IRA Asset Allocation and Balance: September

My Roth IRA is now officially fully funded for 2011! Here a screen shot of my current balance.

Despite the fact I invested $2,000 this month, it's only $348.85 higher than it was on August 1st due to the not so great stock market. Oh well, I just have to remember my balance would be a lot lower if I didn't invest at all.

I did take Dave Ramsey's advice to increase my "growth" stock as well.  I was at 17% in June and now I'm up to 26%.

Don't Look

When I heard about the stock market having it's worst day in three years, I knew I shouldn't look my IRA balance. I kept telling myself don't look because this is money I don't plan on touching for at least 30 years. But, I couldn't resist and prepared myself for disappointment. Here are the results.

Just 2 days ago is was $1,437.34 more. That is nearly all the money ($1,600) I JUST put in three days ago. I wish I would have invested today and got the better mutual fund prices.

I just can't seem to win when it comes to money.  Speaking of bad news - I found out yesterday that our insurance won't cover out sump pump incident, so I don't know how bad that is going to hurt us. Apparently if your sump pump malfunctions and overflows from the sump pump basin they'll cover it, but if the sump pump malfunctions and doesn't do it's job - i.e. get rid of excess water under our house, then they don't cover that water damage. Stupid technicalities!

IRA Asset Allocation and Balance: August

It's time once again for a report on my Roth IRA balance and asset allocation. Stock values have decreased a bit over the last couple weeks, so my account was back below $20K for the last couple weeks, but after my contribution this month it is currently at $20,954.97. Even though I added $1,600, it is only up $813.55 since last month.

I only contributed $1,600 instead of the $1,800 I had planned because life got in the way again. Last Monday was a pretty bad day. It started off with my husband finding out his uncle died and then the end of the day us having to call our insurance company because our sump pump stopped working and we had enough water in our basement to ruin the carpet and pad we just bought last November. Between that and the problems we had with the cats I guess it just wasn't meant to be for us to have nice carpet. If only we would have just waited a year to replace the old carpet. I wouldn't be as bummed out if it ruined the carpet we had wanted to replace anyway.

So getting back to the IRA. A new sump pump cost $200, so I decreased my contribution by $200 at the last minute in order to pay for that. Unfortunately the expenses are not done. We have a $1,000 deductible on our insurance policy, so we'll probably have to spend another $800 out of pocket. So at this time, I don't know if I'll be able to finish my IRA contributions by September 1st or not. I'll need to put in $2,000 to do so, and I don't know if that will happen. Hopefully we can cover the carpet cleaning/pad replacement out of my husband's income, but I doubt it.

IRA Asset Allocation and Balance: July 2

If there is anything more volatile than the constantly changing home values, it's value of mutual fund investments. This time it was actually good news. Just 2 weeks ago, my IRA balance was $18,653.13 and as of this morning with only an additional $600 invested the balance has skyrocketed to $20,141.42!

I knew that I'd see a good number after seeing the news about the value of stocks rising this week, but I didn't expect to surpass the $20K mark. I was actually a little disappointed earlier this week when I heard the Dow was doing so well because I knew that meant I'd be buying my shares at a higher price. Now I wish I would have purchased some shares last month when they were a little cheaper. Oh well, at this point the only thing that matters is that I get some money invested and actually contribute the maximum since I don't have a 401K.

My asset allocation is pretty much the same as 2 weeks ago, but starting next month, I plan to increase my growth stock percentage.

IRA Asset Allocation and Balance

My husband is doing better after having surgery on Monday and will probably be back to work full time next week (thankfully it's a desk job). Of course I still don't know how this will affect us financially, so for now I'm going continue my financial plans as I had planned. Since part of my plan is to stock pile cash, that should hopefully be enough to cover any medical expenses we can't cash flow.

For some reason I don't feel that same drive to put money in my IRA as I did with paying down the second mortgage. So I want to start measuring my progress. Here is my starting point:

It was over $19,000 not too long ago, but with the Dow Jones decreasing so much lately, it's not a big surprise it's in the $18,000's. It seems like I'm always saying "Dave Ramsey says" in this blog, but Dave Ramsey says to invest in a good Growth stock. As you can see only 17% of my IRA is in growth stock right now. So I will probably work towards increasing that percentage as I add more money into it.