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Month: December 2005

Roth 401k

Roth 401k

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Well I planned on starting this blog with more introductory articles on the basics investing tools available, but my employer just decided to offer a Roth 401k plan and I have to fill out the form today so I figured I’d blog about my decision process when filling out the form.

For those of you who don’t know a Roth 401k is a new savings vehicle that the IRS is releasing as of January 1, 2006. A Roth 401k is very similar to a Roth IRA in that any money you contribute to the plan you have to pay taxes on. The good news is that because you paid the taxes on the money up front any money you make a long the way is tax free and when you withdraw any money from this account after age 59.5 the money is also tax free. …

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My Investing History

My Investing History

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I figure I would give you a little history about my investments so far. I graduated college in 2002 with a Computer Information Systems degree and got a job as a programmer making $45,000 a year out of college.

While it didn’t happen right away I knew I wanted to start investing my money ASAP possible. I had always figured that if I started putting say $10,000 a year away when I first started working I would never miss the money or have to adjust my lifestyle to accommodate my saving/investing habits. …

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What are my goals?

What are my goals?

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Well I suppose seeing as how the title of this blog is “My Financial Goals” – I suppose I should actually talk about what my goals are. Now despite the blog title I really have not been a big proponent of setting goals for myself. I know I subconsciously have ideas of what I would like to accomplish in my life, I have never before actually defined a goal and written it down somewhere. In the past I have always been pretty good about accomplishing my secret subconscious “goals”, but who knows maybe I just forgot about the goals I had failed to attain. So at this point in time I am going to dig into my subconsciousness and put some of these goals I have for myself out on paper…err well electronic storage. …

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High School Econ and Yoohoo

High School Econ and Yoohoo

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Well after exponentiation lessons in Math class I really had no reason to think about investing. Heck that was only for grown up people with jobs, I’d have to wait to put my devious plan into action. So really investing did not consume much of my thoughts through high school. Senior year I took an Economics class and while we discussed relevant economic theories I probably was too busy oogling at the girls in the class because I honestly don’t remember much about the theory being taught in the class and really did not understand the stock market at all. …

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What got me interested in Investing?

What got me interested in Investing?

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What got me into investing? Well I am not exactly sure how old I was, but I know I was in Math class and learning about exponentiation, pretty sure it was still in grade school. Anyway as usual my mind began to wander and I probably was not paying attention to the task at hand anymore, but for some reason I decided to think of exponentiation in terms of money. Again I have no idea why because investing was not something I had ever discussed with anyone before and money really was not an important part of my life at that point. Anyway I took my calculator and punched in a sum of money, something like a 6% rate of return, for 40 years. I couldn’t believe my eyes!! How could such a small amount of money grow into such a large sum, without having to do anything . Well I continued on punching in bigger initial investments, higher rates of returns, over even longer periods of time and soon came the conclusion that if I could somehow find a way to get some bank or something to give me like 5 or 6% return over my lifetime I would be very wealthy. I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t do this and why people didn’t just bite the bullet and put a bunch of money away for the next generation or the generation after that. I mean the number coming out of my calculator for compounding money over 100 years was amazing!! …

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Welcome

Welcome

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Welcome!!

You must have somehow mistyped, misclicked, or missearched and ended up on my blog page. I am starting this blog to track my financial journey through life. Despite the blogs title I don’t really have my financial goals set in stone, or for that matter I’m not sure I have even set a whole lot of goals for myself, but well that will be the purpose of this blog.

I’ve run across quite a few other excellent personal finance blogs and think it is a great idea tool to learn how to manage your money better. And its a great way to make sure you are on track to achieving what financial goals you have set for yourself. Anyway bear with me as I get this site off the ground. I am pretty new to blogging and I have a lot to learn before I get this site to where I want it to be. Hopefully it will turn out half as good as some of the sites I have already run across.