June 2008 Financial Report: Rough Month

Hi there. It's been a while! June was a crazy month for me - I was traveling in Europe for two weeks and had hardly any time to spend worrying about my finances and especially blogging. I've fallen completely out of my personal finance reading. I realize now that I even missed doing my monthly report for May (nothing major, just a small increase in net worth). It was an amazing trip - trip of a lifetime - but now it's time to get back into the swing of things and buckle down financially.

June was a rough month for me financially. Despite having planned and saved for the trip somewhat, I still ended up putting myself in debt a bit. All in all it was a very inexpensive trip, and I should be able to wipe out this additional debt by the end of this month. I just hate to see that negative slope on my net worth graph for the first time.

So I ended up diving into my cash assets, which was fine, because I had some money saved up. A bright spot is that I was able to contribute $200 more to my Roth IRA, even though this happened by accident. I had an auto-deposit set up initially, but suspended it for a few months because it was easier for me to work around that and deposit what I needed in odd amounts (turns out that Fidelity doesn't require the $200/mo. auto deposit once your account is actually open). It was set to resume in June, but I had forgotten. So I saw that it took money out of my Citizens checking account and caused an overdraft! Luckily I was able to get the fee refunded (6 months since my last one!) and I decided to just let the deposit stay in my IRA.

So overall assets are down but only by $217. We are at the halfway point in the year and I am at $2,720.19 in assets - just under $280 shy of my target of $3,000 to be on pace to hit $6,000 by year's end. I consider this pretty good shape considering last month's spending. I will definitely need to focus and be disciplined moving forward with my saving. Asset accumulation is a priority.

On a related note, it's nice to see my funds in the Fidelity Cash Reserves actually generating a few bucks. Small, to be sure, but at least it's something positive. I'm close to the $2,500 needed to buy into a mutual fund. Hopefully this month will be the month when I can start investing that money in a long-term vehicle.



Debts - not quite as bad as it seems. A decent credit bard balance but I will be able to pay that off as well as the money I owe to others from the trip. Should work out fine.



A big plus from last month is that I got a big raise at my job! Still not making much but it's actually quite significant and will help a lot moving forward. I plan on putting all that additional money toward accelerating my savings to make up for a little lost ground. I need to rebuild my emergency fund and get my IRA funding back on track. I should be in pretty good shape in another six months if I stay the course.