Six years ago, I wrote about my lifelong passion (some would say obsession) for spare change. This dates back to counting the spare change and “egg money” in my grandmother’s chipped gravy boat in the 70’s. Today, this is the spare change stash in my office: But here in the 21st century, I don’t have too many cash transactions, and therefore not a lot of physical spare change. Enter the micro investing app Acorns* which invests your digital spare change. Six years ago, I signed up for Acorns and linked my checking account. The checking account is my “funding source”. Then I linked my credit card. You can link more than one card including debit cards. For …
What’s In Your IRA?
If you are a certain age, like me, you may recall a series of clever credit card commercials from Capital One asking “What’s in your wallet?” Here’s one from 2000 featuring a band of plundering Vikings. Today’squestion is similar – but instead of your wallet my question is “What’s in your IRA?” This topic was prompted by a recent WSJ Article “The 401(k) Rollover Mistake That Costs Retirement Savers Billions” Workers miss out on billions in investment gains by pulling retirement savings out of the stock market after switching jobs—often without meaning to. From the article: Workers miss out on billions in investment gains by pulling retirement savings out of the …
Could your ex-girlfriend get your money when you die?
Remember that guy or gal you dated then broke up with in the 80’s? I know, I know, I’d like to forget him too. Could that old flame get some of your money when you die? Remarkably this scenario is playing out now in federal court. You can read the whole fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal. (non-paywall link) From the article: “Jeffrey Rolison and Margaret Sjostedt dated in the 1980s. Now, almost 40 years after they broke up, she stands to inherit his $1 million retirement account.” In 1987 Rolison listed Sjostedt on a handwritten 3x5 card (pictured below) as “cohabitor” and the sole beneficiary of his Procter & Gamble workplace retirement …
You Must be Present to Win
I have such wonderful clients. Many of them send me items of interest. Recently, my client JC, a former J.P. Morgan employee, sent me a gold mine: the J.P. Morgan Guide to Retirement 2024. It is 53 pages chock full of interesting data. You can see the whole thing HERE. But the page that really grabbed my attention was page 47 - “Impact of being out of the Market”. You can see page 47 in its entirety HERE. It features this graph: Let’s walk through it. This graph shows the growth over 20 years of a hypothetical $10,000 investment made in the S&P 500 Index on January 1st, 2004. The S&P 500 Index is a group of 500 of the largest companies in the United …
How Much Social Security Tax do you Pay?
In my last blog article, I reviewed Federal income tax liability. Today we move to Social Security tax. Almost all workers, whether they work for themselves or someone else, pay Social Security taxes. How much do you pay? Let’s begin with taxpayers who work for someone else. Employees pay Social Security tax of 6.2% on their Social Security wages. This is automatically withheld from pay. Their employers also pay 6.2% of pay for a total of 12.4%. You can see this on your W-2 form, Boxes 3 and 4: This client had Social Security wages (Box 3) of $142,813.91 This number multiplied by 6.2% = Social security tax withheld (Box 4) of $8,854.46 Her employer also paid …
