Money and Finance

[canuckcutie]

I work with someone who admits she generally files late and owes money! So she's subject to penalties and interest! Why give the government even more of your money!

I'm always looking to be savvier about money and investing. Anyone know of good sites/blogs that they'd recommend?

[chonies]

I like Get Rich Slowly, although a lot of finance stuff is over my head. I also like The Color of Money column from the Washington Post. And despite their horrifying Feed the Pig ads, I do like the 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy site.

[chonies]

Here's a real estate question, but a boring one (and I apologize if I've asked before, but I can't find the answer...if I did, in fact, ask it). What happens to your property value if someone builds a giant (>3000 sq ft) house across the street from your 1960s 1400 sq ft brick rambler?

[ladyboy]

In an unhelpful answer, I would say it depends. I'm thinking about my parents' neighborhood, which is nice but from the 60s. Some people are starting to buy to teardown and build something newer and bigger. I guess if the neighborhood is desirable it could start a trend for teardowns and make your smaller, older property more attractive as a teardown option instead of to live in. I see this at the beach town we go to as well - the small cottages get ripped up and a big thing is built instead. The price of the cottage is still pretty damn high though, because people are paying for the location and not the building itself. So I'd say if the neighborhood is in demand, it will probably be a good thing for property values.

[chonies]

Hmm... I don't know how desirable it is. It's an established neighborhood, mostly owner-occupied, and pretty central, although it's a small town where everything is still pretty spread out with forced driving of short distances, and housing runs the gamut from gated McMansions to dilapidated to student housing. And it's a small city (about 55,000) in a bleh location that's not close to anything with a strangely inflated cost of living, so I don't know about big-picture desirable. It's kind of weird because the builders keep dismantling the house piece by piece. Literally--they disassembled the chimney brick by brick, and left the front facade and part of the east wall up so the remaining structure is L-shaped, but have broken out the original window frames to put in new windows. There is nothing left of the original floor plan or interior walls. We have no idea why they didn't raze it entirely, but I wonder if they get some sort of financial credit for renovating rather than a new build.

But thanks for the perspective! We bought the house two years ago, and since then it's dropped about $10,000 in appraisal estimates. Since I'm an idiot about real estate, I have a lot of questions.

[chonies]

Apr 19, 2015 16:39:04 GMT -4 canuckcutie said:

I work with someone who admits she generally files late and owes money! So she's subject to penalties and interest! Why give the government even more of your money!

I'm always looking to be savvier about money and investing. Anyone know of good sites/blogs that they'd recommend?

I am answering this two years later because I came here to post a question but then I googled to fact check something, and in the process of answering my own question, I found this website: Ride Free Fearless Money. She offers webinar classes for a completely reasonable price, IMO, of $39, and she focuses on women and LGBT issues. AND I found her because I googled, "should I divest from Capital One" and she had a post that was like, yes. LIke me, she had an ING account that was acquired by Capital One, whom she calls "one of the Death Stars of banking 🙁 ."

So, anyway, after about 30 minutes of poking through her site, I'm totally smitten and feel financially smarter, AND kind of validated--she mentioned that part of her reluctance in dumping her old account was nostalgia and a sort of loyalty. Money makes me very emotional, and I feel like HD speaks my language.

[Deleted]

Thanks for that info, chonies. I also still have old ING/now Capital One savings accounts, mostly letting it there for the convenience factor. I might look into Ally bank now.

[chonies]

You're welcome! I set up an ally* account this morning and it took a a maximum of 10 minutes. I got sucked into an old Law & Order so I might have lost some time to distraction.

Also, I called my mom to ask if I was crazy to have lots of little savings accounts. We agreed that if it worked it was a perfectly reasonable strategy and that I only need to keep track of them so I don't learn the hard way how forensic accounting works.

*stupid confusing branding--is it Ally or ally, and is it ally like someone whose got your back, or Ally, your gal pal who is an Allyson, Alexandra, or Algernonia?

[ladyboy]

I've had an Ally bank account for years for savings, and I love it. I wish their online deposit worked a little better, but I think they may have an app now that improves things. It used to be a scan thing and was always a pain.

I have a pile of money from our refi waiting to be spent on renovations. I had it in a 3 month CD, but that's coming due now. I think I'm just going to put it in a money market - there is one with a 1.something % interest rate, since I'll need to start drawing on it soon I hope. Anyone have any other, better ideas?

[prisma]

I'm starting a new job and discovered today that I can't contribute to the company's 401K until I've been employed there a year. I am freaked out about saving for retirement, so I'll need to put money in an IRA until I can get into the company 401K (when matching also kicks in). I hate dealing with financial stuff. I mentioned it to my dad, for whom investing is a hobby and he's taken a number of classes since retiring (although I don't know how good he is at it) and he offered to take care of it for me, and I wouldn't have to pay him a financial advisor fee. He starts talking about different funds and things...the type of stuff I have no interest in and hate to deal with. Here's the thing: I want to be able to earn as much as I can, but I also want to feel good about where the money is invested. My dad is a super right-wing Trump supporter, so I doubt he's up on ethically responsible investment opportunities. I want someone else to handle this for me, but I'm not sure if my dad is the best choice.

Does anyone who doesn't hate dealing with this kind of stuff have any advice for me?

ETA: I need to roll my 401K savings from my last employer into something new, so I would want to lump that into what I do in this next year with the IRA. Don't know if that makes a difference.