[This is a guest post from Bogleheads investment forum participant Bob’s not my name as a follow-up to his previous post How Much Will the New Health Care Taxes Affect High Earners?] There hasn’t been much discussion of how screwed middle class families with significant medical expenses are going to be by a couple of […]
Latest Blog Posts
How Much Will the New Health Care Taxes Affect High Earners?
[This is a guest post from Bogleheads investment forum participant Bob’s not my name.] There’s a lot of talk these days about the new Medicare taxes in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), so you may be wondering how much they will affect you. The short answer is: If your household income (married filing jointly) is […]
How To Deposit Cash To Online Bank Account
Do you use an online checking account such as Ally, Capital One 360, USAA, Fidelity, or Schwab? If you do, here’s a challenge: How do you deposit cash to it? It would be cheating if you first deposit the cash to a local, brick-and-mortar bank and then transfer it to your online bank. In that […]
New 401k Fee Disclosure Does Not Disclose Admin Fees
New regulations from the federal government forced 401k plan providers to give better disclosure to the plan participants about the fees they are paying. August 30 was the deadline for distributing the first disclosure. You should have received yours by now. I read the disclosure from my plan. It confirmed that the funds in the […]
Refurbished: Really Refurbished Or Just Lower Price?
I put in some insane hours at work lately. Management gave me a spot bonus. I treated myself to a Kindle. Not a Kindle Fire tablet, a real Kindle — Kindle Touch to be exact. I bought it refurbished, at 20% off new. It came in a sealed box, with a clear plastic sheet covering […]
Not Necessary to Tell Banks About International Travel
Urban legend says you must notify your credit card or debit card banks before you travel internationally so that they won’t block your cards. I used to believe it. Every time before I left, I would religiously call the banks and tell them the dates and the countries I was going. This last time when […]
Savings Secured Loan: Good Or Not?
I received an interesting offer in the mail from my credit union. It’s for a savings secured loan. The credit union offers to give me a loan if I pledge an equal amount in my savings account as collateral for the loan. If I pledge $10,000, they will lend me $10,000. If I pledge $50,000, […]
5 Stages of Grief and Low Interest Rates
I heard about the five stages of grief but I hadn’t really looked into it. When I read about it on Wikipedia, I thought the model fits very well how savers grieve about low interest rates. Denial "Rates have nowhere to go but up." "The Fed only controls short term rates. Low short term rates […]
ACA 3.8% Medicare Tax and Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
Now that the health care reform law is upheld by the Supreme Court, the 3.8% Medicare tax on unearned income for high earners is also here to stay. It will come into effect in 2013. Just to recap, the chart below shows how it works: The tax is on unearned income — interest, dividend, capital […]
Vanguard Index Fund Lost $25 Million On Facebook
Facebook stock did poorly since its IPO. It opened on May 18 at $42. Now it’s at $21. Nevertheless, as I predicted in the previous post When Will Your Index Fund Buy Facebook Stock? Vanguard still added Facebook to the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund soon after the IPO. In the fund’s list of […]