September '09 Progress Report

Holy guacamole. My last Progress Report update was in June '09??? Egads! I have been away for a long time now. Truth be told, I've been on the same ol' debt pay-down grind for the past 3 months that there really wasn't much to report. So I won't be reporting my progress for July or August. If you're really curious, you can see my July and August numbers here

Anyhoo, here's my financial state as of 9/30/09.

MY DEBT

	Starting Debt (6/31/08)	Last Month	This Month	DIFFERENCE
Private SL	$49,528.99	$44,675.23	$44,306.73	$(368.50)
Fed'l SL	$55,852.68	$54,085.92	$53,961.10	$(124.82)
Credit Card	$13,610.75	$11,208.08	$11,086.08	$(122.00)
TOTAL	$128,771.75	$109,969.23	$109,353.91	$(615.32)

I'm snowballing my debt and I'm arbitraging my 0% credit card debt. Not much to report here. Just the same ol', same ol'.


MY SAVINGS

LAST MONTH	THIS MONTH	DIFFERENCE
$8,011.91	$8,112.28	+$100.37

The savings that is reflected here is my "emergency fund" that I am not supposed to touch unless there is an absolute true emergency.

Although my EF is going up, my "other savings" that I've earmarked for expenses (and that is not reported in my net worth or progress report) have gone down significantly.

As reported previously, my company made me travel back-and-forth to the east coast every other week for the past 7 weeks. During that time, I had to hire a pet sitter for my cat, which wasn't cheap (approx. $20 - $30/day, not including tips). My company refused to reimburse me for my pet care expenses. I estimate that I had to pay about $650+ for my cat's care.

Since I was pretty bitter about having to travel back-and-forth for something that I think is completely ridiculous, degrading and/or a waste of time, I decided to stay an extra day or two (at my expense) in couple of United Airline's layover cities. Wanna guess where I took my side trips?





These side trips probably cost me about $700 or so, including food, hotel, entertainment and ground transportation costs. I thought these side trips would make my lousy business trips worthwhile, but I unfortunately got sick and I couldn't sightsee as much as I would've liked. But I don't regret taking these trips. DC and Chi-town are fabulous cities and they were worth every penny I spent.

By the way, I also got to see the Hope Diamond before they took it out of its setting. (In case you didn't know, the Hope Diamond is currently displayed au naturel while some jeweler is making its new, more modern looking setting called Embracing Hope.)



MY NET WORTH

LAST MONTH	THIS MONTH	DIFFERENCE
$30,205.89	$39,503.13	+$9,297.24

In June '09, I reported my net worth as $10,007.87. Three months later, my net worth is 4 times higher? All I can tell you is that I certainly didn't deposit $30k into my investment accounts. I swear, the stock market volatility is giving me whiplash.

I'm not going to get too happy or cozy with these figures since it appears that the market has started to correct downwards during the first week of October. I'm praying that the stock market won't repeat the debacle of October 2008. *Fingers crossed*

The breakdown of my net worth can be seen here.