Category Archives: Portfolio Updates

I’ll start this update off with a little rant about the joys of blogging. Normally the hardest part of running this website is coming up with a topic interesting enough to me that I want to write about it, and then attempting to do so in a way where you don’t want to gouge your eyes out while reading it. I’ve been through a lot in the relatively short time I’ve had this site. I had no clue what I was doing in the beginning. One day I decided I wanted to start a blog about finance and the next day I bought the domain name not knowing anything about how to run a website. I’ve been learning on the job so to speak, and somehow I’ve managed to keep this thing alive and more people read this website each day than I ever would have imagined.   However, the technical aspects of … Continue reading →

Goodbye March and Q1 of 2013! While the first three months of the year have been very good for my portfolio balances, March was a royal pain to get through personally. It was hard to find motivation to write in the early part of the month. The past week or two has been an amazing combination of constantly being sick, and being super busy. Not a fun combination if I must say. But enough whining from me, April is here…spring is (hopefully) going to show up soon and the market will continue to set record highs, right?! Even with my lack of writing this past month it’s been a record month for visits here on the site. A special thank you to everyone who takes the time to comment and join in the discussion on my posts. I’ve slacked on responding to the comments I get lately, but I do read … Continue reading →

Two months are in the books for 2013. It would be pretty near impossible for February to be as good to me as January was. Mr. Market was up only slightly over the past month so there wasn’t much help to be had outside of my regular contributions. I won’t bore you with too much preamble so lets just get to the good stuff, eh? Roth IRA: $19,350 (+2.65%) Traditional IRA: $9,960 (+1.63%) Slow and steady wins the race, right? My automatic contributions keep funneling into my IRA’s and the market does it’s part to push things higher. Rinse and repeat! 401(k): $4,085 (+5.83%) My employer decided to take our 401(k) match away, but was able to provide us with our yearly profit sharing bonus which gave my 401(k) a needed boost in February. How they can afford one and not the other is anyone’s guess, but I’ll take it … Continue reading →

I’m sad to see January go. The stock market soared throughout the month, with the S&P and Dow both hitting their highest points since 2007. I remember starting my first corporate job back in 2007 and opening my 401(k) investing with the S&P 500 over 1500. All during the recession that’s kind of how I measured if things were “back”. When the S&P got back to that point it would be like a mental reset for me and my investments. We’re at that point now and hopefully ready to leave 1500 far in the rear view mirror. January was also a month of change here on the site. You probably haven’t noticed too many cosmetic changes, but earlier in January this site officially migrated to its new home at TheFirstMillionistheHardest.net. I chose to move domain names to create a single “brand” across the site which will allow me to keep … Continue reading →