Cash- Cash dropped mostly due to our vacation in San Diego in the middle of the month.  It was good to report that we actually came up under budget on our trip and still had a blast! We still have $10,000 as an emergency fund and the rest is set aside to cover the possible replacement of our cars and my wife’s college tuition in June.

Employee Stock Purchase Program- Nothing new to report here, as another $1,667 was taken out of my paycheck and will be used to buy company stock at the end of the quarter which is June 30th.

House-I have recently tried some of the online home evaluators and got a wide range of values. The average was around the $95,000 and I will be using the amount for a while.

Retirement-Got hit by the stock market drop in May.  We are still holding steady by contributing 15% of our pay each month into our 401(K) and IRA.  The stock market swings are enough to give anyone an ulcer.  Good thing we are in it for the long haul.

Pension-Same contribution as last month. This amount should stay steady until October or November of this year.

Mortgage-This amount represent about an extra $150 that we are applying to our principal each month.  Right now on our pace it is going to take us approximately 9 years and 3 months.  Our goal is pay it off sooner than that however.

You can see past net worth updates at the net worth history page.

Hope everyone is having a good Memorial Day.  To Celebrate today I thought I would share this video I found on YouTube dealing with the history of the United State Income Tax

Today’s topic is Term Life vs. Whole Life insurance.  I wrote back in July about life insurance and compared term vs. whole  and wrote about my decision to go with Term.  I feel that term is a superior product to whole life insurance.  Below is clips from Financial guru’s Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman and their feelings on term vs. whole

Well I got back from vacation on Tuesday and received word on my quest to remove PMI from our mortgage payments.  The results were disappointing as the appraisal came back at $91,800.  This means that 80% of the price is $73,440 which is below the remaining $77,365 that is still owed.  Safe to say that we are extremely disappointed.  Hopefully by this time next year our property will have recovered somewhat and we will be done with PMI for good.  All I have to say is that if you ever buy a house, I highly recommend putting down 20%.

For this Media Monday I would like to focus on the Power of Compound Interest.  The first video is a short narrative on how compound interest works while the second is a real life example with no sound.

Every time I see the example in the second video it still astonishes me.  By starting just 10 years earlier and investing for that 10 years only, you would have more money then if you had waited 10 years and invested for the next 30!  Amazing!  So if you have not started to save for future, what are you waiting for again?

AnnualCreditReport.com is a website that everyone should visit once a year.  The reason is because every year you get a free credit report.  The difference between this site and the other “free” credit report sites is that you do not have to enroll in any offers to get your “free” credit report.  You are allowed to get a free credit report from each of the 3 credit reporting companies (Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian) every 12 months.  So if you time it out you can get a free credit report every 4 months.

It is important to remember though that this is just a credit report, not a credit score.  It is good to check your credit report every year because most are filled with errors and it is a good thing to keep on top of things instead of getting a surprise or two when you apply for a mortgage.

Have you ever wondered who truly rich you are?  Well you can now find out at The Global Rich List website.  If you make the median American household income of $52,000 a year, that will place you in the top 1% of all world money makers.  If you make half that ($26,000) you are still in the top 10%!

This is a good reminder for us because I think sometimes as Americans we can forget how truly wealthy we are compared to the rest of the world.  Poke’s (The group who created the web site) main goal is to help people understand where they stand globally in addition to encourage charitable giving.  I am all for charitable giving so it was nice to see them promote that as well.  At least take a look around and see where you stand globally, it at least makes you think a little.

This is a partial clip from an old 2006 Saturday Night live skit featuring Steve Martin.  You can watch the entire clip on Hulu.  It kind of shocked me that this clip was from 2006 and not 2008 or 2009 because it is so dead on on some people’s money beliefs.  If it was not so funny it would probably be a little sad.

If you liked the first ten minutes then I definitely recommend you watch the whole thing as it is really an eye opener on how certain segments of the credit card industry work.  Interesting to note that this was filed before the recession of 2008-2009, I can only imagine it has gotten a lot worse since then.