The Sun’s Financial Diary

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 [...]

You are probably familiar with the Rule of 72, which tells you when the one dollar you invest today will be worth $2 once you have a rate of growth. If your annual rate of return is R%, then it will take you (72/R) years to double your money. For instance, for a 6% return [...]

Why you want to invest in REIT? As historical performance shows, investing in real estate can improves diversification of your portfolio and give you better return and lower risk over the long term.
In my previous discussions on building portfolios with ETFs (the last segment can be found here), we have seen REIT (real estate investment [...]

This morning I sold my position in PowerShares Dynamic Semiconductors (PSI) and used the proceeds to buy more PHO, PowerShares’ water ETF. The reason I am interested in investing in water has been explained before, but why PSI?
There are two reasons: First, I already have an investment in semiconductor and that’s TSM, a stock that [...]

Morningstar is my choice for mutual fund research because it provides a broad array of data for me to analyze a fund in cost, return, and risk. This post is to discuss what kind of information I will consider when evaluating a mutual fund.
If you already have a specific fund on your mind and want [...]

I am starting an irregular Mutual Fund Basics series where I will discuss some basic concepts in mutual fund investing. Though I have a larger portion of my taxable investments in stocks than mutual funds, I feel I know mutual funds better than stocks (and yes, I am still learning). Actually, I already have a [...]

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 [...]

I am a fan of dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP), though I didn’t start participating till late last year. Currently, I have several stocks purchased through DRIP programs: Bank of America (BAC), Progress Energy (PGN), and Procter & Gamble (PG). The first two are from ComputerShare while the last one is from the company directly.
The main [...]

This is the third segment of the Model Portfolios Built with ETFs series. In the first two parts, I discussed two model portfolios, the Couch Potato Portfolio and the Bogel Head Portfolio, and considered possible choices to build these portfolios with ETFs instead of transitional mutual funds.
In this part, I continue the discussion with [...]

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.
In an [...]