Retirement planning: A target fund for your 403(b)?

Retirement planning could benefit with a tax-deferred and Roth IRA invested in a target fund. Retirement planning question is No. 8 in the reader mailbag.?

What?s inside??Here are the questions answered in today?s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1.?Heating and cooling issues
2.?Tax problems
3.?Student loan debt juggling
4.?Daylight Savings Time switch problems
5.?Joint accounts with aging parents
6.?Potential book selling scam
7.?Multilingual children
8.?Retirement planning: Roth vs. 403(b)
9.?Salsa deal
10.?Splurges

Skip to next paragraph Trent Hamm

The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds ? we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.

Recent posts

My children have a ?dress-up tub? in the basement that contains a wide variety of costume clothes we?ve picked up here and there. Most of it is too big for them, but they can get the items on.

They tend to play with the ?dress-up tub? a lot during the winter, but scarcely touch it during the summer because they?re outside so often. This weekend, they dumped it out for the first time in quite a while.

It?s almost as if a big session of the kids playing ?dress-up? is an unofficial sign of the changing of the seasons.

Q1: Heating and cooling issues
I am having some problems getting my roommates to understand frugality, especially when it comes to the air conditioning/heating unit in our house. I am trying to research how much money it wastes to constantly have the air on, especially when it is only 75 degrees outside. My roommates believe that it costs more money to turn the air on and have it re-cool the house and insist it run constantly. I think that it is cheaper to turn it off when no one is home. What is cheaper?

Also, we have an upstairs and a downstairs and, therefore, two units. Sometimes when I wake up I find the downstairs has been on cool at 75 degrees all night while the upstairs has been on heat at 75 degrees all night. I feel like this cannot be good, but I can?t find any research to back up just how much money we are wasting or why this is bad. Is this a waste of money? Can you help me find some research on these things, so I can explain to them why I am so frustrated?
- Bill

It?s substantially cheaper to turn off the air conditioning and heating when you?re not at home. Why? If you?re constantly cooling or heating your home, you?re keeping the temperature of your house far away from the outside temperature, and basic thermodynamics says you?re going to lose the heat or the cool in your house faster if the temperature outside is far away from the temperature inside your house. That?s why your A/C runs a?lot?on a very hot day and not very much on a mildly hot day, and your furnace runs like mad on a very cold day.

However, if you don?t run the A/C or heat all day, the house temperature begins to approach the temperature outside, and the closer it gets to that temperature, the slower the rate of change is in the house. What that means is that at the end of the day when you have to use the furnace or A/C to ?catch up,? you?re not going to have to run it nearly as long as the total time it would have to run to keep the temperature steady all day. It?s far better to ?catch up? ten degrees at the end of the day than to ?catch up? two degrees every single half hour.

As for the heat and air conditioning at the same time, that?s just a waste of energy. You?re far better off accepting that the basement and upper floor are going to be a few degrees different and just use one unit to manage the temperature of the house. My suggestion would be to just use the heat to keep the basement a few degrees cooler than you?d like, then not run anything upstairs. If it gets too warm, crack a window up there for a bit, then close it. Running two units is crazy just so you can have the exact same home temperature in the basement and the upper floor.

Q2: Tax problems
My husband and I got caught up in a dispute with our state?s department of revenue where we kept sending them verification that yes, he had paid his income taxes for 2009 on time, but they kept losing track of our paper work or never updated their records. It finally got settled after a year of going back and forth with them but not before they filed a tax lien against my husband. We did not find out about the lien until two months ago when my husband checked his credit report. It was quite a shock to us, and we immediately set about to get it taken off. The problem is that so far, the best we?ve been able to do is get it marked as paid, where in our eyes it should be removed. We?ve been told that even if it?s paid, a lien is horrible for your credit. We?ve been going round and round with the credit reporting companies and can?t seem to get anywhere with them. I want to try a few more things but am not optimistic they will work. I?m starting to wonder if we should get some legal help. My concern, however, is that I know it won?t come cheap and don?t know if it would be worth it. My husband wants to buy a car next year, so he will need his credit in good shape to do that. How do we figure out if it will be worth it? We don?t know my husband?s credit score right now (the lien is by far the worst thing on the report, so it shouldn?t be that bad but for the lien. His only debt is about $5,000 in student loans). Should we find it out and go from there? Thanks for any help!
- Lisa

My guess is that your credit score is still moderately good, but not great. If you?re really concerned, I?d get your credit score checked through a reputable organization. One approach you might take is to go to your local credit union and simply ask them if they have any credit checking services.

