The following is a guest post on things to look for while choosing your new home. I am not a home owner yet,
With so many options for housing in today’s market, it can be tough to know what to look for in a new home. On top of the options between a house, apartment or flat, there are other things to think about such as kitchen size, closet space and more
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Did you get your tax refund money back yet? Did you know that the average person receives a refund of nearly $3,000? If you are receiving a check for three grand, what on earth do you plan on doing with that kind of money?
Investing Tax refund
I know some people would spend it foolishly by taking a lavish vacation in the Caribbean or for a season golf membership. I am not saying those are bad things, but there are plenty of better things that you can do with that chunk of change.
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The housing market is in recovery, a slow and painful one, but a recovery nonetheless. And no, I’m not saying this because I’ve been obsessing over house prices, builder confidence indexes, construction permits numbers and foreclosure rates (ok, I’ve done that too), but because the hedge funds, where the smart money lies, are moving back into real estate. And I’m trailing behind.
I decided to get into real estate investing about four months ago – right around Christmas when the budgets and the belts are too tight to really be thinking about investments. Well, I’ve never had a deep pocket anyway so I decided to jump in with whatever I could scoop together and hope for the best.
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I was going through the Scottrade 6th Annual retirement survey for 2012. Compared to 2011 the trend seemed favorable to what we, the personal finance bloggers, want to see. Americans all across the board started saving more, spending less and the participation in tax deferred accounts increased. Boomers, Gen X are planning actively for their future
Scene is still not bright for Gen Yers, on the other hand still have a lot to catch up. Today’s young adults fall in this category, age 18 -28, to be precise. As per the survey, only 63% of working class gen Y hold tax deferred retirement account (employer’s 401(k) or IRAs). Still there’s a ray of hope:
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Last time we talked about some do’s and don’ts of annuity investment. Here’s a story about what to do with your annuity investment, if you are looking for some alternative. Let it be clear that if you are looking to rollover your annuity investment in to an IRA, you can only do it if your original annuity was bought under an IRA investment. Else you can’t roll over this in to an IRA account. Here’s an expert advice from CNN Money explaining the process.
I do not have any annuity in my retirement portfolio. I was planning to buy one but figured out that we are better served with employer 401(k) and TD Ameritrade IRA account that we have. We are young couple now and we can risk investing in variable return investment in our retirement account. We do not particularly want assured minimum fixed return that a typical annuity offers. If you have an investment already made in annuity and you want to cash out it, may this article help you.
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