The Return

So, I have obviously been MIA for the past few months. With my final year of school about to begin, I have decided that I would like to continue the blog again, if for no other reason than I'd like to have my PF thoughts documented somewhere for my own good.

The past few months have been very busy, and I will comment on them over the next few posts. But, in brief, I finished my seasonal income tax preparer job and the Spring semester at school (3.9 GPA :), started and just completed my internship at one of the Big 4 accounting firms, where I just landed a full-time offer for after graduation next May.

I have been able to save quite a bit of $$ through the summer by living at home, and making a very nice salary through my internship.

I've updated my goals for graduation, and plan on posting about those and all of the other details of the past few months over the next few days.

February Review

My goals for February were pretty simple: put $100 towards my IRA, pay off the credit card, buy a $50 savings bond, and save up some cash.

IRA: Yes! I contributed $240 in February.
Credit Card: Paid in full
Cash: Opened a 6-month CD today for $500 saved this month. This will come due right around the time school starts next Fall to help pay for those fun expenses.
Was also able to save $240 towards my graduation cash fund, which I am trying to build up to pay for expenses after graduation (new apartment, work clothes, furniture, yadda yadda)

All in all, a great month - I had the extra bonus of receiving my normal pay plus my training pay, along with both my state and federal tax refunds, and spent very little money.

March Goals:
Save $200 cash for month
$100 to IRA
Hopefully bid and win on hotels for trips to Detroit and Chicago in September and October through Priceline

Friday Thoughts

I received my federal refund in my account today, $197, of which I am going to put about half into my IRA and keep the other half in savings. I am watching as the stock market hovers just above 7000 yet again, and see that my IRA fund has hit yet another new low

It seems things are just getting worse - it appears that GM and/or Chrysler will have to file bankruptcy afterall, which will set off a horrible chain of actions, as thousands of supplier will immediately fold up. I have family near the top of a supplier, who employs over 30,000 people, whom are on the brink as it is, and will file bankruptcy literally minutes after any of the Big 3 go down. I don't see it getting better anytime soon, and I wonder what effect this will have on my job prospects post-graduation. My advisors and those I talk to at career fairs state that I will have great opportunities if I continue on my current path, and the place where I am interning at this summer offers full-time positions to over 90% of interns, but of course that is before the economic collapse, and this branch of the office deals almost entirely with automotive related companies. Scary.

Wild Week

It's been a pretty interesting week in the financial world, with the market plummeting to 6 year lows, and down yet again today. The dollar is at it's highest mark in some time (of course when I was traveling in Europe last summer the dollar was at an all-time low), and oil continues to stay in the 30's. The reaction to the much anticipated stimulus plan hasn't been great, at least from the financial sector. Personally, I think the infrastructure portion of the bill is great - we need it, but the rest seems to be a hodge-podge of spending that no one is really sure about yet.

Work has slowed down drastically, as I am only going to end up with about 15 hours this week- not good news. I survived the first round of exams and did quite well which was a relief, and this morning my state refund was deposited in my account - yay!

Organization

I've been thinking quite a bit about privacy, security, and safety regarding the internet ever since my friend had his identity compromised last week. I realized that I access essentially everything via the internet: bank accounts, retirement accounts, credit cards, email, etc. What would happen if someone got a hold of my information? What will happen in the future re: the internet?

As a result, I have been trying to organize myself financially and otherwise. I am working on creating a filing system, and will be looking to store as much data as I can there - including printing out certain statements that are currently sent to me via email, any trade confirmations for my stocks, funds, or savings bonds, etc, so that if something does happen I will have some paperwork to make sure that I fully account for everything, and have some sort of evidence to support my claims.

If nothing else, this will at least ease my mind a bit, and force me to be a bit more organized - something I could surely use.