This March begins on a bit of a mixed note for me. On the plus side, as I've been hinting at this past week, things have been going much better financially lately. I'm in line for a sizable tax refund of over $5000 this year. I've also received a very positive ruling in my recent disability court case, providing for both monthly disability payments and back payment on the disability payments that could have been made starting in 2012, which should yield somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 when all is said and done.
On the minus side, ‘when all is said and done' is not today. The Social Security Administration has sixty days to pay the disability benefits, so it could be mid-April before I see those funds. As for the tax refund…given that I finished the paperwork on Sunday, it's not too surprising that I haven't received my refund yet (even before you factor in the typical speed of the IRS…).
All of this is a long way of saying that the figures I'm about to share only cover part of the overall financial picture here in The Amateur Financier household. Things are actually much better than they look purely from the current numbers, which will hopefully be much more obvious come April. Until then, though, here's where things stand:
Overall, a pretty moderate month, with changes that only occurred in tiny bits. Investments (such as they are) are up a bit, savings are down quite a bit, and debts have increased a little bit. (Although, since my family doesn't charge interest, consolidating all my debts under ‘Personal Debts' isn't that bad a monetary choice. That I need so much help from my family doesn't fill me with pride, though.) The only thing really out of the ordinary is that my checking account is in the red; luckily, my account allows me to overdraw and only charges interest on the amount overdrawn, not hitting me with fees.
As for my Alexa ranking, alas, it has suffered with how distracted I've been with everything else going on this month. It's not too bad, but since I had hoped to keep improving and break 120,000, it is more than a little disappointing. But that does bring up the rest of my goals:
About what you've probably expect. Not a tremendous alternate income (and since I'm taking off the money I spend maintaining my blog and providing other resources, it's actually costing me to build these alternate income sources), some credit card pay-down but a bit more overall debt, and a sadly lacking amount of charitable donations. It's not going to go down as one of my best months, in any of these categories, but for now, at least, it'll have to do.
That's it for this update. I'm hoping that when we reach the start of April, I'll have much better news to share (that should be the case, in one way or another). Here's to everyone having a great March, one where your net worth increases substantially!
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