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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of interesting reads in the land of money.
If you thought 2014 would be the year of higher rates, so far you’d be wrong. Treasury rates are falling. More worrying, high yield/junk bond rates are down near 5%. Continue Reading…
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Saving for retirement is a goal with a limited number of ways to meet it. Did you know that your IRA investment options extend beyond stocks, bonds, and mutual funds? You have more choices than think.
An IRA (Individual Retirement Account) is just a tax shelter. You use it to store money for retirement, so it can grow tax-free. You see, when you open an IRA and fund it, the money just sits there in the form of cash. Some banks or brokers may offer an interest rate on that money, some don’t. But with rates at all time lows, that money won’t grow very fast. In order to boost that growth, you need to invest it in other assets. Thankfully, the IRS gives you some leeway with all the IRA investment options available.
That doesn’t mean you need to invest in each one. There is nothing wrong with taking a nontraditional approach when investing your retirement money. Just make sure you understand the costs and risks associated with any investment before you begin. And do your homework before jumping into something new. Continue Reading…
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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of interesting reads in the land of money.
The annual pilgrimage to Omaha, the value investor’s mecca, was this past weekend. I wasn’t in attendance (not a shareholder). But enough travelers take notes every year, plus the media coverage, that anyone can get information on it. Every year there’s a few niblets to take away from the event. Continue Reading…
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Did you get the most tax savings possible this year? Is there anything you could have done differently that would have saved you more money? I bet there was.
You need to be proactive for big tax savings. By the time April rolls around it’s already too late to work the tax code in your favor. The only planning you have left is a last-minute IRA contribution before the deadline to salvage some savings.
Real tax planning is an ongoing process of making small financial changes that lead to big tax savings year after year. You need a plan for that and our extensive tax code offers up some places to start. Continue Reading…
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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
The markets roll in cycles. You pay attention long enough to market news, you can see this clearly. Though the market news has its own built-in cycle too. Much of it is filler, like the Sell in May headlines that already started popping up. That’s the hypothetical question that pits May sellers up against non sellers. My view – should a month decide your investment’s fate? Continue Reading…
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Tax season is stressful enough just getting those returns finished and sent in time. Now you have to deal with storing all those tax records. Or do you?
The good news is you don’t have to be a hoarder. But before you start force feeding that shredder, there are some tax documents you should hold on to for a little while.
If you’re like me, you may be holding on to tax records out of fear the IRS will show up for an audit or maybe it’s just a keepsake of incomes past.
The hard part is deciding what records should be kept, what is junk, and how long it all needs to take up space. The IRS, of course, has all the record keeping specifics you’ll ever need. Continue Reading…