Saturday, August 21, 2010

Retirement Perspectives MY MONEY IS ALL MOVED OVER NOW!

**Since my accounts basically are almost entirely out of the market at this point, i'll be updating my "retirement perspectives" every pay cycle (every 2 weeks) instead of every week.

End of 2009 Balance: $26,529.33 | Current 2010 Balance: $30,717.35
Additional Contributions since 2009: $4,036.12
Growth: $151.90 (0.96%)


Discontinued 401a Account: Makes up 2.99 % of my Retirement
$918.37/$898.62 invested. (New contributions suspended.)

Discontinued 457 Account: Makes up 3.37% of my Retirement
$1,034.13 (Earns pennies a week and I can’t move the $$$$ until I quit.)

ING DIRECT CD Roth IRA: Makes up 55.46% of my portfolio
$17,037.04/$16,750.00
Up 1.713% from inception +$287.04

The money is all moved over now!!!! To think if I would have just saved it all in here in the first place I’d have a lot more to show for it (and much better CD rates for sure), but that’s what investing in your 20’s is all about… making choices and taking a few risks early (to learn what to do and what not to do), and then moving forward with those lessons hopefully learned (and not too painfully).

At least my adventure in a variety of mutual funds didn’t cost me any of my principle investment (just inflation eating it away since I definitely didn’t gain much.) Sure there was the “Thrill” when the account went up and I thought all about those “dividend” gains too… but then there’s the crappy feeling of seeing your account lose value… loose principle value… and that just hurts.

I think it will be smart to just save the rest of my contributions for 2010 in a non retirement savings account and decide what to do in March before the contribution cut off period for 2010. By that time I’ll either have the $3,000.00 to open another investment account at Vanguard, or I’ll be able to drop that into the savings account and slowly buy some CD’s with it. Liquid it earns 1.10%... the highest CD they offer is 1.25% for 3, 4 or 5 years. Each month I’m taking a few hundred bucks and plopping it in a CD and keeping the rest liquid as I hope to see interest rates get higher.


Pension: Approximately 38.18% of my portfolio
If I quit tomorrow, I’d just have the cash in the account (earning an automatic 6% until withdrawn).

Total: $11,727.81

$2,647.80 (What I’ve put in out of my paychecks) 442.92% Return from inception.

I’m currently buying additional time in my retirement accounts from when I was 16-18 years of age (Cal PERS service prior to membership). It’s less than a year’s worth of service credit, but I’ll be having $33.06 deducted from each paycheck for a while….

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