Stacking Pennies . . .

I think I mentioned I'm re-applying to graduate school. I have 9/30 credits completed (through distance education while working) at "University A", in the state I formerly lived in. I could continue on this path, taking 3 credits a semester (6 a year) and graduate in 3.5 years. University A is usually ranked in the 30s or 40s in my field.

My new job is more flexible about where you do your education. (Actually, they'll pay for almost anything, even non-job related. I think I'm taking sailing this spring!) I now have access to another (distance education) program at "University B" a top 10 engineering college. Even better, they are on the quarter system, require just nine courses, and I can take four each year. They also will accept two transfer credits, meaning if they accept my application, I'll be done in under two years! It'll also be a boost to my resume, as I went to a relatively no-name undergrad university. It also probably will be a lot more work and a very difficult two years... but it should pay off big time in the long run.

I was already really sold on this idea but I just came up with yet another great benefit. At "University B", each class is four credits, which by their system would classify me as a "half time" student. So what does that mean? Well, my student loans are Federal Subsidized Stafford loans, meaning while I'm enrolled in school at least half time, the government will pay the interest for me. I could also completely cease making payments if I wanted, freeing up $133 extra each month to invest/save. WOW! (I'll have to decide exactly what I plan to do when/if this whole thing is a reality)

In dollar terms, what does this mean? Well, last month the interest on my loan was roughly $75, so if I'm in this program for roughly two years, it'll save me about $1800. I can't wait until September to get this started! Let's hope that they accept me! I should find out within a few months!

After yesterday's post on being impatient to enroll in my company's 401k, today I found that I was finally "in the system" and could enroll! I eagerly got to the screen where I could indicate I wanted to save 15% of my pretax income. Then came the fund allocation screen....

Crap. I wasn't 100% prepared for this despite it being on my to-do list from about a week ago. I do have a loose plan of what I want to do, but haven't figure out how to align my three accounts into one asset allocation.

My overall goal for my asset allocation goal is as follows:

• Stocks/Bonds: 88%/12%
• Within stocks, Domestic/International: 60%/40%
• Within Domestic, Large Cap/Small Cap/REIT: 75%/15%/15%

I also would like 10% of my international allocations in emerging markets, and someday I may want to do something fancier with bonds as I hear a lot about TIPS and Treasury and things I don't know anything about (right now I just use a bond index fund).

Overall, this breaks down to 6 funds allocated as follows:

• Large Cap 37%
• Small Cap 8%
• REIT 8%
• Int. Index 32%
• Emerg. Mkts 4%
• Bond Idx 12%

Do you think I'm missing anything important?

There are some issues with this right now. It is pretty impossible for me to actually get the 4% emerging markets allocation or even the 8% REIT allocation. I don't have those options in my 401k, and Vanguard requires minimum investments of $3000, which is currently 15% of my portfolio. Besides, I don't really know exactly what my current allocation is, mostly because Fidelity's 2040 fund has about a zillion different holdings.

So, what is my plan? First, I need to move both my Roth IRA and old 401k to Vanguard, while rolling the 401k to an IRA. Then I want to roll $5000 of the 401k into the Roth. Why just $5000? Because I don't want to get hit with taxes on the full $15k this year. I figure I'll roll it into my Roth over a period of 2-3 years, hurrying it along if it becomes necessary (meaning, if I end up planning to get married before then, as the income limits are harder to meet if you aren't single). Perhaps more on the rollover later, as I contemplate all the implications of it.

Within the Roth, I want to buy $3000 of the REIT index fund, and put the rest in the Vangaurd 2040 fund (which does have a small percent emerging markets). I'll then set my future contributions to the 2040 fund and most likely put my old 401k into the 2040 fund as well. When my portfolio grows more, I may invest more into the emerging markets fund, but probably not any time in 2008.

Last I'll use the index funds in my 401k to balance out my other allocations (small cap, large cap, index, and bonds) as closely as I can to my goal.

What do you think? I do want to have real estate be part of my portfolio, as I don't own property and don't plan on it soon. Should I just wait on the REITs until I can keep them a smaller percent of the portfolio? Or, given the housing market, will they decline all on their own, so I won't have to worry?? :)

In a side note, I temporarily regretted posting anything about my relationship yesterday. People sometimes jump to conclusions based on limited information. I wrote a post detailing things, intending to "clear up" some things. It was wordy and not very personal finance related anyway, so I'll just say it in a concise fashion. It's been 3.5 years. When we were both students, we split things fairly evenly. He would never need a loan from me and is good with money, and will most likely be very successful (someday). He really is on a tight budget as we live in an expensive city. He does pay for things now and then, including dinners, just not this weekend. He spent hours helping me set up my furniture and hang pictures and is really helpful with that kind of thing. I eat his food when I'm at his place (but my food is so much better!) We discussed it briefly, he acknowledged it, and I'll see if it is an issue in the future. If so, I will write about it, but I have to remind myself not to get (too) defensive about the comments!

I still can't sign up for my company's 401k, but not because I'm ineligible. You are eligible immediately (and vested immediately too!), though they a pension plan too which takes a year to be eligible and 5 years to vest.

I can't sign up because the website doesn't recognize my userid. I'm not "in the system" despite already getting a huge packet of information from them. Since I'm not in the system, when I call them, they are totally helpless:
"I can't take your password over the phone, you have to go through the system and punch it in"
"I did. But I wasn't given any menu options, so I pressed zero for help."
"Well. I can put you back through the system, and you can enter your password."
". . . But that obviously didn't work."

Gah! They did say it may take 7-10 days to become active. If they mean business days, it has been seven. If they mean actual days, it has been 11. I'll give it until the end of the week....

But I'm really anxious to start contributing! I'm going to see if I can handle contributing 15% of my income. If I do that, I'll be able to get about $10k in my 401k and 5k in my Roth, for a total of 15k of my money in retirement contributions for 2008, just over 21% of my gross income. There also should be roughly 4k from the company match. Barring an ever declining market, that should almost double my account value in 2008! However, with such a shaky market and all this recession talk, I specifically set my goals in dollars of contributions, not account value. Go long term investing!

I think 15% will be a stretch for me, at least while I'm growing the e-fund. I varied between 12% and 15% at my last job, and rent was much lower. We'll have to see how it goes. My budget says I can do it, but I'm not much of a budgeter.

While I'm waiting, I've been putting a little extra in my Roth IRA to get the year started off on the right foot.

So, you aren't supposed to keep score in relationships. Still, I can't help it sometimes.

My boyfriend is a poor poor grad student who makes less than half of what I do (stipend). My savings is going up, his is staying flat at best. Naturally, I don't expect him to spend much on us. He is content with not going out to eat much and living quite cheaply, which is great for us in the long run because I'm fairly frugal too. We should never have problems living within our means. Still, sometimes I want treats, so I provide them for us.

This weekend (starting on Thursday) I paid for:
Pizza: $13, a good deal though, for 3 medium pizza's that fed us almost all weekend. I will say nothing about the healthfulness of it...
Sam Adam's White Ale: $14
Lunch at Ikea: $11 (though my fault, since we wouldn't have otherwise been at Ikea and he was helping me pick out and build stuff)
Random Food that we ate: Coffee, cereal, milk, juice, burritos from Trader Joe's.... Plus he made a smoothie that neither of us really needed/wanted (which was much to thick) with my frozen strawberries right before dinner for no logical reason!

Also, he doesn't have a car, so I'm always driving and using my gas. And he definitely ate/drank more of all that stuff than I did.

It isn't that I'm not generous with this kind of thing. I am actually quite generous: "Thanks for coming to Ikea... do you want to stop at the cafe? How about this Mango Sorbet too, that looks delicious!" Then I do my budget, see that I want to save more, then regret my generosity. Ooops.

