Sunday, August 25, 2013

August net worth update

August has been another month of Mustachianism on relative autopilot. Let's update my net worth of income-producing assets.

Here are the totals, along with the difference from my last update on July 27th:
  • 401k - $24,173.59 (-$339.00)
  • Lending Club - $2,403.64 ($317.11)
  • Schwab - $1,496.30 (-$48.33)
  • I-bonds - $600 ($200)
  • Total - $28,673.53 ($129.77)
A small increase over last month's value. My 401k contributions and my I-bond purchases remain unchanged. I contributed $300 to Lending Club. The decrease in wealth in my 401k and Schwab account is due to market fickleness — no big deal.

With the rest of my income I've been saving up cash, retiring credit card debt, and beginning to "invest" in a speculative asset class which I'm not ready to share with you just yet. I can almost guarantee you'll hate it. Before I write about it, I want a little more confidence that I'm not throwing money away.

I am planning on dialing down contributions to Lending Club in the short term. My desire for liquidity has increased over the past two months; and I have been trying to buy higher-interest notes for which competition is fierce. I don't have a problem investing in B notes with interest rates from 9 to 13%, but for now that's not the most attractive opportunity for my cash. I'll let the money I have in Lending Club compound for a month or two while I reevaluate.

This month I remembered that I have around $3k of Series E savings bonds, and I think they belong in my invested net worth calculations. I haven't converted them from paper to electronic yet, so when I do, I'll start reporting on them.

13 comments:

  1. Speculative asset class? That sounds like a lot of work. But I'm sure you'll enjoy it, given the effort you've already put off for your investments, not to mention the potential benefits once you fully master it. Good luck with your investments!

    Irving Burton LTD

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    1. Thanks! It's definitely more work than automatically investing into an index fund. I'm glad to have a little fun with investing now that I have a chance. I'm also glad that passive indexing is an option for if/when I get tired of more speculative assets.

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  2. We'll hate this speculative asset class more than Bitcoins? Way to set the bar high...

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  3. Yes, I had the same laugh about what could be more speculative.

    Was curious about why you would not put the savings bonds in net worth, unless they do not produce any income? Sounds like they could be liquidated either way so I would include it.. not a bad chunk of change to suddenly remember that you had :)

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    1. Glad to hear that including savings bonds sounds reasonable. Yeah it's nice remembering about money I forgot about -- one of those dividends from a frugal lifestyle.

      I find I'm squirreling money away in lots of different accounts: a few hundred in Lending Club, a few hundred in Schwab, a few hundred in another savings account. That way I can keep remembering chunks of money I forget about :)

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  4. Just curious how much you're contributing each month to the various accounts? You may have covered this in the past, but I just discovered this site so I've got some reading to do!

    Good stuff, keep up the good work!

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    1. My contribution to Lending Club varied monthly but was usually $200 or $300. I have $200/mo automatically investing in I-bonds. Then there's a few hundred (three to five usually) that go to whatever else I'm playing with at the time. And I try to put $200 or $300 into a separate savings account to keep from touching it.

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  5. Good luck with your goal of hitting $100,000. My wife & I just made that goal happen, aided considerably by having no other debts to slow us down. The next $100,000 will be far easier.

    But I wanted to compliment you on how completely transparent you are on your blog. I've just started my own blog thinking I'd be completely transparent, and I am finding I extremely tough. Sometimes we aren't quite as badass as we thought we were, right? At least I'm not.

    At times like this I have to remember how far we've come and how blessed we are.

    One thing I love is that by putting your financial goals out there you are far more accountable.

    I couldn't get the wordpress comment link to work, so: www.welfaretowelloff.com if you want to get in touch.

    Good luck again,

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  6. That's fantastic. Good job getting to the first $100k.

    I can assure you there are plenty of things I'm not being forthright about. It's an ideal to measure yourself against though. For example I love Dividend Mantra for tracking every dollar in and out in his monthly budget. I think I'd like to be more transparent about my income in the future: it could be pretty instructive.

    Thanks for commenting! I'll start reading your blog for sure.

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  7. Interested, albeit a little apprehensive, to hear about the new asset classes!!

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  8. Regarding Lending Club. Do the math on holding the notes til they mature. At the end of their life, you do not get the return that you should! I would sell notes that have 15 months or less to go and reinvest in notes that have 36 to 30 months to go.

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    1. I'm not sure what you mean. Throughout the life of the loan the interest rate remains fixed, so the amount of interest I'm getting on invested capital decreases proportional to the invested capital. I agree that if I don't reinvest the payments I'm receiving, then my overall return will be lower, but that's mostly assuming the money I receive will sit idle. I'll make sure that's not the case.

      Am I misunderstanding your comment?

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