Archive for August, 2006

Dealpass is a unique program which for a monthy fee (usually around $20) you can join various clubs that allow you to purchase gift cards to your favorite stores at 20% off the face value. You may purchase them in $25 incriments… so a $25 gift card will end up costing you $20. How it works is that you pay the full amount for the gift card, then at the beginning of the next month they credit you back the 20% - so for instance you purchase $125 worth of cards from Target… you pay $125 then usually within the first few days of the following month they will refund your credit card $25.

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With the outrageous price of hiring a full-service real estate agent to sell our home we decided to sell our townhouse for sale by owner. How hard can it be right?

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Taxable Accounts:
$8,357.82 - Liquid Savings - 5.05% APY HSBC Savings Account
$12,620.13 - Stocks - Misc. Direct Investments
$4,399.20 - Stocks - Ameritrade Izone
$689.67 - Stocks - Scottrade
$2,505.82 - Bonds - TreasuryDirect

$28,572.64 TOTAL

Retirement Savings:
$11,415.22 - ROTH IRA - Vanguard
$2,967.76 - ROTH IRA - Scottrade
$28,337.33 - 401K - T. Rowe Price

$42,720.31 TOTAL

Short term goals:
Just purchased a new home a few weeks ago and the liquid “emergency” fund has taken a hit. I would like to get that up over $10k before the end of September, but that may be a stretch. I would like to also have $4k available on January 1st to invest in my Vanguard ROTH IRA (the limit for 2007).

Well, currently I am 25 years old living in upstate New York. I’m working as a computer analyst for a mid-size company (we broke off from an extremely large company about 4 years ago).

I graduated in 2002 from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) with a B.S. in Information Technology. Maybe someday I will go back to school for my MBA, but have no such plans in the near future.

I live with my fiance in a house we purchased together this year. This is actually our second real estate venture… we first lived together in a townhouse we purchased in 2004. This was probably my best financial investment ever with the townhouse appreciating about 50% from where we purchased it at over 2 years. Yay housing boom.

The goal of this blog is to post everything finance - both saving and spending. I am a notorious deal sleuth who scours the internet for good deals and uses coupons for everything. I like to play the stock market with mixed success.

Well, enjoy!