March of 2008, my 6th month of publicly tracking my net worth, was a big month for me in some ways.  I branched out in a few directions and made some steps toward improving my net worth.  At the same time, I went way over budget in several areas, which hurt my overall gains.  Granted, the overall number at the bottom moved forward, but only barely.  Click on the thumbnail to your left for a full-size picture of my net worth.  Let’s take a look at what went right, and what went wrong. 

Liquid Assets

I showed a 4% improvement in my liquid assets this past month, no thanks to my mutual funds, which tanked.  You’ll notice two brand new categories – my Brokerage account, and Precious Metals.  I opened a Zecco account back in February, but didn’t make my stock purchases until March.  I invested $2,800 in six different stocks, which you can monitor at my Llamafolio page.  Currently I am up $125 on my original investment – not too shabby. 

Precious metals is my other new category.  Starting in late February, but really picking up in March, I started to purchase precious metals.  Nearly all of my metal is silver, with a small portion in gold ( a single 1/10 oz Gold Eagle ).  To value my precious metals, I simply use the current spot prices , multiplied times the number of ounces I have.  This is a very conservative estimate, since most of my silver is in the form of Silver Eagles, which go for a premium of several dollars over spot.  To read more about my thoughts on precious metals, read my post on diversifying your cash.

My credit card debt dropped some, but not as much as I would’ve liked.  My monthly expenses credit card is the reason, as I went over my budgeted expenses for the month.  I expect a drastic improvement for April.

My Cars

Just  a tiny improvement in the car equity front – still over $11,000 worth of negative equity.  It would have been worse, but I did make a larger than usual payment on my Civic this month.  I am going to do my best to make a habit of this – I’m sick and tired of having car payments.  The sooner I can rid myself of one, the happier I will be.

My House

Another 1% increase – just like last month.  $17,583.36 in home equity, yippie!  Time to do a cash-out refi!  Wait, no.  That equity will sit there, unused and untouched, except in case of an extreme emergency.  It’s nice to know that it’s there though, in case something does happen.  Having options is great.

Retirement

I couldn’t quite crack $10,000 in retirement savings this month.  Actually I did hit that mark earlier in the month, but my funds fell off a bit as the month wore on.  No reason to freak out though, my next purchases will simply buy more shares.  Also, my wife’s 401(k) contributions from her new company should kick in soon.  She gets a decent match too, so that should help quite nicely.

Overall

After everything gets tallied up, I walked away from March with a 3% net worth increase.  Not quite the 74% increase that I saw in February, but I also didn’t have the luxury of a tax refund to help.  The 3% gain works out to $861.77.  That’s not quite as much as I’d like to see, but still not something that I’m terribly upset about.  Next month I’ll do a better job of sticking to my budget, and hopefully the stock market will have a better showing. 

I do plan on picking up some more metals, as long as the price is right.  Probably more silver ( as I think there is more upside in silver ) but I may go after an ounce of gold.  We’ll see.  Perhaps I’ll add a little funding to my Zecco account as well.  Either way, I’ll continue to invest slowly, and smartly.  I won’t get rich overnight this way, but hopefully I will earn steady, solid returns.