Money Stuff

From a letter to "the girls" that could apply to all.

I ran across this and thought I'd share since it's such a topic of interest for everyone these days! It's from Woman's Day, so few things have a bit of a housewifely slant, but I think the points are valuable for all!

Money myths that empty your wallet

The other thing I wanted to share was some stuff I'm learning about retirement funds. Maybe you already know about this stuff or other things about saving for retirement, but if you don't it's really valuable to just know what some of your options are, especially since social security really isn't secure, or enough to retire on! Just like we're at the age where we need to really start taking our health more seriously as an investment in our old age, it's not too early to start thinking about the money side of things. I hope I am not stepping on any toes by offering this without anyone asking for it, but I would hate later on in life for one of you to say "Hey, you knew about this when we were 28? Why didn't you tell me!?"

So if any of you have the opportunity now to save in a 401K or an IRA - Jump on it! I know when you're swimming in debts the last thing you want to think about is not being able to use even more of each paycheck, but the younger you start the more time your $ has to grow interest and it can really add up for your retirement - it just sits there earning $ for you! And the flip side is how much you miss earning the later you start it. And the benefit to these things that you can take advantage of right now is they are excluded from taxes, so you have less to pay in taxes either every paycheck or at the end of the year.

With the 401K at my work I only elected to contribute 2% of my salary and I'm pretty sure you can even choose 1%. I'm sure as I get older and both my salary increases and retirement gets closer I'd want to contribute more, but even the little bit starting now will really get the ball rolling and start things growing. They take it right out of your pay check and you are not taxed on it until you actually use it when you are retired. It's YOUR $ - even if you leave that job you should be able to move it over to your new 401K, or to a private one.

An IRA is another retirement fund you can start for yourself that's not connected to any job you might have, which might make it a little harder to remember to contribute to it... A big benefit to it for you NOW is that you can often get tax deductions for the contributions you make towards it! My contribution towards mine last year made the difference between me having to pay taxes vs getting money back! It's also $ that grows quite a lot even if you just put in a little, and the younger you start, the more you can earn. You do have to pay taxes on it when you retire, and there are several situations where you can get your $ out of the account before retirement with no penalty like certain medical expenses or buying your first house.

Here's some good breakdown info about IRA's (there's 2 different kinds with different benefits)

Love you, care about you, want to see you taken care of from every angle and aspect of life!!!