Making your money happy, and your life healthy
10% Cash Back on Groceries There is less than one month until Discover it® Cash Back bonus category changes. I’m looking out for deals at the grocery store so I can stock up on supplies!I’m currently in my first year of owning this card, which has quarterly rotating 5% bonus cash back categories. Discover matches …
Continue reading “LARGE Grocery Haul: Chicken, Pasta, and More”
There are many articles describing rent vs buy comparison, as well as calculators that give you “rent is better” vs “buy is better” given certain inputs. However, in my opinion, the best way to analyze anything, is to first understand the basics, then analyze it without using calculators and tools you don’t understand. I will …
Continue reading “Housing Cost Analysis Part 1: Mortgages and Interest”
Your best cards, may not be my best cards. What is best depends on your personal needs! However, the benefits often do span a broad range of people so here I am sharing my choices! I have chosen to add 4 credit cards over the last half a year. From oldest to most recent:Bank of …
Savings accounts, loans, and various financial products will often express interest rate as APR or APY. They are very similar but describe subtly different things. APR APR stands for Annual Percentage Rate. This is the interest rate that is applied directly to the money. How often the interest is calculated, daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever …
Continue reading “What’s the difference between APR and APY?”
This post happened thanks to my friend Bryant! He asked me for my thoughts on whether he should contribute more to his Roth IRA or to fatten up his emergency fund. This post can apply to those who don’t have their Roth IRA maxed out. This includes regular Roth contributions of $6,000 a year in …
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” – Albert Einstein I love graphs, so here are a few graphs showing what investing early can do for you. The earlier you start saving and investing, the more your money will grow. The …
Continue reading “Start saving for retirement and become a millionaire”
1. Tax advantage All returns (dividends, capital gains, etc), are not taxed. In a normal taxable brokerage account, you would pay either normal income tax or long term capital gains taxes on your returns. This could be very high, >30%, depending on your income and state tax laws. Imagine putting $5,000 in a Roth IRA, …
So you’ve decided to contribute to your company 401k retirement account (great!). Your company offers both a traditional 401k and a Roth. Now you need to decide if you should contribute to Roth or traditional, or what combination of the two.I’ll be using a Roth 401k and a traditional 401k in my comparisons in this …
The power of compound interest needs to be appreciated. “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” – Albert Einstein There are some people who love value stocks and invest for dividend growth. This is a totally sensible investing strategy. However, you …
Continue reading “Why Capital Gains is Important Even for Dividend Growth Investing!”
14% returns in a year is not easy. You need to put in effort, especially when the average US stock market goes up 10% a year with plenty of volatilty, +20% some years and -20% some other years. Why Savings Account are not optimal by themselvesThe good old savings account. If you put all $25k into a savings account, you …
Continue reading “How to invest your first $25k in 2019, by not investing”