Carnival of Personal Finance #40
I’m participating in the Carnival of Personal Finance for the second straight week. Tons of excellent articles being hosted over at All Things Financial. Go check it out!!
Am I saving too much in tax-advantaged accounts?
Kind of feel weird even suggesting such a thought, because as a personal finance nut it is my job to fully take advantage of every possible edge I can use to stretch my dollars. Whether it is signing up for the rewards card with the biggest cash back, putting money in the highest yeild savings account, or stashing as much money away as possible where Uncle Sam can’t get his grimey mits on it. However I am continually wondering if I may be going overboard on my retirement savings, in fact I’m honestly worried that by putting so much money away in my retirement accounts that I may actually be delaying my retirement. Eeek!
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Cashed in my hoard of savings bonds
Today I gathered up all of the savings bonds that my wife and I had accumilated over the years and took them to the bank to be cashed in. It’s the first time I had ever tried to cash in a savings bond and well the process wasn’t entirely too painful. We ended having almost $1000 in savings bonds between us and we’ll be using the money to pay off our HELOC instead. I’m also happy because now I don’t have to worry about misplacing or losing the bond certificates, just bugs me not having electronic proof my assets. If you want to know what your savings bonds are worth a good website to use is http://wwws.publicdebt.treas.gov/BC/SBCPrice (actually came up with the same amounts the bank did).
[tags]Savings Bonds[/tags]
Credit Scores Revamped
It appears that the three main credit reporting agencies have decided to adopt the same scoring system for determining your credit score. In the past each company had its own method of determining credit scores and each had different ranges of possible scores.
My First Carnival!
I am participating in my first carnival this week (Carnival of Personal Finance) hosted at Personal Finance Advice. I submitted “Reasons you should not save for retirement” article to the carnival, while it pails in comparison to the quality of the other articles in the carnival, I felt it was one of the better articles I have written so far (I actually proofread it after I wrote it). Anyway you check out the carnival here.
Waiting Just One More Year To Start Investing
How many years do you have till retirement? Thinking about putting off saving for retirement just one more year? Well check out the chart below to see what it will cost you.
Reasons why you should not save for retirement
When it comes to saving for retirement most people are pretty good at coming up with excuses as to why they can’t save for retirement right now. There’s the mortgage, the cost of raising kids, just not getting paid enough at work, need a new car, need to remodel the house, putting it off until they are older, don’t know how to invest, the stock market stinks right now, need to pay off the credit cards, really want to a buy a new (fill in the blank) first. I’ll admit it saving for retirement is not that easy. Especially if you haven’t been in the habit of saving before. It’s kind of like trying to get to the gym and exercise to lose those extra 20lbs you put on. There never seems to be enough time to get around to it and in the beginning it can be pretty overwhelming and you are likely to be fairly unsuccessful starting out so most people either never start or quit shortly after.