Losing $ Sux

I forgot what losing money in the market feels like. I just did my Q3 net worth. I had started it in mid-September. What a difference those few short weeks have made! I feel like I'm down between $15-$20K since then. Not feel like, I know. At least that much. I probably saved about $16K last quarter, at least. And it all got eaten up by the market drop. The good news is I feel less nervous about buying stocks now than I have in a long time. It will be interesting to see if October maintains its reputation for being a shitty month for the stock market. Oh well, long view and all that I know. It's just that every drop puts me that much further from retiring which is a big goal of mine that can't come soon enough.

Not much to report

Not the most exciting title for an update, but it's the truth! I could have sworn though that I posted in August. Anyway, the market is on fire, which is good and bad. I have a bunch of cash that I want to invest, but I don't want to invest now, for fear I will be investing at the high. I know October is usually a not very promising month for the market, so I'll be on the watch for any downturn, no matter how slight, to invest. I saw my Learnvest adviser (or talked to her) recently and we mostly talked about a strategy for investing the cash.  We'll see.  Overall, I"m about 40% in cash, which would be fine if I were 80, but since I am not, I need to put my money to work so it will grow.

The real estate market in my hood is also on fire. There's a place similar to mine on the market for $150K more than I bought mine for a little more than a year ago. So in theory if I could sell my place for that amount, I'd have to bring about 100K less to the closing to give to the bank to pay off the mortgage. Which is nice, but irrelevant because I have no plans to sell.

I've been pretty good on my expenses lately. I haven't bought a stitch of clothing, any electronics, any furnishings or any sporting goods this month, and there's only 10 days left. Would kind of like to keep it that way. My food budget is somewhat under control. Took lunch all but one day this week.

Yawn, sorry for the boring update! But I guess slow and steady wins the race.

How much do you save?

I've been reading Mr. Money Moustache a lot lately. I love his blog and feel like it's really the only PF blog where I am actually learning new things. Anyway, as his readers know, he advocates saving like 50% of your pay. Um, wow. And  I thought I was an aggressive saver!

I've never actually added up about how much I save each month, so I wanted to see what % I save. In various ways (pre-pay mortgage principal, cash direct deposited to my trading account, and cash deposited to my checking account) I save about 15-20% of my monthly income. It's not bad, but it's not great. The only thing that makes me a super saver is my bonus.  I usually get a bonus in December (praise be to the Gods) and it's a good chuck of my income. Last year 50% of my gross was paid out in that one check. And I save the whole thing (except when I spent it on my downpayment for the apartment last year). So in reality I save a lot more than 20%, but I want to try to get better at saving on the day-to-day level. I guess it's just more challenging because so much of my compensation is paid out at the end of the year. It's good practice though for if I ever had to take a lower-paying job. I know I can successfully live on half of my salary and still save 20%.

This month I've been traveling a ton for work which means I save a lot on food expenses. My monthly spending for June had been very low, until I booked an international vacation for December. But the saving wasn't for naught, because I was able to pay for it all out of my salary and not have to touch savings.

I'm curious about doing my networth update for Q2. The stock market was humming until about June. Unfortunately I think I'm going to end up down or flat on my investments for the quarter, and I haven't saved a ton of cash, so I think I'll be below average on my quarterly networth increase, but we'll see.

Boring

I haven't posted in a bit because things have been moving along. Nothing spectacular, except the performance of the stock market. I held out investing my bonus in January, now I wish I had dumped it all into the market and ridden this high. I'm still waiting to see if there's any kind of dip and will invest then. 

I'm still spending too much money on food, but did cut down on lunch spending by going to the grocery store 1x a week and making lunch at work instead of buying it every day. I think that helped offset some food expenses.

I worked out I've been spending about $500 a month on healthcare expenses, in addition to the $200 I put aside in my flex spending. I don't really feel like there are ways to reduce this expense. I'd rather reduce in other areas if I need to.

To date this year I have barely spent anything on clothes. As a result, I feel a kind of pent up demand. I fully anticipate increasing spending in this area in the rest of the year. I had consciously held off on clothing purchases to try to offset my significant healthcare spending.

I'll do a mid-year budget update in early July, along with a networth update.

Net Worth Updated

I had no idea how this would be this quarter, based on adding a big new asset and liability (apt and mortgage) and all of the big expenses like the closing costs of about $17 or $18K.  It turns out I'm down about $19K. If I had done this update even last week it would have been even more, but the market has made a nice little jump over the last few days (at least my accounts have recovered a little of their losses). The stock market remains extremely frustrating. I think if I checked my account balances now versus a few years ago, they would pretty much be the same. Which makes me think, why am I holding these stocks? I've owned the same index funds (for the most part) since 2003. 10 years. Of doing NOTHING. Now that I have a mortgage it seems it would be better served putting the money against that. But I do need some liquidity and I guess I keep hoping against hope that someday my account balances will grow.

