6 Ideas for your Mid-Year Financial Checkup
1) Maximize retirement plan deferrals. Deferrals to your employer’s retirement plan reduce current federal income tax liability and enhance your retirement savings. If your employer offers a match, don’t pass up this benefit. The 2006 basic limit is $15,000 ($20,000 if you are age 50 or older).
Spend Your Money on Doing Things Rather Than Owning Things
When dealing with personal finance, it is important to remind yourself from time to time that our most valuable assets are things that cannot be bought. Family and friends would certainly apply to this category. So would your health, time, and knowledge. It would be impossible to put a price tag on any of the [...]
The Top Faulty Retirement Assumptions
Many people who’ve never done any formal financial planning believe they’ve taken the right steps to put them on a steady path to retirement. But when that time comes, they are often shocked to learn the lifestyle of tennis and travel they envisioned will have to be drastically scaled back.
The following are faulty assumptions [...]
Tips To Avoid Getting Into Debt
There are countless blogs, articles, tips, and books about how to get out of debt. The best way to avoid never-ending pressure from creditors to repay overdue bills is to not let the bills become overdue in the first place — or better yet, to avoid getting into debt at all. You should be [...]
Asset growth chart
Another way I like to keep track of my net worth growth is through the use of this asset chart (click the image to enlarge). It shows the progress of my assets since January of 2004. Each color represents a different asset, and it helps me visualize both the overall picture and the effect [...]
June 2006 Net Worth Snapshot
Nothing too exciting for the month of June. We did come out positive thanks to a late month market upswing.
My Super Sweet 16
I caught an episode of the MTV show “My Super Sweet 16″ for the first time the other night. For those of you who haven’t seen the show, it “takes you behind the scenes for all the drama, surprises and over-the-top fun as teens prepare for their most important coming-of-age celebrations”. But, [...]
