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Home > Archive: March, 2012

Archive for March, 2012

February 2012 - Broke the $600K mark.

March 9th, 2012 at 03:15 am

Cash & Savings: $69,521 => $49,813 (-28.53%)
Foreign Currency: $33,549 => $34,529 (2.92%)
Domestic Brokerage: $142,198 => $156,179 (9.83%)
International Brokerage: $125,740 => $163,863 (30.32%)
401(k): $73,841 => $78,140 (5.82%)
IRA: $87,038 => $97,931 (12.52%)
Roth IRA: $21,837 => $22,637 (3.66%)
Total Assets: $553,724 => $603,092 (8.92%)

My new investment has been working quite well so far but as the tide rises so does all the boats so it remains to be seen whether this trend can continue.

End of January I was too busy to prepare for an overseas project that made me working abroad for more than 3 weeks. As I result I decided to skip back tracking January's performance and only enter the February one. Sometimes with a longer time frame (two months isn't really that long) you can see the impact better as the relatively high percentage of returns have demonstrated above. However, take the 12.52% on my IRA account for example, it really isn't that great considering that's where it was back in July 2006, meaning my account hasn't grown in 6 years! By end of 2007 it rised to an all time high of $92,000 but it went downhill since then until it reached the low point of $53,000 in March 2009. What a ride.

When I write this review in March it's clear that the Greek debt crisis has passed another critical milestone. It's not pretty but at least they survived. In the time of war survival is the most important thing. As long as you're alive there is hope. As long as there's hope there is the chance of succeeding, regardless of how dim the light is.

This month also marks the first time my protfolio broke the $600k mark. In fact, if I had included the personal loans I made to my friends I probably would have broke the mark last month but that's really not important at this point. I'm curious when will I break the next milestone of $700k but it's unlikely I can do that before I turn 40, which is only a few months away.

I recall that when I first started working last century there was the dot com boom and I was dreaming of making over 1 million before 40 and now the time has come and I'm not even close to reaching that goal. It's a meaningless goal though but it's a good personal reflection - that you don't really know what you want when you're young and you are often overly optimistic.