I have read about a peer to peer lending site called prosper.com before. I never put too much thought about it. Then I read a few other reviews about it. I read about it again on mymoneyblog. They are offering a $25 referral so I went ahead. I am waiting for my bid to fund a loan so I do not have anything to report. I will report more on it as it goes along. If you are interested in joining, please use my referral link so we bought get $25. Here is the link.
It has taken a few weeks, but I have finally overcome the stock markets woes of August. My net worth is finally above it was in July. It was a pretty ugly few weeks, but it definitely underscores the importance of staying in the market. If you get of it you are more than likely going to loose out on the recovery and subsequent gains. Here are my financial updates:Assets +$62, 224.91 over last yearLiabilities -$14,015.95 than last yearNet Worth + $76, 240.86 than last year I am pretty happy with the performance. I would like to increase my net worth $100,000 year over year, but it will remain if I can accomplish this goal.
My year 0% financing promo is coming to end the middle of next month (September). My plan is to transfer the money that I borrowed from Citibank and Discover from my money market fund at Fidelity a few days before the due date. I can then pay off Citibank and Discover before the promotional rate expires. I am pretty happy with the results of this. My original goal for this was to two-fold. The first was to stop paying interest on a HELOC which was at a little over $5,000 and the other was to generate extra interest income. After a the year, the HELOC will remain at 0 since I have saved enough to cover the borrowed money. I have also generated around $300 in free interest income on the residual of what I borrowed from on the 0% cards and the $5,000 from the HELOC. This is not a lot, but it sure beats the interest I would have been paying on the HELOC. I definitely think I met both goals. My next step after I pay off the two balances is to wait around six weeks and get a copy of my credit report. I want to make sure that the balances have cleared from it. I am then going to embark on a second round of an app o’rama. This time I am going to apply for hopefully around fifteen or so cards. I want to borrow a lot more at zero percent and then generate a lot more in interest income this time.
Have you ever seen Mad Money on CNBC? The host of the show is named Jim Cramer. His show consists of a very fast paced call ins from viewers and him giving stock tips. I have always thought he was nutty and not much an analyst. Watch this video and draw your own conclusions about his sanity:
Don’t you feel sad about the Bear Stern employees that are losing their jobs? There is no telling what they were making, but I can safely say it was a lot more than you or me. The Wall Street firms have been doing very well over the past few years with all of the merger and acquisition activity.He has missed on quite a few areas. He stated about six months ago that the housing market was fine. This turned out to be so so wrong which is ironic since the sub-prime meltdown is the subject of the video.
The market has been really good of late. The Dow has been hitting records. These gains have really helped my portfolio. My total net worth has increased $35,000 since the beginning of the year. My liabilities have decreased by $1200, and my assets have increased by $33,800. My liabilities are not decreasing as much as I like, but the asset increase is very nice. My goal is to increase my net worth by $70,000 by the end of the year. I hope the market continues its gains. I can at minimum maintain my savings rate. I do have a bonus coming around August. My goal is save most of this. I hope I hit my year-end goal. I am planning on doing another App O’Rama when my current 0% rate expires that I have on two of my credit cards. I am going to try to apply for at least ten. This should also help me reach my goal. It would be nice to exceed it.
One thing I definitely need to do is figure out what my minimum monthly living expenses are. That way I can figure out how much my emergency cash fund should be. I want to have a full six months worth of expenses. I keep this in a money market mutual fund at Fidelity. I may have too much in it now. I can move the excess into one of my equity funds.
The past week has not been kind to the stock market. I slip back below the threshold I hit a few weeks ago. The threshold was my net worth exclusive of my house and car was positive. I hope market stabilizes next week, but I am a long-term investor so I should let dips along the road bother. I did shift $5,000 from my cash reserve to an ETF tracking the S&P 500 on Tuesday when the market started its slide. I figured the decline would have some sort of bounce. Boy was I wrong! The market continued its decline later. It fell more again during the week.
I got my IRS tax refund last week. I had said I was going to get a macbook pro with part of the refund. The refund made me hit another financial milestone. Ever since I bought my townhouse, my net worth exclusive off the house and car was negative. It always bothered me that me when I looked at my net work on Fidelity, it showed negative. I would know that really was not at a negative net work, but it was nevertheless bothersome. Well as February 16, 2007 this is no longer the case. This event caused me to rethink the timing of my macbook pro purchase. I think I am going to wait till bonus time which is in August. I will get a macbook pro then. The timing works out better since leopard (Apple’s new operating system release) will be out by then.
My sporadically reported net work is: assets are $55,111.78 higher than the same time last year, my liabilities are $9,392.17 lower than last year. This brings my net worth $64,503.95 higher than the same time last year. I am very happy which my progress so far. I am still below my goals that I set at the end of last year, but I think as the year goes on, I will be to meet my goals.
I apparently cannot tax plan worth a damn. I did my taxes last weekend and low and behold I am getting more than six thousand dollar refund. I know it is nice to get a refund especially one that is that large, but if you think about it, you are getting your money returned to you. You gave a loan to the US government which is interest free. (more…)
I have been doing some number crunching on my savings rate. I currently save 25% of my income. This is split between retirement savings and after-tax savings. I am not including the money that goes into my money-market mutual fund that is earmarked for my yearly property taxes. I do not escrow so this money my “escrow” account. The nice thing is that I earn the interest on the escrow money instead of the escrow company. I also do not include debt service payments. (more…)
I read this article today. It paints a very alarming picture for the current crop of retirees. Their debt is increasing, and in some cases it is increasing at a very high rate. The number of bankruptcies among retirees is increasing too. I am very concerned by the younger baby boomers and my generation, Generation X. The debt levels are increasingly higher the younger you go. You may have heard the term negative savings rate. If you have not, it means that the nation as a whole is spending more than they make. This is a terrible place to be.