This net worth update will be a new baseline/normal. My first quarter as a homeowner. So next quarter I will be able to see how much I am saving/any gains I am making. I shouldn't have any big expenses, just continuing to furnish the apt. but that's basically coming out of my paycheck, not savings. I'm putting off any really big projects like the built in bookshelves I've been considering.

So here's to a fun, low-key, low-spend summer.

AAPL

So in July/August whenever that monstrous dip in the market was, I bought some Apple shares. Only 3 actually. At the time, Apple was down to like $367. Well this week they absolutely rocked earnings and hit an all time high at like $450. Killer money. I wish I had taken my whole freakin portfolio and bought Apple that day this summer. I would be up A LOT. Much more than the stupid buy and hold index funds has done for me over the last 10-15 years that I've been following this "good girl" approach. I am increasingly convinced that buy and hold does not work anymore and the only way to play the market to make any $ is to actively trade. I'm going to keep buying individual stocks like AAPL when they dip and see if I can make $ that way. The only thing is that its in my taxable account, so I want to hold it for a year so I only play long and not short-term capital gains.

Update

Wow, this last month has been really crazy. Both financially and otherwise.

First, the IRS audit. My business expense was rejected by the auditor. I found a great, relevant tax course case, and my accountant encouraged me to fight the finding, through the proper channels. This would mean talking to the agent, then his supervisor and if I didn't get anywhere, filing an appeal and then meeting with an agent in person. All of this would have meant I had to write up my findings and basically act as my own lawyer/rep. I was ready. And then life happened. And I realized I had already spent a lot of time on this audit and that my resources would be better spent elsewhere. So I gave up. I paid the $2K to make it go away. Of course I'm not done. I'll probably have to re-file NY taxes for that year, too. In the end, I'm glad that it's over and I do not have to think about this anymore. Also, the IRS agent I spoke to was SOOOO nice. I hated him (of course) until I spoke to him. He actually encouraged me to provide him with the case I had found, but I just kept telling him I did not have time. I think he even offered me an extension.

Second, the market. I have no idea. One day I am poor, the next I'm back up to where I started. All of this up and down just means that I net out about even from what I can tell, not really making or losing money.

Third, job. I've decided that I am very bored at my job. I am getting pretty far along interviewing for a new one, so we'll see.

Fourth, it's that time of year. With any luck by the end of this month I will be in possession of a bonus check. Considering how lean but successful we were this year everyone is expecting a bigger one than last year, so we'll see. Crossing fingers.

Market Recovery

So this week was really helpful in regaining some of the paper losses I've suffered in my taxable and retirement accounts over the last few months. My taxable account is only a few thousand short of the highest balance I've ever had. Woo -- hoo!

Shedding Those Pesky Zeros from Bank Acct. Balance

The title of my post is pretty much how I feel these days. I'm due to write up my quarterly net worth statement and I am less than excited to do so. This is the first quarter I will have lost money in years. Cést la vie I suppose. Not like I've been doing much saving on my own to make up for my market losses. I feel like if the market is going to wipe out all of my savings, I might as well have some fun with what $ I do have! Next quarter should be better, because as of October 1, I have paid all of my social security tax for the year. That means an automatic raise of several hundred dollars during Q4. And we are inching towards bonus time (thank the gods).

I feel I have made some progress on fighting back the other force of evil trying to suck $ from me, the IRS. I put together a kick ass package for my audit, and there is no reason that I should not be receiving a check for overpayment from the IRS. I actually discovered that I double reported my dividends for the year in question, so I should get back a few hundred dollars. If they do not accept my business expense explication I will so appeal that finding. There is no reason for them not to, but with the government coffers running low I'm sure they are tasked with sucking every last penny they can from the populace. I'm going to fight for my rights and not let them intimidate me.

More Ugh

My taxable account has reached an unpleasant low today. The balance hasn't been this low since October of 2010. So almost a year of growth wiped out in a week or so. This market really requires a stomach of iron.

One thing that hasn't crashed and seems to be moving along nicely is my Lending Club account. Making me think I should invest more in there and lower my stock positions even more. I'm already like 60/40 investments/cash. Maybe I'll start taking more of the investment money and put it into loans. I like the idea of investing in people.