So, I haven’t blogged in a while – sorry about that. It’s been pretty busy at work and I’ve been traveling a bit – both for work and for personal reasons. But regardless, I haven’t given up on the blog and have a few updates to give, which I’ll space out into a few posts.

In the meantime, let’s see where I currently stand. Keep in mind, I didn’t update my net worth for June so this update shows two months worth of financial data.

In the assets column, everything is going fairly well. I needed to dip back into the savings to cover new brake pads and routers for my car, but other than that my retirement and stock accounts are moving along nicely.

I’m still purchasing a set amount of stock automatically, but only at about $30 a month, looking for long positions and undervalued opportunities within today’s market. It’s been going pretty well for me so far as I’ve gained about $400 in the past month in that area.

As for the liabilities, I’m still chipping away at the student loan debt – realizing that more will be piled on once I complete my MBA. The credit card debt is something that I need to re-evaluate and re-focus myself on in the next few days/weeks. With the new credit card regulations coming this February, I’ve noticed my credit limit go down pretty much across the board and some interest rates rise – both due to the falling limits and the ending of low rate promotions.

All together though, in the past two months I’ve been able to get a little closer to having a positive net worth and that is really the end goal – so until then – I’ll just keep moving forward.

Another month down and I’m pleased that the numbers show that I’m making some progress chipping away at my debt. The credit card pay down combined with a decent increase my emergency fund due to the renewed focus have my net worth being a thousand dollars better than last month. Still a negative number – but I’m starting to see light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully am picking up some momentum. At least that’s what it feels like – which is good.

My tax refund should be in my account by the end of this month. If all goes to plan, this should materialize as a reached (initial) goal of $1000 in my emergency fund by June and the milestone of getting my credit card debt below $20K. Not bad for the 2nd month of the year.

I know there’s still a long road ahead, but I am really starting to feel good about my finances and my debt plan. Some scary things still loom on the horizon – job insecurity, economic uncertainty, etc. – but I’m trying to plan for the unexpected now so that it doesn’t set me back if anything were to happen. Something I should have done right from the start of my career – or sooner. Oh well, lesson for my future kids – if they’ll listen.

Last note, I mentioned the economic uncertainty as being something that I need to watch out for in the future. However, I have to say that I am really proud of myself for buckling down and improving my finances little by little during the current economy. Each time I read a story about consumers buying less and saving more, I feel like I’m reading a story about me. It’s nice to be part of a statistic that I can be proud of – instead of the usual statistics associated with my type of finances.

Anyway…onward.

Near $4,000.00 increase in my net worth – not a bad start to 2009 if I do say so myself. Well don’t get used to this type of monthly report. This was a direct benefit of my end of the year bonus. Now this is where you would naturally say, “Hey, wait a minute, KC…what’s this bonus talk?! Just a post or two ago you were talking about getting fired. What gives?

Yeah, I lucked out. Our year-end bonus is based upon that year’s profitability in terms of a percentage of our annual pay and we did okay in 2008. Now the job insecurity is based a little bit on the 2009 outlook and some other issues I’m going through – namely the perception of my performance from my superiors. Can’t please everyone, I guess. Anyway, that’s a whole other post.

Now in terms of my bonus and just how it affected this months’ net worth update. More than 70% of my bonus went directly to paying off credit card debt. The rest helped me buy some last minute Christmas gifts for my family.

You’ll notice that my retirement account went up by a little more than $1,000. I assure you I did not contribute anything extra to that account. That is soley the benefit of a small and unexpected rebound. However, that being said there are a few expected (knock on wood) things that I can look forward to in the next few months such as a tax refund and the closing of at least one more credit card account which will help me speed up my snowball. So far, so good for ’09…and yes I know it’s only been 12 days.