Archive for December, 2004
While filling out my form to process my worthless Enron stock, I came across these two choices: 1) Relinquish the security, or 2) Sell the security for $0.01 ?For the Lot.?. They sounded pretty similar to me, so I consulted Google and came across Turbotax’s FAQ on Worthless Securities. In short, proving a security to be “worthless” is a bit grey unless you actually register a sale. Therefore, E*Trade gets my 100 defunct Enron shares for the bargain price of $0.01! (I also have to pay $5 for them to process the sale.)
Posted in Investing | No Comments »
E*Trade update
Saturday, December 18th, 2004
Well, E*Trade finally responded to my e-mail inquiry, ten days after it was submitted:
Dear Mr. [MyMoneyBlog]:
Thank you for your inquiry, Enron Corp. is currently being held in your account as a worthless security. In order to remove it from your account you must send us the Worthless Security Authorization Form. You can find this form under Accounts>Forms & Applications>Trading & Tax>Worthless Security Authorization Form. There is a $5 processing fee in order to complete your request which will be automatically debited from your account.
And they had one of those usually-annoying surveys at the end, which I gladly filled out this time. I wonder if I’ll get any response. The answer to the question was satifactory, and the fee is pretty standard. Hopefully it can be processed by the end of the year.
Posted in Investing | No Comments »
Whew, I am glad this week is over. And I just lost my whole entry just now, so here goes retyping it: As in work, it’s good to have a target to work towards. First, I will assign myself short-term monthly goals, due at the end of each month. Since my initial goal this month was to start this blog (done already on 12/6), my new goal will be to decide on an asset allocation strategy for my non-retirement and retirement dough. Here is my current asset allocation for my 401k:
That is, the breakdown between different asset-types is 40% Large-Cap stocks, 20% Mid-Cap stocks, 20% International Stocks, and 20% Bonds. This breakdown was based loosely on a bunch of different websites such as MSN MoneyCentral, CNN Money, and SmartMoney, but I think I can do more research and get a more solid answer.
Posted in Goals | No Comments »
This deal has been going on for a while, but I finally decided to jump on it. While I don’t even have kids yet, I plan to someday. At the California 529 Scholarshare website, you just have to open with $100 with no future contributions necessary. I already have another 529 already open, and it looks like later I can consolidate the two. For now, a free $50 Amazon credit sounds great. To learn more about 529s in general, SavingforCollege.com is a good resource.
You don’t have to be a CA resident - I’m not. Note that you can’t put yourself as a beneficiary, but you can put down anyone else - spouses, siblings, even parents!. You will need their Social Security number and birthdate. You can also take the money out later, with a 10% penalty on earnings (the $100 is still yours!). See Terms & Conditions at the website for more details.
Posted in Deals & Offers | No Comments »
Me. I bought some Enron stock a bit after the crash, thinking it might go up again in the future (wrong.), but now it seems to be completely cancelled, as it is no longer even listed in the pink sheets. However, according to an article I found, it may simply be converted to some other type of equity share. I am curious about this because if indeed it is worthless, I can use it as a short-term loss to offset some short-term gains I have accrued this year. So I tried to ask E-Trade.
1st call: Estimated wait time according to the bot: Infinity. They told me to call back later and hung up on me!
2nd call: Est. wait time: 10 minutes. I waited for 20 and gave up.
3rd call. Est. wait time: 30 minutes. %^#$%^#$(&!!!
I finally tried e-mailing them. A week has passed and… nothing. Not even a “I dunno” or other canned response. If any stock-savvy people out there can help me out that would be great. Either way, I’m transferring my old IRAs to Vanguard to join my 2004/2005 contributions. See ya E-Trade.
Posted in Investing | 4 Comments »
I just finished up A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel. This book became famous in 1973 for suggesting that a bunch of monkeys throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal could beat out most professional managers. And that theme, supported by a lot of statistics spit out by a lot of grad students, endures today. As the Amazon editorial review simply puts:
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Book Reviews | 8 Comments »
I have decided upon Vanguard for my Roth IRA Brokerage. My decision was based upon the following:
1) I want to invest solely in mutual funds, specifically index mutual funds.
2) I want a large selection of no-transaction fee, no-load mutual funds with very low expense ratios.
3) I want minimal fees, especially tricky or hidden ones, from the brokerage.
4) I want it online, with a good web interface.
These points narrowed it down to:
a) Fidelity, a mutual fund behemoth which has a nice selection of in-house funds with expense ratios as low as 0.10%. However, the minimums for those funds are $10,000 each. It also has a great web interface, as I use it for my 401k account.
b) Vanguard, which was a leader in the index fund movement and has an enormous selction, with very low expense ratios. I have no idea what the web interface is like, however.
c) Scottrade, a smaller company which currently has no transaction fees for ANY of it’s mutual funds. However, I have heard through the grapevine that it may start charging soon, as they are currently losing money on each transaction doing this. (Update: They now charge for no-load mutual fund transactions)
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Posted in Retirement | 16 Comments »
As you may have noticed, my portfolio is defintely cash-heavy. There are two mains reasons for this:
1) I am currently renting and am saving up for a downpayment for a house in the next 2-3 years, and would like to keep the money somewhat liquid.
