The Sun's Financial Diary

So you still have about three weeks to file your 2006 income tax (this year’s deadline is April 17, 2007) if you haven’t done so already, what else can you do to save instantly on taxes? If you meet certain income conditions, you can open a traditional IRA account before the tax deadline, make $4,000 [...]

Go ahead and buy that big-screen TV. Enjoy your daily latte. Book your dream vacation. When it’s time to retire, you’ll be just fine. Though this is not exactly what came out of my mouth, it pretty much represents my opinion when it comes to enjoy the life today and live comfortably 30 years later. [...]

Yesterday, I read an article on New York Times with the title “A Contrarian View: Save Less, Retire With Enough” [Registration required]. Without reading the article, the message seemed to be very clear: maybe we are saving more than necessary. If you visit any of the big mutual fund firms’ website, such as Vanguard, Fidelity, [...]

The first thing I did when I came to work this morning was giving Vanguard a call, again. When I filled out the IRA asset transfer form to move all Vanguard funds in my IRA account from Scottrade to Vanguard, I provided a blank check and instructed Vanguard to automatically invest $200 into each of [...]

I can't believe it took more than two months to transfer my IRA assets from Scottrade to Vanguard. Last night, I finally received the confirmation letter from Vanguard, saying that the transfer is now completed and my Vanguard account is ready. The assets were moved to Vanguard on December 8th, two months and eight days [...]

Fidelity’s myPlan is a simple retirement calculator which estimates the retirement assets based on your current age, annual income, and monthly saving rate. There are five simple questions to begin the asset projection: How old are you? How much do you make per year? How much do you save so far, including everything you saved [...]

I really don't know if it's only me or somebody else who ever transfered their IRA assets from Scottrade to Vanguard had the same terrible experience. After my last conversation with Vanguard more than two weeks ago, I thought all the troubles I had with Vanguard were behind me and the last chapter of the [...]

If it's not for your mutual fund products, I probably don't want any business with you!  Well, that was my feeling after a 30+ minutes phone conversation with Vanguard last night. I thought I already had enough trouble with Vanguard for our Roth IRA assets transfer, but it isn't over. When I got home last [...]