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Posted
Oct 23 2007, 06:28 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Queercents blogger Nina Smith, in a guest post at I Will Teach You To Be Rich , notes that "money spends the same whether it's carried in a purse or wallet." So why is so-called investing advice in women's magazines often about protecting money, and men's magazines deliver an aggressive approach to making money grow? Are writers for O, The Oprah Magazine and other publications bolstering a perception of woman as second-class capitalists by emphasizing financial basics, rather than high-powered money advice? Or do they know their audience? The average woman between 24 and 35, Smith's post says, has a mere $500 in savings.
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Posted
Nov 14 2007, 07:59 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog FiveCentNickel . Have you maxed out your traditional or Roth IRA for 2007? If not, you have until Tax Day to get it done, so you'd better get crackin'. The maximum allowable IRA contribution for 2007 is $4,000 ($5,000 if you're 50 or older). Assuming that you contribute once a month from now through April, you'll need to squirrel away just shy of $667 a month to reach the maximum ($833 per month if you're 50 or older). Even if you can't hit the full contribution mark, you should do what you can to pump money into your IRA. After all, IRA contribution limits are a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. If you fail to contribute in any given year, you can't carry the unused portion of your contribution limit forward to the next year. Worried that some sort of emergency might arise? No sweat. You can get your money back out if you end up needing it. Remember, you can withdraw your Roth IRA contributions (but not earnings) at any time, for any reason, without taxes
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Posted
Nov 16 2007, 08:20 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar . Recently, one of my friends quit his job as an actuary for a large insurance company. He’s single, has a Ph.D. in mathematics, and has no debt. He quit for one reason and one reason alone. I’ll let him tell it to you: I got tired of going home every night mentally exhausted and sitting in front of the TV playing Xbox. It’s what I did almost every night, without a weekend. I made a lot of money, but I had no life to do anything at all. My job ate all of my energy. What’s he doing now? He works the night shift at a local factory, driving a forklift. Half the time he sits on the forklift waiting for a new load, so he has started reading a lot of the classics. He makes $11 an hour, far less than he earned as an actuary, but enough to live on, because he banked most of his income from his actuarial work. You know what? I applaud him. I think it was an excellent response to what I call professional exhaustion. Here’s why I think
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Posted
Nov 23 2007, 03:33 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
It's one-stop shopping at Moolanomy if you're looking for " 22 money-maximizing moves ." Disclaimer: He's not a financial adviser, but he is a thirtysomething guy with a $200,000-plus investment portfolio, and his list of ideas to consider is comprehensive. It includes ways to reduce your 2007 taxes , such as buying business equipment, paying vendors before the end of the year, and increasing your 401(k) and IRA contributions . He also describes several creative approaches to charitable contributions . Did you ever think about donating your old car? It's time to use up your flexible spending account, he reminds us. Why not conduct annual reviews of your insurance coverage and asset allocation ? It's also a good time to use rewards from your credit card.
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Posted
Nov 27 2007, 01:48 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
You don't get deeply into debt overnight. Glblguy at Gather Little by Little , quoting from a song by Casting Crown, calls the process a "slow fade." It took considerable guts for him to tell the story of his fade; he made a multitude of bad financial decisions. It began with his first credit card and slid downhill from there: more credit cards , bigger balances and minimum payments; a car purchased with no down payment; a house with only 5% down . "The only good decision we made here was getting a 30-year fixed-rate loan," he writes. At one point he used retirement savings to pay off the credit card debt, only to allow it to balloon again. The next sentence will sound chillingly familiar to many: "Our path to financial problems started with a $500 credit card when I was 18 and snowballed into a sizable chunk of debt across more than four credit cards, a camper, two new cars and a mortgage." The slow fade has stopped, and glblguy has seen the light of financial responsibility. He warns
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Posted
Dec 12 2007, 05:27 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. Recently I wrote about how to develop the habit of spending less than you make. To continue that topic, here are some practical and painless tips to help you save money each month. (Be sure to read to the bottom of this post, as tip No. 51 is bound to spark some discussion and debate.) 1. Combine your cable, Internet and telephone service. Companies now offer combined services that not only cost less, but offer the convenience of a single bill. 2. Slow down your Internet service. I went to the slower Internet service option with my cable company and saved $15 per month. And I haven't noticed a difference when surfing the Net.
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Posted
Dec 21 2007, 06:28 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Even though I'm on a very healthy financial track, I'm still prone to the weakness of buying material goods. I think of things I want, and over time I tend to talk myself into buying them, spending money I really shouldn't be spending. Many readers ask why I shouldn't be spending that money. It's my hard-earned money, and I'm in at least a reasonably decent financial position. Besides, you only live once, right? Let's use that philosophy when evaluating the purchase of a game for my Wii. Let's say I want to buy a new game that costs $50, even though I have three Wii games at home that I enjoy playing and am not close to mastering. This is actually a common temptation for me. Let's consider two scenarios.
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Posted
Jan 22 2008, 12:49 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Mike knows how to build houses and fix cars, but he's not much into personal finance. So after one of Mike's co-workers withdrew all funds from his own 401(k) when it started losing money, Mike wondered if he should do the same. He turned to his favorite personal-finance blogger, glblguy, for advice. "My immediate reply was 'No!' and I explained to him why this was such a bad idea," glblguy writes at Gather Little by Little.
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Posted
Jan 23 2008, 03:02 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
The blogger at Grad Money Matters religiously funds his 401(k) retirement account at work. In fact, he maxed out his contribution last year. He was shocked when he checked his returns earlier this week and saw that they were negative. That's the day he finally understood "why people who have money still worry about money." He also learned some lessons about investing for retirement. First among them is not to check your returns every day if you want peace of mind. Don't fixate on the stock market's recent slide; investing requires a long-term outlook. In that context, his recent 5% loss "is but a ripple in the pond," he says.
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Posted
Mar 12 2008, 06:30 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. As Roth IRA and Roth 401(k) retirement plans gain in popularity, unsuspecting investors may fall prey to a potentially expensive mistake. Money in a Roth 401(k) or Roth IRA account can be withdrawn tax-free, assuming the withdrawal meets IRS requirements. In contrast, withdrawals from traditional 401(k)s and IRAs are taxed as ordinary income when you take the money out. As a result, a dollar in a Roth account is worth a dollar at retirement, but a dollar in a traditional retirement account is worth a dollar minus the taxes you'll pay when you withdraw the money. What's the potential gremlin lurking in your 401(k)? It's treating Roth retirement savings the same as traditional retirement savings when making your investment decisions. Let's look at an example to see how this mistake could impact your investments.
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