Net Worth Update: October 2007

As a means of tracking my progress towards my 2007 goals, I am going to be running this as an on-going series of posts. As a bit of background, here are the opening posts in the series:

• September 2007 Update
• August 2007 Update
• July 2007 Update
• June 2007 Update
• May 2007 Update
• April 2007 Update
• March 2007 Update
• February 2007 Update
• January 2007 Update
• 2007 Financial Goals

Non-Mortgage Debt
You may recall that our only non-mortgage debt is the 0% balance transfer offer from Chase that is currently sitting in our online savings account at HSBC. The current plan is to continue making the minimum monthly payment until a month before the teaser rate expires and then transfer the money out of HSBC to pay the final balance.

During the month of September, we reduced our non-mortgage debt by approximately 2% and that will remain fairly steady as we continue with our repayment plan.

It would have been nice to see the online savings accounts stick with the higher interest rates to maximize the earning potential on the funds that we have in savings. But even with the decline in the interest rate, we will still be earning enough to make it worth my time and effort.

Using the 0% balance transfer to our advantage has worked out well for us and earns us a decent amount of money. Granted it is not for everyone but if you have eliminated all of your consumer debt, it is something to consider.

Increase Net Worth
October brought another positive gain to our net worth, although it was less of an increase than we had last month. The increase to our net worth in October was approximately 1.4%.

We recently opened a new checking account and we have directed a portion of the funds that were intended for our eFund to build a small cushion in the checking account. With our checking account, I prefer to maintain a cushion just to allow some flexibility and have a small surplus should expenses increase in a given month.

Plans for November
The year is quickly coming to a close and the holiday season is upon us. We have already completed the majority of our Christmas shopping, although we will likely still pick up an item here and there if we see a great sale somewhere.

I am somewhat disappointed as I had been shooting to see our net worth increase more than it had in September and we fell short. For the month of November, I would like to see an increase over October to gain a little ground. With only two months left in the year, it looks like we will miss our goal of a 35% increase to our net worth but I still want to see how close we can get.

Hope you are doing well on your financial goals!