Getting something like this removed from your credit report is often more expensive than the benefit you?d get from having it removed.

As I?ve mentioned before, I consider the methods used in the United States to verify credit as completely ludicrous. There are so many situations like this one where one?s credit history does not reflect the reputability of the person, but more accurately reflects the (lack of) credibility of the institution reporting the credit issue.

Q3: Student loan debt juggling
A little background. I am a medical student and my wife is just out of nursing school, making about $80,000 with amazing insurance and a 5% 401k match. Our combined undergraduate debt is about $100,000 as she was solely focused on nursing school which landed her a great job, and I went to an expensive undergraduate school and worked full time as an EMT ($10/hr). No family contributions either way, but they were both well off and thus no aid outside of loans. My tuition now is $44,000 a year and of course I cannot work. There are not many med school scholarships for kids from middle class families, so it is basically all on loans. She is paying off both our undergrad loans and supporting us in every way.

I was recently approached by a company (a legitimate company) that offered to do all our taxes and handle all our repayment, i.e. tell us who to pay when, once residency starts. I don?t know if you are familiar with how it works, but basically I will graduate with $200,000 in medical school debt (plus undergrad that we hope will have a dent after 4 years of her paying it) and work as a resident for 7 years making about $50,000. This is nice because I will be working about 80hr/week and I don?t really have time to focus on the plans and percentages (though it is very significant with those large numbers). The company charges a flat $500/yr, and they help strategize your repayment, specifically focusing on income based repayment (as a resident, married, and wanting kids, that repayment will be close to $0) then after residency, if I took a job with a non-profit hospital, I would have my loans forgiven after 10 total years. They maximize, fill, and file our taxes too. This seems too good to be true, but there is a lot of testimony, and it takes advantage of a system really set up for people who took out $100,000 to get a social work degree and make $30,000 a year and can never repay that debt.

Do you know if there are dangers in taking out the maximal med school loan amount (which I don?t really need, since my wife pays for living expenses) and using that extra money to pay all our private loans (which are not covered by IBR and the 10 year forgiveness). Also, I feel weird saving money in IRA or 401k with all that debt, but this plan seems to encourage taking out the max, saving it, then having it all forgiven. I feel there is a moral dilemma. We currently max out both our IRAs and match the 401k. We also pay 25% of her take home for loan repayment, plus save for a future house. What are your thoughts on these companies that handle repayment strategies and specifically this 10 year forgiveness plan.
- Ron

I?ve heard of a lot of variations on plans like this. What these organizations do is essentially manage all of your money for you and either assign you some living stipend according to their formula or essentially give you a debit card to live off of while the rest of your income goes toward eliminating your debt.

These plans?can?work well, but you have to remember that they?re in business to make money. They?re not really doing anything that you couldn?t do yourself. You?re basically paying $500 a year for a service that will save you the effort in paying taxes and the effort in running a debt repayment plan.

I?m not clear on whether this forgiveness plan is tied to this company. There are a lot of student loan programs out there that are backed by government at some level that forgive student loans for people who take on high-risk jobs. It seems like this is just a service that is a ?front end? to this kind of loan.

Again, it just sounds like you?re paying $5,000 over ten years to simplify your taxes and some of your money management. To me, that?s not worth it. It may be to you, though.

Q4: Daylight Savings Time switch problems
I have a terrible time adjusting to the switches to and from Daylight Savings Time. Do you have any tips that will help me not kill my productivity?
- James

Honestly, I just try to ignore the switch as much as I can. I try to keep my bedtimes and waking times in relation to sunrise and sunset rather than in accordance to the clock. The biggest trick there is just making sure that when the clocks shift, I?m not causing my children to be late for school or anything like that.

For me, it?s the change in day length that really causes difficulty. Day lengths vary about six hours over the course of a year here and during November, December, and January, the short days can get to me.

If you?re really finding the change rough, I suggest starting an exercise routine. Few things are better at improving and maintaining your energy level than regular physical activity.

