It must be mistake week in the news. Last night U.S. News & World Report had an article by Kerry Hannon about “5 Mistakes that will Sink your Retirement”. Below are his five points and some personal commentary:
1. Cutting back on Contributions.
According to the article, 1/4 of American workers do not contribute to their 401(K) and [...]
In a previous Post (Social Security Statement - 11/4/07), I mentioned that I was considered self-employed for Social Security purposes because I was a pastor. One of our astute readers asked a very good question. Here is her comment/question:
You fail to mention that as a pastor you had the opportunity to opt out of [...]
I just received my annual Social Security Statement in the mail. How depressing. Since pastors are considered self-employed for social security purposes, I get the privilege of paying 12.4% in SS taxes and 2.9 % in Medicare taxes. If I work until full retirement age (67 years for me), I may receive about $1,500 a [...]
Any financial adviser worth anything will keep repeating this mantra over and over - contribute as much as you possibly can to your retirement accounts, starting right now. If you have a financial adviser and this advice doesn’t sound familiar, fire him immediately - he’s not looking out for your best interests. The power of [...]
This is part 2 of 2 of 20 real answers to the 20 dumbest finance questions. The questions come from a post called the 20 dumbest personal finance questions at Punny Money. I covered the first 10 questions in the first post and we’ll tie up the last 10 in this one.
Q: How [...]
If Nick at Punny Money does one thing well, it’s creating humor where there sometimes isn’t. His recent post about the 20 dumbest personal finance questions had me laughing with it’s “here’s your sign” sort of answers. Then I got to thinking. Before I started seeking answers to my financial questions, I [...]
What if you received a $100,000 gift? What would you do with it? What would you buy? What would you pay off? These are the questions that Jade asked of me in a comment.
HI I wanted to see if any of you financially wise people could give me some advice.
My relatives have been talking about [...]
If you meet the criteria, you can claim up to a 50% credit for contributions to a qualifying retirement savings account(a.k.a Saver’s Credit). I’ve used it in the past and if everything falls into place this year, I might qualify again. It’s gonna be close though.
Here’s how you qualify.
You’ve got to have been born before [...]
I received an email from a PR man for Nationwide announcing their newly launched RetirAbility tool. It’s an interactive tool that take some information about you and your money and returns a score, called an R-Score. The R-Score is a numeric value that represents the % of money that you will have to maintain [...]
I recently finished reading Todd Lipscomb’s “Achieving Prosperity“.
The advice and methods that Todd gives in the book are quite good. He tries to keep everything simple and remind the reader many times over that the only tried and true way to becoming prosperous is by long term ethical investment. As many get quick books as [...]
