March update

March has come and gone, which brings us to April Fool's Day, and all the associated shenanigans that flood the internet every April 1^st. Apologies for this morning's lame attempt at humour, and thanks to Brian Biggs at BBspot for his creation, Esenam Ayele. Be sure to remember to take any financial "advice" you received this morning with the appropriate grain of salt.

Let's look at how I did with my March goals:

• Reduce my revolving debt to $21,800 - I missed this one by $41.86. Costco continues to be a thorn in the side of my grocery budget, repeatedly forcing me well above my allotted amount for food. We were actually pretty circumspect this month with respect to eating out, but I wasn't quite able to meet the $21,800 mark. Still, this month I crossed both the 20% mark and the $22,000 mark, so I definitely made some headway.


• Grow my Emergency Fund to $1,280 - Once again, I hit this target without relying on interest. Once interest had posted to all my accounts, my Emergency Fund stood at $1,283.16. One change this month is that $200 of this money is now in the form of around-the-house emergency cash, tucked away in a safe hiding spot.


• Walk to and from work every day, and work out at least three times a week - I came close to this one, but didn't quite make it. I had three days where I needed to take the TTC to work (due to tardiness), and I only averaged just over two workouts per week. However, I've started running again the last couple of weeks, so that should help this goal in the future.


• Lose 4 pounds - Given that I missed the mark on the walking/workout goal above, I was sure I had missed this one as well. However, when I weighed myself this morning (for the first time in a while), I was shocked to see that I currently weigh in at 207lbs. That's 20% of my weight loss goal for the year! 207lbs puts me at a BMI of 27.3, which is down from my start of 28.0 in February. This unexpected success is a great motivator to keep this up in the months to come. Look for my weekly weigh-ins to resume next Wednesday.


• Blog 31 times in March - For the first time in 2008, I missed my target post count: only 27 posts for the month of March. Still, that comes to 0.87 posts per day (or 1.29 posts per weekday, since I rarely post on weekends). Room for improvement, but still not a bad result.

Now, on to my month-end update:

Assets:
Online Savings - $1,897.43
Self-Directed RSP - $43,271.32
Employer Group RSP - $4,039.04

Debts:
Credit Cards - $16,575.74
Line of Credit - $5,266.12
Student Loans - $28,466.94

Net Investable Assets: ($1,101.01)
Net Liquid Assets: ($48,411.37)

There wasn't a lot of movement this month. My liquid savings dropped slightly, and my retirement savings once again grew by less than my monthly contributions. My investable assets increased by $374.65, and my debts decreased by $1,061.60.

Overall, my net investable and net liquid assets increased by $1,436.25 and $1,039.97, respectively. My NetworthIQ profile has also been updated (including loose cash, home, car and mortgage), showing that my net worth finally cracked $40,000 this month. A nice little milestone to cap off the month.