As you may already know, this week is National Save for Retirement Week. In that spirit, I want to spend some time today discussing the peace brought on by having a sound financial plan.
It should come as no surprise that planning for the future and saving for retirement can bring a great deal of peace [...]

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The latest issue of Time Magazine featured an article that was very critical of the 401(k) system. In it, they argued that “the 401(k) is a lousy idea, a financial flop, a rotten repository for our retirement reserves.”
Why all the hate?
So just what is it that Time hates about 401(k) plans? For starters, 401(k) plans [...]

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In honor of National Save for Retirement Week, I wanted to take a minute to point out some excellent books about investing. Truth be told, I thoroughly enjoy reading about money and finance, but I’m a bit of a freak when it comes to these things.
With that in mind, here are three great books that [...]

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Two years ago, our tax preparer suggested we take advantage of tax breaks like IRAs and home ownership. We then looked at our options and started working on our IRAs. Buying a house just for a tax break wasn’t what we wanted, so we paid down our debt and saved some money on the side [...]

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This is a guest post from Mike Piper, author of Investing Made Simple and proprietor of The Oblivious Investor. If you like what you see here, please consider subscribing to his RSS feed.
The Roth IRA vs. Traditional IRA question gets a lot of press, and that makes sense. By choosing correctly, you can significantly reduce [...]

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Guess what? Today marks the beginning of National Save for Retirement Week. Did you know that over half of all workers in the United States have less than $25,000 in total savings and investments?
While these stats include a lot of younger workers, we can do much, much better when it comes to preparing for [...]

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The cover story on this month’s Money Magazine asks “What would you do with $1000?” We’ve talked in the past about what you’d do with a major windfall, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at your options with a smaller windfall.
Here are Money’s suggestions:

Build up your emergency fund
Spend five hours [...]

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The art of salary negotiation is a touchy but crucial matter that rarely receives adequate attention. With all the economic certainty that we’ve been facing, many people have increasingly focused on reducing expenses and leading a frugal lifestyle. There are, however, two sides to the “spend less than you earn” coin…
When is the last time [...]

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Do you have a Flexible Spending Account (FSA)? We do, and we love it. Every year, my employer lets us set aside up to $5k in pre-tax dollars to pay for healthcare expenses that aren’t covered by insurance. This includes co-pays, deductibles, prescriptions, orthodontia, vision care, etc.
Well… The Senate Finance Committee has just approved healthcare [...]

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We’ve talked in the past about the merits of index funds vs. ETFs. Today I wanted to highlight the views of one my favorite financial authors, William Bernstein.
In his book “The Intelligent Asset Allocator,” Bernstein said the following about ETFs in general, and SPDRs (i.e., ETFs that track the S&P 500) in particular:
“They have both [...]

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