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HomePersonal SituationEvan By The Numbers November 1, 2010

Evan By The Numbers November 1, 2010

Numbers

One of the main reasons that I started this blog was to hold myself accountable, since I truly believe that Accountability Leads to Success when dealing with personal finance and me.. it is even in my FIRST post from August 2008 it is right there in the first sentence of published work on this blog! I updated my financial stats often when I was working off my credit card debt, but I slacked off once that was finished. So if I believe accountability is necessary, why don’t I have my numbers out there for everyone? I have no real excuse so here we go!

Before I get into giving out the numbers, I don’t plan on putting everything out there, and the reason is pretty simple. I am pretty sure that I will slip up and this site will eventually become known to my friends and family, and I am just way too private when it comes to money issues for everything to be out there. So what do I want to share? Those topics which I have covered on my blog already.

My Debt Items

In addition to my house I have a few other debt items. I don’t highlight the house, because it is secondary right now as compared to following debts:

  • I refinanced my auto loan (reducing the rate from 8.9% down to 5.5%) earlier this year.  In July my auto loan was at $11,325 currently we are at $10,650 a 6% Reduction.  The original loan in November 2006 was about $18,000.
  • One Law School Loan is  at $56,931.51 down from $57,275.48 a less than 1% reduction.
  • Another Law School Loan is at $6,808.90 down from $7,088.69 in July a  4% Reduction.  The original amount was about $10,000.  The interest rate on this loan is 5%.

I do not have any credit card debt, and don’t feel comfortable providing my exact mortgage information, but it is more than the above debts combined.  My goal is to to pay the minimum on the for the next 10 to 15 months on it until The Wife, the upcoming child and I decide to move.

Speaking of moving, I am not on operation destroy those debts solely because I want to accumulate as much cash as possible for the change from DINKs to DINKs.

My Multiple Income Streams and Qualified Investments

My Prosper Account

I have previously provided really detailed information about my Prosper.com Account, however boss broker-dealer said no more investing in prosper. So I have been taking the cash from the notes and just adding it elsewhere.

  • 26 Active Notes (down from 30 in July)
  • The total value of those notes are worth $472.57 (Down $177.47 from $650)
  • $21.39 in Cash (will be withdrawn)
  • $77.77 in Gain
  • 5 Charge offs up from 4 Charge offs in July
  • 13 Paid in Full up from 10 Paid in Full in July
  • Average Yield at acquisition 11.10% Same as July

When I wrote about Prosper in July someone asked me why I was moving away from Propser.com, and it has nothing to do with the business model or system I had set up.  Rather since I am Series 6 and 63 registered my job gets notice of all investments and when I told them about Prosper, it wasn’t a complete, “Hey, quit it” rather it was a more “we are going to need a ton of paper work on it” and since I wasn’t putting much towards it I decided to slowly collect my active notes.

My 401(k)

Despite stating that it “may be time to look into re-allocating my 401(k)” in May July. I have yet to do it!  Is it ridiculous that a personal finance blogger has talked about reallocating his 401(k) for MONTHS and have yet to do it? YES. it will be done in the next week.  My 401(k) provider lets me put in custom dates, so from July1, 2010 to October 31, 2010 my 401(k) is up 16.59%. That doesn’t even count the $x,xxx I have put towards it since July.

My Perpetual Income Machine – Non-Qualified Dividend Portfolio

For my Perpetual Income Machine I researched dividend paying stocks to create an eventual perpetual income machine. The account is tiny, and will just be a slow growth sort of thing until my cash reserves are where I want them, I am talking about $120 or so a month (up from $100 at the beginning of the experiment).  The update of the perpetual income machine deserves its own post (you can read some here, here and here).

Notwithstanding I should mention that the portfolio return, as a whole is up 5.91% and as a value and if I were to look at the account value on August 1, 2010 and October 31, 2010 the value has almost tripled, but that includes a monthly deposit from $120 to $240.

My Cash Account

I am not comfortable providing my cash account details, but lets say I am at about 53% of what I’d like in a liquid account (I was at 45% in July).

