My Investing Notebook :: Learning from the pros; making decisions on my own. ::

The Wall Street Journal has an article about personal finance blogs. I subscribed through couple of them with Bloglines.com. Some of them look good, so take a look.

By the way, WSJ.com is my favorite daily newspaper. I read it every day before work. It’s not cheap ($80/year; I pay $40 because I also have a subscription to Barron’s), but it is worth every penny. I like to get my information from the most reliable source.

I used to like Scottrade a lot. Where else do you get free Mutual Fund investing? Where else do you get no inactivity charge? No longer at Scottrade, I’m sorry to say. Scottrade limited the number of no-transaction mutual funds from 9000 to 900. I found out about this yesterday. For a while, I thought that I might have to stick to the 900 they have. Just wait, Stas. I found out about FirstTrade. You basically get old Scottrade: $7 trades; FREE mutual-fund trading; no inactivity fee. I am switching over my IRA accounts and one other personal account to FirstTrade. (I use InteractiveBrokers as my main account, of course — can’t beat $1 trades.)

Here are the four best indicators for tracking the economy, as recommended by Money magazine.

Follow these indicators and you’ll be as well informed as many professional investors.

Bureau of Labor Statisticts employment report (available bls.gov/ces), which tracks job creation.

The ISM Reports on Business (ism.ws), which take the pulse of the nation痴 industrial and service sectors by surveying executives in fields ranging from agriculture to retailing.

Consumer Confidence Index (conference-board.org), which gives a sense of consumers� willingness to spend and thus spur economic growth.

U.S. Leading Index (also at conference-board.org), a compilation of 10 economic indicators designed to predict how the economy will be behaving three months down the road

Bankrate (bankrate.com) has some pretty good Frequently Asked Questions answered about a 401(k) account: basic but fundamental. Check it out if you are unsure what to do when you change your job; when you can take a loan on 401(k) — yes, you can; how to allocate money in 401(k); how to diversify; and more.

FAQ about 401(k)sBy Bankrate.com

InvestorGuide.com pulls content from the best financial sites on the Web. News and commentary are posted on the front page, with links to additional news sites. A simple portfolio is provided by Barchart.com, and a drop-down list takes you to a wrap-up of current market activity. Enter a ticker symbol, and you can choose from a list of sources that provide pretty comprehensive research data, linking directly to the appropriate page. If you don’t have a favorite research site and would prefer to sample the best, this is a great place to do it. [Excerpt from Barron's]

This is my favorite business magazine. It is published weekly, so it gives you timely information on the economy and the markets. It is very reliable (I’m subscribed to other magazines, but this one stands out as the winner in that category). It covers other areas, like news & technology. And it gives you yearly company rankings and lots more. If I had to pick one financial magazine, I would pick Business Week.

If you want to get it, search for it on Ebay (~$10/year); or get it free for 6 months from MagazineOutlet.com; or, even better, get a year free from My Bonus Center here. For the latter two, you must pay up front and call before the term expires to get your money back.

Investopedia.com: Financial Dictionary

For those of you who need to understand financial and accounting terms inEnglish this financial dictionary will be extremely useful. The dictionary hasseveral categories including buzz words (phrases whose meaning is unrelated to the words that make up the phrase) and terminology related to trading and taxes, among others.

Elsewhere on the Investopedia.com site are tutorials and lessons on finance andinvestments for students and others interested in the topic.

Pretty good resource — I came across it recently.

Forty-two percent of workers cash out their 401(k) retirement savings when they leave their jobs and take their accounts with them, according to Time. Big mistake. When you cash out, you pay taxes in your tax-bracket and a penalty of 10% of the accounts value (if you’re less than 60)! Also, your money no longer grows tax-deferred.

What you should do is roll the money into an IRA or your new employer’s 401(k), or leave it in the old employer’s plan — if it’s over $5K, your old employer is required, if you wish, to keep the account open.

Some information about taxes, which I found-out about recently. I thought that if you are in a 25% tax-bracket and you make, let’s say, $60K, you would pay $15,000 (25% * 60K) in taxes (oh, that seems a lot). Fortunately, it does not work that way: if you’re married (similar if you’re single, only the numbers change — see below for your bracket), you pay 15% for the first $56,800 (bracket below 25%), and pay 25% on $3,200 (60K – 56,800); so that comes out to $9320 ($8520 + $800) — still a lot but better than $15K!

Another, similar, misconception (I thought that way also) is the notion that your tax will suddenly increase by a huge amount when you move into a higher tax bracket. For example, if your taxable income is in the 15% bracket, but just a few dollars below the 27% bracket, you might be concerned that earning a few dollars more will cause you to pay a lot more in tax. Relax. The first $100 dollars you earn in the 27% bracket will cause your tax to increase by $27. You still pay only 15% on all the money you earned below the 27% bracket.

Here are current, 2003, tax brackets.
If you’re single, see your tax bracket here.

See a whole article (where I got the information from) here.