September turned out to be an interesting month. I put to bed $1,200 in debt! Unfortunately the stock market continued to bring the pain which tempered the mood a bit. I poured about $1,200 into the market and ended up down $492 (a loss of about $1,700 or ~10%).
The debt side of the ledger was dominated by my decision to refinance our "bad debt" into a fixed rate, fixed term personal loan. I now have a specific date when we will be (bad) debt free. It has only been one month, but following this plan has proved easier to stick to than plans in the past.
On the asset side there was a dip in cash which will be rectified soon when my next payday arrives. This month I will have an extra paycheck so I will use it to juice up my cash holdings. The retirement accounts continued to suffer with a loss, but I'm holding steady and continuing with my investment strategy.
As the stock market has fallen I have gradually moved away from bonds and become more fully invested in stocks. On November 20th, when the S&P dropped to 752, I moved the last 5% of my investments into stocks. I had set an 800 threshold for myself and went all-in when it dropped below that level. I picked 800 by doing a linear extrapolation of stock prices from the 1980's without the exponential rise that came with the dot.com bull market. It was a rough forecast, but gave me a jumping in point. Thus far it looks like a pretty smart move. Even if I did not hit the bottom of the market perfectly I am confident that a few years down the road I'll be glad that I used this buying opportunity.
Now that you've got the story, here are the numbers:
| Assets |
| $ Diff | % Diff |
| Cash | $1,608 | ($502) | -23.79% |
| Stocks | $0 | $0 | - |
| Bonds | $0 | $0 | - |
| Annuities | $0 | $0 | - |
| Retirement | $17,544 | ($492) | -2.73 % |
| Home | $194,900 | $0 | - |
| Other Real Estate | $0 | $0 | - |
| Cars | $14,720 | $0 | - |
| Personal Property | $0 | $0 | - |
| Other | $0 | $0 | - |
| Total Assets | $228,772 | ($994) | -0.43 % |
| Debts |
| $ Diff | % Diff |
| Home Mortgage(s) | $175,747 | ($194) | -0.11 % |
| Other Mortgage(s) | $0 | $0 | - |
| Student Loans | $0 | $0 | - |
| Credit Card | $402 | ($293) | -42.16 % |
| Car Loans | $7,442 | ($373) | -4.77 % |
| Other | $16,536 | ($341) | -2.02 % |
| Total Debts | $200,127 | ($1,201) | -0.60 % |
| Total | $28,645 | $207 | 0.73% |
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