March was a decent month for me financially. My business was down slightly, but I was able to pay down another row on my liabilities, which was great. 2008 State taxes, goodbye!
I have a large federal tax bill due this month, around $9000. Which really kind of sucks, but I guess I should want to pay a lot of taxes, right? If I’m not paying taxes…I ain’t making any money!
I’ve arranged all my paperwork to dispute the IRS balance. I really screwed up doing my own taxes in 2006/2007. I hope to have that line eliminated sometime in May. I may still owe some, but more like 10K at the most, not $29,000 like I do currently. My accountant is booked this month, but said they will get to it after tax day. That should be fine.
I made my regular payments to my mother and on my student loans. I’m still deciding what to do on any of the collection accounts. I haven’t been contacted on any of those old business debts in a long time. Ideally I hope to settle those in the near term future.
On the asset side, I won’t comment much except to say…my tiny stock portfolio was up like 45% in March. No joke. I think I’m still down for the year, and I never should have bought stocks in the first place, but now I’m just going to let the small 2K account ride.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Another good month for you, congratulations again.
Perhaps you should consider selling those stocks in the near future and paying down some of your student loan. The current rally may or may not continue, but as a general rule you should get out of debt before you even think about investing.
Yeah, great work this month! I tend to agree with the first poster. Do you think that small stock account is distracting you? Wouldn't it be better to simplify and pay off some of the debt? Of course these are questions to ask yourself, not questions you need to answer for me!
Keep up the great work!
your journey to get out of debt is inspiring! i'm just starting mine.
Congrats!
If I could reduce my debts at that rate we would be debt free in only a few months. Thanks for the inspiration.
I agree with the first two individuals – get out of the market and eliminate some debt and get more aggressive about repaying your mother. Plus, given your previous stock market experience (what lead to this blog) you should stay out of the market a while longer…..
This stock market bounce over the past month has been pretty huge, one of the largest monthly turnarounds in history. However, you should consider selling and eliminating some debt because I think the market is in for some more tough times. Here's why: 1) The Treasury isn't going to mention how specific banks performed on the stress tests. This will hurt the market because it displays a lack of transparency and shows that the Treasury wants to protect zombie banks. 2) The Treasury did the large majority of the stress tests by relying on internal personnel at the banks. Therefore it sounds like the information is probably skewed to the upside by those people. 3) The IMF believes the total writeoff from banks around the world will top $4 trillion. It wasn't too long ago that you got strange looks if you thought the banks needed to write off $1 trillion. 4) Did I mention that March was a huge runup?