Monthly Net Worth Statement

March Madness. What a month for my finances and basketball! From an earlier post, I mentioned I received some bad news from my best friend. I paid for some of her medical costs out of my emergency fund. I also racked up some more credit card debt to stretch my cash reserves until pay day. I even took a loan out on my 401(k) to act as my emergency fund. Half my vested balance was the limit, so it didn’t amount to much. That was disappointing, but I got some good news a few days later. We got bonuses! It wasn’t the full 30% of my annual salary, but hey I’m not complaining. The payment was split at 20% now and 5% in June. The unfortunate thing is that it was taxed at 49%!!! Probably to pay of AIG or GM. I plan on paying back the 401(k) loan as soon as I do some math. The interest is only 4.25%, so it may be worth paying off a higher-interest credit card. We’ll see.

My Zillow home value dropped for no apparent reason. There have been compaints from other bloggers about the fluctuation of Zillow’s number from month to month. Who knows how they base their values on? My neighbor has the same house, but is the same value mine was last month. Weird, but I’ll go with it. My car value remained steady.

Another increase to my cash position came from my gambling account. I crushed my bookie during March Madness for a $6,000+ profit in 3 weeks. Some of you are probably rolling your eyes that I would be gambling while I have mountains of debt. I don’t consider it gambling. I saw some value in completely incorrect spreads, like an arbitrage situation. You don’t find too many of those in the markets any more. I also won $300 at the blackjack tables of the Wild Wild West Casino at Bally’s in Atlantic City. What, I can’t have some fun on the weekends?

As for miscellaneous income, I filled out some surveys at e-Rewards and received $29 of e-currency. I used $20 of it on two 1-year subscriptions on Entrepreneur magazine and Fast Company magazine. I used $50 of my Discover Card cash back rewards towards by balance. Easy money. I received some rebate checks from Pep Boys oil changes. I received a prorated credit for cancelling my Comcast Cable. My eBay business was below last month’s sales number, so the profit was unremarkable. My Upromise account is scheduled to credit my student loan for $49.52 for the quarter. Gravy.

After I set aside $5,000 for my emergency fund…again, I will pay off my Discover Card, as they increased my interest rate to 16.99%. Funny I don’t remember getting notified of that. Bastards. Let’s see how they like my $0 balance. Well, that’s it for this month.