Fortune magazine just released its 2009 installment of "100 Best Companies to Work For". Here are the top ten companies.

1. NetApp
2. Edward Jones
3. Boston Consulting
4. Google
5. Wegmans
6. Cisco
7. Genentech
8. Methodist Hospital
9. Goldman Sachs
10. Nugget Market

And the link to the full list. (My employer is a distant 38th on the list, but at least it is still one of the 15 companies that pays 100% of employee health insurance premiums.

The cliché goes that there are only two things remain constant in this world: death and taxes. With this year's April 15 deadline approach, do you know some important tax law changes that might affect your individual income tax return?

Below is a concise compilation from CCH CompleteTax of what you need to know about your 2008 tax return:
 
Exemptions

• Personal exemption. This increased to $3,500 per person for 2008.

• AMT exemption. The AMT exemption increased for 2008 to $69,950 for joint filers and surviving spouses, $46,200 for single filers and $34,975 for married persons filing separate returns.

We continued to live below our means and save a huge portion of our income. But even though our portfolio is only mildly exposed to equity investments, we still took a hit from worst market performance in any January since 1928. As a result, our net worth retreated 1.4% and dipped below the $800k mark.

On the other hand, our mutual fund automatic investment plan is in its full throttle. $23,000 net purchase was made in the month, bringing our total investment exposure as a percentage of net worth by two points to 33.4%.

As a farewell bid to 2008, I compiled a full reconciliation table of the investment gains and losses in the unfortunate year of 2008.

Technical Notes:

- Purchase = Total money paid to acquire additional stock or mutual fund shares, including commission.
- Sale = Net proceeds from selling stock or mutual fund shares, after commission.
- Cash Dividends = Total dividends received from stock.
- Note on mutual fund dividends: since all mutual fund dividends are automatically reinvested, there is no cash flow transaction to record. Additional shares from reinvestment are reflected in the year-end Quantity column.

For a long time, I had been rather sporadic in managing my investments, picking up a fancy stock today, and jumping into another mutual fund the next day. Obviously the approach was proven wrong in 2008. So my new year's wish: more rigor in managing my financials. After all, although the financial crisis has wiped out a sizable fortune, I still need to count on building and growing my nest egg for a much aspired early retirement.

In the last few weeks, I have some rarely-find personal time to develop and implement my investment plan for 2009. I will take the next few posts to share my plan and solicit your feedback.

My plan starts with personal assessment of macroeconomic situation, a result of at least 30 hours of readings and analysis:

1. Asset Price

Assessment: Asset price is approaching reasonable levels.

Major stock markets have lost almost half of its peak value, and commodity price have tanked. By many measures, equity price is at very attractive level now. On the flip side, since we haven't seen the full impact on corporate earnings yet, it can be argued that the ordinary price metrics like P/E ratio may offer a false reading at the moment. All told, I come to believe that while no one can predict where the bottom is -- the claim that November is a long-term bottom is becoming weaker every day -- it can be said that asset price doesn't have much room to drop further.

Actions: Currently, 3/4 of my portfolio is on cash and that allocation certainly is not optimized for growth. I intend to start increase exposure to riskier assets. Also, I plan to enter into automatic investment plans to avoid being sidetracked during market swings.

Can you put a price tag on the White House? Of course, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will never be put to the market, but the online real estate site Zillow.com decides to make some timely noise now that the new First Family only needs to wait for another 10 days to move in. The estimate: $308,058,000.

Yes, if Uncle Sam is in a fire sale, the "55,000 square feet of indoor space, 132 total rooms, 35 bathrooms, 16 bedrooms, three kitchens and 18 acres of premium downtown Washington, DC land" will slightly help our budget deficit.

And more fun facts if we think alone this line:

- Were someone to take out a standard 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage on the White House today (assuming 20 percent down and a 6 percent rate), their monthly payment (including principal and interest) would be $1.48 million. Even with the Treasury Department's proposed 4.5% rate on 30-year mortgages, a monthly payment would still top $1.25 million.

My stock picking days are finally over, for now. Back in April 2003, I bought my first stock -- Pre Paid Legal Service (PPD). Over the six and half years since, I bought a total of 33 stocks. As late as May, I was sitting on almost quarter-a-million portfolio of individual stocks, including many financial stocks (AIG, BAC, JPM, LFG, MMC, WTM, just to name a few) -- what a good portfolio it was in a financial crisis :-)

And with the market testing new lows every other day, my portfolio was taking one nosedive after another. For a moment I was in denial, and hesitated to share the losing record, especially to a special reader of my blog -- my wife. Knowing that we won't touch on the investment portfolio for at least a decade, and stock market will surely recover in the long run, I felt it was not necessary to create a lot of anxiety under the same roof.

