Time to break out the balance sheet in the hope that my finances aren’t roasting in a huge inferno of suck.

Credit Card / Car Loan / Student Loan Debt:
$0

Expenses:

$200 on control arm for a faulty ball joint on the vehicle last week, and an additional $68 for a new axle (which snapped while trying to fix aforementioned ball joint).

$1,000 on a road trip to Cape Ann, Massachusetts for Lexi’s first birthday.

Credit Cards I Use:

American Express Gold (my primary card)

Since I prefer simplicity, all household and personal expenses go straight onto my American Express Gold card and the balance is immediately paid off in full each month. M. questions my sanity because I am so completely anal about this—which explains why I have a rad credit score and his is, ahem, somewhat blemished.

My trusty old Discover Card has resurfaced and they’ve recently sent a new, glossy black card through the mail with a tantalizing offer attached: spend $1,000 by October 31, 2012 to receive $100 in cash back.

Hmmm, this could be tempting. A coin has piqued my interest for around that price range, so I may consider taking advantage of this, but for now the slick card has been lounging on our coffee table, unactivated.

Personal Checking Account: $2,877.11   (-$122.89)
My checking account is set up at a local community bank.

Goal: Plump this balance up to $3,000. Why keep so much in a checking account? Liquidity. As previously mentioned, I enjoy having a bit of cash at my disposal in order to take advantage of unique opportunities (local antique crawls, etc.)

Personal Online Savings Account: $1,000.72   (+$435.00)
Discover Online Savings Account @ .90% APY, with a $500 minimum balance.

Goal: Leave this account as is. $1,000 seems like the perfect amount to keep handy in this personal online savings account right now.

M. & I also have a joint savings account set up at a local credit union.

Our joint savings: $3,500   (-$1,500)
A recent family vacation and car repairs guzzled up a hunk of this balance. (And I seem to have $200 floating around waiting to be redeposited back into this account.) I’d like to get our joint family savings at the credit union back to $5,000, asap.

My Other Investments: $23,191.00
Various conservative investments which can be liquidated if necessary in the near term.

Unusual investments probably also worth mentioning:
M. and I invested a teeny percentage into Bitcoins last year. We bought in at $4 and recently sold some of our Bitcoin back into the market at $13, a phenomenal rate of return for this nascent cryto-currency. Profits are being held in the Bitcoin market exchange CampBX in order to reinvest into more Bitcoins during attractive price dips.

(I’m not going to break down exact numbers here because a. it’s 5:30 in the morning and I’m too lazy to dig out our CD at the moment and b. so few were sold that it’s a pretty negligible amount anyway and not worth the effort so, I won’t.)

Simplicity, and all that.

Current Net Worth: $30,568.83   (-$1,084.17) <— Cape Ann family vacation plus car repairs.
Down by $1k.

~¤~¤~

Financial Carnivals this week:

Wealth Artisan’s FinCarn at Wealth Artisan
Carnival of MoneyPros at See Debt Run
Nerdy Finance Carnival at Nerdy Finance Carnival
Carn. of Financial Camaraderie at Finance Product Reviews
Yakezie Carnival at Frugal Portland

~¤~¤~

What I’ve been reading:

• Wikileaks bypasses financial blockade with Bitcoin – by Jon Matonis, Forbes Magazine (8/20/2012)
• Cash is essential for a free society – Stowe Boyd. “A strong society that accepts human nature without moralizing will always have anonymous cash.”

You won’t be reading this until later morning but I shall slip off to bed now. Have a great weekend, everyone.

=^..^=

Be Sociable, Share!

•