| 02/14/2009 - I can't take the pain anymore.
The sales at my company in the month of January were bleak - down 44% year over year. After just making the cut in the last round of layoffs, I am now worried about the next round.
One a positive note, I finished our taxes the other day, and we got a BIG surprise. In my initial calculations I had my sale price on our old house to be much higher than it should have been. The result, instead of owning the $6,000 that I had planned for, we are actually going to end up with about a $5,500 refund. I took the family out to eat to celebrate the big win.
I'll probably add $2k of the refund to my daughters Education IRA, and put the rest towards home improvements - my own personal contribution toward stimulating the economy.
02/17/2009 - With the market in a free fall today, I sold off several of my mutual funds to take tax losses on them. I plan to move the proceeds into my Vanguard Total Stock Market account. What's really sad is that I initially purchased the two funds that I cashed out over twelve years ago, and both of them are significantly under water...
02/24/2009 - I feel like the markets put in bottom yesterday at S&P 743.33. This was right in the same range as the November 20th close of 752.44. We had a pretty good bounce back up today. I think we could see a large rally over the next several months. Time will tell if I eat my words. I usually do.
I sold some of my mutual funds the other day to take the tax loss. I'm thinking of putting the proceeds into an Energy ETF - perhaps DIG. |