If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you have any questions, please see my policies page or if you would like to contact me, you can do so here. You can find out more about me here. I sincerely thank you for visiting! Earlier this week, I blogged [...]

(Due to the length of this post, I’ve broken it down into two pieces. Read part one here.)
My current allocations as of 3/31 were:
0.49% Cash
48.02% Domestic Value
13.09% Emerging Markets
15.20% International
12.86% Real Estate
10.34% Domestic Growth
I am primarily a value investor and seek out value stocks that pay dividends. One of my largest holdings is a Fidelity [...]

(Due to the length of this post, I’ve broken it down into two pieces. Here is part one.)
Professionals and personal finance bloggers often tout the benefit of rebalancing your portfolio every so often in order to maximize gains. The problem is that they never explain how to go about doing this. I try to rebalance [...]

It’s a small amount involved, but this blog has a pretty good discussion on employment taxes and retirement for those that are self-employed.
SEP-IRAs are basically pension plans for those that are self-employed. You can contribute up to 25% of self-employment income (with a maximum contribution of $42,000) as an employer. As an employee, you [...]

Earlier this week, I mentioned target retirement date mutual funds in a post about money managers. I mentioned that the funds are often too conservative, but I didn’t go into great detail.
Luckily, the Washington Post saved me a long post by explaning this exact phenonoma in a recent article. The Vanguard funds are far too [...]

CNN Money’s “Ask the Expert” column takes on professional money managers.
The basic question is whether a science teacher should ditch his collection of mutual funds for a professional money manager that will take 2% of assets as his fee. The Expert says it’s likely that he’ll lose out since he’ll be paying 1% more annually [...]

H&R Block is back in the news. This time, Eliot Spitzer is suing the company over what the company calls “Express IRAs”.
These accounts were created to take advantage of their customers a 2002 tax law change that allowed low income taxpayers that contributed to a retirement account to take a tax credit for the amount [...]

USA Today has an article on how my generation is not saving enough for retirement. While you could truthfully strike “my generation” from the above sentence, it’s particularly an issue because we have time to know and shouldn’t be having this problem.
Nearly 80% cite daily living expenses as a barrier to saving. While I know [...]

I love the advice of the Motley Fool. They are usually spot on when talking up value stocks (though they thankfully abandoned growth stocks after the tech bubble). However, they sometimes forget they are talking to a lay audience.
The advice that they give is impeccable. However, not everyone has the ability, or time, to not [...]

The WaPo has an article on the median American family from a financial perspective. And it ain’t pretty.
It has about $3,800 in the bank. No one has a retirement account, and the neighbors who do only have about $35,000 in theirs. Mutual funds? Stocks? Bonds? Nope. The house is worth $160,000, but the family owes [...]