Oprah and Suze Orman have teamed up to provide people a free financial plan for 2009.  I went ahead and downloaded it (I love Oprah, not as much of a Suze fan, but she has good common sense advice), and here is my summary: Get out of credit card debt.  Credit card companies are trying [...]

Over the past month or so we have been hearing about big banks failing under the credit crisis (you can’t really call it a mortgage crisis anymore).  Merill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual all have suffered headlining losses.  Now there are rumors that Morgan Stanley and Wachovia are next (and possibly Goldman Sachs).  We know [...]

No. Not long ago I wrote my thoughts on real esate and where I thought we were headed.  I articulated my concerns and researched data to support my arguments.  However, I have come across a lot of individuals and propaganda that tell me “Oh no, Kate, now is the best time to buy.”  Since I [...]

Part of the reason I chose to open my IRA at ShareBuilder was that there has been a stock I have been wanting to purchase but didn’t want to shell out the whole purchase price. Hence part of the appeal of ShareBuilder was that you could buy dollar amounts of many stocks including Berkshire Hathaway. [...]

When most people ask about setting up their 401k and which mutual funds to pick the easiest answer is to choose index funds. Since most people don’t actively manage their retirement accounts (most people just direct deposit and forget about it, they aren’t interested in following the ups and downs of the stock market) this [...]

If your employer offers a 401k, then by all means you should make sure you are contributing (this is particularly good if they match your contributions, since that is basically free money you are missing out on if you don’t participate).  If you don’t have a 401k though, you should definitely have an IRA (and [...]

Most of us have 401ks, but a lot of people don’t really know what the best way to allocate your money. Most 401k programs require you to invest in set of pre specified mutual funds. Often times one or more of these funds will be invested in growth or value stocks (and a lot of [...]

I was chatting with some of my colleagues about why I am so intrigued by finance and why I would want to spend all my free time devouring everything I can find on economics and finance–well part of it is that I am inherently greedy and materialistic (Madonna’s Material Girl was my theme song when [...]

You should make your money work for you.  Part of this is to make sure you have a credit card, you pay the balance every month, and that your credit card gives you some sort of perk (this is what I refer to as responsible credit card use–living within your means).  Of course if you [...]

An old coworker of mine and I once argued about 401ks.  He said “Why would I put my money in that account when I can make more investing it on my own and don’t have to wait until I am 65 to leverage it?”  Fair enough, I argued about the 3% employer match we had [...]