So almost 1 year ago I got out of the small, cramped, stuffy condo I was living in with my wife, 2 kids, dog, cat, and ex-fish. The housing market here was good, I got away with about 50k more (after taxes) than I paid a year prior with it. I know, I know, capital gains bit me in the a$$, but we were running terribly low on space, and I hadn’t gotten the finance bug bite yet. So I might have been able to squeeze out another year there if I could have realized it would have kept about 15k in my pocket. It’s a tough choice though – even now knowing that I LOVE the wide open space of my new place (2800 square feet compared to 1200 square feet is a huge difference and the kids are both still not in school yet, so having any private space to work was a pipe-dream in the old house. Here I have some space –

So where do I sit with my funds. I’ll be crafting up an xls doc here shortly breaking down what I’ve got where, but for now it looks something like this:

1. $35,692.23 in my 401k at work – currently dumping 10% of my salary and 10% of the wifes salary into a pretty good pool of mutual funds. 40% in ALMRX, 35% in REREX, and 25% in TRRDX.

2. $10,000 in Land Investment that I sold out my ROTH IRA to get into last year for $10,000 – looking back again, probably not my best move, but the rumor is that the $10,000 will be worth $25,000 in 2009. We’ll see how that pans out. I know the area very well, and I’m hoping it will work out that way. I was somewhat arm-twisted by my family to go in on it so it was a bit knee-jerk and I semi-regret it. I guess I’ll find out for sure in 2009.

3. $1,293.92 in my ROTH IRA that I cooked back up at the beginning of this year with Edward Jones. Anyone have any preferences on this aspect – I’ve got all my shares in NPFBX and I don’t particularly like the expense ratio of 1.48%, but the fund hasn’t been doing too bad. I just knew at 28 I should be dumping some $ in somewhere to start the ROTH – hoping to maybe find some guidance on this (and a million other things) here in the future.

4. Whole-Life Insurance Policy with Hartford – So I do enjoy what this policy offers, I pay about $200/month and I have 500k of life insurance and that value increases with my 200/month contributions along with the mutual funds I am invested in along with the policy – So I have 8,756.20 in ITHAX that I can borrow against and use just like a typical mutual fund also, but the benefits of a Life Insurance Policy. Anyone have any insight on that one? Am I getting buffaloed? I can’t complain too much – for $200 guaranteeing 500k+ and having ability to borrow against it and make extra in the fund doesn’t sound like too bad of a deal – thoughts?

5. $5,000 cash – Yea, that’s about all there is to say about this one. I am likely going to be starting to find a place to put this growing number in a high yield savings or MMA

So these numbers are relatively small, but this month was a direction changer for me. Looks like I will be getting a promotion at work that looks to bump my weekly paycheck a few $; waiting on the offer-letter, will post that when I see it -We finally paid off all our consumer credit cards (I now own the furniture and appliances in the house I sold last year, hahaha, great) – and our only debt now is the house, and our student loans. So we should be able to build all the columns with a pretty good chunk here shortly –

All things considered, I *think* I am doing things right for now – There are soooooooo many other blogs out there that I have read with the next thing to get rich on, or help me help you, but really, these personal finance blogs I’ve run into seem to be the best “real world” experience out there – people are honest and up front about their finances and what they invest in, and I like that aspect… I’m excited to get started…