Hello All,
You may know from my wife’s earlier posting that I’m back from Switzerland. After getting home last night and taking care of getting our apartment back in shape I find that I’m taking a brief look at our financial situation. Traveling is terrific, but I’m more of a homebody than my globetrotting wife so its good to take a breather and check the status of our accounts.
1) Second Mortgage Payoff:
We’ve both decided to make this our highest priority. So far, its going okay. We’re down to $16,700 from $17,730 at the start of this year. Thats not a while lot. It may make sense to think about some way to reduce the interest rate so we can attack the principle more quickly. We discussed this back in late January, but we haven’t acted on it yet. The most likely plan will be either a) call Washington Mutual and demand a rate reduction or b) transfer part of the debt to a zero balance credit card.
2) Stocks:
Things with our portfolio are just okay. We’ve got a fair amount in Canadian energy trusts (PVX, AAV) and the southern copper corporation (PCU). The prices for shares of these three companies have been fluctuating a fair amount recently. For the time being, their values seem to have stopped declining, so our account values have improved a bit recently. While there isn’t much to be gained from watching the daily fluctuations of stock prices, it’s a psychological boost when our accounts increase in value.
Best,
James
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