The Dilbert guide to personal finance, courtesy of Vanguard:

Everything you need to know about financial planning*: Make a will. Pay off your credit cards. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support. Fund your 401(k) to the maximum. Fund your IRA to the maximum. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and you can afford it. Put six months’ expenses in a money market fund. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues) hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

• From

Note that saving the maximum to a 401(k) and IRA each year would require significant disposable income so it's not always feasible.

Hee, Nora. I totally just pimped ING to a friend of mine. How do I get a referral code? She'll have enough money to open an account when she gets paid in three weeks.

Once you get all logged in and stuff, go to the very bottom of the page, and there should be a graphic that says, "tell a friend!" and you click on that and it sends you to the page where you put in people's names and emails and stuff. It's very exciting!

Yes, I love the ING people and customer service too. We don't care too much about the bricks and mortar thing, but that's just us. Tom had an internet only checking account before we went to Wainwright, and while we were happy about supporting a local bank that works very hard to serve the community the online stuff at first was a bit rough and that was definitely a transisiton. It's upgraded some though, since then.

I know that I was so paralyzed with not knowing what I was doing with the IRA thing that I let it sit in my old employer's accounts for so many years, but dealing the ING was SO FREAKING EASY, even for me. Seriously, aside from ING-love and a quick consultation with the 401K guy who liaisons with our university (aggressive investing now, and safer bets closer to retirement, basically) I know nothing about this stuff and ING made it very easy to do online and over the phone.

(also, I realized that I had to divide the gains % over the number of years to get an accurate reading on the growth, so my IRA gain I was confuzzled about upthread was more like 8-9% which is fine and dandy by me.)

The 2-3 day lag is probably the only downside, but we actually like it because it makes the money just a LEETLE bit less accessible for our (OK my) spendy ways. This is just theoretical of course, because basically what happens is we use the credit card for emergencies or unexpected household or car expenses and then transfer the money to the checking account a few days before we plan on paying the credit card online. Once it hits the checking, then we make the payment.

So the lag has never really affected us negatively, we just learned to plan around it.

I didn't know the student loan interest tax deduction was only for the first 5 years of repayment! (cries) That means that either this year or next year I won't be able to use it!

OK I shut up now.

{{Gloomcookie}}

Cereal (hah):

Btw, I don't know if anybody else noticed in the grocery store but they've reissued all the original Monster cereals for Halloween. So Count Chocula, Frankenberry, Booberry and some other one which I forget.

Yummy Mummy?

Where's the Freakies love? I ask you.

I have a financial question brought up by yesterday's discussion: If one already has an IRA, would it be worth it to switch it over to a Roth IRA now, or would the tax penalties make it not worth it?

{{{Aimee}}} Feel better.

I don't think you should be at work on a Saturday, though. You should be watching He Man and She Ra and eating Count Chocula and wearing flannel pajamas.

Make it Fruit Loops and I'm there.

I even had flannel jammies on this morning (juliana's seem 'em! Suzi too!) but alas, they had to be removed and replaced with cords and a cashmere(ish) sweater.

Le Sigh.

I'm also kind of discombobulated because I had a bad dream about a good friend last night.

I have a financial question brought up by yesterday's discussion: If one already has an IRA, would it be worth it to switch it over to a Roth IRA now, or would the tax penalties make it not worth it?

Some basic advice on Roth IRA Conversions

If one already has an IRA, would it be worth it to switch it over to a Roth IRA now, or would the tax penalties make it not worth it?

As I understand it, if you switch your IRA to a Roth IRA, you have to pay the taxes that were deferred plus the taxes on your earnings. If you can afford it, there are advantages to doing that while you're in a low income-tax bracket.

I have never, ever heard of Yummy Mummy before now.

It came out sometime in the 80s. I guess General Mills felt they had given short shrift to the mummy community in their original 70s line of monster cereals.

I even had flannel jammies on this morning (juliana's seem 'em! Suzi too!) but alas, they had to be removed and replaced with cords and a cashmere(ish) sweater.

Better cords than gouchos. Even the homeless recognize the evil that is gouchos.