Recent Posts
My Open Wallet: A Personal Finance Blog about Money and Life in New York
Return To Blog Listing
An anonymous New Yorker tells the world how much money she earns, spends, and saves.
I am a 30-something single woman living in Brooklyn, NY. I write about how much money I make, what I spend it on, how much I save, how I budget, my home-buying experienc
Recent Posts Tagged With 'Retirement'
The Cost of Being Gay
The New York Times has a very interesting analysis on the higher costs gay couples (or unmarried heterosexual couples, in some cases, though they of course have the option to marry) may face for things like health insurance for a partner, having a ch...
Unintended Consequences: 401ks Mean Fewer Jobs for Young People
Interesting, this is something I hadn't really thought about: when people rely more on private retirement savings, they retire later, leaving fewer openings for younger workers to fill.A Reluctance to Retire Means Fewer OpeningsIn other parts of the ...
Finances and the Family: The Earlier Generations
Thank you all for your advice and kind wishes after reading my last post. Obviously the family finance issue is on my mind a lot, and one of the aspects I was mulling over last night was how these things slide from one generation to the next: my moth...
More Stories of Scary Financial Ignorance
This one from the NY Times Modern Love column is a doozy: When Bliss is a Mutual FundMY husband of 12 years, Pat, was supporting our little family of three with a series of acting and temp jobs that barely covered expenses or simply didn’t, which m...
What, Me Worry?
I've been blogging for almost 4 years now--during that time, I've not always been the most productive blogger, but I've gone through phases where I was full of ideas and I have well over 100 draft posts in various stages of completion, some dating ba...
What Should A Young Couple Invest In?
A reader writes in with this question:My fiance and I are getting married in Oct 2009. We have been together for 8 years now and we are both students. I am 23 and he is 22. We are both working on our masters degree and have accumulated students lo...
Debating the 401k
From the "Room for Debate" feature on the NY Times website:So Much for the 401(k). Now What?Below are a few outtakes from the various contributors: * Alicia H. Munnell, Center for Retirement Research * Jacob F. Kirkegaard, research fellow, Peters...
Looking at Japan's Stock Market
Ugh, this is the ugliest thing I've seen in a while:Japan's Long Slump Tests Faith in the Resilience of StocksI've been continuing to contribute to my 401k, and I still have a fairly aggressive blend of investments there. And with the kind of share p...
CD Maturity
I just had a 5-year CD mature. Often I'm pretty lazy about doing anything when this happens-- if you don't act, the bank just automatically rolls it over for the same term at whatever the current rate is. But given how things have been going lately, ...
Blasts from the Past
Three years ago today, I was writing about retirement books.Two years ago today, I linked the the Anonymous Lawyer's take on salaries.One year ago today, I didn't post, but the next time I did it was about proximity to wealth.Today, I could be linkin...
The Comeback Calculator
I just noticed this on the NY Times website: an interactive graphic where you can calculate how long it will take your portfolio to rebound to its peak level before the crash. I tried running the numbers for my 401k, which I think peaked at about $20...
That Mattress is Looking Pretty Good Right Now...
I was just pulling some info for my December 2008 wrap-up and happened to notice this summary info on my 401k statement:Contribution Summary, inception to date as of 12/31:Employee deferral $89,450.67 (deductions from my paycheck at my current job)Em...
The Candidates' Economic Proposals: IRA & 401k Withdrawals
The New York Times had a good side-by-side comparison yesterday of Obama and McCain's economic recovery plans and tax proposals. It's pretty much reproduced here.One thing that struck me was that both candidates are proposing to make some changes to ...