Then again, how petty is it for me to quibble about $37 spent on "us" when i spent about $200 on me and my apartment at Ikea? It is hard to justify that.

I guess it's the principle rather than the dollar amount. When we stopped at the store to buy juice (potentially for future smoothies or to mix in drinks), he could have paid for it. It was only about $3, so it makes no difference in the scheme of things, but it makes me feel a little less like I'm being taken advantage of. I know that really isn't the case... I offer to do all these things and he would be fine if I stopped. Sometimes I can't help but be bothered by it though.

I guess I need to be careful with my generosity, and really think about it before I offer to pay for things for "us". I need to make sure I won't regret it. Spending money doesn't show love (though, I can't help but think it does, at least a little). I think (hope) that my attitude would be different if we were engaged/married and money spent on us was truly ours and not mine/his. I also think his attitude would be a little different as well. But it just isn't like that right now. It is my money, and if I'm going to share it, I need to make sure I'm sharing it within my budget.

I'm quite certain that I wasn't tagged for this, but I saw a few other bloggers doing it and it seemed fun. I don't use a traditional wallet. For better or worse, I use a little wristlet that my sister gave me. I stick it in my purse, or if I'm traveling light I put it on my wrist and don't carry a purse . While it doesn't have the organizational capabilities of a wallet, I don't carry too much with me, so it works well.


What is there?

• Drivers License: I just got this about a week ago. I heart California! Also, I so wish I wouldn't have worn red, as it sort of clashes with the yellow background.
  
• Cash: I usually don't carry any cash, but I happened to hit the ATM a few days before, so I have $23. I also have some quarters, which I hoard for laundry money.
• Credit Cards: My awesome pink Discover Card, and a Chase Visa. Also a seldom used Wells Fargo debit card, and a Health Savings Account debit card from my HSA at my last job.
• Library Card: Brand new! No, I'm not afraid that you know that I live somewhere in the vast LA area.
• Ralph's receipt: It is for Orange Juice. Trader Joe's was all out of OJ (well, out of the $3 kind, they did have a $5.50 jug) so we swung into Ralph's. I don't need this receipt. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought OJ. To some skeptical friend, "Don't even act like I didn't get that OJ. I've got the documentation right here. It's in my file at home. Under O." (So much funnier coming from the late Mitch Hedberg, but if you got that reference, I automatically like you extra.)
• H&M Gift card: It has less than $5 on it, but I put it in there hoping I'll use it someday...
• AAA card: Because my parents love me and got it for me. Personally, I'd probably join the much greener Better World Club.

I don't tag you, but if you think this seems fun, feel free to participate!

So.... If you are observant, you might have noticed earlier this week I requested to be added to the blog roll of anyone who regularly reads this, yet didn't follow through on my promise to create one myself. I'm a bad person! But I have an excuse: I think I'm moving to wordpress, but I'm just not quite ready to move in over there. I hate that you can't edit the CSS for free, but let's be honest... I don't want to deal with editing the code anyway. I'll get this taken care of SOON, either way.

I consider myself reasonably successful, and I hope to continue down the road to success as I get older. Trent over at the The Simple Dollar recently wrote an interesting post in which he shares some tips to improve your life. In light of this, I want to share with you exactly how I got to where I am today, and outline how you can do even better than I did! Here are the main four things I did right to get where I am today:

Luck: I was born in the USA, lucky me! I think that is the single most important thing to my success (though other first world countries could have been acceptable).

Family: We were not in poverty, though there were some money issues at times. That helps a heck of a lot when trying to get through life. I was well fed and actually went to a private high school. Most of all, there was a ton of emotional support. My dad in particular placed high priority on education, as he did not finish college himself. We were encouraged to participate in extra-curricular activities, and my parents shelled out for a lot of lessons, sports and extra classes. I used to go to summer school for fun to take extra classes! They provided some minor monetary support in college, and allowed me to stay at home rent free while for a couple semesters.

Natural ability: Not everyone can get through the engineering coursework with good grades. I'm not meaning to be arrogant--there are a ton of things that I stink at. But my ability to understand math is genetic--I did nothing special to earn it.

Hard work: I have spent many many hours investing in my education and myself. It isn't always fun, but it is rewarding.

To a lesser degree, the following two things helped:

Federal Support: I received scholarships and financial aid to attend college. Without it, I'd be at least 20k more in student loan debt. For a state school!

Social connections: I got the interview for my current job because my boyfriend was going to a top grad school, met someone who worked here, and passed on my resume. Most people who work here are from big name schools. Not I! Other than that, I didn't get a lot of advantages from social connections, yet. My parents don't have powerful friends, nor did I go to a prestigious school. But I've seen it happen with others a lot.

Based in my successes, I have three surefire tips for success. You'll may have to combine these with hard work to guarantee success. Still, with just a little work, you'll have a good shot at a successful life if you do these three things:

1. Be born in a good country. Even better, pick a good neighborhood, and maybe consider avoiding being a minority group. You could even consider being male, though I wasn't and don't want to be!
2. Have a good family. The more money the easier it will be for you, but even more importantly, they have to care about you. Not only that, they must have the time and knowledge to invest in your future, as well as the ability to lead you along in your early years. And maybe in your young adult years too, if you are lucky!
   
3. Be gifted. Intelligence is a good gift to have, or perhaps extreme artistic talent. Both would be great, but there are some other options I'm sure. Have some charisma and a go-getter personality. While you are at it, make sure you are healthy and it wouldn't hurt to be attractive too.

What, you don't like my advice? Okay, okay... Then I suggest you read Trent's good advice that can actually be followed, no matter what has happened with my three tips!

All joking aside, hard work is very important and can help a lot of people. What about "working smart"? Personally, that term gets on my nerves. I think it is overused and largely meaningless. However, if you think you can find a way to "work smart", go for it. If you don't really understand what "work smart" means in your life (I don't!) just work hard while you are contemplating it.

My point is, you do have to play your cards right, but it is silly to pretend we all got a similar hand.

I have been using two online savings accounts for about a year, ING and HSBC. Both have been dropping rates like crazy, and neither are very competitive anymore. There simply are better options out there. I'm not going to stand for this anymore!

I did a little research, and decided to switch to the Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund to house the majority of my savings. It currently has a yield of 4.22%. While are HYSAs and CDs out there with better rates, they aren't consistently higher. I'm not going to rate chase. This is a solid account that has continually been competitive to HYSA. I first did the analysis last summer, and the tax free money market account actually came out ahead of any savings account. Try out this awesome calculator to compare. These days, the taxable account is a better deal for me. I was wavering between EmigrantDirect (solid reviews, solid rates) and Vanguard, and honestly the final decision was sort of impulsive. I figure I'll eventually roll over my 401k into an IRA there, and move my Roth from Fidelity... So it will simplify my finances in the long run.

I funded it with $4000 to start, about half of my HSBC balance. I already have a lot of stuff linked up with my HSBC account, so I'm waiting to completely pull the plug on it... But it will happen. I already set up my Vanguard account for direct deposit and will be sending my tax refund there as well.

What about ING? Well I'm not too impressed with them either, but they will be staying around. I'll be using them for some shorter term savings (car insurance, travel fund) and for now, for my student loan payback account and new car fund. Why? I like the subaccounts. Yeah, I can do it in excel. Whatever, I don't want to. For such small balances I'm not as concerned about getting the best rate.

Why else? The $10 referral bonuses and the sweepstakes I am entered in for using direct deposit. So it's lame to trade interest rates for sweepstakes... but whatever, you'll be jealous when I win $30,000!

