I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘retirement’ Category

Here’s another good reason to get out of debt as soon as possible - when the market keeps falling I can invest more in my IRA.  I always thought I was risk-adverse but really, I was just uninformed.  I was scared of risk because I didn’t know enough about the risk.  The stock market just seemed terrifying to me.  It is fine to be risk-adverse if that is your personal comfort level but it is not good to just be ignorant, and I was definitely ignorant.  Now I’m just semi-ignorant.

In fact, it seems I like a little risk.  My retirement fund is a pretty aggressive portfolio right now, and I keep thinking as the market falls… hmm, too bad I don’t have any extra money to throw in there right now.

As people keep saying… Stocks on sale!  When stuff is on sale at the store I stock up… it is the hoarder in me.  This might be a beneficial side to a hoarder personality.  I’ll have to wait to find out for a few more years though.  Right now it is all hypothetical, my little buying frenzy.  And retirement is a ways off so I can be mellow about whatever is going on.

Speaking of the market and economy, I’m just glad I don’t have a subprime mortgage.  Even with our being in some debt we got a 30 year fixed rate mortgage with a very competitive rate.  I guess the great credit score was good for something.  You don’t need money just a random high number attached to your credit!   Heh.

~J

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My transaction is complete and I am now invested with Vanguard.  So it didn’t take that long at all, nowhere near the November date Vanguard warned me it could take up to.  I now have a little over 362 shares of Vanguard Target Retirement 2040 Fund.  So now you know approximately how old I am and how much money I’m worth.  Too old and not much.  But at least it is only 2007. 
I’m proud of my investment.  I did research, I weighed options, I thought carefully, and I acted.  Nothing like when I first opened this Roth IRA in grad school.  Then I just knew I should be saving for retirement so I went to the first financial planner that mailed me an ad.  Direct mail worked for someone!  And seriously, I knew more than that planner did and that’s not a good thing ;).  But she took my money and invested it in what I chose from the options she gave me, and it has done okay.  That little company was bought by a bigger company that was eventually bought by Wachovia and a few years of horrid customer service later, here we are.  Bye bye Wachovia!  I don’t miss you already.

~J

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A few days ago I got a statement from Wachovia that they had sold my retirement assets at my request (I am transferring them to Vanguard).  I knew the approximate value of my portfolio at the time I requested the transfer, and when I scanned the statement outlining what was sold, I looked at the final value and immediately panicked.  The value shown on the sheet was about $1700 less than the value my portfolio had only 3 weeks before that.  I knew I had unwittingly picked a bad time to move assets but I wasn’t prepared for it to be *that* bad.  $1700 represented roughly 15% of my portfolio value… all in one fell swoop.

Well… after a few minutes of panicking I settled down and tried to make sure I wasn’t missing anything obvious.  After comparing the sheet to my most recent brokerage statement, I realized that (of course) my money market account which was also being transferred wasn’t listed, which has about $1300 in it.  (Why I had a money market in a retirement account is a long story and also part of why I should pay more attention but anyhow.  I don’t any more!  Vanguard Target 2040 all the way!  )

So in actuality my portfolio was only down $400 and not $1700.  Still not a nice thing but it didn’t make me feel ill inside.  And now it is sold and being transferred to Vanguard.  Hopefully that all happens really soon and then I can just watch it grow.  And start contributing more to it eventually.

~J

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As I’ve talked about before, I am transferring my Roth IRA from Wachovia to Vanguard.  I initiated this transfer before the stock market hoopla in the past week, and now I wonder… did I make an idiotic decision?

On the one hand, maybe I’ll be able to buy a few more shares of the Target Retirement fund I picked (I haven’t checked on the fund’s movement in the past week at all so I honestly don’t know if it has gone down any).  On the other hand, maybe my portfolio is worth a lot less than it was when I originally applied for the transfer.  Ugh.

My old portfolio was on the conservative side so I am hoping that it didn’t suffer *too* badly.  Add that to the list of things I should probably check up on in the coming days… just to know.

I thought money was fun. 
~J

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Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait.  Vanguard received my paperwork today in the mail to transfer my assets from Wachovia.  So I am officially a Vanguard client now.  Yay!

But online it says they estimate completion of the asset transfer by November 9th, 2007.  That’s over 3 months from now!  Ugh.  Why does it take so long?  That’s not a question about Vanguard really it is a question about the whole transferring of assets.  That just seems like a really long time.

Hopefully it takes a lot less time than that.  I’m still excited though!  I’m moving forward, a little at a time.  My financial house is resembling a house of cards less and less these days.  Good riddance! 
~J

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