Thursday, October 21, 2010

How I See the World Today | Jim Rogers

Jim Rogers is one of my favorite investors to listen to. These are a must watch:



Friday, October 1, 2010

September 2010 Net Worth: 90K, I can smell 100K!

August and September are all in the books and things keep looking up despite whats going on. Thats because the wife and myself have combined all of our money. We still have some tinkering to do with her retirement and such but overall we are feeling good. That is another reason I did not put up our net worth last month so bear with me.
Lets break it down:

Cash & Savings: Huge jump since last time I posted our net worth, this is mainly due to combining my wife's saving and my savings. We have been saving up for a house down payment but looks like we got one heck of deal on a home, so we will be keeping most of this. Our first goal is to get about 50K in the bank(cash) for saving before we really start putting our money to work. We have to purchase some major things for our new home(washer, dryer, and fridge) so this will be drained a bit over the next couple months. This bracket holds the funds for insurance, auto maintenance, Roth IRA, and vacation. This is why it can be a little deceiving, it also holds my monthly budget in it. It has about 13-15k sitting around as savings the rest are funds that are going to be used at some point over the year. The rest is used on a daily bases for covering expenses, rent, food, auto, etc...

Stocks/Brokerage: Has been a good run with my brokerage account the last couple of months. I decide to go ahead and pull the trigger on Exelon Corp. I am just saving up some cash in the mean time to start dollar cost averaging into these. Overall I am up around 10% in these. The list of stocks I own (EXC)(PWE)(PHYS)(GLD)(EGO)(AUY)(AVARF)(RGLD)(ZQK)(XOM)(CVX).

*As you can see I am heavy in commodities in my brokerage account. This is all based on my thought that over the next decade the best investments are going to actually be in hard assets. My Roth/IRA/401k are in pretty common index funds and mutual funds so I figure I can go more risky with brokerage. I believe these will out perform equities in the next decade and if nothing else I feel more comfortable with my portfolio diverse. I am bearish on the US Dollar and US Economy, I believe that trillion dollar deficits are not going bode well for the USA.

Retirement 401k: This bracket is just both my wife and my retirement, adding money to our retirement funds every month. Big tick up this month because of combining...we will wait and see how the stock market plays out come the fall. (update - Fall is here and based off quantitative easing or money printing coming down the line, I am starting to think the market might raise dramatically, as money will have to flow somewhere)

Retirement IRA's: So I have jumped back into some funds as I had a large amount of cash sitting on the sidelines. I put most into precious metals & mining fund(VGPMX). In this bracket I have all Vanguard Funds (VTSMX, VGSTX, VEIEX, VGPMX)

Debts and Liabilities - Vehicle under 7K!! Credit Cards done...

Credit Cards: don't have much to say here! $0.00

Car Loan: I am paying 4% APR on it so I am paying a little, but not a ton. Still looking to pay it off early-will probably be a goal this or next year. Now that we don't need to save up on the downpayment we might have to start paying a bit more per month even though our mortgage will be higher than we are paying now...will keep you posted.

I am still extremely bearish on the world economy and the US economy...We are headed for a financial storm and it is very important for all of us to be up to date on current events. It time to be prepared for the worse and pray for the best.

Thing will be getting shifted here and there over the next few months with everything we have gong on with the home purchase and combining finances but overall I feel pretty good and cannot wait to see what happens come of end of year to see how far we have come. Until then good luck with your own budget and growing your wealth.