Picking up Nickels

Monday, May 14, 2007

May 2007 Financial Asset Roundup

Here are my current financial assets as of the market close on May 11th, 2007:

Asset Apr 2007 May 2007 Change
Checking 489 256 -233
Money Market 36,321 27,584 -8,737
Savings Bonds 4,509 4,526 17
Treasury Bills 0 17,000 17,000
CDs 57,515 57,743 228
Brokerage 91,275 93,886 2,611
401k 98,431 101,992 3,561
Roth IRA 32,613 33,527 914
SEP IRA 162,629 167,711 5,082
529 Savings 33,419 34,755 1,336
Total Assets $517,201 $538,980 +$21,779 (4.2%)



Work, family obligations, and spending the bulk of my spare time on a minor bathroom remodel have really taken a huge bite out of my blogging time lately. Despite having my finances primarily on auto pilot since the last update, I still managed a nice gain since that time.

My gains over the past month can be attributed to an additional equity distribution from my S Corp's 2006 profits combined with another nice boost from the stock market (S&P 500 index was up almost 4%):

(chart courtesy of msn.com)

My only financial move of note was a folly-ridden purchase of 1 month T-Bills two weeks ago. My goals over the next month primarily focus on making a final 2006 equity distribution from my S Corp and then start working on my 2007 SEP IRA contributions. Baby steps...

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Tuesday, May 01, 2007

May 3 Issue T-Bills: 4 Week Yield (4.79%) Nosedive

Since the HSBC Direct 6% APY promotion ended yesterday and reverted to 5.05% APY, I have been keeping an eye open for a place to stash some cash. Despite the trend of declining yields, I decided to go the 28 T-Bill route again since my after tax yield would have been approximately 5.3% with last week's auction.

So I plunked down my money and purchased a 28 day T-Bill today, my first T-Bill purchase since late November. The problem with that was that the investment rate on this Bill plummeted quite a bit more than I expected, dropping to a paltry 4.683%.

Using the new and improved handy T-bill tax equivalent yield spreadsheet (courtesy of the FatWallet discussion on Treasury Bills), I ironically found out that that my tax equivalent yield for this Bill will be 5.05%. So other than showing HSBC that I was willing to move my money elsewhere for a better rate, I basically gained nothing in terms of my return on investment. Live and learn, right?

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