Wisconsin makes CNN video!

As I’ve said before, Wisconsin never makes national news for anything good, but at least this clip isn’t too bad and a pretty cool clip. Amazingly, the driver was not seriously injured.

My friends the drug dealers

So I've been on the road for the last few days visiting American prisoners. This is one of the things that consular officers typically do, but all Foreign Service Officers have to do some consular work once in a while, so this time it fell to me. I had actually visited some of these guys last year as well, and I can tell you that they are happy to have visitors--Latin American prisons are not the nicest places, as you can imagine. These are about as nice as you would imagine--peeling paint, creaky gates, bugs everywhere--and you practically bathe in hand sanitizer when you get out of there. I try not to think about the possibility of airborne illness; it's too scary to think about what I might be bringing home to my family.

The thing that surprised me was how the prisoners--all in for drug running--reacted to my visit: 2 of the 3 hugged me when they saw me (well, actually it was the extremely manly half-hug with solid claps on the back) and were curious how things were going for me. Strange reception when all I was bringing them was vitamins and old copies of Newsweek!

February 2008 Net Worth Review

Wow, that's some jump! As I mentioned previously, we got a huge federal tax refund (presumably for the last time, since I redid our withholding in order to be able to fully fund our retirement accounts), which allowed us to put some into the house fund and open another Vanguard account.

In spite of the fact that the market ended sharply lower, I still managed to come up with solid gains in our retirement accounts simply due to the extra cash I dumped in by raising my TSP contributions. Obviously, more than anything else that indicates that I don't really have very much saved yet! Oh well, I'm not going to complain about a monthly increase of 13% in our net worth!

Making the leap

Well, this has been an interesting month—today’s paycheck marks the first one in which I’m maxing out my TSP contributions, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see how much I have left over. Of course, the entire thing was made easier by my adjustment a little while ago to my federal withholding, so goodbye fat tax refunds! Our Roth IRAs are on autopilot for maximum contributions as well, so we’re in pretty good shape as far as our retirement accounts go.

So when we got our (presumably last) huge federal tax return back the other day, I put a little into our house fund and decided to buy some shares of a Vanguard fund with the rest. This is the first time that I'll be investing in anything outside of our retirement accounts, but after reading up on various funds, researching tax implications and (of course) talking it over with my dad, it seemed like a good time to get started. Since I waited so long to really begin saving in earnest anyway, I just couldn't see the point of simply adding the cash to our house fund just to hit the (entirely arbitrary) savings goal I'd set when we first arrived at post.

So there you have it. I'm now not simply saving for retirement, but I'm actually an Investor. Feels pretty good!

January 2008 Net Worth Review

Another bumpy month in the stock market, but overall not bad. I was able to start building up some cash in our emergency fund again after raiding it to pay for a little vacation in the States last month; my goal is to have at least a thousand dollars in our USAA savings account (it earns very little interest, but it is immediately available, so it really is more for emergencies than anything else. The bulk of our cash is in a CD with Countrywide and a money market account with Capital One, but those are more of what I consider to be our house fund than an emergency fund).

Some technical difficulties have prevented me from contributing as much to the TSP as I had planned, but I believe that those problems have been solved now, so hopefully our retirement balance will really start to grow in just a few weeks.

Overall, not bad growth--slowing down a lot from the heady days last fall, but still pretty good, I'd say.

An honor long overdue

Okay, so I’m not a big fan of a lot of the stereotypes that people have about Wisconsin. Strangely, I don’t think that shirtless fat guys with Green Bay Packers helmets painted on their chests while wearing cheesehead hats show off our best side.

However, there are some things that you just gotta love.

Goal for 2008

Well, this looks like it could be a very bumpy year for the market, and this is also the year that I’ll be maximizing our retirement contributions—we’ll be maxing out my TSP contributions as well as each of our Roths.

It is hard to keep from feeling a bit queasy about that, given how the year has started out and the fact that I keep dumping money into accounts that have been losing value week after week. Logically, of course, it just means that I’m getting more and more shares for my money, but logic and one’s money don’t always mix well.


Since I’m not looking to use this money for decades, I really don’t care what the market is doing right now—at least, that’s what I keep repeating to myself in order to remain calm!

So this year, I hope to bring our net worth up to 75K. That’s not asking for a lot of growth beyond our own contributions, but based on how things have started out this year, that may be just about right.