If you’re single and earned less than 26,000 last year, or married and together made less than $52,000, then you can qualify for a tax credit of up to $1000 if you contributed to a retirement savings account during the year. To get the maximum credit, you’ll need to have socked away $2,000 and earned less than $15,500 as a single tax filer ($31,000 if married). And yes, this is a credit, not a deduction (something this writer has confused in the past), so it can make a significant difference on your final tax bill.
retirement
New York Expands Countrywide Class Action Suit
By 1.26.08
Today, New York City and state expanded their class action lawsuit against Countrywide Financial Corp. to include two more company officers, twenty underwriters (including big investment banks like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch), and two accounting firms. “We will pursue every avenue to ensure that those who defrauded investors are held accountable for their actions,” said the NYC Comptroller.
5 Retirement Myths
By 1.23.08
Many people are so fixated on saving for retirement that they forget to plan what they’ll do during that time. If you cut out your days of work, you now have 40-60 extra hours in your life. What will you do with that time? After all, there’s only so much golf you can play.
Enron Class-Action Suit Killed By Supreme Court
By 1.22.08
Today the U.S. Supreme Court effectively killed off any chance of a $40 billion class-action lawsuit against the investment firms that did business with Enron. The suit charged that the Wall Street firms were complicit in Enron’s massive corporate fraud fiasco. The Supreme Court, however, just ruled on a similar case last week and found that “third parties – vendors, contractors and consultants such as banks, accountants or attorneys – can’t be sued over corporate fraud unless investors relied on them when making their investing decisions.”
By 1.18.08
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Here’s 10 top questions frequently asked about starting a Roth IRA. Don’t have one? Why not? They’re a great no-brainer way to save for retirement. [Yahoo! Finance via Money Crashers]
Create A Virtual Piggy Bank For "Spare Change" From Debit Card Transactions
By 1.16.08
Consumerism Commentary wants you to “put your savings in hyperdrive.” Funny, we thought that’s what we already did, which is why our savings raced light years away from our bank account. But Flexo, in his series of posts this week on how to save, uses a more grounded definition of “hyperdrive” and offers suggestions like opening a high yield savings account, saving your spare change (or the contemporary equivalent of spare change if you pay with a debit card), and automating your savings. Yes, these are simple suggestions, but that’s what makes them easy to remember and easy to implement.
Retirement Investment Scams And How To Avoid Them
By 12.18.07
People who are about to retire often find themselves faced with a million different brokers who have a million different great ideas about what they should do with their savings. It can be overwhelming, but Kiplinger has a great article about shady investment scams and how to avoid them.
The Best Personal Finance Ideas Of The Year
By 12.18.07
Nothing say Christmas like a list, so here’s another one. Here are some of the best personal finance ideas blogged this year, chosen by Mrs. Micah: Finance for a Freelance Life. Her top pick is the “debt snowflake” from the blog PaidTwice—it describes the act of finding lots of little ways to supplement your standard income, so that you can add mass to your “debt snowball” to make it more effective.
Fund Your Teen's Roth IRA
By 12.13.07
Kiplinger’s idea of a good Christmas present for a teenager is helping them start a retirement account. We kind of think the average teen is going to have a hard time understanding why that’s a “better” gift than, say, a game system, but the underlying idea is sound. As long as your teen worked at some point in 2007—even babysitting counts—he can open a Roth IRA. But other people (that means you) can fund it, up to the amount the kid earned in wages.
11 Common Tax Planning Mistakes
By 12.11.07
It’s not as sexy a topic as dog treats, but it’s an important one: tax planning mistakes. More specifically, how to avoid some of the most common ones. Kiplinger lists 11 frequent mistakes you should be aware of if you don’t want an unpleasant surprise come April.
Help for the Retirement-Challenged
By 12.5.07
There’s a huge gap between many Americans’ perceptions of what life in retirement will be and the practicalities of what their finances will allow. The former is often a time of limited work, relaxation, and enjoying the twilight years of life while the latter forces decisions about working longer, relying more on relatives, and doing without past pleasures and purchases. This gap exists for good reason — it’s expensive to retire in the United States. The amount of savings needed to support today’s retiree, who can be expected to live a couple decades or so longer, is mind-blowing and, for many, unattainable.
10 Tips For Lowering Your Taxes
By 12.4.07
This list of ten tips to reduce taxes was published nearly a year ago, but they’re still relevant, and we thought now would be a good time to share them before Kiplinger releases its new “10 Ways” list later this month. Among the tips: make sure you load up your retirement accounts and flexible spending accounts, and remember that the government gives you a 2 ½ month grace period on reimbursing yourself from an over-funded flex account.
How To Tell A Good Stock Picking Strategy From A Faulty One
By 11.21.07
Okay, so Jack Hough’s column in SmartMoney this week is really just an extended ad for his new book. But in this case, the content of the book is something valuable that we think a lot of Consumerist readers will want to know about: how to identify reliable stock picking strategies.
Which Retirement Funds To Tap First
By 11.19.07
So you’re an old geezer and you’re ready to start enjoying all the money you saved up for retirement. If you’re under 70.5, this is the order you should spend your assets in, according to the Autumn 2007 Vanguard report:
5 Myths Of Retirement Investing
By 11.19.07
Here’s 5 common myths people tell themselves that can end up bungling their retirement savings plan, cribbed from the Autumn issue of the Vanguard market report.
12 Things Women Should Do To Prepare For Retirement
By 11.12.07
Women live longer than men and don’t participate in the workforce as consistently, which puts them in a tougher position when it comes to living off of retirement funds. But after reading through this list of 12 things women can do to protect themselves from financial ruin in their final days, we’ve decided that old ladies are just goths with even crazier makeup and clothes. It starts off with the basics—”start your own retirement account,” “invest in stocks,” “put your retirement savings before your kids tuition bills”—but then takes a turn for the morbid and becomes all about death, divorce, and more death. Here are the gloomiest tips—enjoy!
6 Financial Demons And How To Exorcise Them
By 11.1.07
If you keep trying to save money and failing, there’s a good chance you’re possessed… by “financial demons,” says Kiplinger. Here’s a list of six common ones and how to exorcise them, before your credit rating goes all Linda Blair on you.
NBC Teaches Personal Finance Lessons On "30 Rock"
By 10.26.07
NBC is taking the “workplace comedy” concept to new levels of realism, by including a couple of scenes about a major character’s lack of a savings plan in this week’s “30 Rock” episode. After being awarded a $10,000 “GE Followship Award” for being such a great follower, Tina Fey’s character stuns her boss by revealing she doesn’t have a 401(k)—or, apparently, even a savings account.
