Monthly Update: September 2007(-$49,791.85, +10,192.63)
September is now gone and the results were better than I had expected. Without any large changes in our household fundamentals we benefited from the gains in the equity markets and had our best month over month gain this year!
Here are the results;
Some thoughts on the past month:
We have accumulated a few new 0% Balance Transfer in September The difficult part however has been to find an offer that now caps the balance transfer fees. They are out there but only about 1 out of 5 limits the balance transfer fee to less than $100. With the interest rates in our online savings accounts falling this makes theses offers less attractive.
The majority of our monthly gain came from gains in our savings and retirement accounts. We are able to accumulate our savings quickly by attempting to live off of only one salary. I don’t put a lot of weight into the gains in our retirement accounts since it will be years before we touch this money.
I will pay off the last of my “true” credit card debt at the end of this month. I thought I would have been more excited when this day came but my dreams have since moved on to bigger things. We continue to slowly pay off our debts but with the majority of our debts at less than 5% interest I plan to make only the minimal payments on these for some time.
I have begun to think about out goals for next year. The past year has been very straight forward for us financially. The next 12 months will be much more exciting/difficult. We will be moving back across the county, not to mention my wife and I will both be changing jobs. Despite these challenges we hope to continue our steady progress towards financial independence.
