Entries Tagged 'Investments' ↓

The 2010 Traditional IRA Conversion loophole is the convenient name given to a part of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 that lifts the $100,000 income restriction on Traditional IRA conversions. Understanding it allows those earning more than than the Roth IRA income phaseouts to contribute to a Roth IRA.

The Roth IRA income phaseouts state that a single filer that earns between $101,000 and $116,000 in 2008 will not be able to contribute the full $5,000 towards their Roth IRA. However, the 2010 loophole presents an opportunity.

There are no income phaseouts for the Traditional IRA. Contributions to a Traditional IRA are usually income tax deductible, meaning you don’t pay taxes on contributions, and share the same contribution limits as the Roth IRA. In many instances, such as if the contributor has the option of participating in a 401k or similarly structure retirement, the contribution cannot be deducted.

Here’s the loophole. Contribute to a Traditional IRA, don’t deduct it from your taxes, and then convert it, mostly tax free, to a Roth IRA when the $100,000 income limit is lifted. This turns your Traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, all in one fell swoop.

It is important that you create a separate Traditional IRA account, one separate from any other IRAs, for bookkeeping purposes. Then, in 2010, convert it over. If you start mixing funds, the paperwork increases and the headaches do as well.

If you’ve been keeping tabs on your stock market investments and seeing a lot of red lately, you’re not alone. While we still have over six months before the end of the year, it doesn’t hurt to brush up on your capital gains and losses rules now, rather than in the last few weeks of the year.

Short term and long term capital gains are taxed at two different rates. Short term capital gains are taxed at your marginal tax rate. Long term capital gains are taxed at either 0%, 10% or 15% depending on your capital gains rate. You can have significant tax savings by waiting at least a year to sell your profitable positions.

When it comes short term and long term capital losses, you apply the loss against the same type of gain when you can, then you move towards short term. For example, if you have a long term capital gain of $1000 and a short term capital gain of $1000 and a long term capital loss of $1000, you reduce the long term gain by the amount of the long term loss. If you had the same gains but a short term capital loss of $1000, then you deduct it from your short term loss. If you had, instead, a short term loss of $1500, then the first $1000 goes against the short term gain with the last $500 going towards the loss.

If you don’t have enough gains for your losses, you can deduct up to $3000 of loss against your personal income. If you have more than $3000 of loss, you can push that forward indefinitely year after year.

If you have been thinking about laddering CDs, whether it’s just for your savings or if it’s for an emergency fund, here’s a pretty straightforward CD laddering tutorial detailing all the specifics of doing so.

Don’t get hung up on the rates of return or the use of ING Direct as the example, you can buy CDs from any bank or from multiple banks. ING Direct was simply used because it’s easy to get to their rates of return and they have great CD laddering online features.

Did you know that if you buy a treasury bill, such as a Series I or Series EE savings bond, at the end of the month, you get the interest for the entire month? Yep, it’s true and it’s a well known hack used by many a treasury investor. I’m not exactly sure why the government calculates it that way but that means you can actually hold a bond for 11 months and get “credit” for the full year.

For example, if you were to buy a savings bond today, you could redeem it April 1, 2009 (you can’t redeem a savings bond within a year). That’s 11 months, rather than the full twelve, because April 2008 counted as a full month even though you bought it on the last day.

If you ever intend to buy savings bonds, do so at the end of the month and double dip on the interest!

Sharebuilder is a great service where you can dollar cost average, “build your shares,” in companies you like at an affordable price. Sharebuilder, recently acquired by ING Direct, is made even greater since they offer you incentives for opening up an account. The typical bonus is a $50 bonus and you can find a comprehensive list of codes at this Sharebuilder promotion code post.

Some people have tried to open multiple accounts to get multiple promotions and been shut down. I’ve done so successful serveral times and the key is to be patient and open them up over time. If you open up 5 accounts in 2 days, it’ll draw attention and you will be reviewed. I did it, inadvertantly, over the course of months and had no problems.

One of my most popular posts on my personal finance blog, Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, was a post in which I explained how you could take $100 and turn it into $1470 through a relatively simple, but time consuming, process of promotions, referrals, and bonuses. The idea was that you could use the $100, which you could get through credit card promotions, to open up a Sharebuilder account, get the bonus, and then open up Bank of America and ING Direct accounts. Through those banks, you could refer your friends and earn commissions while your friends earned bonuses. After all was said and done, you could end up with around $1470 (now even more, but I haven’t refreshed the article lately).

It’s not a get rich quick, turn $100 into $1,000,000, but it’s a little more practical and something you coudl easily do.

First there was Prosper, now there’s a new kid on the block called LendingClub. LendingClub is another peer to peer lending marketplace where lenders can lend and borrowers can borrow, all in the same paradigm as existed at Prosper.

So, if it’s the same, why bother mentioning it? Well with another lending marketplace comes another promotion offer to entice you to join and lend (or borrow) some of your hard earned cash. If you sign up for LendingClub through that link, you get a bonus for joining and lending (or borrowing) and I get a bonus (the same bonus). The bonus is:

• $25 when your friend becomes a lender or borrower OR
• $50 when your friend opens a lender account with an initial deposit of $1,000 or more

So, join up, open an account and deposit $1,000, and get a quick 5% return with a $50 bonus. You may even be enticed to pick out a few loans to lend to!