Net Worth Entry For February

Well, February has ended and the markets were less than kind this week. So I figured now that the carnage is over (hopefully), I figured I'd ask a question to my readers:

Net worth didn't fare so bad over in my neck of the woods since there were tax returns etc to offset the bad week in the market. If you are interested, here's the latest entry: http://www.networthiq.com/people/EasyChange

Happy Friday Everyone!

Comments

Blogging WealthTrack: Christine Benz (Retire Early? Or not?)

This morning I've watched an interesting video on Consuelo Mack: WealthTrack. Here, Consuelo's guest, a longtime contributor, Christine Benz, a personal finance expert from Morningstar joined Consuelo for a discussion on issues related to retirement, in particular in the current market environments. This conversation is even more interesting against the backdrop of The Great Resignation. I found Christine's advice to be particularly interesting on a couple of fronts. Her advice in dealing with talking about retirement in general, in particular for people who are in the process of thinking about retiring early gave me pause. She is considering the traditional advice of a 4 percent withdrawal rate to be dangerous and indeed, actually concerning. According to the recent research she cites, a 3% withdrawal rate is a better option. Even more than the four percent rule, I think that her comments on annuities are particularly interesting. While annuities have been given a bad nam

More Money Into Ibonds

At this point, it seems like a well-known strategy for handling inflation: ibonds. While there was not much press about this, it is in fact something that I did late last year in order to capitalize on the fact that this interest rate was bound for up to 10000 dollars as part of my allotment for 2021. Then now that we're in the new year, I have moved another 10000 into the account. All of this can be done easily at http://treasurydirect.gov if you're willing to give up the fact that the money is locked up, that the interest rates to be paid will be somewhat lower than you could earn in the market, and you're able to ensure that you're not needing the money for the near future. For me personally, I find that this is a great way to lock up about 25% of my emergency (safe) money instead of putting it into a High Yield Savings account. This interest rate changes every six months, but even if it is much lower, I think that we're going to be in much better shape than if

Credit Report Review

So, one of the things that I've started doing is trying to pull my credit reports at regular 4 month intervals so that I get a free one frequently to make sure that things are progressing as I'd like them to and also as a safeguard against identity theft. Of course, the part that I don't like is that these reports don't include a fico score - the key number when it comes to determining if you are going to be extended credit and at what interest rate. This time, I got the report from Equifax - I went to the end of the process and for 8 dollars more I could get my credit score. And the Equifax gave me a credit score of 742. This of course is not even close to the perfect score of 850 when it comes to fico score nirvana, but 742 is still a respectable fico score. Things to improve are basically lowering my balances on my credit cards and loans, which I already have a plan for. And also I noticed that the amount that I paid off on one of my loans is actually still being rep

Easy Change

Search This Blog