Retirement

Spousal IRA : Retirement savings for stay at home parent

Last week, I was helping my friend with her taxes. They are an immigrant family as well, the husband is working, the wife is not, due to the visa restrictions. I was discussing saving for retirement with her and how to use the retirement savings in her home country if they decided to return. I [...]

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Vanguard vs Fidelity – Which is better?

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I am trying to open a ROTH IRA for my emergency funds (will write a separate post to defend myself on this ). Right now, I have my employer sponsored accounts – 401k, employee stock purchase plan in Fidelity and personal investment account in Vanguard. When I initially opened the Vanguard account 5 years ago, [...]

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2011 Contribution limit for 401k, 403b and 457b

The Internal Revenue Service recently announced cost of living adjustments affecting dollar limitations for pension plans and other retirement-related items for tax year 2011. In general, these limits will either remain unchanged, or the inflation adjustments for 2011 will be small.

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20 Smart Personal Investment tips

As I mentioned in my last post, I attended a personal investment seminar  during the LA Financial planning day. I am interested in learning more about investments and scared about it at the same time. So I religiously took notes throughout the talk. Here are the 20 key steps to make smart personal investments.

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How much do I need for retirement – My Retirement Number

What is your number? I tried looking for an answer to that question a couple of yrs ago when I started working.  I dutifully read all the materials they gave for my 401k, went online and plugged some numbers into the online calculator. My heart sank when it showed my “number”. It was an exorbitant [...]

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Borrowing from 401k for first time home down payment

We are contemplating borrowing from 401k as a down payment assistance. Crazy? Lets see. Conventional wisdom says – “ Never take money out of your 401k, it doesn’t make sense in any situation”. First, I totally understand that retirement savings are best left for retirement. But conventional wisdom might not be perfect for every single [...]

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Taking a 401k loan – Rules and limits

For most of us, putting money away for our retirement in a 401k account is the first and only act of real savings.  These savings are intended for our retirement, so it is widely acknowledged that this money should not be touched for anything other than retirement purposes. But what if you have no where [...]

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Mid Year Investment Review

This post is the final part of a mid year review and tune up series. The first post of this series was It’s Christmas time. The second post was on Planning for taxes. Everyone of us might have started the year with new dreams and goals.  Now that half a year has gone by, there [...]

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