End of Month Recap With Only a Minimum of Lying

On second thought, forget lying--I consider it more like financial misdirection.

First, my quarterly net worth update: I'm up $24,465 to a total net worth of $507,180. Really good, though it begs the point that the first quarter of 2009 was an all-time low economically. And that every other quarter, back to 12/31/2006 was higher. Also, given that the stock market is down today, but was up yesterday (the last full day that I could use for my calculations), chances are, my retirement funds are lower than the numbers I used.

See? Not exactly a lie, but not the full truth, either.

Second, my debts are down by $1122.26. These numbers are accurate. Sort of. I chart my credit cards by the last statement. What I ignore are any purchases made since the statements came out. So, either I won't reduce my indebtedness by as much next month or I'll have to make larger payments to the balances. My plan is to do the latter, as I have in the past, when I don't really want to admit I haven't been as frugal as I sometimes make it sound. My true goal (which I achieved last month and the month before) is to make NO new purchases on any credit card. I tell you when I do that. It's just that I don't always 'fess up when I don't!