Picking up Nickels

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

May 2009 Financial Asset Roundup

Here are my current financial assets as of the market close on May 11th, 2009:

Asset Apr 2009 May 2009 Change
Checking 505 805 300
Money Market 14,763 21,730 6,967
Savings Bonds 15,257 20,321 5,064
Treasury Bills 0 0 0
CDs 128,694 117,702 -10,992
Brokerage 80,875 80,302 -573
401k 61,473 66,506 5,033
Roth IRA 25,843 27,950 2,107
SEP IRA 153,482 163,537 10,055
529 Savings 31,923 33,687 1,764
Total Assets $512,815 $532,540 $19,725
      (3.85%)



The upward trend has continued since the last update with the S&P 500 index up 6.15% during that time:

(chart courtesy of msn.com)

Unemployment is still rising and is now up to 8.9% (a 25 year high). The stock market rally has continued over the past month, although it has stumbled a bit over the past couple of days. Hopefully crude oil reaching $60 per barrel again is another sign of the start of some economic recovery.

I still haven't felt like blogging much lately, so my updates have been far and few between. After doing this for almost three years, I do force myself to do this monthly update since it is a good way to make me take note of my holdings on a periodic basis. Moneywise, my one year Patelco CD @ 4.07% APY CD matured at the end of April and I ended up buying some electronic April 2009 I Bonds at TreasuryDirect.gov due to a lack of other attractive cash options.

I've been somewhat encouraged by the pickup in the stock market over the past couple of months. Keeping things in perspective though, I am still about $68k down from my peak in December 2007, and that ignores the $36k of SEP IRA contributions I've made since then. Hopefully things will continue to pick up....

2 Comments:

  • "I still haven't felt like blogging much lately, so my updates have been far and few between. After doing this for almost three years,"

    I just want to say I, for one, really appreciate your blog, enjoy reading it and have gotten a lot of helpful info from it.

    J

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5/16/09, 12:54 PM  

  • Thanks for the kind words J (Is that you Mom?). :)

    It's been a little hard to stay motivated at times with the financial crisis, burst housing bubble, job losses, etc.

    By Blogger Frugal Frugalson, at 5/17/09, 10:15 AM  

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