Not Made Of Money

On the surface, borrowing money from your 401(k) account when you face an emergency or a major unplanned expense may not seem like a bad idea. After all, it’s your money; why shouldn’t you use? And wouldn’t you rather owe yourself than a bank or credit card company?
Although these both seem like good [...]

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We really like Jim Cramer and enjoy watching “Mad Money”. Recently we had the opportunity to read his new book “Stay Mad For Life”. Here are the top 10 things we learned from the book:
1. Put into your 401(k) only what your employer will match because most 401(k) mutual fund [...]

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Our 401K plan is currently in a blackout period due to a change in the 401K administrator. The company decided to change the administrator of the plan and it is causing huge headaches in our household. The blackout period is the time when the plan is being switched from the old 401K [...]

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A friend and I were recently discussing our 401Ks. He said he still had all or most (90%) of his 401K in his company’s stock. I was shocked. I said I have one word for you, “Enron”. What goes up quickly can go down even faster. I reminded him [...]

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If for any reason you are uncomfortable with how to choose investments in your 401k or how to diversify your 401k, read as much information on investing as you can.  Read the prospects of each investment chosen in your 401k.  Read the 401k information your employer puts out as well as any information on your 401k’s web site.  Another [...]

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Besides re-balancing your retirement plan it is also a good idea to review your plan’s performance.  We like to look at how the plan is doing overall and how each individual investment is doing.  Then we make changes to our overall plan or individual investments.  For example, this year one of our growth fund investments [...]

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Now is a good time to look at your retirement plan and reposition or rebalance your plan based on your goals.  Rebalancing is simply moving dollars from one group of assets to another.  For example, say your goal is to have your plan be evenly divided between:
30% Growth (Invests in Stock of an individual company [...]

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