I had an interesting conversation with a friend a few days ago, and got her permission to discuss it here. She is engaged and I was very pleased to hear that she and her future husband have been discussing how they plan to deal with their finances after they wed. I am not sure of all of the details, just that they seem to have agreed on all but one minor thing - their retirement accounts. Right now, my friend has her retirement accounts (401k … [Read more...]
A downside for the ladies
Yesterday, an AP article discussed that "Women should factor longer life into retirement." According to the article, women live an average of 22 years after retirement, while men only live 19 years after retirement, and given the increase in medical costs, women therefore need to save 2% more than men every year for 30 years to maintain their standard of living. Doesn't sound too terrible, does it? But there's more. On average, women … [Read more...]
What I Wish I Had Known
At work, there has been an influx of fresh faced young employees over the past few weeks. Some just out of college, others just out of grad school. I’m enjoying meeting all these new people, and it’s always great to have new, enthusiastic employees. There has been a lot of talk as of late as to what sort of personal finance information recent college grads and recent high school grads should know, and as I watched these new employees arrive, I … [Read more...]
May Net Worth Update (+8.22%!)
This month was a great month for my net worth. It increased by a whopping 8.22%!Ok, so that was mainly due to a very generous gift from a family member that is being tucked safely away.Aside from that though, my investments are continuing to rebound. It's slow going, but it's at least moving in the right direction. My cash accounts took a bit more of a hit this month, thanks to vacation, but those were planned expenses. With this generous … [Read more...]
Retirement funds – DCA or no?
Thanks to a generous family member, I came into a bit of money in the past week. It was enough to fund my Roth IRA for the year with a bit leftover. So of course, step one was funding my Roth. I couldn't decide whether dollar cost averaging was the way to go or not. I did know that I wanted to add a fund to my IRA - a fund tracking the international markets - and at the financial institution I use, that required a minimum of $3000 to open. So … [Read more...]