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.

Starting off the New Year

To kick off the New Year, I met with my Learnvest financial planner. I really like her and value her advice. This year I'm tackling the same problem as last year which is getting my cash surplus invested. It sounds ridiculous, but I haven't even gotten last year's increase invested and now I have a big chunk to invest again this year. I can't keep up. I get so nervous about dumping a lot into the market. But once I set up auto investment, I can truly set it and forget it. It's just that to get the cash invested in a timely manner I would have to be making large buys each month. Right now I'm only going in about 10K at a time, which is not doing much to make a dent in my stash.

I have also convinced my planner that I don't need to replace my full income in retirement or even 85% of it. I know the exact number that I spend each year, and what part of that is for housing (almost 40%!), so in today's dollars I need about 60K a year with a mortgage and 36K a year without one. Of course that # doesn't include inflation.  If I used the Mr. Money Mustache formula I would need to save 25x the amount I need each year, so either  $1.5 million or $900K.  I think to be safe I would only be comfortable with the higher #. The planner's target number is going to be more like $2 million, but that's better than the like $4 million she is currently targeting which is most likely never going to happen.

Happy saving!

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.

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.

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!

Losses and Gains

So I finally just finished my taxes. After a gruelling search for the cost basis for a mutual fund I sold that I'd bought in 1998. The good news is that I found it. The bad news is that I sold the fund at 1/2 price. And i held $10,000 of it. So I had $6,000 in recognized losses this year. Ugh. The good news is that I am now getting a tax refund, whereas without these losses I would not be. Also, I have $3K to carryover to next year! I guess that is also a good thing, in a way. What would be better is if I could make better investment decisions and pay more attention to my investments. But I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself since 2008 was killer for everyone.