My Retirement Blog
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What Is A Certified Financial Planner?
A Certified Financial Planner, or CFP, is someone who meets the qualifications specified by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc., and those qualifications are: Pass an Exam: They must complete the CFP Board’s certification examination. Years of Experience: They must have 3-5 years of financial planning-related experience. Adherence to Ethics: They must voluntarily…
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Spousal IRA Explained
If you’re a stay at home mom or dad, you can make a deductible IRA contribution (or non-deductible if you opt for a Roth) of up to $5,000 for 2008 if you file a joint return and your working partner/spouse has enough earned income to cover the contribution. That’s right, even if you don’t personally…
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Snowflaking Your Way To Retirement
Snowflaking is a play on words off Dave Ramsey’s Snowball psychologically-driven debt busting technique and it refers to putting small amounts towards your debt, snowflakes, to help eradicate debt. One of the ideas of snowflaking is that you can find small alternative sources of income and then push it towards your debt but you could…
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Benefits of Retirement Community Living
Coming from a Chinese family, the thought of having my parents live in a retirement home was never appealing to me. In Chinese culture, unlike American culture, there’s a sense that family, rather than government (Social Security, pensions?), takes care of the elderly members of the family. That’s not to say all Americans send their…
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Guaranteed 4.625% Ain’t Bad
I’ve considered investing more of my retirement money into Treasury Notes but could never get over the seemingly weak rates of return. However, one article I found recently talked about someone who uses treasury notes exclusively for retirement savings, averaging around 4.625%, and then living off the interest of those (state and local tax free!).…
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Five Great Senior Citizen Discounts
Some people lament growing older, some people celebrate it. Well, now both groups have five great reasons to celebrate (even more!). The latest TheStreet.com article on retirement identifies five great opportunities for seniors to pull the age card and get themselves discounts. Baseball Tickets More and more teams are offering Senior Days, with discounted tickets,…
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Last Minute Tax Retirement Moves
It’s April 14th, tomorrow is tax filing day, have you made all your contributions for 2007? Now’s your last chance! IRA Contributions You have until April 15th of the following year to make contributions for that tax year, so you have until April 15th, 2008 to make your contributions to a 2007 IRA. If you…
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2008 Federal Income Tax Brackets
New year means new brackets and limits and all that great jazz! This year the total amount you can contribute to your 401(k) or 403(b) will not increase (remains $15,500) but IRA contributors will be able to put $5,000 towards their retirement (more if you’re in the catch-up category). There are a few other 2008…
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Identify Year of IRA Contributions
April 15th is right around the corner and many of you will be making your 2007 IRA contributions right now, that’s great news. Putting money away into a Roth or Traditional IRA is one of the best ways you can save for your retirement, so kudos to you for doing it. Many brokerages and mutual…
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