Q5: Joint accounts with aging parents
I have read mixed reviews on the idea of adult children being added to their parents? accounts. The issue often mentioned is the gift tax. But, the upside is that it is easier to make payments on behalf of the parent(s) in the event of illness or death.

What do you suggest? Are there any ground rules you would suggest like keeping the account below $13,000 to avoid gift tax issues? Does it need to be listed as an asset for a will since there are other siblings?
- Michelle

Money in that account would be considered part of the parental estate since the parent never relinquished control of it (because they kept their name on the account). Of course, any money you take from that account for your own use is considered a gift for tax purposes.

As long as anything that comes out of that account is clearly for your parents, there?s no issue at all with you being on the account. This is the type of thing that can be dug up in the case of an audit, so I?d take care with this regard.

When your parent passes on, don?t touch the account unless it?s explicitly for any remaining parental expenses. The rest of the money should be handled by the executor of the will.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/vnuDNbIDZgI/Retirement-planning-A-target-fund-for-your-403-b

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Nancy Pelosi Wants A Federal Babysitting Service - Business Insider

Buried in a Washington Post story about Herman Cain calling Nancy Pelosi, "Princess Nancy" is a new policy idea that Pelosi has been pitching recently during her short tour through California.

"One of the great pieces of unfinished business is high-quality child care; I wonder why we just can?t do that,?? she recently said to a California audience.?

By "we", Pelosi means the federal government. Pelosi clarified that Congress should be? ?doing for child care what we did for health-care reform.?

The Post characterizes Pelosi as touting the economic and social benefits of government child-sitting:

?When it comes to ?unleashing women? in a way that would boost the economy, she says, ?this is a missing link.?

According to Pelosi, the babysitting market ? one of the last unregulated sectors of the American economy ? is broken.?

?I could never get a babysitter ? have five kids in six years and no one wants to come to your house.?. . .?And everywhere I go, women say the same thing,? she said.?

This is an odd thing for Pelosi to be hearing since her San Francisco district has more dogs than children.?

Perhaps after Pelosi boosts the economy by separating mothers from their gross offspring, she can work on "unleashing" dog-owners on the economy as well.?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/nancy-pelosi-wants-a-federal-babysitting-service-2011-11

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Google has third biggest week since start

By Suzanne Choney

Social networking site Google+ recorded its third biggest week last week, with more than 6.8 million total U.S. visits, according to Hitwise.

The site launched last summer to an invite-only crowd. Its previous top two weeks were the week ending Sept. 24, when Google+ opened to all users, and the week after that.

Live Poll

Facebook or Google+?

  • 168259

    Sticking with Facebook. And that's that.

    25%

  • 168260

    Using both; like them for different reasons.

    26%

  • 168261

    Have ditched Facebook for G+.

    21%

  • 168262

    Getting ready to boot one or both; tired of social networking.

    29%

VoteTotal Votes: 525

Why the sudden boon? Mashable points to Google's recent introduction of "brand" pages on Google+?? which lets companies have their own pages, just as they do on Facebook ? well as the continuing addition of features, such as letting users rate images +1.

Google+ has had its ups and downs since it began. But recent signs are definitely on the "plus" side.

Hitwise director of research Heather Dougherty, on the company's blog, points to a few factors: Google+ "benefits from other Google properties for referral traffic. Among the top ten referral sources, eight are Google properties and accounted for 73 percent off all upstream traffic last week, up from 65 percent during the peak week of Sept. 24."

As "another positive sign," she cites the increasing number of returning visitors to Google+. "The average of the first two weeks of November versus the same time in October shows the share of returning visitors to the Google+ site increased 18 percent. Last week, 74 percent of the traffic to Google+ was from returning visitors, suggesting that Google+ users are returning to interact and engage with their networks (aka circles)."

Is Google+ starting to run "circles" around Facebook? What do you think? Let us know by voting in our poll.

Related stories:

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on?Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/17/8860943-google-has-third-biggest-week-since-start

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Court upholds fine against nude hiker (Reuters)

ZURICH (Reuters) ? Hikers crossing the Alps in the nude may get more than just a chill after Switzerland's top court ruled they may be fined, validating a conservative region's bid to quash the practice.