My Protection Contracts

I will update this in the next month or two and provide real details, but we currently each have $250,000 20 year term.  My plan is to convert a part of that policy into a whole life policy and purchase even more term.  But I’ll give a more detailed review of this process and my reasoning.

So financial voyeurs any questions?

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23 COMMENTS

  1. Why did you refinance the auto loan? To lower the pmt and save on the interest? Did you have to pay any refi costs? Just curious…

  2. I never realized it until now, but your Perpetual Income Machine is a distant cousin to my “Lunch Experiment via Dividends”. I too want the stocks in my experiment to pay my lunches forever (ideally). We are contributing a similar amount of money towards the stocks too!

    Of course, I’m hoping that I can tap the dividends earlier than your perpetual income machine, and my dividends are in risk of the dividend payout percentage being drastically reducded… but other than that… what’s up cuzz 🙂

      • I would love that… except my day job prevents me from doing anything in the investments/finance field.

        If it weren’t for that, I’m sure I’d be a financial consultant on the side…

        The kicker is, that I’m in technology and not finance…

        Compliance rules, grrrr…

  3. Now you’re making me rethink how much I have up on my check-in. I share a lot, but I need to see it on paper (okay, web) so that I can be accountable. I’m sure that someone that I know will see it, but screw it, my other posts share more about me than the numbers I guess. 🙂 Anyway, you’re charging ahead. Good stuff!

    • When I was tackling debt I shared everything, bc I figured who the hell cares that I had $18K of CC Debt, but as I finished that off and started talking about how much cash I have in the bank AND I figured out it wasn’t tough for buddies to find my blog I toned it down.

      Love your Update!

  4. Dude, your CAPTCHA is brutal!

    Anyway, looks like you have your act together; good to see you’re preparing for the worst as well. How bout some stock portfolio returns too though – always love to see that stuff (if you have a separate trading account).

    • You are 100% Correct, I am going to do a stock portfolio return post. It seemed like a lot to tackle in one post.

      Look for it this week

  5. I love how you call her The Wife 🙂 Does she know?

    I like how you’re doing the passive dividend income too. It’s nice to add it all up. A few hundred here and there don’t seem like much until it gets all added up in annualized returns. 🙂

  6. Very interesting! I am sure you cannot wait to get those loans paid off, it will feel fantastic when you do. (I still remember when I made my last payment!)

    You seem to have a great balance of debt reduction and investment!

  7. Even, with all due respect – why do you bother with these updates? You aren’t willing to share any specific info which makes these posts a waste of time.

    Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing wrong with not sharing, but saying stuff like:

    don’t feel comfortable providing my exact mortgage information

    That doesn’t even count the $x,xxx I have put towards it since July.

    I am not comfortable providing my cash account details

    The account is tiny

    is useless.

    Mike

    • VERY VERY VERY fair sentiments and trust me no disrespect taken. Your feelings are the exact reason why I didn’t update since July.

      That being said these updates are really for me to be held accountable to myself. These updates got me to get rid of my CC Debt (which is when I was doing them every month AND providing every detail) and they provide reminders for me.

      For example, I have yet to recently analyze my 401(k) and I mentioned that in my July update! AND I WORK IN THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY AND RUN THIS PF BLOG! So it provides me with a little kick in my own ass to do that up.

      I hope that explains it a bit.

      • Fair enough. I do think it’s a great idea to track your finances/goals etc.

        Maybe for the public blog post you can just completely remove the sections which you don’t want to share. It looks like you might have already done that, now that I read it again.

        Mike

  8. Wow, and I thought my student loans were rough. 57k!! I guess that’s what you get with law school.

    Evan, I love this though. You’re so honest with the numbers. I hate looking at my numbers and debt but recently I’ve become more comfortable with it. Great post.

    And I completely understand why you’re sharing this. This can definitely encourage others to be accountable with their finances.

  9. Thanks Evan for highlighting my dividend post.

    Yeah my comment luv is busted and I need to get unbanned but it is too cumbersome and haven’t found the time to 🙂

  10. Wow…your numbers scare me, but obviously you make way more too, lol. Congrats on reducing debt and good luck on getting around to re-allocating your 401(k)! 🙂

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