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Simple IRA rollover

My old employer offered an IRA through Fidelity and I just passed the 2 year maturity date on that account. With Simple IRAs you have to wait 2 years before the funds are available to rollover. I’m sure regular investment accounts at Fidelity are fine, but this IRA was an “Advisor” account and I didn’t really have much control over it and the investment options were limited. Some of the fees are a little steep considering how much I have in the account. I think I just have a money market fund in it that hasn’t done much, but I did double my investment from the employer match.

The Fidelity IRA will be rolled over to a Traditional IRA at Vanguard and I’m contemplating putting the money into the Total International Stock Index Fund. I’ve got the Target Retirement 2045 in my Roth which is heavy in domestic large caps and only has 18% of its holdings in international stocks. I’d be willing to go a little higher than that, maybe 30-35% international. My rollover just barely meets the minimum $3000 in the international fund and maxing out my Roth IRA for 2008 would put my portfolio at 39% international. Next year I’ll buy more of the 2045 fund and bring that percent down.

If anybody is interested I put together a little spreadsheet to help calculate asset allocation based on a fund’s holdings. With funds of funds, this can be tough to figure out, especially if you have overlap in different funds. Since I’m in broad market index funds I don’t have to worry about being too heavy in a certain sector or single company.

Yeah yeah I know, index fund blah blah blah, asset allocation blah blah blah.

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Shared: Detaching From Material Possessions a Sign of Emotional and Financial Maturity

Shared from Google Reader:

Detaching From Material Possessions a Sign of Emotional and Financial Maturity

Makes you think about all the “stuff” we have and do we really need it. If I start riding my bike to work I’m going to have a truck I’ll drive occasionally on the weekend, but still pay a good chunk of change every month for it to sit there all week. Only 2 years left on the loan, but if I was starting a bike commute a year ago I’d probably be more serious about downgrading.

The Blarg is clearing out his DVD collection which makes me think I could do some house cleaning myself.

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Breaking down my gasoline consumption

With gas prices at their current levels people are hurting at the pump and even my 2.5 mile commute adds up. I usually go home for lunch so I’m driving 10 miles a day. Compared to the 50 miles I was doing one year ago I should be grateful my gas bill is as low as it is. The savings I’ve seen with a shorter commute aren’t quite as large as you’d think. The increased price of gas and lower mileage from city driving has doubled my cost per mile.

Gas prices have gone up considerably; here’s my data I’m collected over the past 2.5 years:
Price of Gas

Higher prices mean it costs more to drive a mile, no question there. Here’s my mileage over that same time period for my 2005 Toyota Tacoma 4 cylinder automatic:
MPG

When I started at the County last August two things happened: a tank of gas started lasting longer and my mileage plummeted. The short trip to and from work means my engine is operating at a less efficient temperature for a larger proportion of my commute. Coupled with stopping and idling at traffic lights I saw a 7-8 mpg decrease, that’s a very significant ~30% drop in mileage. My historic cost per mile looks like this:
Cost per mile

The double whammy of increased prices and lower mileage hurts. With my current cost per mile it costs me $2.20 to drive to work everyday. Doesn’t seem like much, but that adds up to about $550 per year. That’s just to get to work, that doesn’t include driving anywhere fun.

I’m going to go through a series of post analyzing my energy costs and figuring out ways to reduce them. What’s your daily commute cost you? Simple formula to calculate it:

Commute cost = (price of gas / MPG) * miles

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Revolution Money Exchange – PayPal’s new competitor

I despise PayPal because monopolies are bad for the consumer. PayPal has become the defacto method of sending money across the Internet and paying for eBay auctions. I just sold an extra CPU on eBay for $60 and PayPal took their $2 cut (don’t get me started on the $5.41 eBay got). Google Checkout was suppose to be a big PayPal competitor for retail sales, but peer to peer transactions are stuck using PayPal. There might be a viable contender in town now.

Revolution Money Exchange is part of Revolution, LLC, founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case. The board of directors is filled with former CEOs: David Pottruck from Charles Schwab; David Golden from JP Morgan; Franklin Raines from Fannie Mae; and Russell Hogg from MasterCard International. This definetely isn’t some homegrown Web 2.0 project coming out of some guy’s garage.

Here are some of the differences between Revolution Money Exchange and Paypal:

  • No fees for receiving and sending funds
  • Only checking accounts are used, cutting credit cards out of the picture is what reduces the costs so drastically
  • No business services or eBay integration
  • Simple interface, PayPal has become a nightmare to use

Sending money person to person is Money Exchange’s focus and it shows in the account creation process which is very straightforward. They’ve got a $25 sign up bonus going on until May 15th so I thought I would try it out. If I don’t end up using it then I got some free money. If you sign up for the $25 bonus through the link below I’ll get a $10 and then you can refer people.

Give it a try; it would make transactions like going in on a gift together or selling things on Craigslist a lot easier. There is some real potential here and I hope it starts growing in popularity.

Refer A Friend using Revolution Money Exchange