May 29th, 2006
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If you have some winner stocks in your portfolio and you are thinking about selling the stock, but then think of the tax hit you will take and think again about it. By selling your stock you never have to worry about paying taxes on those gains on that stock, plus you can take the deduction on the full value of your stock’s shares. Click here for more information on donating stocks.
Written by mike on May 29th, 2006 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Household and Investing and Stocks.
Yes, if you rent an apartment you need insurance because the contents of your apartment will not be insured otherwise. So you need to make sure that you have renter’s insurance if you have possessions that have significant worth to you.
Obviously, if you own a home you need to have home owner’s insurance and make sure it includes replacement-cost coverage, not default coverage which is called actual cash value. It will cost you approximately 10% more for replacement-cost coverage, but in the end it is worth it.
Written by mike on May 29th, 2006 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Household and Insurance and Real Estate and Uncategorized.
If your credit card has a yearly fee ask for it to be waived and if they refuse say that you are prepared to take you business elsewhere (make sure to have that plan because typically you do not want to close credit card accounts because it lowers your credit score).
You can do the same with credit cards interest rates. Look online for average rates and if you are armed with a good credit score in hand and a comparison to national rates you can often get your rate lowered.
Just be prepared and have a plan before calling and asking for a fee to be waived or a lowering of your credit card interest rate. Most people never even ask.
Written by mike on May 29th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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Every autumn you need to think about loss harvesting in your non-retirement taxable investment accounts. You can use up to $3,000 per tax year as losses to offset capital gains and this can make a bad invesment into a tax break.
Now if you lost $9,000 on taxable investments in a year you can take up to $3,000 of that and use it over three tax years. Therefore, a really bad investment can help you out for several tax years.
If you still like the investment you lost money in remember to follow the thirty-day wash rule because otherwise use cannot use the tax benefits of that loss.
Written by mike on May 29th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Investing and Taxes.
At least once a year you need to rebalance your investment portfolio because certain investments might be doing extremely well or bad and it will through off the weights you have allocated to each category (e.g. international, small-cap, large-cap, mid-cap, bonds, etc). By doing this you are forcing yourself to sell high and buy low at the same time keeping your portfolio with the correct weights.
Written by mike on May 29th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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If your job offers a Flexible Spending Account you should take advantage of it. It lowers your taxable income and is withdrawn directly from your paycheck and you use it to pay for a wide range of medical expenses. You can save around 30% on the amount you take out for the Flexible Spending Account. The limit is $5,000 and sign up is usually the autumn prior to the calendar year the money will be used.
Written by mike on May 29th, 2006 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Household and Taxes.
Rule #1 of investing in a 401k is to invest at least up to the level your company matches because it is free money. So if your company matches dollar for dollar up to a 5% contribution and you contribute that 5% of your salary (e.g. 5% of 100,000=$5,000). In that example you would have an extra $5,000 in your 401k at that company.
Caveats:
- Your company might not vest 100% of that matched funds to you right away. They might have a schedule of tenure you must hit before you can be the outright owner of the money the company matched.
- Your company might provide stock as a match. Be careful: you must diversify your portfolio or you could be another victim of an Enron situation where many employees had all of their 401k investment in Enron stock and lost their retirement money as the stock price plunged.
After you have hit the company match level and you want to put more towards retirement you should take the excess and open a Roth IRA. Here you will have endless choices of what to invest your money in and it will be after-tax investments with the ability to withdrawal contributions (not profits) tax-free at any time.
Written by mike on May 29th, 2006 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Investing and Retirement.