I think I mentioned I'm re-applying to graduate school. I have 9/30 credits completed (through distance education while working) at "University A", in the state I formerly lived in. I could continue on this path, taking 3 credits a semester (6 a year) and graduate in 3.5 years. University A is usually ranked in the 30s or 40s in my field.

My new job is more flexible about where you do your education. (Actually, they'll pay for almost anything, even non-job related. I think I'm taking sailing this spring!) I now have access to another (distance education) program at "University B" a top 10 engineering college. Even better, they are on the quarter system, require just nine courses, and I can take four each year. They also will accept two transfer credits, meaning if they accept my application, I'll be done in under two years! It'll also be a boost to my resume, as I went to a relatively no-name undergrad university. It also probably will be a lot more work and a very difficult two years... but it should pay off big time in the long run.

I was already really sold on this idea but I just came up with yet another great benefit. At "University B", each class is four credits, which by their system would classify me as a "half time" student. So what does that mean? Well, my student loans are Federal Subsidized Stafford loans, meaning while I'm enrolled in school at least half time, the government will pay the interest for me. I could also completely cease making payments if I wanted, freeing up $133 extra each month to invest/save. WOW! (I'll have to decide exactly what I plan to do when/if this whole thing is a reality)

In dollar terms, what does this mean? Well, last month the interest on my loan was roughly $75, so if I'm in this program for roughly two years, it'll save me about $1800. I can't wait until September to get this started! Let's hope that they accept me! I should find out within a few months!

After yesterday's post on being impatient to enroll in my company's 401k, today I found that I was finally "in the system" and could enroll! I eagerly got to the screen where I could indicate I wanted to save 15% of my pretax income. Then came the fund allocation screen....

Crap. I wasn't 100% prepared for this despite it being on my to-do list from about a week ago. I do have a loose plan of what I want to do, but haven't figure out how to align my three accounts into one asset allocation.

My overall goal for my asset allocation goal is as follows:

• Stocks/Bonds: 88%/12%
• Within stocks, Domestic/International: 60%/40%
• Within Domestic, Large Cap/Small Cap/REIT: 75%/15%/15%

I also would like 10% of my international allocations in emerging markets, and someday I may want to do something fancier with bonds as I hear a lot about TIPS and Treasury and things I don't know anything about (right now I just use a bond index fund).

Overall, this breaks down to 6 funds allocated as follows:

• Large Cap 37%
• Small Cap 8%
• REIT 8%
• Int. Index 32%
• Emerg. Mkts 4%
• Bond Idx 12%

Do you think I'm missing anything important?

There are some issues with this right now. It is pretty impossible for me to actually get the 4% emerging markets allocation or even the 8% REIT allocation. I don't have those options in my 401k, and Vanguard requires minimum investments of $3000, which is currently 15% of my portfolio. Besides, I don't really know exactly what my current allocation is, mostly because Fidelity's 2040 fund has about a zillion different holdings.

So, what is my plan? First, I need to move both my Roth IRA and old 401k to Vanguard, while rolling the 401k to an IRA. Then I want to roll $5000 of the 401k into the Roth. Why just $5000? Because I don't want to get hit with taxes on the full $15k this year. I figure I'll roll it into my Roth over a period of 2-3 years, hurrying it along if it becomes necessary (meaning, if I end up planning to get married before then, as the income limits are harder to meet if you aren't single). Perhaps more on the rollover later, as I contemplate all the implications of it.

Within the Roth, I want to buy $3000 of the REIT index fund, and put the rest in the Vangaurd 2040 fund (which does have a small percent emerging markets). I'll then set my future contributions to the 2040 fund and most likely put my old 401k into the 2040 fund as well. When my portfolio grows more, I may invest more into the emerging markets fund, but probably not any time in 2008.

Last I'll use the index funds in my 401k to balance out my other allocations (small cap, large cap, index, and bonds) as closely as I can to my goal.

What do you think? I do want to have real estate be part of my portfolio, as I don't own property and don't plan on it soon. Should I just wait on the REITs until I can keep them a smaller percent of the portfolio? Or, given the housing market, will they decline all on their own, so I won't have to worry?? :)

In a side note, I temporarily regretted posting anything about my relationship yesterday. People sometimes jump to conclusions based on limited information. I wrote a post detailing things, intending to "clear up" some things. It was wordy and not very personal finance related anyway, so I'll just say it in a concise fashion. It's been 3.5 years. When we were both students, we split things fairly evenly. He would never need a loan from me and is good with money, and will most likely be very successful (someday). He really is on a tight budget as we live in an expensive city. He does pay for things now and then, including dinners, just not this weekend. He spent hours helping me set up my furniture and hang pictures and is really helpful with that kind of thing. I eat his food when I'm at his place (but my food is so much better!) We discussed it briefly, he acknowledged it, and I'll see if it is an issue in the future. If so, I will write about it, but I have to remind myself not to get (too) defensive about the comments!

I still can't sign up for my company's 401k, but not because I'm ineligible. You are eligible immediately (and vested immediately too!), though they a pension plan too which takes a year to be eligible and 5 years to vest.

I can't sign up because the website doesn't recognize my userid. I'm not "in the system" despite already getting a huge packet of information from them. Since I'm not in the system, when I call them, they are totally helpless:
"I can't take your password over the phone, you have to go through the system and punch it in"
"I did. But I wasn't given any menu options, so I pressed zero for help."
"Well. I can put you back through the system, and you can enter your password."
". . . But that obviously didn't work."

Gah! They did say it may take 7-10 days to become active. If they mean business days, it has been seven. If they mean actual days, it has been 11. I'll give it until the end of the week....

But I'm really anxious to start contributing! I'm going to see if I can handle contributing 15% of my income. If I do that, I'll be able to get about $10k in my 401k and 5k in my Roth, for a total of 15k of my money in retirement contributions for 2008, just over 21% of my gross income. There also should be roughly 4k from the company match. Barring an ever declining market, that should almost double my account value in 2008! However, with such a shaky market and all this recession talk, I specifically set my goals in dollars of contributions, not account value. Go long term investing!

I think 15% will be a stretch for me, at least while I'm growing the e-fund. I varied between 12% and 15% at my last job, and rent was much lower. We'll have to see how it goes. My budget says I can do it, but I'm not much of a budgeter.

While I'm waiting, I've been putting a little extra in my Roth IRA to get the year started off on the right foot.

So, you aren't supposed to keep score in relationships. Still, I can't help it sometimes.

My boyfriend is a poor poor grad student who makes less than half of what I do (stipend). My savings is going up, his is staying flat at best. Naturally, I don't expect him to spend much on us. He is content with not going out to eat much and living quite cheaply, which is great for us in the long run because I'm fairly frugal too. We should never have problems living within our means. Still, sometimes I want treats, so I provide them for us.

This weekend (starting on Thursday) I paid for:
Pizza: $13, a good deal though, for 3 medium pizza's that fed us almost all weekend. I will say nothing about the healthfulness of it...
Sam Adam's White Ale: $14
Lunch at Ikea: $11 (though my fault, since we wouldn't have otherwise been at Ikea and he was helping me pick out and build stuff)
Random Food that we ate: Coffee, cereal, milk, juice, burritos from Trader Joe's.... Plus he made a smoothie that neither of us really needed/wanted (which was much to thick) with my frozen strawberries right before dinner for no logical reason!

Also, he doesn't have a car, so I'm always driving and using my gas. And he definitely ate/drank more of all that stuff than I did.

It isn't that I'm not generous with this kind of thing. I am actually quite generous: "Thanks for coming to Ikea... do you want to stop at the cafe? How about this Mango Sorbet too, that looks delicious!" Then I do my budget, see that I want to save more, then regret my generosity. Ooops.

