those numbers are only about 8,000 total. Sad, but true!!!

January Net Worth

Here's the month in review.

We increased another 3.69%. This was sort of a miracle after the way the stock market started out this month. At one point, Susan's IRA was down close to 6,000 this month before the last week or so. It ended up down another 2,500 this month.

Net Worth: 122,752.26 +3.69% YTD: +3.69%

Net Worth w/o House: 62,464.58 +0.11% YTD: +0.11%

Net Worth w/o IRA or House: 28,525.34 +9.85% YTD: +9.85%

Coming off of Taxes

So I'm slowly but surely getting use to the idea of us having to pay more than 10,000 in taxes by April 15th. Still not liking it much, but I know its coming. I still think the IRS should just keep the 1200 they are planning on sending us and putting that towards that 10K+.....

We changed the plans a little. We went ahead and decided to just get the Vanguard account up to 25,000 for right now. That will hopefully enable us to keep that account with at least 10,000 in it even after we have to pay our taxes and the April tax estimate. If that works out, we will most likely go ahead and pay the July tax estimate from the Vanguard account as well and just keep on working towards paying off the house sometime during August. We owe just over 38,000 on the mortgage that got put on hold to add some to the Vanguard account. The Vanguard account is about 150 dollars away from that 25K amount now, so as soon as we get the January paycheck, I'll go ahead and move that 150 dollars into the account and pay the rest of the extra to the mortgage. That should get the mortgage down into the 34K range and any solitaire money will start going towards the mortgage again. If we can keep a 5,000 pace alive for the next 7 months, we will be down with the mortgage in August. If we can kick it up to 6,000 per month, we will be done in July. The problem with the 6,000 scenario though is, of course, the tax estimates. We should know more sometime late February or early March once the accountants actually do our taxes. That will make the picture a whole lot clearer.

January 9 - January 27th Results

9 - 150
10 - 250
11 - 200
12 - 0
13 - 50
14 - 200
15 - 75
16 - 365
17 - 50
18 - 100
19 - 100
20 - 50
21 - 150
22 - 75
23 - 200
24 - 0
25 - 50
26 - 0
27 - 0

Death and Taxes

Ok, so more about taxes than death, but where there is one....

So we have done our preliminary tax prepartions and it isn't looking good. Unless the accountants can come up with something that we haven't, we are going to owe federal well over 12,000 dollars. Not a pretty sight to see that number pop up. Its about twice what we were expecting that we would have to pay. And the really bad part is that is just federal, TaxAct doesn't have the Mississippi forms ready yet, so I have no idea how bad that will be....

So we are dropping back and punting. Prior to yesterday, we thought we had the mortgage balance down into the 32Ks, but we are going to have to divert some monies to the taxes. We have about 21K in the Vanguard account but we really don't want it to drop below 10K, so we are going to take 3000 for each of the next 3 paychecks and move it over to the Vanguard account in order to have plenty to pay the taxes. We will also have to have enough to not only pay last year taxes, but we will also have to have enough to make the first quarterly estimate payment in April. Fun, fun!!!!

So we will be ok, kind of funny to say when I start thinking about a 12,000 dollar expense. We will be cutting it close on paying off the mortgage in 2008 now. We need to come up with about another 4800 to pay off the mortgage this year. Of course, we will also have to come up with the quarterly estimates, so that will have to be added on to that number.

Do I think we can do it? Yep. Do I know we can do it? Hmmmm Are we going to do it? Heck yeah!!!!!

Jan 1 - Jan 8th Solitaire Results

Jan 1 - 50

Jan 2 - 50

Jan 3 - 150

Jan 4 - 150

Jan 5 - 300

Jan 6 - 350

Jan 7 - 150

Jan 8 - 250

So far so good this month. Couple of good tournaments have lead to some rather nice results.

Solitaire Results Dec 15th - Dec 31st

Dec 15th - 0
Dec 16th - 0
Dec 17th - 0
Dec 18th - 100
Dec 19th - 100
Dec 20th - 50
Dec 21st - 0
Dec 22nd - 0
Dec 23rd - 200
Dec 24th - 100
Dec 25th - 250
Dec 26th - 200
Dec 27th - 50
Dec 28th - 50
Dec 29th - 0
Dec 30th - 50
Dec 31st - 0

Can't Sleep

So I slept too late today. I slept a little past 10:30 and that means I can't go to sleep now. I finally got up because I was afraid I was keeping Susan awake. I'm not sure how she slept later than I did, took a couple of naps, and is still able to go to sleep now....

Anyway, an update on where we are at since its been a couple of days. Solitaire has been going very well the past week. I'm already at 1200 for the month, which is way ahead of where I thought I would be. Every time I think I will only average 50 dollars a day, something happens and things just seem to work, and I make a lot more than that. The exciting part of this though, means that the imaginary mortgage balance is now below 34K. Yep, folks, we are now in the 33K zone.

So anyway, why we decided to pay off the house instead of investing:

1. We want Susan to be able to stay at home whenever we have kids. Not having a mortgage will make that a much easier task to accomplish. We can live on less than 2000 a month if we don't have a mortgage payment, so that will mean living on less than 2/3rds of my income.

2. Just the security of knowing that no one can come and just take the house away because we missed a payment for whatever reason. This is just a security thing that both Susan and I feel. Just knowing that the house is paid for will be a big relief.

3. "The borrower is slave to the lender." (Proverbs 22:7) Enough said on this item.

4. Because Susan said so. Ditto.....

January 1, 2008 Net Worth

Well, our net worth did next to nothing last month. What extra we paid on the house was pretty much off set by how much the stock market went down and Susan's IRA last month.

Net Worth: 118,381.53 up 0.21% from the previous month.

Net Worth w/o House: 62,393.41 down 4.82% from the previous month.

Net Worth w/o IRA: 25,967.07 down 9.72% from the previous month.

But since October 1st, the numbers look like:

Net Worth up 18.87%.
Net Worth w/o House: -2.90%
Net Worth w/o IRA: 1.56%


Since I have been tracking, we have yet to have a month where the net worth went down. I know that month will come, and it almost did this month (the intrest the money market account draws is what put is in the positive).

My main goal as far as this goes is to increase the Net Worth at least 50% in 2008. That would add another 59,000 to the net worth. My stretching goal is to have the net worth up above 200,000 before the end of the year. That would be an increase of close to 70% in 2008. I really think that is doable. Might not be easy, but that is what a stretch goal is suppose to be.

Pretty soon the (July or August) we will have the entire equity of the house to list, so that will be a very good thing. After we pay off the house, the change of investments will be going way up, so the other 2 numbers will start playing a bigger role.

My plan is to go in 3000 dollars increments, simply because a lot of the funds that we are looking at have an initial investment requirement of 3000. We will save 3000 and then buy a mutual/index fund for 3000, and keep on doing that until we have a diversified portfolio. Once we do that, we will use 3000 as the base to get the percentages right by investing more in the funds that we want to get to the "right" percentages. That's our diversification plan for right now. We will have to take Susan's IRA into account to decide what funds we want to buy at first.

We are almost to the fun part....only about 7 more months to go!!!!