On Thursday a court rejected the appeal of a man slapped with a 100 Swiss franc ($109) fine. The man had walked naked past a family with small children at a picnic area and a Christian rehabilitation center for drug addicts one Sunday afternoon in the eastern canton (state) of Appenzell Ausserrhoden.

"The fundamental right to personal freedom is only marginally, if at all, infringed upon by a ban on hiking naked in a public area," the court said in a statement.

The mountainous cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden, which only gave women the right to vote two decades ago, are popular among nude hiking enthusiasts.

Naked hiking is not illegal in Switzerland but it is possible for individual Swiss cantons to apply indecency laws.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Copley)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oddlyenough/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111118/od_nm/us_swiss_hiking_odd

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Check out these two knockouts from Bellator and M-1

With so much hubbub surrounding the UFC this weekend, it was easy to forget that Junior dos Santos wasn't the only man to score a big knockout. At Bellator 57, Douglas Lima won the welterweight tournament with a second-round knockout of Ben Saunders.

With that right hand, Lima won the Bellator welterweight tournament and the right to challenge Ben Askren for the Bellator championship.

In Russia, Aleksander Emelianenko (brother of Fedor) took longer to walk out to the ring than he did to fight. Skip to 2:20 to watch how quickly Magomed Malikov finished Emelianenko off.

Yep, that took a total of 23 seconds. It was Emelianenko's second loss in a row.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/blog/cagewriter/post/Check-out-these-two-knockouts-from-Bellator-and-?urn=mma-wp9468

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Lawsuit Filed Against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Researcher by Former Employer

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115186/Lawsuit_Filed_Against_Chronic_Fatigue_Syndrome_Researcher_by_Former_Employer

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Symbolic 'war crimes' tribunal to try Bush, Blair

(AP) ? Malaysian-led activists will hold a symbolic trial this month for former President George W. Bush and British ex-leader Tony Blair on charges of committing crimes against peace in the Iraq war, the event's organizers said Tuesday.

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal is an initiative of Malaysia's retired Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who staunchly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The tribunal will convene a four-day public hearing starting Saturday to determine whether Bush and Blair committed crimes against peace and violated international law in the Iraq invasion, said Malaysian lawyer Yaacob Hussain Marican.

"For these people who have been immune from prosecution, we want to put them on trial in this forum to prove that they committed war crimes," Yaacob told The Associated Press.

Activists sent information about the charges to Bush and Blair recently but received no response, Yaacob said.

Francis Boyle, an American international law professor based in Illinois, will be among the prosecutors at the hearing, which follows two years of investigations by a Malaysian peace foundation founded by Mahathir that looked into complaints by people affected by the Iraqi war.

The effort is modeled after a 1967 Vietnam war crimes panel convened in Sweden and Denmark by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre, Yaacob said. The Vietnam tribunal said the U.S. committed acts of aggression against Vietnam and bombarded civilian targets, but it was mostly ignored in United States.

The Kuala Lumpur tribunal will have a seven-member panel of judges including two retired judges from Malaysia's highest court, peace activist Alfred Lambremont Webre of the United States and Mumbai-based lawyer Niloufer Bhagwat of India.

If the tribunal finds Bush and Blair guilty, it will enter their names into a symbolic "Register of War Criminals."

The tribunal is also scheduled to hold a separate hearing next year on charges of torture linked to the Iraq war against former U.S. officials including ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Yaacob said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-15-AS-Malaysia-War-Crimes/id-bd34502257854349bdfd2c869968bdd8

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Official Update Regarding the Mentor Team

As part of RPG?s ongoing adjustments and changes, the Mentors Team is undergoing several alterations, in terms of both personnel and direction. The group will be expanding to include many more members with both demonstrated skills in roleplay and the right attitude to serve as representatives and role models on the site. The new team will be renamed Scholars, and will be operating as specialized staff.

This adjustment means that some of the tasks we have come to expect of the team will no longer be their responsibility alone. Teaching and educating younger users and new roleplayers is the responsibility of everyone and not the sole task of any one staff team ? or even just the staff. It is the responsibility of everyone, staff and users alike, to try and better the site and the community in such a manner.

The team will remain on as our official representatives of what we aspire to be as a community - friendly, dedicated, and talented writers.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/PaZJxa8GUuE/viewtopic.php

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