It’s been said time and time again; when investing, costs matter. Costs (many different types, such as loads, expense ratios, and commissions) all eat into your bottom line. It’s for this very reason that I recommend discount brokers, no load funds, and passively managed index funds with low expense ratios. All of these things keep […]

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I’d like to extent my warmest aloha to those of you visiting us this week from the Festival of Frugality, hosted by Sound Money Matters. Please enjoy your stay!

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It’s likely that your 401(k) will be your largest investment account. Knowing that, it’s prudent to determine what asset allocation you want in that account, as well as what mutual funds you’d like to be included.
We’ve discussed asset allocation before; basically it’s how much money you would like in certain kinds of investments. I’ve pretty […]

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Hello to all of you coming to us from the Carnival of Personal Finance, this week sponsored by Lazy Man and Money! Hope you stay awhile!

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A 401(k) is an employer sponsored retirement savings plan that is common in for profit companies. Non profits have a largely equivalent plan known as a 403(b) and public sector employees often have the also largely equivalent 457.
Dollars contributed to the 401(k) plan are pre-tax [although there has recently emerged a “Roth 401(k) which allows […]

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I was surprised to learn this past week that one of my blogging buddies who I consider a brilliant guy was not participating in his company’s 401(k) plan. I coincidentally got a request by a reader to cover some 401(k) basics, which has lead to this article.
In traditional Uncommon Cents fashion, I’ll discuss what a […]

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When I was in intermediate school, back before the turn of the millennium, we had an assignment in math class to choose a few stocks and track them daily. While this was probably a horrible introduction to personal finance, it did illustrate a few things:

It was incredibly difficult to read those stock listings in the […]

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This is the second in our series of guest posts from Kyle over at Rather-Be-Shopping.com. Thanks Kyle for helping me and my readers out with finding great online discounts!
Springtime and baseball go hand in hand in our house! So it just makes sense that I am coaching my 6 year-old son’s T-ball team this year. […]

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I am hoping I can continue to post daily for the next few days, but due to circumstances beyond my controlthat ought to have been in my control, but weren’t, my iBook is currently down. I’m posting from my desktop machine, which is fine (and faster than the iBook), but I hate being tied to […]

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This past Valentine’s Day, Trent over at The Simple Dollar discussed how he’s been spending less time managing his personal finances because he’s learned how to balance on his financial bicycle (read “improve his financial behavior”) and is starting to shed his training wheels (meaning his budgeting and planning tools). He also stated that he’s […]

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