Comments on: Financial Retrospect http://sweetpeastudio.biz/wordpress/2007/10/17/financial-retrospect/ More than you ever wanted to know about what goes on in my life and my brain. Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:17:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Bunny http://sweetpeastudio.biz/wordpress/2007/10/17/financial-retrospect/comment-page-1/#comment-6969 Bunny Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:00:28 +0000 http://sweetpeastudio.biz/wordpress/2007/10/17/financial-retrospect/#comment-6969 It's good to hear I'm not the only one with the packrat habit in this family. And as far as the "wiggle money" the plan for next year is a road trip to So. Cal to see friends, and a flight to Seattle to see friends and family! It’s good to hear I’m not the only one with the packrat habit in this family. And as far as the “wiggle money” the plan for next year is a road trip to So. Cal to see friends, and a flight to Seattle to see friends and family!

]]> By: Avedis http://sweetpeastudio.biz/wordpress/2007/10/17/financial-retrospect/comment-page-1/#comment-6956 Avedis Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:19:55 +0000 http://sweetpeastudio.biz/wordpress/2007/10/17/financial-retrospect/#comment-6956 Good to hear things are getting on track! I also suffer from many similar maladies re: conditions growing up (packrat, had free school lunches, etc). To help combat this, as soon as I had a job where a 401(k) was an option, I immediately started putting in the maximum I was allowed to (16%), but I didn't feel like I was taking home any less than I ought to, since that was my first non-student job. That $ didn't do much for me for the first 3 years, since it was just sitting in a money market account inside Fidelity's netbenefits site. So I did some minimal research and divided it up (as well as future contrib's) to a couple of random funds, all of which made me more $ than just the interest building in a mmkt account, but not a ton. After 2 years of that, and doing a whole bunch of research, I finally bit the bullet and bought a 2-year fool.com Stock Adviser subscription. For the first year, I just used CNBC's free portfolio tracker to track what I would've made if I had been following the advice that had been coming my way (choosing from their recommendations based on what I knew or liked about the companies they chose). After about a year of that, I decided they really did know what they were talking about, and so transferred as much as I was able to from my basic 401(k) to the BrokerageLink they offered (where you can use the $ in your 401(k) to buy stocks instead of just a few funds that your employer agrees with them to make available to you). A year later, based on how they've done for me, I've decided that as long as Tom and David Gardner stay in charge of fool.com, I'll probably keep my subscription up-to-date and follow at least half of their advice (I don't make enough to buy a significant amount of what they recommend each month, and the $10.95 per transaction would eventually add up). YMMV, but this year I'm up 18% since Jan 1st -- I am finally happy that I am doing what I think it'll take to retire comfortably, and maybe even a little early if I'm lucky. =D So anyway... maybe sometime soon some of that 'wiggle money' will find its way into tickets to Seattle and I can show you around some of the places I think you'd like, and/or just hang out? =D ~ Jeff Good to hear things are getting on track!

I also suffer from many similar maladies re: conditions growing up (packrat, had free school lunches, etc). To help combat this, as soon as I had a job where a 401(k) was an option, I immediately started putting in the maximum I was allowed to (16%), but I didn’t feel like I was taking home any less than I ought to, since that was my first non-student job.

That $ didn’t do much for me for the first 3 years, since it was just sitting in a money market account inside Fidelity’s netbenefits site. So I did some minimal research and divided it up (as well as future contrib’s) to a couple of random funds, all of which made me more $ than just the interest building in a mmkt account, but not a ton.

After 2 years of that, and doing a whole bunch of research, I finally bit the bullet and bought a 2-year fool.com Stock Adviser subscription. For the first year, I just used CNBC’s free portfolio tracker to track what I would’ve made if I had been following the advice that had been coming my way (choosing from their recommendations based on what I knew or liked about the companies they chose).

After about a year of that, I decided they really did know what they were talking about, and so transferred as much as I was able to from my basic 401(k) to the BrokerageLink they offered (where you can use the $ in your 401(k) to buy stocks instead of just a few funds that your employer agrees with them to make available to you).

A year later, based on how they’ve done for me, I’ve decided that as long as Tom and David Gardner stay in charge of fool.com, I’ll probably keep my subscription up-to-date and follow at least half of their advice (I don’t make enough to buy a significant amount of what they recommend each month, and the $10.95 per transaction would eventually add up). YMMV, but this year I’m up 18% since Jan 1st — I am finally happy that I am doing what I think it’ll take to retire comfortably, and maybe even a little early if I’m lucky. =D

So anyway… maybe sometime soon some of that ‘wiggle money’ will find its way into tickets to Seattle and I can show you around some of the places I think you’d like, and/or just hang out? =D

~ Jeff

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