Then again, how petty is it for me to quibble about $37 spent on "us" when i spent about $200 on me and my apartment at Ikea? It is hard to justify that.

I guess it's the principle rather than the dollar amount. When we stopped at the store to buy juice (potentially for future smoothies or to mix in drinks), he could have paid for it. It was only about $3, so it makes no difference in the scheme of things, but it makes me feel a little less like I'm being taken advantage of. I know that really isn't the case... I offer to do all these things and he would be fine if I stopped. Sometimes I can't help but be bothered by it though.

I guess I need to be careful with my generosity, and really think about it before I offer to pay for things for "us". I need to make sure I won't regret it. Spending money doesn't show love (though, I can't help but think it does, at least a little). I think (hope) that my attitude would be different if we were engaged/married and money spent on us was truly ours and not mine/his. I also think his attitude would be a little different as well. But it just isn't like that right now. It is my money, and if I'm going to share it, I need to make sure I'm sharing it within my budget.

I'm quite certain that I wasn't tagged for this, but I saw a few other bloggers doing it and it seemed fun. I don't use a traditional wallet. For better or worse, I use a little wristlet that my sister gave me. I stick it in my purse, or if I'm traveling light I put it on my wrist and don't carry a purse . While it doesn't have the organizational capabilities of a wallet, I don't carry too much with me, so it works well.


What is there?

• Drivers License: I just got this about a week ago. I heart California! Also, I so wish I wouldn't have worn red, as it sort of clashes with the yellow background.
  
• Cash: I usually don't carry any cash, but I happened to hit the ATM a few days before, so I have $23. I also have some quarters, which I hoard for laundry money.
• Credit Cards: My awesome pink Discover Card, and a Chase Visa. Also a seldom used Wells Fargo debit card, and a Health Savings Account debit card from my HSA at my last job.
• Library Card: Brand new! No, I'm not afraid that you know that I live somewhere in the vast LA area.
• Ralph's receipt: It is for Orange Juice. Trader Joe's was all out of OJ (well, out of the $3 kind, they did have a $5.50 jug) so we swung into Ralph's. I don't need this receipt. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought OJ. To some skeptical friend, "Don't even act like I didn't get that OJ. I've got the documentation right here. It's in my file at home. Under O." (So much funnier coming from the late Mitch Hedberg, but if you got that reference, I automatically like you extra.)
• H&M Gift card: It has less than $5 on it, but I put it in there hoping I'll use it someday...
• AAA card: Because my parents love me and got it for me. Personally, I'd probably join the much greener Better World Club.

I don't tag you, but if you think this seems fun, feel free to participate!

So.... If you are observant, you might have noticed earlier this week I requested to be added to the blog roll of anyone who regularly reads this, yet didn't follow through on my promise to create one myself. I'm a bad person! But I have an excuse: I think I'm moving to wordpress, but I'm just not quite ready to move in over there. I hate that you can't edit the CSS for free, but let's be honest... I don't want to deal with editing the code anyway. I'll get this taken care of SOON, either way.

I consider myself reasonably successful, and I hope to continue down the road to success as I get older. Trent over at the The Simple Dollar recently wrote an interesting post in which he shares some tips to improve your life. In light of this, I want to share with you exactly how I got to where I am today, and outline how you can do even better than I did! Here are the main four things I did right to get where I am today:

Luck: I was born in the USA, lucky me! I think that is the single most important thing to my success (though other first world countries could have been acceptable).

Family: We were not in poverty, though there were some money issues at times. That helps a heck of a lot when trying to get through life. I was well fed and actually went to a private high school. Most of all, there was a ton of emotional support. My dad in particular placed high priority on education, as he did not finish college himself. We were encouraged to participate in extra-curricular activities, and my parents shelled out for a lot of lessons, sports and extra classes. I used to go to summer school for fun to take extra classes! They provided some minor monetary support in college, and allowed me to stay at home rent free while for a couple semesters.

Natural ability: Not everyone can get through the engineering coursework with good grades. I'm not meaning to be arrogant--there are a ton of things that I stink at. But my ability to understand math is genetic--I did nothing special to earn it.

Hard work: I have spent many many hours investing in my education and myself. It isn't always fun, but it is rewarding.

To a lesser degree, the following two things helped:

Federal Support: I received scholarships and financial aid to attend college. Without it, I'd be at least 20k more in student loan debt. For a state school!

Social connections: I got the interview for my current job because my boyfriend was going to a top grad school, met someone who worked here, and passed on my resume. Most people who work here are from big name schools. Not I! Other than that, I didn't get a lot of advantages from social connections, yet. My parents don't have powerful friends, nor did I go to a prestigious school. But I've seen it happen with others a lot.

Based in my successes, I have three surefire tips for success. You'll may have to combine these with hard work to guarantee success. Still, with just a little work, you'll have a good shot at a successful life if you do these three things:

1. Be born in a good country. Even better, pick a good neighborhood, and maybe consider avoiding being a minority group. You could even consider being male, though I wasn't and don't want to be!
2. Have a good family. The more money the easier it will be for you, but even more importantly, they have to care about you. Not only that, they must have the time and knowledge to invest in your future, as well as the ability to lead you along in your early years. And maybe in your young adult years too, if you are lucky!
   
3. Be gifted. Intelligence is a good gift to have, or perhaps extreme artistic talent. Both would be great, but there are some other options I'm sure. Have some charisma and a go-getter personality. While you are at it, make sure you are healthy and it wouldn't hurt to be attractive too.

What, you don't like my advice? Okay, okay... Then I suggest you read Trent's good advice that can actually be followed, no matter what has happened with my three tips!

All joking aside, hard work is very important and can help a lot of people. What about "working smart"? Personally, that term gets on my nerves. I think it is overused and largely meaningless. However, if you think you can find a way to "work smart", go for it. If you don't really understand what "work smart" means in your life (I don't!) just work hard while you are contemplating it.

My point is, you do have to play your cards right, but it is silly to pretend we all got a similar hand.

I have been using two online savings accounts for about a year, ING and HSBC. Both have been dropping rates like crazy, and neither are very competitive anymore. There simply are better options out there. I'm not going to stand for this anymore!

I did a little research, and decided to switch to the Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund to house the majority of my savings. It currently has a yield of 4.22%. While are HYSAs and CDs out there with better rates, they aren't consistently higher. I'm not going to rate chase. This is a solid account that has continually been competitive to HYSA. I first did the analysis last summer, and the tax free money market account actually came out ahead of any savings account. Try out this awesome calculator to compare. These days, the taxable account is a better deal for me. I was wavering between EmigrantDirect (solid reviews, solid rates) and Vanguard, and honestly the final decision was sort of impulsive. I figure I'll eventually roll over my 401k into an IRA there, and move my Roth from Fidelity... So it will simplify my finances in the long run.

I funded it with $4000 to start, about half of my HSBC balance. I already have a lot of stuff linked up with my HSBC account, so I'm waiting to completely pull the plug on it... But it will happen. I already set up my Vanguard account for direct deposit and will be sending my tax refund there as well.

What about ING? Well I'm not too impressed with them either, but they will be staying around. I'll be using them for some shorter term savings (car insurance, travel fund) and for now, for my student loan payback account and new car fund. Why? I like the subaccounts. Yeah, I can do it in excel. Whatever, I don't want to. For such small balances I'm not as concerned about getting the best rate.

Why else? The $10 referral bonuses and the sweepstakes I am entered in for using direct deposit. So it's lame to trade interest rates for sweepstakes... but whatever, you'll be jealous when I win $30,000!

