Net Worth Update: April 2010 – The Sky is Falling

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Net Change: +$1,673.29

Investment Performance: +$277.14
Net Cashflow: +$1,396.15

Dining Out: $ (356.56)
Groceries: $ (252.37)

A good month overall, but as I write this, I already know that most of these gains have been wiped out by May’s poor investment performance.  This week the Dow dropped 1,000 points before recovering and ended the week down 5%.

One silver lining, this week I happened to be transferring my assets from TD Ameritrade over to Vanguard.  If you transfer your assets from one brokerage to another, with the intent of investing in different equities, you have to liquidate your assets before the transfer occurs.  This can be a little precarious because after you liquidate, your assets must sit in cash for approximately 2 weeks before they are reinvested in the market.  It’s possible to miss out on market gains during this period.

Luckily for me, my liquidation occurred this Monday, right before the market crashed this week.  Accidental arbitrage at its best.  Let’s hope my assets are invested right before the market comes up.

I’ve started investing in my 401(K) account at my company.  They do a full match of the first 4 percent of my investment, which is pretty good relative to the the rest of industry.  The problem, however, is I realized that I invested in an a fund that is privately held, meaning I can’t use a ticker symbol to update my holding prices in Quicken.  I personally don’t see the point of investing in anything if you can’t track it’s value over time, so I will likely transfer my assets to a publicly held fund next week.

I spent a ridiculous amount on food this past month, and I feel now I need to watch it more closely.  If you include both Dining Out and Groceries, I spent over $600 this month.  I had a couple of dinners with friends this week and I tend to be a bit loose with spending in front of company.  A couple of action items on my part to bring this down:

  1. Prepare more food at home
  2. Eat out less
  3. Eat cheaper when I eat out
  4. Bring lunch to work more often

I already know next month is going to be rough.  With the market crashing this week and two large insurance payments coming in the month of May, unless the market makes a dramatic recovery, I doubt my net worth will increase this period.

6 thoughts on “Net Worth Update: April 2010 – The Sky is Falling”

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  5. Let’s hope my assets are invested right before the market comes up.Great kind of results…Thanks a lot for sharing as usual..

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