Blathering about Money

Sep 01, 2008 21:10

Next month'll be Oct 2008, roughly 5 years since I started a REAL job at NCEN (and boy do I miss NCEN), and now I'm starting to reflect how I treat money ( Read more... )

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small_alo September 3 2008, 17:15:47 UTC
Aaaah! Sorry, Mike the Mentor is the Mike that complains a lot. He's infamous for this.

You got a point about the diminishing returns. Maybe at a point, giving away money makes you happy in the long run too.

Yes, I'll have saved up my salary pre-tax. I have it staggered in CDs too. I've been randomly asking people what interest they're getting on their savings, and I've found 2 guys that said < .1% so I nagged them to get off their butts. 2/3 of the stuff I earned off interest got eaten by taxes last year, but that's better than .1%.

I do have retirement account(s) set up. 401K and Roth 401K (thanks to the company). As for company matching, at the end of each year, they put 15% of my salary (and bonuses). Thing is, it's vested interest - I'll need to be here for 6 years before 100% is mine. If I'm here for 2 years, 20% of it's mine. That's why people tend to stay here for a really long time...

I usually don't "get" how much I should be putting toward retirement each year. I plan to continue my lifestyle (so I shouldn't require much), maybe get an easy job so I still get some income, and I don't know how long I'll be living (should I put away more? haha). But I know not working for the 2 years, I had to put away 20% for 3 years at NCEN in order to catch up.

75% matching up to $1K is a good deal!

All right, look forward to your post!

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arichi September 3 2008, 21:38:57 UTC
Post is up if you want.

Funny you should say that about .1%. The incredibly low return in my BofA savings is what kicked me in the butt to put money into a CD. I got less than a buck of interest in a month for having over $10,000 in savings about two years ago. And that's what caused me to look into CDs. Two weeks into the CD, I had earned more in interest than I would have from the savings account over a full year without it.

My short retirement plan is to keep putting money I don't need away, until the interest can support my committed expenses (including insurance for things).

The matching was terrific, especially since I'm an intern!

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small_alo September 4 2008, 00:14:42 UTC
Did you know there's a difference between regular savings and online savings? I have WAMU (among other banks) and I only realized recently its Online Savings % was beating ING's CDs.

Its interest for online savings is 3.75% I think its regular savings is <.1%. Online savings has been better. I don't know if that's the same case at BOA.

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arichi September 4 2008, 03:50:06 UTC
I've never heard of it. How does it work for you?

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small_alo September 4 2008, 05:30:46 UTC
Really stupidly. It's called: signing into Wamu to check my checking account and seeing an ad for online savings at 4% (back then) and then realizing this was something different than my existing pathetic savings account....

I quickly opened that online account of course. Now, I'm aware that Wamu's not doing that well so I'm not advocating opening an account with Wamu unless you're ready to risk it. 1/5th of my savings is with them so I'm ok with what comes.

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arichi September 5 2008, 03:48:10 UTC
Yeah, I may stick with B of A, since I'm getting close to 4% on my CDs there now. Thanks for the heads up though.

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small_alo September 5 2008, 04:53:27 UTC
Wamu online CD's currently 4.5% During the last week of August, they had it up to 5% too.

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arichi September 6 2008, 01:57:45 UTC
Ah crap. And I *just* renewed... without checking :(

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