Posts Tagged with "Add new tag"

NY Times on Annuities

Thursday, February 4, 2010

View Comments

Image via Wikipedia The NY Times has an interesting article on lifetime annuities here. Basically, a retirement annuity is when you give an insurance company an upfront lump sum of cash, and they provide you with smaller guaranteed payouts for life. My favorite part of the article is how commission based financial advisors can no [...]

Continue reading...

Information Overload – What are some good index funds?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

View Comments

Image by Getty Images via Daylife How do you decide what stocks to purchase? Which index funds are the best? The problem with finance isn’t the lack of information but rather that there is too much of it. The paradox of choice overwhelms us and in the end, we do nothing, and stick with the [...]

Continue reading...

Hymn to Hapi

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

View Comments

For those of you who haven’t checked out the About section, Hapi is the Egyptian deification of the Nile flooding. I just found this hymn written to Hapi and it made me smile. Lightmaker who comes from the dark Fattener of herds Might that fashions all None can live without him People are clothed with [...]

Continue reading...

How much do you need to retire

Thursday, January 21, 2010

View Comments

Image via Wikipedia There are a lot of different ways to do this, and a variety of different results will come because of it. Personally, I choose to stick to more conservative methodologies, but you can be as aggressive as you like. Here’s how I calculate the amount you need to retire: 1. Figure out [...]

Continue reading...

Your Home is Not an Investment

Sunday, January 17, 2010

View Comments

Image by thinkpanama via Flickr Those real estate agents are tricky, prone to all sorts of chicanery. They will tell you things like “oh, this home is a great investment!” and fill your head with dreams of your home doubling, or even tripling in value.  Certainly, you will live here and raise a family here, [...]

Continue reading...

What are Index Funds, and why should you care?

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

View Comments

Image via Wikipedia Here’s my first post on investments to buy that aren’t cash or short term cash equivalents. Read up, it’s important. Index Funds are like a mutual fund, but they are set up to mimic indices like the S&P 500 or Wilshire 5000, etc. Here’ s the definition courtesy of Investopedia: A type [...]

Continue reading...

Ummm, what are you doing with Credit Card Debt?

Sunday, January 10, 2010

View Comments

Image by Getty Images via Daylife Credit cards are 1 part genius, 2 parts evil. Credit card companies make their money in 2 ways: 1) They charge stores and merchants for the ability to even accept credit card payments in the first place- between 2% and 5% of every transaction goes through payment processors, payment [...]

Continue reading...

Retirement Calculators are Risky

Friday, January 8, 2010

View Comments

Image via Wikipedia MarketWatch just came out with an interesting article analyzing twelve different retirement calculators (courtesy of the Society of Actuaries) and came to the conclusion that they all, in short, sucked. Here are the reasons they listed as the short comings: Longevity- In other words, how long will you live. Average age is [...]

Continue reading...