So, you’ve done your research, read the articles, crunched the numbers, and you want to convert your Traditional IRA held at Vanguard into a Roth IRA. But, how do you actually do it at Vanguard.com? There is no explicit “Convert” button or link to run this conversion. After some fumbling around, I managed to figure it out. But why not just share it here in mind-numbing detail and…
Good financial advice is hard to come by. There are so many variables, such that you have to find the balance between providing enough information, and making things digestible enough that peoples’ eyes don’t glaze over.
Check out this advice column found in the newsletter that comes in my 401k statement each month. Can you spot what’s missing?
There is no mention of what investment vehicle…
Here are another set of charts comparing the P/E10 Ratios for the S&P 500 and subsequent 10-year annualized real returns, courtesy of Mebane Faber based on Professor Shiller’s data. Can we really decide if the market is “overvalued” or “undervalued” by looking at one single number?
As noted in my earlier post about P/E ratios as a long-term predictive tool, the “P/E10 ratio” is the…
Amazon.com has a new program called Amazon Student where you can get “exclusive deals”, the best of which is a free one-year subscription to Amazon Prime. This allows you to get the convenience of free 2-day shipping on most products (including textbooks and even some used books) with no minimum order amount. Usually costs $79 a year.
You can even keep your existing Amazon.com account, just
With all of the current government spending, future promised spending, and the huge trillion-dollar budget deficit, there is a lot of talk about impending inflation. Many people are convinced that there is going to be a tax increase as a result, regardless of your political affiliation. However, this reminded me that we shouldn’t forget that the government can increase taxes without ever passing a bill, making you a…
Time for another net worth update… last one was back in April.
Credit Card Debt
I used to take money from credit cards at 0% APR and place it into online savings accounts, bank CDs, or savings bonds that earned 4-5% interest (much less recently), keeping the difference as profit while taking minimal risk. (Minimal in regards that the risk was under my control.) However,…
When you charge something on your credit card, the merchant usually pays about 2-3% in transaction fees for the convenience and benefit of accepting these cards (it makes it easier for people to spend money with them). In order to get their specific card “in your wallet”, issuers often rebate part of these fees in the form of % cashback rewards or frequent flier miles. This makes sense,…
Another problem with escrows is by mixing it in with your mortgage payment, it can obscure what you’re paying towards property taxes and homeowner’s insurance premiums. Do you know how much you paid in property taxes this year versus the last? Or how much of each month’s mortgage payment goes towards taxes and insurance? I probably only knew within about $500 the annual total.
Property taxes…
In response to my earlier post on Should You Manage Your Own Mortgage Escrow?, reader James e-mailed me a trick he found to save some money even if you are required to have an escrow account:
Even if you’ve got an loan that requires an escrow account for the life of the loan, you can still save some money by beating your lender to the punch on
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Housing prices. Are they still falling? Stable? Best time to buy ever?
Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture thinks that housing prices have much further to fall. Here’s part of his analysis:
Today, residential real estate confronts numerous headwinds: Credit, once given to anyone who could fog a mirror, is now tight. Hence, demand is far below what it was during the past decade. Home prices are
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