In retrospect, the biggest lesson I learned from loading more and more financial stocks between 2007 and 2008 is: I acted blindly. With 60-hour work weeks, I should have known that I cannot dedicate enough time to study each company and keep track of all developments. My corporate finance background should have helped me, but without a lot of time to study my portfolio holdings as much as I study the corporate P&L I'm managing, it is no surprise that I chose the wrong path.

How bad did the worldwide stock markets perform in 2008? Too bad that there is only one country with some positive gains.

And comparing to the 94% plunge of Iceland stock market, we are truly blessed to "only" sustain 30%-plus loss in the States.

Via BBC:

The Best Performing Stock Markets in 2008

Isn't it good that when you wake up from hibernation, everything in the world is better?

A good portion of personal finance planning is about credit management, and that usually involves you keep track of your credit report and credit score, so as to maintain a good credit record that might help you when you apply for the next mortgage, car loan or credit card.

Three years ago, the new FTC legislature requires each of the "big three" credit agencies to provide a free credit report to everyone once every year. If you haven't tried that yet, go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ and order yours. If you space out your retrieval carefully, you can get one free report every four months.

But that will only give you the credit report for free. Credit score is still something you normally have to pay for. Now, it seems that the advertising-supported business model is hitting this corner of the world too ... introducing CreditKarma.com, where you can get unlimited flow of your latest credit score on demand for free.

One of the few things that are long-lived at PFBlog is the $1M goal stated in the tag line.

When I started PFBlog in 2003, my intention is to use the blog to track my progress to become a millionaire by the age of 40. It doesn't take long for me to realize that we can claim a seven-figure asset much earlier with diligent savings and financial planning. Therefore, in 2005, I changed the goal to break the million-dollar mark by 36.

Now you may say one million dollars is no longer enough to support a comfortable retirement, but it is still an attractive milestone, isn't it?

So after a long hiatus in my blogging activity, a quick snapshot assessment of where we are:

To start off, we still ended the year with just over $800,000 in assets. In a few months, I'll turn 33, so we still have about three years to add the final 200 grand to our coffer.

It's time to face the moment of truth. After a lapse of six months (which all of us want to forget), let's pick up again the monthly ritual of reporting my net worth. Here comes our balance sheet at the end of the year:

The worst market performance since 1930s caught us as a victim too. After this carnage, our net worth is 80 grand less than the last time we reported. We also closed 2008 with almost $90k lighter than what we started the year with. What a year!

2008 is finally around the corner now. What a busy year! Now 2008 will soon be a memory, I took the chance to write a final annual summary so the year will be remembered when I looked back decades from now.

Family

What's Good: My wife, my son and I, as a family, has much stronger bonding compared to last year. We enjoyed a lot of precious family moments. My wife continues to have success in her great freelance job, and my son, now at grade 2, is starting to having fun in his school. Everyone, including my extended families, is still healthy.

What's Not So Good: Really nothing. I feel blessed our family is growing in the right direction.

Work

What's Good: I'm taking much more responsibilities at work than a year ago and received an important promotion as a result. I continue to feel valued and am excited to come to work on most of the days. I derive a lot of fun working with my team, including my new boss who was parachuted to us 6 months ago.

What's Not So Good: For the entire year, I was essentially taking the workload of two, and the financial crisis has been challenging the effectiveness of our team to optimize resources. Many times, I felt I am consumed by the work by having to get up 6am in the morning and attend late-night calls. Also, I took more business trips than last year -- I spent altogether over 100 days on the road for business. To some extent, the economic crisis and accompanying reduced level of business travel is a blessing :-) In all means, 2008 is simply the busiest year ever I had in my career.

While our portfolio barely made an inch, we continued to save a substantial part of our take-home pay and this ultimately drove home a 1.5% net worth addition in May.

Should I feel good that Our net worth winning streak is finally extended to the third months?

For the four full years between 2004 and 2007, there were only three "down" months in between. Now with our net worth changes are mostly governed by the market turbulence, our monthly performance is close to a coin toss lately -- exactly three "down" months and three "up" months in the last six months.

And this means my annual financial goal of $225,000 net worth growth is probably out of reach now -- our net worth actually retreated about 10 grand so far this year compared to where we ended 2007.

