Category: General
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Ten Things Your 401K Provider Won’t Tell You, Part 1
I love Smart Money’s series, Ten Things Your [Insert Someone Here] Won’t Tell You, because it really opens your eyes to some of the shady practices of some operations you may otherwise think are being honest and above board. In the latest installment, Smart Money takes a look at 401K’s and the little things that…
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Are You Saving Too Much?
With so many articles lately talking about the savings rate of Americans being negative (and they are), it’s somewhat interesting to see an article written from the other perspective, are you saving too much? They contend that it may be better for some people, especially if they’ve been good savers in their earlier years, to…
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Do Your Part, Use Direct Deposit
I was reading an article on Yahoo Finance that explained how 25% of baby boomers didn’t use direct deposit for salary and other regular payment deposits. The article then supposes that if the 150 million benefit checks cut by the Treasury Department were converted to direct deposits, it would save us all a cool $120…
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10 Retirement Resolutions: Keep Your Other Resolutions Too
US News and World Report had a little piece where they discussed some good New Year’s resolutions related to retirement and I thought that I’d put each of them through their paces. The tenth and final retirement resolution was to stick to your other (non-financial) resolutions too. It can’t hurt to eat right and exercise–and…
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10 Retirement Resolutions: Reevaluate Your Investments
US News and World Report had a little piece where they discussed some good New Year’s resolutions related to retirement and I thought that I’d put each of them through their paces. The third retirement resolution was to examine your investment portfolio. The New Year is the perfect time to look over your various retirement…
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Top 5 Mistakes in 401(K) Investing
Laura Rowley, one of my favorite Yahoo! Finance columnists, posted a list of the top five mistakes of 401(k) on Friday and I wanted to take a closer look at some of them. Mistake #1: Failure To Enroll In An Employer’s Plan Whenever I hear one of my friends tell me that they aren’t participating…
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Writing a Retirement Plan
Having a retirement plan is critical if you want to be able to ensure that the funds you’ve allotted for your retirement will be able to fund what you’d like to enjoy during retirement. Basically what you’ll need to do is to evaluate how much income your current retirement assets are projected to provide for…
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Max Out Your 401(K) As Early As You Can
In my first two years of full-time employment, I contributed the maximum amount to my 401(k) plan because I still had the college mentality. I wasn’t used to making money and as such I wasn’t used to spending it, so in a very miserly fashion I jacked up my 401(k) contribution so that my annual…
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Inflation and Your Retirement Portfolio
While you’re still gainfully employed, inflation wasn’t never really much of a concern because you always figured it would be taken care of by your annual salary increases (which on the whole is generally true). However, once you enter retirement and begin drawing down your retirement assets, inflation becomes a much more significant issue because…