I mentioned this last year in my post 3 Reminders About Year-End Mutual Fund Distributions. I see the conventional wisdom “don’t buy a distribution” is still going strong. Vanguard reiterated this conventional wisdom in its blog post The record date: Not a tune you can dance to in early December. But the conventional wisdom is […]
Grace Period and Double-Cycle Billing
Twitter brought my attention to an article on SmartMoney (link no long working). It’s another “banks are out there to get you” article. It alleges that some banks are exploiting a loophole in the “CARD Act” for double-cycle billing. I’m sorry to say that the journalist was misled by her sources. Whoever fed her the story […]
401k Loan Double Taxation Myth
I don’t know who started it. Suze Orman certainly helped spread it. She says that you shouldn’t borrow from your 401k (or 403b) plan because you will be double-taxed. I did a Google search and I found this by Suze Orman: “Also, never ever borrow against your 401k plan because you will pay double taxation […]
A Business That Punishes Its Largest Customers
Here’s a Jeopardy question. A financial service charges no fee if you have less than $100,000 with them. If your account has $100,000 or more, they charge you $100 a year account maintenance fee. If you create multiple accounts, each with less than $100,000, then you will pay no fee for all your accounts. The […]
Mortgage Interest and Property Tax Deduction for Homeowners Who Don’t Itemize
The New York Times reported that Senate Democrats and Republicans reached a tentative deal on the new housing bill. Among the various provisions is a federal income tax deduction for property tax paid by taxpayers who don’t itemize deductions. Single taxpayers get a $500 deduction. Married taxpayers filing a joint return get $1,000. [Update: This […]
More On Missing The 10 Best Days
Blogger Nickel at fivecentnickel.com made some great comments to my post about missing the 10 best days in the stock market. I showed in my post that the probability of missing the best 10 days in 10 years is one in 2.8 billion billion billion. Nickel disagreed. Because the comments require a long response, I’m […]
Out of the Market and Meaningless Stats
The stock market had a field day last Thursday (7/12/2007). The Dow rose 284 points, its biggest point gain in nearly five years. It reminded me of the stats about the risk of being out of the market. It goes like if you missed the best X days in Y years in the stock market, […]
$10,000 Lesson On Variable Universal Life (VUL)
Variable Universal Life insurance or in short VUL is sold by insurance agents as a smart investment to unsuspecting people. The pitch usually goes like this: You invest in VUL. The money in the policy grows tax deferred. You get to choose what you invest in, stocks, bonds, international, you name it. It’s like a […]
The Commutative Law of Multiplication
The Commutative Law of Multiplication is a fancy way of saying when you multiply two numbers, it doesn’t matter which number you put down first and which number you put down second. a * b = b * a This basic law of arithmetic is taught in the second grade in elementary school. Yet it’s […]
Payday Loans, Anybody?
No, I’m not talking about borrowing a payday loan. We all know it’s very expensive for the borrowers. If you treat the fee as an interest charge, the rate often reaches several hundred percent APR. You know, what’s bad for the borrowers must be a good deal for the lenders, right? What about owning a […]
401(k) Committee Chasing Performance
I received an e-mail from my employer’s HR department this week announcing some changes to our 401(k) plan. Here’s what they said (emphasis added by me, fund names masked). The 401(k) Committee decided to remove the ABC Fund from the Plan due to poor performance for several quarters. The committee closely monitors all funds in […]
Picking Stocks Is a Waste of Time
The 2/26/2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal had a special section for stock score board. If you don’t have access to WSJ Online, it’s worth digging it out from a library. I’m highlighting something I noticed in that section which makes the point for the title of this post — picking stocks is a […]