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Organization vs. Convenience
I have a moving date: July 13. We’re downsizing, moving out of a 1200 sq. ft., three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom house into a 900-ish sq. ft., two bedroom, two bathroom apartment (awaiting final confirmation). Still bigger than I wanted, but significantly cheaper and almost 300 sq. ft. smaller. As I’ve been decluttering over the last almost-year (stalled for the last few months), I’ve struggled mightily with the conflict of organization vs. convenience. For instance, in my new, smaller office, I have all my office supplies in two small bins that fit on the shelf above the desk. Nothing overflows and I have exactly what I need. But getting out a pen…
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Relearning to Bind Off
My beautiful scarf is done! Way back on my bir’day, Scott bought me some fancypants yarn that I started working into a wavy scarf. Seven months, 5.5 feet of unstretched scarf (and most of a blanket and two dice bags…) later, I have a scarf, currently blocked out on my roommate’s floor. Hey, he wasn’t there at the time. Not my fault he came home that night after I went to bed. I’m not keeping the scarf–it’s going to my much more colorful sister–but I’m really proud (and glad!) it’s done. Aside from the little dice bags to break up these longer projects, this is my first sizable finish since…
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Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning: Self-Employment Account Options
A 401(k) for MacGregor? Muy awesome. I had no idea that there were traditional or Roth 401(k) options for the self-employed. I figured that Greg was due to be stuck with only IRAs, as well as a tangle of alphabet soup even I didn’t want to swim in: SEP-IRAs, SIMPLE IRAs, Keoghs, spousal IRAs. This totally changes our game plan, even though we won’t hop to a 401(k) immediately.
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Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning: Tax Games
Why didn’t I ever look at 401(k) contributions as a tax game? Probably because I didn’t really understand how taxes worked.
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Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning: Investment Policy Statement
This is the second of my Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning series. “Investment Policy Statement” a hoity-toity term for “make a contract with yourself on how you’ll invest”. What’s your risk tolerance? What allocation of investments do you want to maintain? How often will you rebalance? What’s your goal? How often will you reassess your goal? I’ve had these things in my head, shuffling them around as I researched and toyed with percentages and numbers. What they weren’t was written down.