A big boost to my overall net worth, thanks to a nice month in the asset columns. Especially the upswing in my 401(k). In fact, lately I’ve been fighting off the urge to increase my contribution again. A part of me sees this as a great opportunity to increase my shares while the market recovers and grows. However, the other part of me is telling myself to slow down and focus on paying down that debt first. Then focus on building up my retirement.

I’ll go into this more in my next post – but there are definite arguments to both sides.

The start of school and some car repairs ate into my cash/payouts this month, but overall I’m still making good progress and my net worth continues to climb upward. A nice surprise this past month was to see some value return to my 401(k), even though my Roth IRA and Investment accounts didn’t do so well. Regardless, that’s not my focus right now – just trying to passively save/build those up while I attack the debt.

July proved to be a productive month – a rise in the temperature matched well with a drop in the overall debt. As you can see in the column to the right (–>), I’ve now passed the $10K mark in payoff for this past year alone and I’m hoping to keep chugging right on to zero before the end of year 4 (Oct. 10 – Oct 11), which matches well to when I’ll be wrapping up my MBA and moving on to the next phase of my life…marriage? kids? house? Who knows?

It’s definitely daunting, but I’m going to try and keep my head down and focus on reducing the debt, since losing that will make all of those other things more possible and more enjoyable.

So I’m very late in posting this update, however the numbers are from early in the month. Not a whole lot of excitment in the past 30 days or so – still chipping away at that debt. My ‘year’ ends in October, so I’m going to pass the $10,000 mark in debt payoff within the past 12 months.

I’m looking forward to that number increasing in the next year as well – which would hopefully make it my last year in debt (besides upcoming student loans…gulp.)

A dive in stocks this past month didn’t bode well for my overall net worth, however I continued to put money towards my credit card debt and am close to getting that monster down to the $10k mark.

So, during my last net worth update, I mentioned that I had increased my 401k contribution from 5% per paycheck to 8% per paycheck. Many friends of mine either don’t contribute to their companies 401k plan or if they do – they never increase their contribution amount. Typically, most set their contribution amount to the minimum amount to qualify for a company match. That’s fine – but many have told me that they won’t increase their percentage because they don’t want the amount taken from their paycheck.

So, if you’re reading this, it’s a pretty good bet that you’ve heard that you should pay more than the minimum monthly balance on your credit card debt.

Well, what you may not realize is that advise is now more relevant than ever. The credit card reforms that went into play this year make it possible for those of us with credit card debt to save a lot of money and hopefully get out of debt faster – if we abide by the rule and pay more than the minimum. In fact – the Center for Responsible Lending says that the reform will save about $2 for every dollar you pay above the minimum. Pretty sweet, huh?