I think I mentioned I'm re-applying to graduate school. I have 9/30 credits completed (through distance education while working) at "University A", in the state I formerly lived in. I could continue on this path, taking 3 credits a semester (6 a year) and graduate in 3.5 years. University A is usually ranked in the 30s or 40s in my field.

My new job is more flexible about where you do your education. (Actually, they'll pay for almost anything, even non-job related. I think I'm taking sailing this spring!) I now have access to another (distance education) program at "University B" a top 10 engineering college. Even better, they are on the quarter system, require just nine courses, and I can take four each year. They also will accept two transfer credits, meaning if they accept my application, I'll be done in under two years! It'll also be a boost to my resume, as I went to a relatively no-name undergrad university. It also probably will be a lot more work and a very difficult two years... but it should pay off big time in the long run.

I was already really sold on this idea but I just came up with yet another great benefit. At "University B", each class is four credits, which by their system would classify me as a "half time" student. So what does that mean? Well, my student loans are Federal Subsidized Stafford loans, meaning while I'm enrolled in school at least half time, the government will pay the interest for me. I could also completely cease making payments if I wanted, freeing up $133 extra each month to invest/save. WOW! (I'll have to decide exactly what I plan to do when/if this whole thing is a reality)

In dollar terms, what does this mean? Well, last month the interest on my loan was roughly $75, so if I'm in this program for roughly two years, it'll save me about $1800. I can't wait until September to get this started! Let's hope that they accept me! I should find out within a few months!

After yesterday's post on being impatient to enroll in my company's 401k, today I found that I was finally "in the system" and could enroll! I eagerly got to the screen where I could indicate I wanted to save 15% of my pretax income. Then came the fund allocation screen....

Crap. I wasn't 100% prepared for this despite it being on my to-do list from about a week ago. I do have a loose plan of what I want to do, but haven't figure out how to align my three accounts into one asset allocation.

My overall goal for my asset allocation goal is as follows:

• Stocks/Bonds: 88%/12%
• Within stocks, Domestic/International: 60%/40%
• Within Domestic, Large Cap/Small Cap/REIT: 75%/15%/15%

I also would like 10% of my international allocations in emerging markets, and someday I may want to do something fancier with bonds as I hear a lot about TIPS and Treasury and things I don't know anything about (right now I just use a bond index fund).

Overall, this breaks down to 6 funds allocated as follows:

• Large Cap 37%
• Small Cap 8%
• REIT 8%
• Int. Index 32%
• Emerg. Mkts 4%
• Bond Idx 12%

Do you think I'm missing anything important?

There are some issues with this right now. It is pretty impossible for me to actually get the 4% emerging markets allocation or even the 8% REIT allocation. I don't have those options in my 401k, and Vanguard requires minimum investments of $3000, which is currently 15% of my portfolio. Besides, I don't really know exactly what my current allocation is, mostly because Fidelity's 2040 fund has about a zillion different holdings.

So, what is my plan? First, I need to move both my Roth IRA and old 401k to Vanguard, while rolling the 401k to an IRA. Then I want to roll $5000 of the 401k into the Roth. Why just $5000? Because I don't want to get hit with taxes on the full $15k this year. I figure I'll roll it into my Roth over a period of 2-3 years, hurrying it along if it becomes necessary (meaning, if I end up planning to get married before then, as the income limits are harder to meet if you aren't single). Perhaps more on the rollover later, as I contemplate all the implications of it.

Within the Roth, I want to buy $3000 of the REIT index fund, and put the rest in the Vangaurd 2040 fund (which does have a small percent emerging markets). I'll then set my future contributions to the 2040 fund and most likely put my old 401k into the 2040 fund as well. When my portfolio grows more, I may invest more into the emerging markets fund, but probably not any time in 2008.

Last I'll use the index funds in my 401k to balance out my other allocations (small cap, large cap, index, and bonds) as closely as I can to my goal.

What do you think? I do want to have real estate be part of my portfolio, as I don't own property and don't plan on it soon. Should I just wait on the REITs until I can keep them a smaller percent of the portfolio? Or, given the housing market, will they decline all on their own, so I won't have to worry?? :)

In a side note, I temporarily regretted posting anything about my relationship yesterday. People sometimes jump to conclusions based on limited information. I wrote a post detailing things, intending to "clear up" some things. It was wordy and not very personal finance related anyway, so I'll just say it in a concise fashion. It's been 3.5 years. When we were both students, we split things fairly evenly. He would never need a loan from me and is good with money, and will most likely be very successful (someday). He really is on a tight budget as we live in an expensive city. He does pay for things now and then, including dinners, just not this weekend. He spent hours helping me set up my furniture and hang pictures and is really helpful with that kind of thing. I eat his food when I'm at his place (but my food is so much better!) We discussed it briefly, he acknowledged it, and I'll see if it is an issue in the future. If so, I will write about it, but I have to remind myself not to get (too) defensive about the comments!

I still can't sign up for my company's 401k, but not because I'm ineligible. You are eligible immediately (and vested immediately too!), though they a pension plan too which takes a year to be eligible and 5 years to vest.

I can't sign up because the website doesn't recognize my userid. I'm not "in the system" despite already getting a huge packet of information from them. Since I'm not in the system, when I call them, they are totally helpless:
"I can't take your password over the phone, you have to go through the system and punch it in"
"I did. But I wasn't given any menu options, so I pressed zero for help."
"Well. I can put you back through the system, and you can enter your password."
". . . But that obviously didn't work."

Gah! They did say it may take 7-10 days to become active. If they mean business days, it has been seven. If they mean actual days, it has been 11. I'll give it until the end of the week....

But I'm really anxious to start contributing! I'm going to see if I can handle contributing 15% of my income. If I do that, I'll be able to get about $10k in my 401k and 5k in my Roth, for a total of 15k of my money in retirement contributions for 2008, just over 21% of my gross income. There also should be roughly 4k from the company match. Barring an ever declining market, that should almost double my account value in 2008! However, with such a shaky market and all this recession talk, I specifically set my goals in dollars of contributions, not account value. Go long term investing!

I think 15% will be a stretch for me, at least while I'm growing the e-fund. I varied between 12% and 15% at my last job, and rent was much lower. We'll have to see how it goes. My budget says I can do it, but I'm not much of a budgeter.

While I'm waiting, I've been putting a little extra in my Roth IRA to get the year started off on the right foot.

So, you aren't supposed to keep score in relationships. Still, I can't help it sometimes.

My boyfriend is a poor poor grad student who makes less than half of what I do (stipend). My savings is going up, his is staying flat at best. Naturally, I don't expect him to spend much on us. He is content with not going out to eat much and living quite cheaply, which is great for us in the long run because I'm fairly frugal too. We should never have problems living within our means. Still, sometimes I want treats, so I provide them for us.

This weekend (starting on Thursday) I paid for:
Pizza: $13, a good deal though, for 3 medium pizza's that fed us almost all weekend. I will say nothing about the healthfulness of it...
Sam Adam's White Ale: $14
Lunch at Ikea: $11 (though my fault, since we wouldn't have otherwise been at Ikea and he was helping me pick out and build stuff)
Random Food that we ate: Coffee, cereal, milk, juice, burritos from Trader Joe's.... Plus he made a smoothie that neither of us really needed/wanted (which was much to thick) with my frozen strawberries right before dinner for no logical reason!

Also, he doesn't have a car, so I'm always driving and using my gas. And he definitely ate/drank more of all that stuff than I did.

It isn't that I'm not generous with this kind of thing. I am actually quite generous: "Thanks for coming to Ikea... do you want to stop at the cafe? How about this Mango Sorbet too, that looks delicious!" Then I do my budget, see that I want to save more, then regret my generosity. Ooops.

