The Sun’s Financial Diary

Surprisingly, many people do not realize that they can still get one last deduction out of 2009 even though their current calendar reads 2010. No, this isn’t fantasy or traffic grasping SEO hype — there really is one way for you to still get another deduction on your 2009 taxes. Ready? Here goes:
If you want [...]

Though it’s still almost two months away from the 2009 tax deadline, April 15, 2010, brokerage firms and mutual fund companies have already rolled out promotions to lure taxpayers to open IRA accounts with them. Among them, OptionsHouse is offering 100 commission free trades if you open an IRA account, such as Traditional, Roth, SEP, [...]

As we’re getting into the tax season, how to lower tax payment legally is probably on everybody’s mind. While most techniques you could employ to reduce your tax bill for the previous tax year already expired at the end of the year from, there is still one thing you can do to significantly cut your [...]

Starting January 2010, anyone can convert a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. In the past, only those earning less than $100,000 were eligible to do contributions to Roth IRA (even after January 2010, contribution to Roth IRA starts to phase out if you earn more than $100,o00). According to media reports, this conversion opens [...]

Lending Club, the only SEC registered peer-to-peer lending site, today announced the introduction of the first ever self-directed IRA to let lenders save for retirements through P2P lending. The new self-directed IRA accounts are managed by EntrustCAMA, a custodian of both self-directed and real estate IRAs.
Currently, Lending Club self-directed IRA plan participants can choose to [...]

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 of [...]

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 [...]

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 the [...]