Last year I found out that my employer was taking money out of my paycheck and sending it to a DCP when I worked over summers. I gained access to my account, and I moved all my money into the fund with the best performance that I could see. There was only a couple hundred dollars in the account so I didn't take it very seriously. Well, luckily for me, that fund was a Fidelity Income fund and was entirely invested in government bonds! In this economy I have made a 7% return on my investment!

Well now that I know a lot more and with my knowledge of the impending bond bubble burst, I just rebalanced my portfolio to only have 10% in bonds. I changed to a different fund with a lower expense ratio also. Hopefully I have played my cards right and in 2-3 years when I graduate and roll over that account, hopefully I will have seen decent growth. In the mean time, I'm using this fund as a testing ground for my own investing strategy (the rest of our retirement is invested according to my financial planner/brother's recommendations).

Hello all. Sorry for being silent. I was away at a conference for 5 days and then was crazy busy catching up.

So we received DH's paycheck, and they have taken out money for the upcoming furlough days. Somehow they justified taking out a higher pay rate than he actually gets paid. Don't ask me how they justified it. It's all Union contracts. So this month's budget is going to be $300 tighter than normal.

I'm pretty sure DH is going to be changing his specialization for his Masters. We looked at possible Education Technology jobs and he could easily earn 1.5-2x his current pay. This should also mean that we will hear if he is accepted by the end of the week. Hopefully that will mean hearing about financial aid sooner.

I started our Roth IRA this week, though I'm still waiting until the beginning of next month to fund it. We were delayed by the name change.

We have a lot of big expenses coming up from exciting weekends and planning for summer vacations, but I think our Frivolous spending account will cover it.

I had a nightmare last night that my parents could not afford to retire. They were selling their home in Southern California and moving to Florida. I was trying to convince them that they would be spending a lot o money traveling between California and Florida for at least three holidays a year.

Whether my dream had any logic to it, I still worry about their ability to retire. My mother recently broke her arm and had problems working while she recovered. I just worry so much because both of our parents are trying so hard to get enough money in the next few years to get near retirement. I just really don't want this for us. I really want to finish our home downpayment fund and up our retirement contributions. Only 1-2 years.

So H and I sat down tonight and worked a lot on our financial plan. Here are the changes:

1) We opened up a 36 month CD to for $15,000 of our house savings fund. This will earn us an additional $1,100 toward our goal.

2) We opened up another ING account. This one will be a Freedom Account to hold our savings toward large expenses such as insurance premiums and H's tuition. Now I don't have to worry about calculating that into my budget as a yearly expense.

3) We will be opening (tomorrow?) a Roth IRA. I feel kind of silly because we just went through a lot of trouble trying to open up a 403(b) through H's work and now we're going to stop funding it. I just realized (thanks to the forums)that with our income at a lifetime low, we would be better off paying the taxes now than when we retire. In addition we're unable to max out the IRA contributions right now as we save up for a house.

So I'm thinking we will use ING's ShareBuilder for the Roth IRA. Anyone got any experience or advice as to a good custodial company?

[ ] Get me onto H's Rx insurance ($15 per month savings)
[ ] Try out a digital envelope system (we have no cc problems so we charge everything and pay the balance)
[ ] Get district to pay extra paycheck for H's extracurricular work
[ ] Make sure address is changed for Costco (coupon book)
[ ] Move extra money in no interest checking to savings
[ ] First paycheck going into retirement!!