Monthly Review & Net Worth Report - September 2005

Net Worth as of 10/1/2005

* Other Assets = condo deposit

Previous month's report: click here.

This was my best month since starting this blog. My net worth went up $8303.75 thanks to several factors. I received my sign-on bonus with last week's paycheck. In addition, I also received an unused vacation reimbursement check from my previous employer for the amount of $1147. That's a total of $4747 extra net pay this month that helped boost my net worth a healthy amount.

My investment gains and interest income also came to about $1000 this month, an increase of almost $700 over last month's amount. I am not sure if that is good enough though considering I have over $140k between retirement, savings and investments. Seems like I should be earning more than 1k but for the time being I can live with it. I will take a closer look at my investments and savings in Dec when I have more time.

Other than that what added to my net worth was a $408 from eBay & furniture sales, $100 from the Sony card offer, $19 gas card (translated to $19 savings in this month's gas spend) from Great Fun and employer 401k match. I only received the employer match for the first half of the month as my 401k at Msft hasn't kicked in yet but the sign-on bonus kind of made up for it. The rest was savings from salary which came to about $1906.

Balance Sheet

My total income this month was about $15,800 from all sources (salary, bonus, vacation reimbursement, investments, interest income, eBay etc) out of which expenses were a little over $7,500 total including $1500 in unposted transactions from last month ($1000 to mom & dad and $500 Red Cross for Katrina relief) and $3800 in taxes withheld. The rest, $2200, was living expenses for the month of September.

The living expenses at $2200 is the lowest it has been since starting this blog despite the impulsive weekend trip to BC earlier in the month. For some reason I have been on a total spending freeze ever since. I didn't buy any CDs, movies, clothes, makeup, magazines, cappuccino, candy or any other junk that I normally buy every month. It's not something I set out to do. It just happened. For the most part I think it was because I have been busy training my replacement at the old workplace, getting ramped up at the new workplace, running what-if scenarios on renting vs buying, shopping for mortgages, reviewing condo papers, threatening would be delinquents on the phone etc. A couple of categories do need watching though: my food bill climbed up to over $500 (partly because the m/w was out of commission but partly because it acted as an excuse for me to go back to eating out more often) and my gas expense rose to over $200 (from the $70-80 monthly average) thanks to the new longer daily commute from Seattle to Redmond.

September score: A- (I feel like saying A for effort but I should have been proactive about the commute situation since I knew it was coming and I should have booked the tickets to Bangalore by now)

Thoughts for October: 1. Buy that damn ticket to India, 2. Sign-up for magazine subscriptions, 3. Look at carpool/vanpool/bus and other alternate commute options, 4. Decide whether to roll over my 401k or leave it where it is.