blah blah finances blah blah

[rmd]

so, i've been pondering my finances lately.

as usual, i'm thinking that i should be saving more money. then again, i suspect that if i could retire this moment i'd still be thinking "man, i should be saving more money. what if..."

i'm thinking about talking to some kind of financial planning type, but haven't done anything about it yet.


[Poll #743154]

if you're local to me and have a financial planner you like, feel free to share the name. i have an irrational aversion to most "hey, talk to our financial planners" offers from amex et al since i pessimistically assume they're going to act in a way that maximizes their happiness in terms of "meeting boiler room quotas" and less to maximize my happiness in terms of "making me a lot of money".



thanks!

Comments

[keren-s.livejournal.com]

In 2000 I put a good chunk of money in a Vanguard 500 mutual fund. As the market crashed I got to watch it decline to just over half its value. However, because I did it on my own (in addition to the 401K and other tax deferred savings) I also had to pay taxes on the gains that were made for the various trades the fund made, even though overall the fund lost money. Wow, I thought, that really sucks. I have to pay money on my fund that is losing money. Any every year I have had to pay taxes and it still has not fully recovered its value.

Yet conventional wisdom would have had me continuing to put money into the fund every year, which would have meant I would have also ended up buying low for subsequent years and making money as it worked its way back up. Which I shoulda done but didn't.

I did continue to put money in the tax deferred retirement plans, though. Plus, I understand the thing is to put in funds every month, not just a lummp at one time every year, which further smooths the ups and downs of the market, so I do that.

*this in no way constitutes financial planning advice!*