My first financial mistake happened in my early 20s.  Although last week I admitted that buying my house was a financial mistake, but not a personal mistake. So what did I really make a mistake on?
I was young, dumb, and just starting out.  Truth is, my mom didn’t give me much financial guidance except “spend [...]

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A person wrote in to Walter Updegrave here, asking “I’ve been saving for retirement for over 10 years and at 34 have $160k saved, but I now have less than I did one year ago. Have I been a fool in my diligence?”
Walter’s response was no.  He says it’s better to have saved the $160k [...]

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The newest retirement vehicle is a Roth 401k.  Like the Roth IRA, you contribute after tax dollars up to $15.5k/year into a retirement account and it comes out tax free when you retire.  Thus you are able to actually save more than in a regular 401k, depending on your tax bracket.  Not many companies offer [...]

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I think this is a great article in the NY Times discussing different type of IRA retirement accounts.  So what are the different types of IRA?
There is a Roth IRA. It allows people under a certin income to contribute taxed dollars to a retirement account.  Currently the amount is $5k/annually, and will grow tax free [...]

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There are many changes for Roth IRAs in 2008, so I want to enlighten you to them. 

People are able to contribute $5k/year without being 50. If you are 50, you can save an additional $1k or $6k total.
Income limits are increased for contributing to a Roth IRA, $101k for singles and $159k for married filing jointly (the [...]

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Our 2008 Roth IRAs are done for the year.  $10k for us in now put in.  The rest of the year will be spent saving for a contribution on 1/2/2009 of $10k.  Hopefully we’ll be able to do it.
Unfortunately we’re still waiting for our tax refund from 2007 and the rebate for 2008 will both [...]

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I am done funding my Roth IRA for 2008.  DH’s should be done in about 1 week, we’re just waiting for a check from our stock account.  Sold some ESPP shares last week and now we’re just waiting to fund. 
Plan for next year is to fund our Roth IRA with the 2 remaining ESPP purchases [...]

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There is a blog called “I am facing foreclosure” started in September of 2006 by Casey Serin. He is a 24 year old “would be real estate mogul”. He bought 8 houses in 8 months in 4 different states. Unfortunately he bought at the peak of the market and has been unable [...]

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People always ask should they contribute one $4k deposit to a Roth IRA or should they contribute $333/monthly? The answer is…you should deposit $4k on January 2nd of the year to get the longest possible time of tax free investing. Because you deposit every year and leave it alone, that will be a [...]

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