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 at this point in the year.
Brokerage: $2,310 (+281.82%)
Otherwise known as my freedom fund, I continued to shift some of my cash into the markets in February and initiated a new position by buying shares of Visa (NYSE:V). Visa is a stock I’ve been watching for quite some time and finally decided to pull the trigger. I absolutely love their long-term prospects and pumped to finally be able to call myself a shareholder.
Lending Club: $526 (+0.77%)
The past due loan I mentioned in last month’s report still hasn’t been paid and the loan has officially been sent to a collection agency. I’m kind of baffled that someone with a (previously) 714 credit score and no prior delinquencies would go ahead and f*** up their credit score by defaulting on a $3500 Lending Club loan. But that’s exactly what this person is doing. I’m just writing this loan off in my mind, and if they do ever resume payments again I’ll consider it a bonus.
Situations like the above are part of the risk of investing in P2P loans, but for the one person who isn’t paying there are 20 other loans I’m invested in that are right on time every month. My net annualized return is 9.19% on my Lending Club account. I continue to believe that P2P lending presents a great opportunity to diversify your investments and earn a higher rate of return than CD’s and money market accounts which currently yield close to nothing.
Cash: $5,490 (-20.26%)
As mentioned above, I’ve continued to draw down the portion of my portfolio I keep in cash. I’m not sure how much more I’ll be moving around in the next month, it will really depend on where the market goes and what kinds of opportunities I find to invest in over the coming months.
Total Portfolio Value: $41,721 (+2.96%)
Close to a 3% overall gain. It seems like a really long time since I’ve had a negative number here, and that’s just the way I like it!
February’s Top 5 Posts On The First Million is the Hardest
Here are the top 5 most viewed posts on the site this month. If you missed them the first time around be sure to catch up and add to the discussion going on in the comments!
1. Should You File Your Own Taxes Or Hire A Pro?
2. What Is Your Retirement Scenario?
3. Investing Experts and the Herd Mentality
4. Five Dumb Ways To Spend Your Tax Refund
5. Should I Contribute To A 401(k) With No Match?
That’s it for February. Let’s hope March brings warm weather and a hot stock market to all of us.
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Looks like a solid month. I’m hoping that Texas will begin to allow P2P lending because I’d love to be able to get some cash invested there. Although that will open up a whole new potential income stream to educate myself on. That is kind of strange that the profit sharing is still available but the match is not. Although the match would cost 25% more for my company if everyone is contributing at least enough for the full match. Keep it up!
Looks like you’re making progress. Keep it up.
I can’t believe that your match got stripped away. As far as I’m concerned, the match is the only reason to waste time with the 401k. The funds available tend to be expensive and I am loathe to have my money locked up for the next 25 years.
From what I understand, 401Ks have pretty stringent reporting requirements, and your employer actually carries a bit of liability because they are technically acting as your fiduciary in that kind of arrangement. They might have figured out that they can limit costs to the company by providing profit sharing that has much lower costs and no fiduciary responsibility while still giving similar amounts to its workforce overall.
Good job! They all look like positive numbers so that is never a bad thing.
Looks like you had a great month. Good work.
Some nice percentage gains you got there. I miss the employer free money match the most as an unemployed person. Might have to go back to work to get me some free money!
Sam
Nice month! I was helped by the market in February, it helped net worth go up. You know, with the market reaching highs in prices, it makes me wonder if/when we’ll see a correction. Hopefully not anytime soon
Nice work on picking up Visa. I am a holder as well. Thats one stock I never expect to sell. Hopefully some good dividend and capital gains for us in the years to come!