From the category archives:
I’m not a skilled investor, particularly when it comes to short-term prognostication, and my long-term track record has yet to be established considering my first investing decision was less than ten years ago. I don’t invest in many individual stocks. My 401(k) includes company stock as part of my employer’s matching contribution, and I opted ... Continue reading this article…
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Discount brokers are everywhere. Not long ago, only a few companies offered the ability to trade stocks with low commissions. If you wanted to trade with a full-service brokerage, it might have cost $30 for each transaction. For this fee, you would talk with a broker assigned to your account, who would help you make ... Continue reading this article…
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The Baby Boomer Generation consists of Americans born between about 1946 and about 1964. Many individuals in this generation are approaching the typical retirement age, as defined by the U.S. government’s tax and benefit policies. While some are delaying their retirement thanks in part to recent poor stock market performance, underfunded nest eggs, and the ... Continue reading this article…
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Updated July 1, 2010. Online bank ING Direct is offering some goodies in July in time for Independence Day. July 4 is a bank holiday in the United States and falls on a weekend this year, anyway, so this sale starts early. Unfortunately, the bank is being coy about its promotions for its savings and ... Continue reading this article…
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Last week I wrote about lump sum investing vs. dollar-cost averaging, voicing the opinion that in most cases, if a lump sum is available, it’s a better choice in the long run. But how do you invest that lump sum? It’s great that the financial media has been encouraging young people to start thinking about ... Continue reading this article…
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Is dollar-cost averaging (DCA) a sound investing strategy? In theory, dollar-cost averaging allows you to invest smaller portions of your money over a longer period of time, reducing the chance that you pay a price too high for any individual investment. If your ideal allocation calls for $50,000 to be invested in the stock market ... Continue reading this article…
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The more money you have, the more opportunities you have to save money. That is Vanguard‘s message. I’m not sure I agree with the philosophy from a consumer standpoint, but it is a way to reward loyal customers — generally customers who make the most money for the company. Yesterday I received a notification in ... Continue reading this article…
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This is a brief review of my experiences with the discount brokerage Scottrade. If you are interested, you can open an account at Scottrade here. I first opened my account with Scottrade a little over five years ago. At the time, my current discount brokerage, Wachovia, began charging an inactivity fee. They claimed I was ... Continue reading this article…
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I’ll admit I’m nervous with my investments right now. Back at the beginning of May, the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500 and other indices, dropped sharply. This was around the time of the “flash crash,” and it appeared to me that the value of my primary vehicle for investment, VTSMX, fell irrationally. ... Continue reading this article…
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With thirty years or so until retirement, I haven’t considered investing in certificates of deposit in my retirement accounts, money I would hopefully have no need to touch for decades. Despite recent problems, the stock market is expected to provide the best returns, even with risk, over a long period of time. But not everyone ... Continue reading this article…
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Vanguard seems to be one of those rare companies that wants to give customers more for less. The brokerage recently eliminated transaction fees for their proprietary exchange-traded funds (ETFs). They’ve been offering no-load, no-commission mutual funds, but with mutual funds you don’t have the flexibility to buy or sell while trading is open. While I ... Continue reading this article…
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As a fan of index mutual funds for the long term, I’ve stuck with first TIAA-Cref and currently Vanguard for my IRAs. I started with TIAA-Cref because when I first discovered Roth IRAs, I didn’t have enough saved to qualify for Vanguard’s minimums. Both brokerages offer low-cost options for those who want to invest in ... Continue reading this article…
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This is a guest article by Christian of Money Obedience. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to the MoneyObedience RSS feed. My parents offered a very important piece of wisdom to me: Even if everybody is doing something, you do not have to do it, too. Unfortunately I usually applied this advice to ... Continue reading this article…
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This is a guest article by Greg McFarlane, the author of Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their twenties and thirties who know nothing about money. People have feared inflation ever since… well, since the dollar’s last rampant bout of inflation in 1977. However, there’s every reason to ... Continue reading this article…
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Pop writes about the intersection of our lives and economics at Pop Economics. There, you can find biweekly posts on everything from how your behavior affects your personal finance decisions to what the Fed’s most recent move means to you — not to mention some killer pop art. He recently wrote: Resistance is futile: Why ... Continue reading this article…
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Zecco is a discount online brokerage offering trades for $4.50, but if you maintain a $25,000 balance or if you execute 25 trades or more a month, you receive 10 free trades. I decided to open an account with Zecco recently to try my hand with stocks with a small amount of “fun money.” Trading ... Continue reading this article…
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ING Direct‘s recent survey results about retirement are scary. I don’t know what the world is going to be like in thirty years, the time I’ll be approaching “retirement age.” I do know that if my pattern of increasing expenses doesn’t change until then, and if I’m still earning primary income by trading my time ... Continue reading this article…
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Overconfidence leads investors to believe they can make buying and selling decisions that would result in their performance beating the indexes. Most professional fund managers don’t beat the indexes on a consistent basis, so there is little reason to believe that amateur stock-pickers will be able to succeed where professionals have failed. Are you overconfident? ... Continue reading this article…
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This past weekend, a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti broke the previous record for most expensive piece of art sold at auction. An anonymous bidder purchased “L’Homme Qui Marche I” for $104.3 million, up to five times more than the expected price. This may be a good sign for the art world in need of a ... Continue reading this article…
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Or, how to invest like a grandmother. This is a guest article by Pop. Pop writes about the intersection of behavior, economics, and personal finance at Pop Economics. He writes about investing for a living and turns famous economics figures into pop art for fun. I’m young, as I bet a whole bunch of you ... Continue reading this article…
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