August 2008 Site and Net Worth Review (+1.72%)

By Pinyo, on September 2, 2008

Net Worth Review

The daily fluctuations aside, August was relatively good month with the S&P500 up 1.2% from 1,267.38 to 1,282.83.  This gain covered the loss in July and then some. According to NetworthIQ, my net worth dropped another -1.43% — again due to the declining value of my house. But my net investable assets went up +1.72%, or from 22.94% to 23.34% of $1 million goal.

Highlights

• The biggest drop in value was my house, which declined another $15,000 according to Zillow.  However, this doesn’t affect me at the moment since I am planning to live in it for a long while.
• My retirement investment stayed flat despite the additional contributions made in August.  Looking closely at the portfolio, it was my international funds that dragged down the portfolio performance.  I am not an international investment or currency expert, but I suspect that the declines were due to the stronger U.S. Dollar.  According to FXHistory, USD improved against the Euro by 6.3% and 10% against gold in August, while my international funds dropped about 4% each.
• My peer-to-peer investments continue to grow.
  • Prosper grew from $693.14 to $751.99. This represents 3.72% gain since I started in the end of December 2007.
  • Lending Club went down slightly from $448.65 to $438.27 as I continue to withdraw money from my account.  I can’t wait for Lending Club to start up their program again.

Alternative Income

We had a strong cash flow this month due to higher than expected alternative income from my web businesses.  The amount was a 71% improvement over last month instead of the projected 10%. This brings my projected alternative income against my total income (salary + alternative income) from 17.12% to 21.61%.  However, I am not expecting to match August’s result any time soon, so the goal for the rest of the year will stay at 17%.

If you want to know how to make money with a blog, I recommend Dough Roller’s Make Money Blogging collection.

Blog Review

August was a fairly quiet month.  I missed a few scheduled articles and didn’t write as many home run quality articles as I should have.  Moreover, I believe my lack of participation in blog carnivals also contributed to the decline.

Performance

Here are the key statistics for this month:

• Subscribers dropped -3% from 2,031 to 1,968
• Search traffic dropped -1% from 12,160 to 12,085
• Visitors dropped -3% from 38,571 to 37,296
• Page views dropped -5% from 69,788 to 66,586

Top 5 Most Viewed Posts This Month

1. 40+ Alternative Income Ideas and Resources from 3/4/2008
2. Why Should You Become A Part-Time Entrepreneur from 8/22/2008
3. Building Multiple Income Streams As A Career from 7/21/2008
4. 7 Key Factors to Build Successful Income Streams from 3/17/2008
5. Dave Ramsey’s Baby Step 6: Pay Off Home Early from 3/5/2008

Top 10 Referrers

I wish I could list all 759 web sites and blogs that sent visitors my way. Despite listing only 10 11, I do appreciate everyone’s help, regardless of how big or small. Here are the top 10 referrers this month:

1. MSN Smart Spending
2. Cash Money Life *
   
3. Being Frugal *
   
4. Christian Personal Finance *
   
5. Broke Grad Student
6. I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…
7. Mrs. Micah *
   
8. Simple Mom *
   
9. My Two Dollars
10. Gather Little By Little
11. Frugal Dad — tied with Gather Little By Little
    

* Indicates the winners of 125×125 banner ad spot.

Again, thank you to my readers and fellow bloggers for your support.

Read more about

Get free updates

    via Twitter
    via Facebook
    via RSS or Email

Share this article

• 
• 
• 
• 
• Share

Pinyo is the brain behind Moolanomy personal finance blog and a few other web sites. If you like this article, please subscribe for free daily email updates.

All posts by Pinyo

Please share your comment:

Comment Rules: Constructive criticism is welcomed. Please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name or URL, as the latter comes off like spam and I'll most likely delete your comment. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! Here's our comment policy and guidelines.

1 blogs that link to this article:

If your trackback does not show in 24 hours, please resend to this trackback URI.

1. –› August 2008 Net Worth Update: -2.4%