The Sun's Financial Diary

My answer is: No, nobody needs to be an expert in order to open and invest in an IRA account. The biggest obstacle from I can see is not whether you know investing or not, but whether you are determined to save for your own retirement. If you make tons of money, you probably don’t [...]

There are only four days left before the April 15 tax deadline, but it isn’t too late to make 2007 IRA contribution which has a limit of $4,000 ($5,000 if 50+ years old). At this time, some brokers are offering incentives to encourage people to open IRA accounts with them. For example: Scottrade: 1-year subscription [...]

The government today updated its outlook on Social Security and Medicare and there’s no good news for folks who will retire in 10 years from now. According to the annual trustee reports released by The Department of Treasury, the Social Security Trust Fund will run into negative cash inflow in 2017 and exhaust its assets [...]

I know, setting up a 401(k) account should be one of the first things to do after changing employer, but I waited for more than half a year to finally get it done When I started my current job last July, I didn’t have the chance of making contributions to the retirement plan as the [...]

Last week, when my previous employer informed me that the company match for the first 6 months has been credited to my 401(k) account at Fidelity, I was also told that my account status will be changed to “Terminated” on August 31st. That means I can move the money to other accounts starting September 1st. [...]

So are you saving enough (or too much) for your retirement? Given your age and income, do you know how much you should set aside every month now so you can have enough fund to cover your daily expenses when you are at age 65? In the April issue of Journal of Financial Planning, a [...]

We realized last weekend after we were done with our income taxes that we, my wife and I, had made excess contributions in our Roth IRA accounts. Based on our income numbers, TurboTax said we were only eligible for $200 Roth IRA contributions in 2006, instead of the maximum $4,000 we made throughout the year. [...]

Last week I got an email from a reader about the difference between Traditional and Roth IRA. The question is more on the withdraw side than contribution side. After giving a quick answer, I feel I can expand it a little bit with more information on this topic. But tax rules are always complex, so [...]