If I ask you point-blank "what is your marginal tax rate?" do you know the answer? If you think you know, write it down. If you are not sure, take your best guess. After you finish reading this post, see if you got it right. The marginal tax rate is the tax you pay on […]
Latest Blog Posts
Treasure Hunting in Secondary CDs
I mentioned in a previous post Short-Term Fixed Income: CDs vs Bond Funds that I would buy CDs as short-term fixed income investment for my solo 401(k) account. Because Fidelity administers my solo 401(k) plan, I can buy only what’s available through Fidelity. I looked at new-issue brokered CDs. The yields are lower than the […]
It’s Not 529’s (Or 401k’s) Fault
Ever since I switched from reading Financial Times to Wall Street Journal (FT subscription ran out; no option to use airline miles), I started encountering more and more sob stories. On Tuesday I mentioned the story about laid-off employees burning through their severance and turning down job offers. On Wednesday I read this article about […]
Marriage Tax Penalty and Unit of Taxation
The marriage tax penalty refers to the fact when two people marry, they pay more taxes than they do when they are single. This happens when the two persons have roughly the same income. The mirror image of the marriage tax penalty is the marriage tax bonus, that is when two spouses have disparate income […]
It’s a Stock Picker’s Market
If you read or watch financial commentary, I’m sure you’ve encountered this piece of insight: “It’s a stock picker’s market.” I heard a guest say this in a recent episode of WealthTrack. Is it true? Absolutely. If someone picks the right stocks, they will have a better performance than the market. There’s no doubt about […]
How Much Should Unbiased Financial Advice Cost?
People should seek out unbiased financial advice but there are too many sharks out there. Good advisors are often unaffordable.
Lesson from the Recession: Keep Your Job
In The Right Lessons and The Wrong Lessons, I said the right lessons from the recession and the bear market are “so simple they don’t need any further explanation.” A reader Mark suggested that I shouldn’t be so dismissive. “If you tell him/her it’s so simple that he should be ashamed of himself for failing […]
Mortgage Refinance and Option Pricing
Being a blogger with a contact form, I often receive PR outreach messages. They want me to write about what they are trying to promote. I ignore most of those. Once in a while, I get something worth reading. Andrew Kalotay Associates is a fixed income analytics and debt management advisory services company in New […]
What Makes Investing Hard?
I wrote a few weeks ago Investing Is Simple. “You come up with an asset allocation, open some accounts, pick a few index funds, and you are done. Once in a while you see if anything is out of whack and you redirect your new money to wherever is lagging. It’s not complicated at all.” […]
Rollover IRA to Solo 401k
In preparation for converting my non-deductible IRA contributions to Roth IRA, I’m rolling over the pre-tax portion of my traditional IRA to my solo 401k. I set up the solo 401k last year primarily for this purpose — to provide a harbor for my pre-tax IRA money so I won’t get taxed proportionally on my […]