Monday, March 27, 2017

Latest Buy

I have been pretty dormant in terms of my purchases in my taxable account. My opinion is that the market is really hot, and it makes sense to wait for it to cool down before making purchases. That said - there are always companies with some transient issues and they present buying opportunities, so i am still very open to those.

This is part of my automatic 401k (my contribution + employer 3% match) buys. On March 22, i purchased -

VFIAX - $112.50
JMYAX - $309.38
Stable Value Fund - $515.62 (this is more like a money market+bond blend fund)

Total - $937.50

Approximate dividend yield on the index funds is about 2%, so this adds about $8.50 to the annual dividends received in my tax deferred account.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Credit card rewards are for real

I have been through different phases as a online blog consumer. Personal finance to credit card hacking to investing to dividend related investing. I can say that now i am in a place where i have a good balance of all of these.

In my credit card hack phase (i still do a fair amount, though not as active as before) i used to hit up over 10 credit card blogs regularly, including The Points Guy, Mommy Points among others and ended up selectively applying for credit cards and getting valuable points.


Monday, March 13, 2017

Best CD interest rate

Today is the 8 year anniversary of the stock market recovery since the infamous 2008-2009 crash. It has been an amazing and unpredictable recovery to say the least. Where the market goes from here is anybody’s guess, but i think it is prudent to either not invest aggressively at this stage or pull a little bit of money out of the market and lock in some gains.

Like most financial gurus will tell you, I too believe that time in the market is better than timing the market – but taking a pause and re evaluating every now and then is not a bad strategy either.

With that said – what do you do with whatever money you have on the sidelines, waiting for a 5%, 10% or even 20% correction from this point ?


On a work visa, contributed to a retirement plan, going back now - options ?

I discussed the idea of participating in a retirement plan at work even though on a work visa in this previous post - here

You did that, and ended up with a small chunk of money over a period of 3-6 years and are planning to go back to your home country, now what? Here are a few options.

On a work visa,should i participate in retirement plans at work? - Part 1

With the increasing global nature of work and jobs, a lot of us find ourselves in the situation where we end up with a work visa (H1b,L1) etc after graduation from grad school or being sent over by a company to work as a consultant for a few months or years.

For those that graduate and join the workforce on a H-1b visa,a lot of questions pop up. Will i be here for a while, long enough for the company's 401-k vesting period?, will i eventually want to become a permanent resident or citizen or will i go back home for good? All these questions and uncertainties mean that most people procrastinate and do not participate in employer sponsored 401k plans. BIG financial mistake !