Well, I hate Quicken. The fact that you have to log in to your accounts to update your books in the thing kinda deterred me. Mint is cool because you can pretty much create a hub for all your accounts there and none of it sits on your computer. No more bloated software. None of your bank login information is on the Mint website. It’s a read-only service and it connects securely to your banks the same way you would; it has to jump through the same security hoops as you do.
It even gives suggestions for savings plans, and you can budget from the site too based on the information in your accounts. I’ll play with it some more and give a better review once I get used to it.
I do like the fact that I can have all my accounts in one place. Even my 401(k) site is on there. I can see my full set of assets. Pretty slick.
If that’s the case, the whatever convenience or weird satisfaction someone feels they get by not filing ends up being all for naught because an audit is just as much if not more of a pain the ass than filing.
If it turns out from that audit that they owe you money, it still means that the goverment still held onto that interest free loan from you even longer, when a sane person who say, files in January or February gets the money back as soon as possible as opposed to the government still keeping that interest free loan all the way until they do decide to audit you and the time it takes to process cutting the check after that audit.
Anyways…back on track with this thread. Who didn’t love the big +256 DJIA today?! air high five
Seriously though, people need to contribute to your 401k and/or IRA. Especially during volatile times in the market right now. Remember that when the market goes down your performance in your portfolio might not be so hot, but your purchasing power increases SIGNIFICANTLY. You don’t have much control over your 401k money due to limited selection of funds, but you sure can up your contributions while the market is down and buy some major shares.
Remember… we’re in this for the long run so we can spend our later years traveling around and shit.
The best way to think of it, is when you finally retire, and hopefully all the money collected up in your 401k is a healthy amount, despite whatever money you get from retirement package, your 401k is what can also constitute what can be a (or THE) major part of your retirement income as well, so there’s no need to even really take it all out and put it in the bank, even when you retire and even help take care of your kids who are likely planning on buying a house or something at that time.
If say, the 401k built up to $500-750k by the time you retire, and the market is still good, and over the year you have a 15% return on investment… that’s $75-112.5k of income, and you didn’t even work, and since you’re retired, you can dip into that anytime you want.
After doing some research on Lifehacker, people are kinda scared to trust in a hub for all their financial information. A lot of critics/cynics aren’t buying the promise of security on the website and apparently wouldn’t even trust their own bank’s website let alone a third party.
Here’s Lifehacker’s comment roundup
Me personally, I figure we’re taking a risk already by having a Paypal account link up to our bank accounts. What’s another site? Anyway, I’m gonna discontinue accessing my more important accounts through Mint. I should’ve known better than to jump in headfirst, but I’ve already fallen victim to the gift/curse of online banking, so the convenience was so much bait to handle, I guess. Lesson learned.
EDIT: ah fuck it. No sense in having a separate site handle my play money account when it’s the only account on there. I cancelled my mint account.
Car fully owned (2002 Monte Carlo)
$9500 in SDP accruing 10% (deployed)
$30000 in an online bank accruing no-risk 3%
$11000 in seperate checking account (kept it cuz’ changing direct deposit stuff in the Army is as much an invitation to a screwing as bending over in a jail)
$2000 in an online mutual fund which has fluctuated but stayed the same.
No IRA or TSP
How would you suggest I improve? Or how would you rate my financial standing? Any advice is welcome, as it is this thread has already been far more informative to me than many “official” sites.
(Any on here who would lampoon my asking SRK for advice will at some point soon in their lives be kicked or otherwise struck square in the junk. SRK has helped me out before…)
Honestly, I wouldn’t do any moves until the economy is better, cause you will probably get the same rate, just a different location (Hats off to you for saving as well)
As for pulling funds out of 401k, I would only suggest that if you in a REAL money bind, as in, you can’t make payments for a while (if need be, you can pull from your CC’s if its like a month or two). The 401k or the Ferrari fund as I call it should be out of sight, out of mind until your old and grey.
I’ve got a little over 6k ? (10k USD or so) in the bank. The number increases by around 1k ? each month (after all expenses). No debts, no car that might break down, no addictions or expensive hobbies.
Where should I put that money I have now? Bank seems like a waste.
I plan on traveling next year, but it’s a while and I can get the travel money from putting a few hundred aside each month.
well the thread became informative and golden thanks to White Ninja, ace, mastermind, myself, night, and especially f_man for putting the smack down on dumb ass questions. What happened to you anyway regarding posting in this thread?
Really you’re calling to ban me? That’s just silly. Also, we had this conversation on IRC and you pay your taxes quarterly. So why would you be convincing people not to bother paying their taxes when you do yourself? This is really a moot point and I’d rather taxes not be the main discussion of this whole damn thread.
I’m not using scare tactics either, just saying that people should just go ahead and file. In most cases the government owes you money anyways due to withholding so why would you wait until you get audited?? Getting audited stinks and it’s time consuming and a waste of time. Spend the half hour and just do your taxes so you don’t have to deal with the IRS people who get their rocks off about this stuff.
Anyways, I’ve been thinking about buying AMBAC(ticker: ABK) over this past week. The financials are absolute garbage, but it came back from its low of around 3.08 this week despite announcing more losses. The company had earnings per share of NEGATIVE 31 dollars, but I’m almost convinced something like this company is too big to fail(even though I hate when people say that). I just hope nobody here owned it was $95 a share or you’d be hurting.
so i did some research and i found out that you can actually prop up your credit score by having something (anything) purchased in installments.
even buying something like a tv or guitar or computer and paying for it ontime everytime gives you a decent boost. originally, i had the mentality that buying these sorts of things simply hurts your credit. but it all makes sense, an increased risk increases your potential range on your score.
yamizaki youve got it made at the moment in terms of financial saving. where you wanna take that depends on how much risk you can tolerate. ace makes a good point in terms of picking now as a time to start fiddling with investments. with that much money saved id actually go and consult with some sort of professional financial planner. hell you may pay 200 dollars for that session, but 10 years from now they may have given you direction to earn that 200 back and then some.
keep your shittyass politics<–>finances out of this thread. you already made yourself look like a moron in this one:
A question for you yanks regarding the 401k. I assume from the thread it’s for retirement purposes (Canadians have something called an RRSP). Do you guys get a dollar limit per year or is there some formula that derives the amount?
The maximum a person in the US can contribute to their 401k is I think $15,000 per year, lowering their taxable income for that year for that amount. It’s always contributed during the course of the year, depending on how you set it up, like contributing x% of your paycheck to it each pay period.
I can’t believe you said that shit for real man. The reason why your in debt is because of your spending habits (not just you, but people in general); So you dont have a HD TV or a new computer, what do you think will happen when you spend money on that instead of paying off your debts? You will have something new for sure, but you also will be paying more for the old shit you bought a couple of years go.
Your not the only one who is in the same boat, I am paying of debt more and more each month. I have an older computer than you, hell, my laptop is 4 years old. I have an HD TV, but thats is being paid off with NO INTEREST. Paying off a honeymoon/wedding, IRS, random spending which I have no idea what I spend that money on.
george bush paid off my best buy credit card… bought my new phone an two tanks of gas…
oh b… if u ever need discounts on stuff (accessories…etc.) at verizon… use my phone number an get my job discount playa… same wit u will if you have verizon…
No doubt, I need a holder for this brick that is in my pocket. :rock:
Bush gave me 600 bucks to spend on the economy, American Express was sure happy he did that. When your putting almost a G (as in a GRAND) a MONTH towards your credit cards, 600 IMO isn’t shit. I can’t wait until I get my debts gone…I dont know what the hell I am going to do with money in my account. :tup:
