2005 Year in Review

I've been really bad about updating for the last few months, but here is my net worth as of 12/31/05. As you can tell by looking at this entry, I missed my goal by about $2300. Also, you'll notice that my money ended up allocated a little differently than I originally planned.

I ended up putting $2k more in my 401k than I originally planned, and saw a small return on my Scottrade account and Roth IRA. However, I was not able to put as much into my savings as I liked. Several reasons contributed to this, but the big ones were spending $4.5k on a new laptop for myself and a new desktop for my GF. Also, my budget for my winter vacation was $2k but I ended up spending almost $3k. Luckily most of these expenses were offset by a consulting project I did.

Despite the miss of my my goal for the year, I was able to increase my net worth by $26k in 2005, which is a very big gain for me. Remember that I was only making $43.5k and living almost check to check as of 11/2003. So the new job really made all this possible.



¹Denotes a temporary balance earmarked for a specific purpose. This balance is not included in Net Worth.

As for other points of interest for 2005, the big one was that I now remember how expensive being in a relationship can be. While I tend to be pretty good about controlling spending on myself, I must confess I have a terrible time controlling how much I spend on my GF. However, it has been an incredible experience and I am determined not to let my frugality (read: cheapness) become a burden on our happiness! She truly is the most important thing in my life, and I would happily give up everything I've accrued to make her dreams become a reality.