2) I don’t know that to do with it. I don’t want to be investing in the current trendy idea, and have it bomb right before I find the perfect house. Still…
…earning 2% interest is not going to help my downpayment money grow. I heard you can withdraw money from a Roth IRA to pay for your first home, but after doing some research, I found out that you must wait five years first. I’d like to think I’d be owning my own house by then… However, putting money into a Roth isn’t a bad idea anyways. So, I have decided to fund a Roth IRA. I can put in $3,000 for 2004 and $4,000 for 2005 for both my wife and myself each, as we satisfy the income restrictions this year and the next. Either it stays in there as a great retirement vehicle, or I can pull it out to pay for a house.
Next step: Which brokerage firm to use, and where to allocate my assets - stocks/bonds/REITs/pork futures?
Posted in Retirement | No Comments »
Ok, so the $100 from Fidelity is gone before I even received it. Oops. I saw this super-cheap KitchenAid Artisan 5-Quart Mixer on Amazon.com for $150, with a $25 off $125 purchase coupon code “DECEMBERKHBB” good until 12/19, and free shipping! On top of that, you can get $20 off your first purchase from signing up for the Amazon.com credit card. Not the best credit card sign-up deal, but that made my purchase $150-25-20 = $105 including shipping! I just saw the same mixer on sale somewhere in town for $230! So now I think of it as “Free Trendy Martha-stewart-like Mixer from Fidelity”.
It’s refurbished with a 6 month warranty instead of a full year, but the reviews are pretty good, and Amazon seems to have a decent return policy if you need to return it - they’ll send you a pre-paid shipping label and UPS will pick it up and bring it back. Many refurbished items are just items that people bought and returned without even using it. Homemade baked goods, here I come.
Posted in Deals & Offers | No Comments »
This has been offered for a while with no expiration date mentioned, but I just got an email from Fidelity saying that it expires in a week. Basically, eBay users (you submit your userid) who deposit $10,000 in a non-retirement brokerage account, get a $100 bonus (which most likely counts as taxable interest) With the amount of money I’m spending on the holidays, any bonus will help. Click here for more information, and also here for signing up and the fine print. eBay Powersellers also get $8 trades.
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Deals & Offers | 2 Comments »
Just a quick shout out to the Learning Movable Type Blog, which is just awesome. It’s a simple, well-organized, guide to messing with Movable Type a snippet at a time. I’ve changed various link placements and the background and font colors to something a bit more unique than the program defaults. LMT is nice for someone who wants to learn MT ten minutes at a time…
Posted in General | No Comments »
If you go to http://www.delta.com/dashtothegate an play a short game and answer some pretty easy questions, you can get yourself 10,000 free Delta Frequent Flyer miles. You’ll need your Delta Skymiles #. Pretty sweet deal, if you assume miles are worth approximately $0.01/point, this offer is worth $100, and will get you 40% of the way to a free domestic coach ticket. I’d hurry, offers like this tend to dissappear quickly.
Hint: If asked, Delta’s been flying for 75 years.
Update: Expired, but I got my 10,000 miles! Hope you did too.
Posted in Deals & Offers | No Comments »
Ok, my planned “grand opening” for this site is January 1, 2005, since 1/1/05 looked like a nice number, and I just don’t have time to make things nice-lookin’ right now.
But I did want to make a quick snapshot of my current status for historical purposes:
Assets: *= pre-tax
———–
Cash Savings: $54,983
Brokerage (non-retirement) $ 7,808
Roth IRA: $ 2,001
Traditional IRA*: $ 5,383
401k*: $11,000
529: $ 1,097
———————————————
Total: $82,272
Liabilities
————–
Credit Cards: $26,522
Net Worth: $55,750
Don’t worry, most of my credit card debt is in 0% APR accounts, or I pay off the balance every month. More on that later…
Posted in Goals | 2 Comments »
Now that I have a rough goal to achieve of $1,500,000, I need a way to chart my progress. My favorite tool for this is Yodlee OnCenter. It is a site that aggregates all of your logins and passwords for different accounts, such as bank accounts, brokerage, 401ks, loans, and credit cards. It even keeps up with all your frequent flyer miles and various other points. It can tally up all your assets, subtract all your liablities, and show you your net worth on a daily basis. Try it out, it’s well organized, free, and I use it every day!
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Posted in Tools & Calculators | 20 Comments »
Ok, so my plan for this blog is to keep track of my steps towards financial freedom. I am still working on what constitutes “financial freedom”. Right now I’m looking at a sum of money, such that I can live off of the earnings without touching the principal. One of the inspirations for this site, PFBlog.com, has chosen a goal of $1,000,000 by age 40. After reading an article at MSN Money, getting a solid number sounds complicated.
Still, let’s try some super-simplified calculations. Let say you want $60,000 a year after retirement, ignoring what you get from Social Security and pensions (a term that will probably go with the dinosaurs). A fair rate for return is 4%, with fixed income-type securities. So that leaves you with needing $1,500,000. Sounds like a crapload of money, huh? Well, hopefully not, but that’s another entry.
Posted in General | 2 Comments »
