Reading Time: 3 minutes So I opened an IRA account in mid March, deposit some money there, but I have not bought any mutual fund until today (theoretically tomorrow). Why? Two reasons: 1) The market has been hot lately, and I was waiting for a dip, that dip did not come until recently the Goldman scandal surfaced, and Greece
Reading Time: 4 minutes (Update 08-01-2010) It seems the referral still works. Feel free to use my referral code 2568778, and email me after you enroll. I will send you the $25 Amazon gift card as soon as I receive the referral bonus from Ohio 529 plan. (Update 06-29-2010) My mistake, there is not limit in terms of the
Reading Time: < 1 minute I received both the federal and state tax refund last week. Besides using the Turbo Tax from Bank of America site (get 35% off). For State (show me state) filing, I used paper filing, because state filing is usually simply enough, and also the Turbo Tax already gave me the estimate refund amount (so that
Reading Time: < 1 minute (Update 05-07-2010) I just found out some more details on how it works. Per BoA’s FAQ of the Keep the Change Program, “The matching funds will be credited annually to your savings account. This will take place within 8 weeks after the month of your enrollment anniversary for the Keep the Change® savings service.” (Update
Reading Time: < 1 minute ESPP stands for Employee Stock Purchase Plan. My former employer is a public company, and it offers a good ESPP plan: 15% discount of stock market price at the beginning or the end of plan period (pick the lower of the two prices, then apply 15% discount), the plan period is usually 6 months. I
Reading Time: 4 minutes The average age of your credit history is one factor that goes into determining your credit score. At fifteen percent of your score, having a longer credit history can make a big difference. This is one reason why it makes sense to start building credit as a student; the younger you are when you get
Reading Time: < 1 minute How to deal with 401k when leaving a job? Some options: 1) Take it out, with 10% penalty, and potential income tax later on. This is usually not recommended. 2) Rollover to an Rollover IRA; or Rollover to the new employer’s 401k. I did this once: not because of change of job, but because of
Reading Time: < 1 minute Index or value investing for retirement: so that we can sleep well at night; Crap shoot for speculation: so that we may get rich some day before retirement age; But those are just tactic I learned from Your Mind & Your Money series of NBR (PBS) and from my own experience. The most important lesson
Reading Time: 2 minutes It’s that time again, the end of 2009 (and the decade of 2000s) means we can also look at the performance of mutual funds in past year/decade. The winner of US based mutual fund is CGM Focus fund, managed by Mr. Heebner, the fund’s manager since its 1997 launch. CGM Focus is a large cap
Reading Time: < 1 minute NBR at PBS is running a series of year end tax tips (link here). My take is in investing, taking gain/loss should first based on the investments prospectus (how you think your investments will work in the future), the tax should be secondary consideration. It is still important because in some cases you want to
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