Net Worth and Goals: March 2010 – Up 5.8% and making great progress!

Each month I provide an update on how we’re tracking toward our goals. I break it down between Net Worth and Goals for the year.

Net Worth:

The market was very kind to us this month and we saw a another nice boost to our 401K. We also sold off stock purchased through the Employee Stock Purchase Plan which allowed us to make a big, fat deposit to our Emergency Savings Fund. In total we’re up 5.8% this month! Woot!

In other news, Mr. Frugal’s company lifted their wage freeze and he received a small cost-of-living type raise which we immediately directed to our 401k. That will take effect in April. And Bank of America continues to work my nerves.

Here’s the breakdown:

Emergency Fund: +3,000.09

Brokerage Accounts: -532.66 (Rough trading month for me and Mr. Frugal)

401K: +7,368.44

Boat loan: -259.63 (After assuring me that extra payments would be applied to principal going forward, Bank of America once again applied my extra payment to “future payments”. They have now informed me that the agent I spoke with last month was misinformed and that I need to CALL THEM EACH MONTH to instruct them to apply the extra payment to principal. Oh how I hate being at the mercy of a bank. I am SO motivated to pay off this stinking loan!)

Note: Although I include our vehicles and boat in our net worth, I don’t reassess their value each month. I value them conservatively using Kelley Blue Book and update once or twice a year.

For a more detail you can check out our Net Worth report here.

2010 Goals:

Emergency Fund Set aside 9 8 months living expenses in Emergency Fund (roughly $30K $25K)

• I’ve officially changed this goal to 8 months living expenses
• We’re getting close with 5.2 months saved

Pay down debt Add $130 to boat payment. This alone will shave 5.5 years off the loan and save nearly $12,000 dollars in interest.

• Completed! Can’t wait to meet our Emergency Fund goal so we can REALLY start paying this down!

College Savings Fund We’re expecting our first baby in May. Although we won’t be able to contribute much this year, saving for college is extremely important to us and I don’t want to put it off. Establishing an account will also give our family the opportunity to contribute if they choose (I’ll elaborate on this in a later post).

• We’ve decided to go with a 529 Plan, but I haven’t settled on which state’s plan yet. My parents are giving us $1,000 to start the plan which is so awesome. This will be their first grandchild and they are so excited. You can read more about our college savings plan here.

Personal Finance blog

• Post daily (except weekends)
• Develop readership of 1,000 subscribers and 10K visits per month (note: I have no idea if this goal is realistic. It may be shooting too high or too low, but I wanted to give myself some sort of target to push me forward.
• Generate additional income from the Personal Finance Blog to put towards paying down debt and savings

• This month I joined the Yakezie Challenge which is a cooperative effort amongst a group of Personal Finance bloggers to help each other improve our Alexa rankings. I started the challenge ranked at 3,989,292 and in three weeks have moved up to 434,977. That’s a 917% increase in my ranking! Besides the obvious benefit of increased ranking, I’m meeting some really great PF bloggers and learning so much from them. Check out the members and their rankings here.