Quote:
Originally Posted by frayne
My advice first would be to enjoy the year and read up on investing, especially index funds. Common Sense on Mutual Funds by Bogle and The Four Pillars of Investing by Bernstein. Morningstar FIDO Family and Diehards are good web sources as well for investing info.
Again welcome.
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I have been making a list of books to read, those two were already on the short list, to pick up after Christmas.
Thanks for the encouragement from those that jumped in. The 2% the FA wants to charge included all fees, loads and transaction fees but still seemed like a big chunk of my yearly income as JohnP pointed out it isn't really 2% but more like 50% of my yearly income needs.
One of the tasks in the next 12 months is to move around the after tax funds to support me after salary continuation ends. Not sure if I should tap pretax money at 59.5 or wait till I spend down the after tax money. I have about $50K in Janus World Wide that I believe is still below water for my average cost. Trying to decide if I should sell before the end of the year so I have 2 years of tax deductions if I need it (while I'm still in a high tax bracket). The real dilemma is do I just leave it in a Money Market for living expense in 2007-8 or is there a safe place that might make a little more money. I'm sitting with about 35K in cash and CDs right now and plan to add to that during 2006. How many years of buffer cash is enough. I'm figuring on the tight budget to be $20-30K and the generous budget to be in the $40-55K range. Making a real budget is on the list to do early in the year. The generous budget was arrived at backwards by subtracting off things that I would not be spending money on. 401Ks, savings, taxes, etc.
Jeb