Now I actually don't feel too bad. If anything, the market condition and ensuing sea change in our net worth growth trend is a good wake-up call on how important it will be to manage the financial risks after our peak earning years. We are still fortunate that we are able to save more than 50% of our pre-tax income month after month, so we can definitely ride through this hurricane and come out stronger (both financially and mentally).

SUMMARY

May is a pretty stable month for my portfolio in terms of absolute gains -- my stable of mutual funds, stocks and cash inched higher 0.12%. But on a relatively basis, my portfolio lagged the benchmark by 1.3% in this month. Certainly not a good month for relative performance!

TRANSACTIONS

I made a further $7,000 commitment to Dodge & Cox's domestic stock offering (DODGX). Also, I started a new (yet admittedly tiny $500) position at T. Rowe Price New Era (PRNEX), as an effort to beef up my energy exposure. I have enrolled in

NEXT STEPS

My individual stock positions have been lagged the market for a few months in a row now -- the huge concentration on financial stocks has been proven untimely, but at this price level, it can be argued that opportunities and risks are relatively balanced. Anyway, I'm intentionally controlling the relative share of my individual stock exposure now -- individual stock positions now represents only 28% of my portfolio, vs. 34% at the end of 2007.

With another series of reports on worsening housing market, it doesn't look like I need to eagerly commit more money to the market now. I do plan to sit in the side line of the equity market, and move more money to China for some currency bets.

Thanks to a nice comeback of the stock market, our net worth received a much needed boost of 4.7% in April. I hate to mention the fact that despite our continued hard work and savers' mentality, our nest egg is still lighter compared to the low 900's it fetched in October 2007 -- our total wealth basically went no where in the last six months thanks to the rollercoaster ride of the stock market.

BALANCE SHEET

SUMMARY

The market finally recovered some ground after five back-to-back monthly losses, and my portfolio benefitted from the market's sudden enthusiasm too with a nice gain of 3.98%, the largest monthly gain in a while. Since my portfolio is decidedly under-exposed compared to my benchmark, my monthly gain is dwarfed by the benchmark's 4.45% expansion. On a year-to-date basis, both my portfolio and the benchmark lost about 3.30%.

TRANSACTIONS

I made some shuffling in my mutual fund positions to embrace the newly available option of BrokerageLink -- a 401(k) plan feature that allows participants to expand investment options to almost all stocks and mutual funds. As such, I dropped Russell International Growth and ING International Value (NIIVX), bought more of Harbor International (HIINX) and USAA Precious Metals and Minerals (USAGX).

In addition, I moved more U.S. dollars to Chinese Yuan on my "carry trade" experiment. By the end of the month, I have about one seventh of my portfolio in Chinese Yuan, yielding handsomely from gradual, predictable appreciation of the currency. (Starting from this month, I'm breaking our my Chinese Yuan positions from the "Cash/Fixed Income" category.)

Also, I had to pull some money out of my portfolio to repay some 0% APR credit card debt that is coming due. This, of course, reduced the leverage of my portfolio.

The workload surge in the last two months caused many slips in my life. Not only was I forced into a "sabbatical leave" from blogging, I didn't even notice that I have fallen behind on a monthly credit card payment.

The card at issue is a Discover Miles card, which I took advantage back in November for its 0% APR balance transfer offer (after a $75 balance transfer charge). While I was only a few days behind the due date, I was slapped with a $39 late payment penalty and a $176 interest charge.

I have to admit this incident is not typical of me; I have been meticulously managing all bills for many years and almost never missed a payment. Now it is very hard to swallow that my first miss in years set me back for $215.

The first month of net worth gain came rather late in 2008. Helped by continued strength in my day job and sideline business, our net worth edged up 0.7% in March. While we are $62,100 off where we started the year, we still increased our wealth by over $150,000 in the last 12 months.

Again, the market is testing the patience of every participant and spectator. If anything, I'm getting very good at dealing with market turbulence -- daily five-figure portfolio loss doesn't bother me much these days.

Now I don't think I'm a role model when it comes to investing -- some can easily discount me as market timer by keeping a big cash reserve, or being on the fence between stock picker and fund investor -- but I'm glad I'm true to myself and put my money where my mouth is. There are and will continue to be hits and misses, and it will surely take a long time to get better in the game. I won't mind people giving me more criticism or feedback along the way.

It seems that our distance to the seven-figure net worth milestone only increased in the first 60 days of the year. With another 25 grand retreat in February on the heels of the $42,790 net worth decline in January, our net worth took a 7.6% nosedive so far this year.

I can blame this to the stock market, or MSFT's unsolicited bid for Yahoo!. But either case, it just makes it much harder to achieve the net worth growth goal for the year.