Then again, how petty is it for me to quibble about $37 spent on "us" when i spent about $200 on me and my apartment at Ikea? It is hard to justify that.

I guess it's the principle rather than the dollar amount. When we stopped at the store to buy juice (potentially for future smoothies or to mix in drinks), he could have paid for it. It was only about $3, so it makes no difference in the scheme of things, but it makes me feel a little less like I'm being taken advantage of. I know that really isn't the case... I offer to do all these things and he would be fine if I stopped. Sometimes I can't help but be bothered by it though.

I guess I need to be careful with my generosity, and really think about it before I offer to pay for things for "us". I need to make sure I won't regret it. Spending money doesn't show love (though, I can't help but think it does, at least a little). I think (hope) that my attitude would be different if we were engaged/married and money spent on us was truly ours and not mine/his. I also think his attitude would be a little different as well. But it just isn't like that right now. It is my money, and if I'm going to share it, I need to make sure I'm sharing it within my budget.

I'm quite certain that I wasn't tagged for this, but I saw a few other bloggers doing it and it seemed fun. I don't use a traditional wallet. For better or worse, I use a little wristlet that my sister gave me. I stick it in my purse, or if I'm traveling light I put it on my wrist and don't carry a purse . While it doesn't have the organizational capabilities of a wallet, I don't carry too much with me, so it works well.


What is there?

• Drivers License: I just got this about a week ago. I heart California! Also, I so wish I wouldn't have worn red, as it sort of clashes with the yellow background.
  
• Cash: I usually don't carry any cash, but I happened to hit the ATM a few days before, so I have $23. I also have some quarters, which I hoard for laundry money.
• Credit Cards: My awesome pink Discover Card, and a Chase Visa. Also a seldom used Wells Fargo debit card, and a Health Savings Account debit card from my HSA at my last job.
• Library Card: Brand new! No, I'm not afraid that you know that I live somewhere in the vast LA area.
• Ralph's receipt: It is for Orange Juice. Trader Joe's was all out of OJ (well, out of the $3 kind, they did have a $5.50 jug) so we swung into Ralph's. I don't need this receipt. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought OJ. To some skeptical friend, "Don't even act like I didn't get that OJ. I've got the documentation right here. It's in my file at home. Under O." (So much funnier coming from the late Mitch Hedberg, but if you got that reference, I automatically like you extra.)
• H&M Gift card: It has less than $5 on it, but I put it in there hoping I'll use it someday...
• AAA card: Because my parents love me and got it for me. Personally, I'd probably join the much greener Better World Club.

I don't tag you, but if you think this seems fun, feel free to participate!

So.... If you are observant, you might have noticed earlier this week I requested to be added to the blog roll of anyone who regularly reads this, yet didn't follow through on my promise to create one myself. I'm a bad person! But I have an excuse: I think I'm moving to wordpress, but I'm just not quite ready to move in over there. I hate that you can't edit the CSS for free, but let's be honest... I don't want to deal with editing the code anyway. I'll get this taken care of SOON, either way.

I consider myself reasonably successful, and I hope to continue down the road to success as I get older. Trent over at the The Simple Dollar recently wrote an interesting post in which he shares some tips to improve your life. In light of this, I want to share with you exactly how I got to where I am today, and outline how you can do even better than I did! Here are the main four things I did right to get where I am today:

Luck: I was born in the USA, lucky me! I think that is the single most important thing to my success (though other first world countries could have been acceptable).

Family: We were not in poverty, though there were some money issues at times. That helps a heck of a lot when trying to get through life. I was well fed and actually went to a private high school. Most of all, there was a ton of emotional support. My dad in particular placed high priority on education, as he did not finish college himself. We were encouraged to participate in extra-curricular activities, and my parents shelled out for a lot of lessons, sports and extra classes. I used to go to summer school for fun to take extra classes! They provided some minor monetary support in college, and allowed me to stay at home rent free while for a couple semesters.

Natural ability: Not everyone can get through the engineering coursework with good grades. I'm not meaning to be arrogant--there are a ton of things that I stink at. But my ability to understand math is genetic--I did nothing special to earn it.

Hard work: I have spent many many hours investing in my education and myself. It isn't always fun, but it is rewarding.

To a lesser degree, the following two things helped:

Federal Support: I received scholarships and financial aid to attend college. Without it, I'd be at least 20k more in student loan debt. For a state school!

Social connections: I got the interview for my current job because my boyfriend was going to a top grad school, met someone who worked here, and passed on my resume. Most people who work here are from big name schools. Not I! Other than that, I didn't get a lot of advantages from social connections, yet. My parents don't have powerful friends, nor did I go to a prestigious school. But I've seen it happen with others a lot.

Based in my successes, I have three surefire tips for success. You'll may have to combine these with hard work to guarantee success. Still, with just a little work, you'll have a good shot at a successful life if you do these three things:

1. Be born in a good country. Even better, pick a good neighborhood, and maybe consider avoiding being a minority group. You could even consider being male, though I wasn't and don't want to be!
2. Have a good family. The more money the easier it will be for you, but even more importantly, they have to care about you. Not only that, they must have the time and knowledge to invest in your future, as well as the ability to lead you along in your early years. And maybe in your young adult years too, if you are lucky!
   
3. Be gifted. Intelligence is a good gift to have, or perhaps extreme artistic talent. Both would be great, but there are some other options I'm sure. Have some charisma and a go-getter personality. While you are at it, make sure you are healthy and it wouldn't hurt to be attractive too.

What, you don't like my advice? Okay, okay... Then I suggest you read Trent's good advice that can actually be followed, no matter what has happened with my three tips!

All joking aside, hard work is very important and can help a lot of people. What about "working smart"? Personally, that term gets on my nerves. I think it is overused and largely meaningless. However, if you think you can find a way to "work smart", go for it. If you don't really understand what "work smart" means in your life (I don't!) just work hard while you are contemplating it.

My point is, you do have to play your cards right, but it is silly to pretend we all got a similar hand.

I have been using two online savings accounts for about a year, ING and HSBC. Both have been dropping rates like crazy, and neither are very competitive anymore. There simply are better options out there. I'm not going to stand for this anymore!

I did a little research, and decided to switch to the Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund to house the majority of my savings. It currently has a yield of 4.22%. While are HYSAs and CDs out there with better rates, they aren't consistently higher. I'm not going to rate chase. This is a solid account that has continually been competitive to HYSA. I first did the analysis last summer, and the tax free money market account actually came out ahead of any savings account. Try out this awesome calculator to compare. These days, the taxable account is a better deal for me. I was wavering between EmigrantDirect (solid reviews, solid rates) and Vanguard, and honestly the final decision was sort of impulsive. I figure I'll eventually roll over my 401k into an IRA there, and move my Roth from Fidelity... So it will simplify my finances in the long run.

I funded it with $4000 to start, about half of my HSBC balance. I already have a lot of stuff linked up with my HSBC account, so I'm waiting to completely pull the plug on it... But it will happen. I already set up my Vanguard account for direct deposit and will be sending my tax refund there as well.

What about ING? Well I'm not too impressed with them either, but they will be staying around. I'll be using them for some shorter term savings (car insurance, travel fund) and for now, for my student loan payback account and new car fund. Why? I like the subaccounts. Yeah, I can do it in excel. Whatever, I don't want to. For such small balances I'm not as concerned about getting the best rate.

Why else? The $10 referral bonuses and the sweepstakes I am entered in for using direct deposit. So it's lame to trade interest rates for sweepstakes... but whatever, you'll be jealous when I win $30,000!

