2010 Goals

Gosh, I've been bad about updating my net worth lately! I've missed doing my monthly updates for 3 months in a row. But that's not because I'm unhappy about my net worth progress-- it's actually been great.

The first quarter is always a good time for me in terms of cash flow-- I'm usually getting a bonus and tax refunds and discretionary 401k contributions from my employer. In addition to that, it's been a pretty good run for the stock market. All in all, my net worth has increased by $26,875 year to date, bringing me to $435,365. Since I'd never set a goal for my 2010 year-end net worth, I've decided to see if I can get to $450,000 by then. This may be a little conservative, but we'll see how things go and perhaps I'll increase it! On the flip side, it could end up being too aggressive. If the recent stock market rally doesn't sustain itself, and if I get pricing data that leads me to lower my home value again, that could easily wipe out some of my gains. We'll see.

Hitting a net worth number isn't my only goal for this year. I'm continuing to try to adjust how I manage my finances. I don't want to fuss around with my bills as much, so I'm trying to automate more payments and go paperless with more accounts. I don't want to get too hands-off, as I've forgotten to pay things or transfer money once or twice in the past, but hopefully between email alerts and monitoring my info via PocketMoney and Mint on my iPhone, I'll stay on top of everything, and save time on filing etc later.
My other goal is to take a good look at my overall portfolio and rebalance things. I probably have too much cash on hand right now earning hardly any interest, so I need to invest some more. I wish now that I'd done even more of that last year when the market was in the toilet! But as always I try to remember that timing the market is not as important as time IN the market.

Another goal will be to dive back into my mother's finances again. This has been such a source of anguish lately-- as I'd feared, she's going a bit crazy trying to re-do her whole house. I haven't been there since Christmas, when I left in tears after a total meltdown about her whole attitude and how irresponsible I think it is. So far, at least, I think most of what she's done has been minor cosmetic stuff like painting, but even if these jobs are only a few hundred dollars at a time, she's doing more and more of them. There have also been some "necessary" repairs like a new furnace and some plumbing, but I'm worried that she's starting to get a reputation among the local tradespeople as the crazy widow with money to burn, so who knows how much she's being talked into things that may be costing more than they'd need to. A lot of the time, I just have to back off-- I don't want to destroy my relationship with my mother and I just can't take the stress of thinking about it too much. But I also feel like I need to give her a reality check every so often before she's past the point of no return.

Whew! I didn't mean to end on such a downer. All in all, things are pretty good for me right now, and I'm just thankful for that. Onwards and upwards!

Mint Adds Manual Transactions

Mint.com has added a feature many people wanted: the ability to enter cash transactions and manually enter future transactions in other accounts. But the way it works is a little weird.

Let's look first at adding manual transactions, for instance to a checking account. This makes a lot of sense, as you really need to know what pending transactions could affect your account balance. You can enter a future check with a check number and later, when that check has actually cleared against your bank account, it will be automatically reconciled so you don't have a duplicate entry. I'm not sure how this would work with a savings account where there's no check number to help with matching the transactions.

As for cash transactions, I don't like the way they've implemented this. You can add a random transaction that isn't counted against any account if you just want to track cash expenses against a budget, but there's no way to maintain a cash account and enter expenses against it. Instead, they want you to assign your cash transactions to your recent ATM transactions, which some people were using as a workaround already. I guess they've made it a little easier to do that, but they've missed half the point of bothering to track cash in the first place. Cash is cash, and what matters is the total you have and the total you spend-- why would you need to assign it to a particular ATM transaction? And what if you receive payment in cash and then spend that money?

Another thing worth noting is that you can't yet enter new transactions from the iPhone app, which is really a necessity. Mint says they're working on adding that soon, though.

You can read more about this all works at the Mint Blog. Some of the comments bring up these exact issues so perhaps they'll listen to their users and make some changes.

But on the positive side, after using Mint for a couple of months now, I have to say that there is a lot to like about it. It's very easy to set up and I love being able to check my balances and see transactions on my iPhone. That makes it all the more frustrating that they have left a lot of good features out-- I wish I could see how the individual stocks and mutual funds in my portfolios were doing on my iPhone (showing how much they were up or down, not just the current price), rather than just a total balance. I wish the budgeting categories were a little more flexible. And the cash transaction thing is just bizarre. Let's hope they keep refining this without heading off in the wrong direction...

Emergency Clothes Shopping

Single Ma's post about wanting "hawt" spring clothes made me laugh... and reminded me that my own spring shopping, so far, hasn't been that pleasurable. I've definitely had the itch to buy some new duds, but I haven't had the time or energy to really focus on it, until I was forced to!

This is one of those nightmare scenarios, but it could have been worse: a couple of weeks ago, I was all dressed up in a suit, for a big off-site meeting where I had to help make an important presentation. We nailed the presentation, and afterwards, I stopped in the ladies' room before getting on the subway back to the office. While I was in the bathroom, I bent over to pick up something I'd dropped, and in doing so managed to slam my butt against the corner of a waste bin. For a few seconds, all I could think was "ouch!" But then my brain suddenly focused on the sound I'd heard as it happened: "rrrrrip!" My hand flew to my backside, and sure enough, I discovered a huge tear in my pants-- through the fabric, through the lining, and indeed through a bit of my own skin too!
I think my jaw literally dropped, thinking "OH SH*T! I'm in a client's office, with a giant hole in the butt of my pants-- what do I do??" Luckily, I remembered then that although my suit jacket would not cover the hole, the raincoat I had on that day would. I was incredibly glad the meeting was over and that all I had to do was put my coat on and get out of there! But I did have to go back to my office for the rest of the day-- and was I really going to be able to sneak around with my back to the wall all afternoon? I didn't think so.
My solution was to head straight for everyone's career-wear standby, good old Ann Taylor. I don't always have good luck with clothes there, but fortunately, I found a decent pair of black pants that fit pretty well and were only a teensy bit too long. Since I was wearing a black top under my suit, the black pants still made a nice outfit even though they didn't match the lighter color or pattern of the suit jacket. I bought them and wore them out of the store.
The pants, of course, weren't on sale-- that would have just been too lucky, wouldn't it? The total including tax came to about $140. Under the circumstances, it seemed a small price to pay for the convenience of immediate full butt-coverage. But I seem to remember having seen these same pants on sale a couple of months ago, in some buy-two, get x% off deal, so it was annoying to have to pay so much for them. But of course if I'd bought them months ago, I'd have had to go home and get them on the day my suit pants ripped! Which would have made the whole experience an even bigger pain in the ass...
So the real moral of this story, I guess, is that if you're an on-the-go career gal (or an on-the-go career klutz) who has to look sharp, you should always buy black tops and pants whenever they're on sale and then stash a few extras in your office! And don't bend over without checking very carefully behind you!

P.S. SingleMa, would wearing a sharp suit with a hole in the butt make me a "hawt mess?"

P.P.S. Yes, everyone, this is a true story, despite today's date!