Geek and Money Updates - January 2009

The first month of the year of the ox, 2009, has just ended and the future looks bright for me and Geek and Money. As such, I am reviving an old habit of posting a monthly report of my finances and goals status. This post shall summarize how I fared this January of 2009. I’m going to try to make this post as detailed as possible yet simple to read and understand.

Career
The first payday of the year came off with a bonus, a new project, and a little bit of bad news. My employer has been affected by the global economic crisis. As a result, 500 people were cut. Luckily I ain’t one of them. However, just a few days after the bad news, my honey and I received some good news. We would be receiving another performance-based bonus this February 15th. So that leaves April, July, and August as the “dark” months (months without any bonus).

Alternative Income
2009 started with an $11 payout from Text Link Ads. Join now, sell links and enjoy a passive monthly income. At mid-month, my honey finally decided to become my “neighbor”. That decision netted me a handsome Php500 referral bonus from my condo-share landlord. Also, my SEO experiments have been quite successful as my google adsense earnings for January almost doubled my monthly average (of the previous 6 months). And thanks to Millionaire SEO, I’m gonna get $100 referral income from iPower soon.

Emergency Fund
Added 78% or Php10,000, to be exact, of the bonus that I received last January 15. I also decided to include my contributions to the automatic savings program as part of my emergency fund. This month, I was deducted Php3,720 as contribution to the automatic savings program. You can see the progress of building my emergency fund in the financial goals page.

Net Worth

For January, my net worth increased by 15.57%. I I have been entrusted by my mom to keep some of her money for future use. Since I don’t own that money, I placed it as a liability, thus an increase in liability, which cancels out the increase in cash. Also, I bought an additional 1000 shares of Robinsons Land Corporation (RLC) for Peso Cost Averaging purposes. From an average cost of Php18.7, my RLC stocks are now down to an average cost of Php6.04. By the time stock prices rebound, I’ll have much more capital gains. As always, credit card bills were paid in full and in advance.

Check out my 2009 Personal Wishlist and Financial Goals for 2009 for more updates. That’s all for now.