I think I mentioned I'm re-applying to graduate school. I have 9/30 credits completed (through distance education while working) at "University A", in the state I formerly lived in. I could continue on this path, taking 3 credits a semester (6 a year) and graduate in 3.5 years. University A is usually ranked in the 30s or 40s in my field.

My new job is more flexible about where you do your education. (Actually, they'll pay for almost anything, even non-job related. I think I'm taking sailing this spring!) I now have access to another (distance education) program at "University B" a top 10 engineering college. Even better, they are on the quarter system, require just nine courses, and I can take four each year. They also will accept two transfer credits, meaning if they accept my application, I'll be done in under two years! It'll also be a boost to my resume, as I went to a relatively no-name undergrad university. It also probably will be a lot more work and a very difficult two years... but it should pay off big time in the long run.

I was already really sold on this idea but I just came up with yet another great benefit. At "University B", each class is four credits, which by their system would classify me as a "half time" student. So what does that mean? Well, my student loans are Federal Subsidized Stafford loans, meaning while I'm enrolled in school at least half time, the government will pay the interest for me. I could also completely cease making payments if I wanted, freeing up $133 extra each month to invest/save. WOW! (I'll have to decide exactly what I plan to do when/if this whole thing is a reality)

In dollar terms, what does this mean? Well, last month the interest on my loan was roughly $75, so if I'm in this program for roughly two years, it'll save me about $1800. I can't wait until September to get this started! Let's hope that they accept me! I should find out within a few months!

After yesterday's post on being impatient to enroll in my company's 401k, today I found that I was finally "in the system" and could enroll! I eagerly got to the screen where I could indicate I wanted to save 15% of my pretax income. Then came the fund allocation screen....

Crap. I wasn't 100% prepared for this despite it being on my to-do list from about a week ago. I do have a loose plan of what I want to do, but haven't figure out how to align my three accounts into one asset allocation.

My overall goal for my asset allocation goal is as follows:

• Stocks/Bonds: 88%/12%
• Within stocks, Domestic/International: 60%/40%
• Within Domestic, Large Cap/Small Cap/REIT: 75%/15%/15%

I also would like 10% of my international allocations in emerging markets, and someday I may want to do something fancier with bonds as I hear a lot about TIPS and Treasury and things I don't know anything about (right now I just use a bond index fund).

Overall, this breaks down to 6 funds allocated as follows:

• Large Cap 37%
• Small Cap 8%
• REIT 8%
• Int. Index 32%
• Emerg. Mkts 4%
• Bond Idx 12%

Do you think I'm missing anything important?

There are some issues with this right now. It is pretty impossible for me to actually get the 4% emerging markets allocation or even the 8% REIT allocation. I don't have those options in my 401k, and Vanguard requires minimum investments of $3000, which is currently 15% of my portfolio. Besides, I don't really know exactly what my current allocation is, mostly because Fidelity's 2040 fund has about a zillion different holdings.

So, what is my plan? First, I need to move both my Roth IRA and old 401k to Vanguard, while rolling the 401k to an IRA. Then I want to roll $5000 of the 401k into the Roth. Why just $5000? Because I don't want to get hit with taxes on the full $15k this year. I figure I'll roll it into my Roth over a period of 2-3 years, hurrying it along if it becomes necessary (meaning, if I end up planning to get married before then, as the income limits are harder to meet if you aren't single). Perhaps more on the rollover later, as I contemplate all the implications of it.

Within the Roth, I want to buy $3000 of the REIT index fund, and put the rest in the Vangaurd 2040 fund (which does have a small percent emerging markets). I'll then set my future contributions to the 2040 fund and most likely put my old 401k into the 2040 fund as well. When my portfolio grows more, I may invest more into the emerging markets fund, but probably not any time in 2008.

Last I'll use the index funds in my 401k to balance out my other allocations (small cap, large cap, index, and bonds) as closely as I can to my goal.

What do you think? I do want to have real estate be part of my portfolio, as I don't own property and don't plan on it soon. Should I just wait on the REITs until I can keep them a smaller percent of the portfolio? Or, given the housing market, will they decline all on their own, so I won't have to worry?? :)

In a side note, I temporarily regretted posting anything about my relationship yesterday. People sometimes jump to conclusions based on limited information. I wrote a post detailing things, intending to "clear up" some things. It was wordy and not very personal finance related anyway, so I'll just say it in a concise fashion. It's been 3.5 years. When we were both students, we split things fairly evenly. He would never need a loan from me and is good with money, and will most likely be very successful (someday). He really is on a tight budget as we live in an expensive city. He does pay for things now and then, including dinners, just not this weekend. He spent hours helping me set up my furniture and hang pictures and is really helpful with that kind of thing. I eat his food when I'm at his place (but my food is so much better!) We discussed it briefly, he acknowledged it, and I'll see if it is an issue in the future. If so, I will write about it, but I have to remind myself not to get (too) defensive about the comments!

I still can't sign up for my company's 401k, but not because I'm ineligible. You are eligible immediately (and vested immediately too!), though they a pension plan too which takes a year to be eligible and 5 years to vest.

I can't sign up because the website doesn't recognize my userid. I'm not "in the system" despite already getting a huge packet of information from them. Since I'm not in the system, when I call them, they are totally helpless:
"I can't take your password over the phone, you have to go through the system and punch it in"
"I did. But I wasn't given any menu options, so I pressed zero for help."
"Well. I can put you back through the system, and you can enter your password."
". . . But that obviously didn't work."

Gah! They did say it may take 7-10 days to become active. If they mean business days, it has been seven. If they mean actual days, it has been 11. I'll give it until the end of the week....

But I'm really anxious to start contributing! I'm going to see if I can handle contributing 15% of my income. If I do that, I'll be able to get about $10k in my 401k and 5k in my Roth, for a total of 15k of my money in retirement contributions for 2008, just over 21% of my gross income. There also should be roughly 4k from the company match. Barring an ever declining market, that should almost double my account value in 2008! However, with such a shaky market and all this recession talk, I specifically set my goals in dollars of contributions, not account value. Go long term investing!

I think 15% will be a stretch for me, at least while I'm growing the e-fund. I varied between 12% and 15% at my last job, and rent was much lower. We'll have to see how it goes. My budget says I can do it, but I'm not much of a budgeter.

While I'm waiting, I've been putting a little extra in my Roth IRA to get the year started off on the right foot.

So, you aren't supposed to keep score in relationships. Still, I can't help it sometimes.

My boyfriend is a poor poor grad student who makes less than half of what I do (stipend). My savings is going up, his is staying flat at best. Naturally, I don't expect him to spend much on us. He is content with not going out to eat much and living quite cheaply, which is great for us in the long run because I'm fairly frugal too. We should never have problems living within our means. Still, sometimes I want treats, so I provide them for us.

This weekend (starting on Thursday) I paid for:
Pizza: $13, a good deal though, for 3 medium pizza's that fed us almost all weekend. I will say nothing about the healthfulness of it...
Sam Adam's White Ale: $14
Lunch at Ikea: $11 (though my fault, since we wouldn't have otherwise been at Ikea and he was helping me pick out and build stuff)
Random Food that we ate: Coffee, cereal, milk, juice, burritos from Trader Joe's.... Plus he made a smoothie that neither of us really needed/wanted (which was much to thick) with my frozen strawberries right before dinner for no logical reason!

Also, he doesn't have a car, so I'm always driving and using my gas. And he definitely ate/drank more of all that stuff than I did.

It isn't that I'm not generous with this kind of thing. I am actually quite generous: "Thanks for coming to Ikea... do you want to stop at the cafe? How about this Mango Sorbet too, that looks delicious!" Then I do my budget, see that I want to save more, then regret my generosity. Ooops.

