Picking up Nickels

Thursday, December 11, 2014

December 2014 Financial Asset Roundup

Here are my current financial assets as of the market close on December 10th, 2014:


Asset Nov
2014
Dec
2014
Change
Checking 927 2,089 1,162
Money Market 47,836 48,279 443
Savings Bonds 92,887 93,019 132
Treasury Bills 0 0 0
CDs 63,599 63,775 176
Brokerage 129,429 130,288 859
401k 134,862 131,870 -2,992
Roth IRA 100,398 99,881 -517
SEP IRA 483,832 480,718 -3,114
529 Savings 113,690 114,452 762



Total Assets $1,167,460 $1,164,371 -$3,089
   
 
-0.26%


The S&P 500 had been strong since the last update before a recent slide down 0.59%:

(chart courtesy of yahoo.com)

On the jobs front, the unemployment rate for November remained at 5.8% (making 2014 the best year for job gains since 1999). Oil prices have continued their slide from $78 to about $60, which has been a pretty nice dose of relief on American pocketbooks.

On the financial front, my next domino to fall is a Penfed 3.5% APY 5 year CD maturing in January. There haven't been any hints of a Penfed end of year deal like the Penfed 3.04% APY 5 year CD offering from last year, so I'm figuring to use some of that cash to make final 2014 Federal and state estimated tax payments and have actually considered throwing the rest of the money at my mortgage principal if a better opportunity doesn't present itself.

Other than that, I'm prepping for an all-nighter this weekend as a client migrates a critical production environment to new hardware with disaster recovery capabilities. I'm certainly going to be ready for the Christmas holiday once that work is finally complete. :p