One of the investing lessons I learned the hard way involves taxes. When I first started investing outside of retirement accounts, I didn’t consider how tax efficient the funds were that I had selected. For starters, I was only investing about $100 a month. And because I had no intention of selling [...]
Looking at the website design of ChoiceTrade.com, you may be wondering if it can compete with more prevalent online discount brokers like TradeKing and Scottrade. Never judging a book by its cover, if you decide to dig down beneath the surface, you’ll find that ChoiceTrade.com has built a very impressive trading platform and can offer [...]
Online discount brokers have a variety of resources that are the average investor might not know about. One of those resources is housing your Independent Retirement Account, commonly known as your IRA. Whether you are looking to open a traditional IRA, Roth IRA, rollover or SEP IRA, an IRA is an excellent way to set [...]
The other day I was talking with a good friend named Adam about options trading. Adam use to work for a pension fund, but now crunches housing data for a think tank in Washington, D.C. When it comes to investing, he is one of the smartest guys I know, and he’s done very [...]
A relatively unknown broker in the online space, OptionsXpress offers more to trading than their name would lead you to believe. Founded a decade ago in 2000, OptionsXpress prides itself not only in its technology but its wide variety of educational tools to help both experienced and inexperienced investors. And since it has won [...]
Dave Ramsey espouses 7 “Baby Steps” to get your finances back on track. Step #4 is to save 15% of your income in a 401(k), IRA, or other retirement account. A reader recently asked an interesting question about what to do when his 401(k) limits his investments to 10% of his salary and [...]
Of all the online discount brokers that we have reviewed, ShareBuilder is the most unique. Acquired by ING Direct in December of 2007, Sharebuilder is not your run of the mill online discount broker. Without the use of brokers or stock professionals in-house, ShareBuilder has still become one of the best options for consumers within [...]
When you think of inflation protected bonds, you probably think of TIPS. But did you know that I Bonds are also adjusted for inflation? There are, however, significant differences between TIPS and I-Bonds. Treasury Direct, which has a wealth of information on U.S. bonds, has created a handy chart explaining the difference [...]
If you’ve spent any time evaluating mutual funds, you have probably run across the concept of value investing. Mutual funds are often described as being a value fund, a growth fund, or a blend of both. Understanding what these concepts mean and applying them to your investment decisions can have a significant impact [...]
