• On Life and Love

    Financial Advisor: Not This One

    My first financial advisor discussions have ended with a quiet crash and burn. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning warned me about commission-based folks. I listened to them and then called him on some junk. We met yesterday to catch up on some of the things we talked about the first time, such as pre-tax vs. post-tax investments, “real wealth” vs. “paper wealth”, etc. Showstopper: he was trying to sell me insurance. Lousy insurance at that. His ideas of safe, “real wealth”, tax-protected investments were whole life and variable universal life insurance. Which he’d get a commision on for selling me.

  • On Life and Love

    A bit less of a slacker

    I finally got off my ass and finished moving over my teaching retirement money. I asked them to cut me a check back in February so that I could do a rollover into an IRA. Well, turns out you can only rollover into a traditional IRA, so I got two accounts set up (traditional and Roth) and stalled, and stalled, then moved into the house, then stalled some more… Ah, life. It happens. And the check is chump change in the grand scheme of things, really… Blah, blah, inertia. I’m appreciating a new, larger salary now, though, and have located my inner “gazelle” (although it’s more like a puppy, really)…