One thing I really like about personal finance software is the ability to see performance over time. So I decided to plot my net worth over the time I have been tracking it. I only started this blog in December 2004, but I also remembered that I calculated my net worth back in June at $30k. Here are my results:

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Since I only have a week left(!), I’ll make this month’s goals very brief.

1) I want to have all of my financial accounts added and updated in Microsoft Money 2005.

2) Very very roughly, I want to see where our money is going each month.

3) (From last month) Review my W-4 Withholdings and minimize the overpayment for this year.

Since I only have a week left(!), I’ll make this month’s goals very brief.

1) I want to have all of my financial accounts added and updated in Microsoft Money 2005.

2) Very very roughly, I want to see where our money is going each month.

3) (From last month) Review my W-4 Withholdings and minimize the overpayment for this year.

Ok, so I’m chronically late on my monthly goals. Briefly, here is the status of the goals that I set for March:

1) “File taxes for myself and the missus…”

Done. It was a pain doing taxes for 2 states for two separate people and a joint federal tax return and trying to divy up all those incomes and figure out what’s taxable, but I think I did it right… Anyways, we ended up getting about a $1,000 refund. So in a sense, Mickey Mouse took my tax refund.
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Ok, so I’m chronically late on my monthly goals. Briefly, here is the status of the goals that I set for March:

1) “File taxes for myself and the missus…”

Done. It was a pain doing taxes for 2 states for two separate people and a joint federal tax return and trying to divy up all those incomes and figure out what’s taxable, but I think I did it right… Anyways, we ended up getting about a $1,000 refund. So in a sense, Mickey Mouse took my tax refund.
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I am doing a bit of tinkering with this site, and I wanted to restate clearly my goals. Contrary to the inspirational image to the left, I feel that if you don’t write your goals down clearly, they are much less likely to happen. I am still separating them into Long-term, Mid-term, and Monthly Goals:
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Here are my financial goals for March (or what’s left of it):

1) File taxes for myself and the missus. I sent in the many rebates for the TaxCut Deluxe tax prep software that I bought. Will need to do 1 joint Federal and multiple state returns due to us being married mid-year. Not looking forward to it.

2) Looking forward, do the research in order to find the right amount of tax withholding per paycheck in order to pay as little taxes during the year as possible without penalties and avoid giving out an interest-free loan to the IRS. Especially since I wait until March to do my taxes!
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I’m a bit late, but here were my goals & sub-goals for last month, and here is my current status:

1) I did some research into ETFs, but not a whole lot. I examined possible areas of interest such as chasing high-dividend earning companies and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Definitely more to be learnt out there.

I did buy 100 shares of DDD @ $4.80 per share. At $480, it is less than 1% of my net worth, and it is a company that I’ve wanted to own a piece of for a while. We’ll see how it goes!
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How is it the 11th of February already?!?! Work is keeping me busy, but I still need to set a goal for this short month. I’ll keep it relatively simple. What I am doing is making the ~$5,000 in my FreeTrade account my “Play Money” account. I am also thinking of it as my own experimental personal mutual fund, or a micro-fund, as first brought to my attention by IRA-CAM.com.

While I will probably not have time to even make one trade this month, I am taking steps to set it up so that I can run it with minimal time invested. Steps I want to take this month:
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