Dollar Jane

Ok, drumroll please.

I made the standard $500 contribution to the Roth IRA. The market recovered enough at the end of the month to boost the worth of my retirement fund by $55. Not too impressive, considering my account right now is still worth $3,724; $276 less than the total contributions I’ve put in.

No change in my ING account except for a $3 interest gain. (Which is promptly wiped out by a $7 finance charge from my credit card).

The American Express Credit Card got a $100 payment, a $500 payment, a $250 payment and a $300 payment this month for a grand total of $1,150 in payments. I’m now down to a $766 balance. It feels great to have the balance under $1,000. The $100 and $500 payments are my scheduled monthly payments. The $250 payment was a rebate check from work that I got for belonging to a health club–my job will pay up $250 of membership costs. The $300 payment was just “extra”–I found that I’ve built up a $900 cushion in my checking account which isn’t earning any interest, so why not put it to good use? I get nervous when my bank balance falls too low but having a balance consistently above $500 is unnecessary.

Finally, on a whim, I decided to participate in Suze Orman’s Save Yourself challenge. I opened a TD Ameritrade account and put in $50. I’ll need to put in another $50 a month for the next year to get the $100 bonus.

So, grand total net worth increase is $1,735 for the month. That’s nearly a 20% increase in my net worth!

My first April paycheck comes on April 11th, and I’m thinking I’ll only pay the credit card minimum so I can make an extra Roth IRA contribution and get closer to maxing out my 2007 contributions. If I leave everything as is, I will have contributed $3,350 in 2007. Another $600 would get me very close to the $4,000 maximum. That means I won’t wipe out the credit card debt as quickly as I’d like, which is annoying, but it’s now or never for this 2007 Roth payment.