Then again, how petty is it for me to quibble about $37 spent on "us" when i spent about $200 on me and my apartment at Ikea? It is hard to justify that.

I guess it's the principle rather than the dollar amount. When we stopped at the store to buy juice (potentially for future smoothies or to mix in drinks), he could have paid for it. It was only about $3, so it makes no difference in the scheme of things, but it makes me feel a little less like I'm being taken advantage of. I know that really isn't the case... I offer to do all these things and he would be fine if I stopped. Sometimes I can't help but be bothered by it though.

I guess I need to be careful with my generosity, and really think about it before I offer to pay for things for "us". I need to make sure I won't regret it. Spending money doesn't show love (though, I can't help but think it does, at least a little). I think (hope) that my attitude would be different if we were engaged/married and money spent on us was truly ours and not mine/his. I also think his attitude would be a little different as well. But it just isn't like that right now. It is my money, and if I'm going to share it, I need to make sure I'm sharing it within my budget.

I'm quite certain that I wasn't tagged for this, but I saw a few other bloggers doing it and it seemed fun. I don't use a traditional wallet. For better or worse, I use a little wristlet that my sister gave me. I stick it in my purse, or if I'm traveling light I put it on my wrist and don't carry a purse . While it doesn't have the organizational capabilities of a wallet, I don't carry too much with me, so it works well.


What is there?

• Drivers License: I just got this about a week ago. I heart California! Also, I so wish I wouldn't have worn red, as it sort of clashes with the yellow background.
  
• Cash: I usually don't carry any cash, but I happened to hit the ATM a few days before, so I have $23. I also have some quarters, which I hoard for laundry money.
• Credit Cards: My awesome pink Discover Card, and a Chase Visa. Also a seldom used Wells Fargo debit card, and a Health Savings Account debit card from my HSA at my last job.
• Library Card: Brand new! No, I'm not afraid that you know that I live somewhere in the vast LA area.
• Ralph's receipt: It is for Orange Juice. Trader Joe's was all out of OJ (well, out of the $3 kind, they did have a $5.50 jug) so we swung into Ralph's. I don't need this receipt. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought OJ. To some skeptical friend, "Don't even act like I didn't get that OJ. I've got the documentation right here. It's in my file at home. Under O." (So much funnier coming from the late Mitch Hedberg, but if you got that reference, I automatically like you extra.)
• H&M Gift card: It has less than $5 on it, but I put it in there hoping I'll use it someday...
• AAA card: Because my parents love me and got it for me. Personally, I'd probably join the much greener Better World Club.

I don't tag you, but if you think this seems fun, feel free to participate!

So.... If you are observant, you might have noticed earlier this week I requested to be added to the blog roll of anyone who regularly reads this, yet didn't follow through on my promise to create one myself. I'm a bad person! But I have an excuse: I think I'm moving to wordpress, but I'm just not quite ready to move in over there. I hate that you can't edit the CSS for free, but let's be honest... I don't want to deal with editing the code anyway. I'll get this taken care of SOON, either way.

I consider myself reasonably successful, and I hope to continue down the road to success as I get older. Trent over at the The Simple Dollar recently wrote an interesting post in which he shares some tips to improve your life. In light of this, I want to share with you exactly how I got to where I am today, and outline how you can do even better than I did! Here are the main four things I did right to get where I am today:

Luck: I was born in the USA, lucky me! I think that is the single most important thing to my success (though other first world countries could have been acceptable).

Family: We were not in poverty, though there were some money issues at times. That helps a heck of a lot when trying to get through life. I was well fed and actually went to a private high school. Most of all, there was a ton of emotional support. My dad in particular placed high priority on education, as he did not finish college himself. We were encouraged to participate in extra-curricular activities, and my parents shelled out for a lot of lessons, sports and extra classes. I used to go to summer school for fun to take extra classes! They provided some minor monetary support in college, and allowed me to stay at home rent free while for a couple semesters.

Natural ability: Not everyone can get through the engineering coursework with good grades. I'm not meaning to be arrogant--there are a ton of things that I stink at. But my ability to understand math is genetic--I did nothing special to earn it.

Hard work: I have spent many many hours investing in my education and myself. It isn't always fun, but it is rewarding.

To a lesser degree, the following two things helped:

Federal Support: I received scholarships and financial aid to attend college. Without it, I'd be at least 20k more in student loan debt. For a state school!

Social connections: I got the interview for my current job because my boyfriend was going to a top grad school, met someone who worked here, and passed on my resume. Most people who work here are from big name schools. Not I! Other than that, I didn't get a lot of advantages from social connections, yet. My parents don't have powerful friends, nor did I go to a prestigious school. But I've seen it happen with others a lot.

Based in my successes, I have three surefire tips for success. You'll may have to combine these with hard work to guarantee success. Still, with just a little work, you'll have a good shot at a successful life if you do these three things:

1. Be born in a good country. Even better, pick a good neighborhood, and maybe consider avoiding being a minority group. You could even consider being male, though I wasn't and don't want to be!
2. Have a good family. The more money the easier it will be for you, but even more importantly, they have to care about you. Not only that, they must have the time and knowledge to invest in your future, as well as the ability to lead you along in your early years. And maybe in your young adult years too, if you are lucky!
   
3. Be gifted. Intelligence is a good gift to have, or perhaps extreme artistic talent. Both would be great, but there are some other options I'm sure. Have some charisma and a go-getter personality. While you are at it, make sure you are healthy and it wouldn't hurt to be attractive too.

What, you don't like my advice? Okay, okay... Then I suggest you read Trent's good advice that can actually be followed, no matter what has happened with my three tips!

All joking aside, hard work is very important and can help a lot of people. What about "working smart"? Personally, that term gets on my nerves. I think it is overused and largely meaningless. However, if you think you can find a way to "work smart", go for it. If you don't really understand what "work smart" means in your life (I don't!) just work hard while you are contemplating it.

My point is, you do have to play your cards right, but it is silly to pretend we all got a similar hand.

I have been using two online savings accounts for about a year, ING and HSBC. Both have been dropping rates like crazy, and neither are very competitive anymore. There simply are better options out there. I'm not going to stand for this anymore!

I did a little research, and decided to switch to the Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund to house the majority of my savings. It currently has a yield of 4.22%. While are HYSAs and CDs out there with better rates, they aren't consistently higher. I'm not going to rate chase. This is a solid account that has continually been competitive to HYSA. I first did the analysis last summer, and the tax free money market account actually came out ahead of any savings account. Try out this awesome calculator to compare. These days, the taxable account is a better deal for me. I was wavering between EmigrantDirect (solid reviews, solid rates) and Vanguard, and honestly the final decision was sort of impulsive. I figure I'll eventually roll over my 401k into an IRA there, and move my Roth from Fidelity... So it will simplify my finances in the long run.

I funded it with $4000 to start, about half of my HSBC balance. I already have a lot of stuff linked up with my HSBC account, so I'm waiting to completely pull the plug on it... But it will happen. I already set up my Vanguard account for direct deposit and will be sending my tax refund there as well.

What about ING? Well I'm not too impressed with them either, but they will be staying around. I'll be using them for some shorter term savings (car insurance, travel fund) and for now, for my student loan payback account and new car fund. Why? I like the subaccounts. Yeah, I can do it in excel. Whatever, I don't want to. For such small balances I'm not as concerned about getting the best rate.

Why else? The $10 referral bonuses and the sweepstakes I am entered in for using direct deposit. So it's lame to trade interest rates for sweepstakes... but whatever, you'll be jealous when I win $30,000!