Most of the threads we have closed have one thing in common, they were general topics posted on one of the Personal subforums: Investing - Help with Personal Investments, Personal Finance and Personal Consumer Issues. New threads in each of these subforums must meet the following requirements
- It must be personal. In other words, you must be asking about your own situation. You can also ask on behalf of someone specific, such as a family member.
- It must be actionable. You must be able to do something specific with the replies that will make a difference in your situation.
To illustrate I'll give some examples from real threads.
Locked, neither personal, nor actionable.
OKNice article over on learnvest about immigrant parents. Obviously I agree with the general tenor of the piece, though there are always exceptions to the author's generalization of immigrant parents; plus, there are always cases within the immigrant parent subset where the parents are diametrically opposite in how they handle money.
Locked, not personal (and it's about proposed legislation, which is also off topic).First of all, i have started thinking about my parents' retirement plan... We're immigrants so my parents don't even speak very well english and they still have the european mentality of keeping cash in the house rather than investing or giving to the bank...
OKRobert Pozen writes about 529 plans and has a few suggestions to try to get folks to use them more. But first, one has to have money to put into them, so I liked the article because it agrees with me...
Removed, neither personal nor actionable.I am ready to open a 529 Plan for my one-year-old daughter, and I am considering the Maryland 529 Plan and the NY 529 Plan. The MD 529 is managed by T. Rowe Price and the NY Plan is managed by Vanguard. Everything else being equal, the major considerations for my decision are:...
OKI was digging around our local Police & Fire Public Pension website recently because, like many, the funded ratio dropped again (below 80% this past year.) While this fund doesn't affect me directly, as a citizen taxpayer, it can indirectly.
To say this pension fund is actively managed would be an understatement. Full of high expense funds. The 'financial consultants' who meet with the pension board every month and provide their advice for what to sell and buy. It is a local firm who runs my wife's 401k, which leaves a little to be desired. Anyway, looking through the minutes of previous meetings, it appears the consultants just recommend funds and the board blindly approves these. There is an Investment Policy which looks good, but they are turning over a lot of funds frequently. Expenses are supposed to maintain a level comparable to average expenses (which is a joke.)
The division of the company I work for was recently sold to another company. Because of this, employees have an opportunity to cash out their fixed benefit pension with the previous company.
Some of the choices I have are the following.
(My length of employment is not that great, which is reflected in the payout)
Lump sum: ~$22K which can be moved to an IRA.
Immediate annuity of ~ $100 per month.
Annuity starting at age 55 of ~$370/month
Annuity starting at age 65 of ~$525/month.