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Here’s Your Chance to Ask Two Professionals Financial Questions

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I am very excited about this! A little while ago, I reviewed On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl’s Guide to Personal Finance. I have been in contact with their PR person about the possiblity of the authors, Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar, answering some of your questions!

Today, I received word that it is officially a go!

So, here is your chance to ask questions to have the authors answer. Now, they probably will not be able to answer every question, but they will select some of them to answer.

To join in, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post with your question. Sunday night, I will email the questions to the authors and await their reply.

As a little hint, you may want to keep an eye out for when I post the answers πŸ˜‰


10 Comments

  • Reply Amanda |

    Oh, me, me!! I hope it doesn’t get too long.

    We have recently (just last Friday!) paid off all of our debt except for the house…so now what? πŸ™‚ We need to restart our college and retirement savings (we were saving a little before but halted that to have extra money to knock out the debt). I don’t have any idea how much we should be saving. Savings has always been an afterthought, just saving a portion of what was left after paying the bills. I’d really like to start paying ourselves first but I don’t have any idea what we should be saving to meet our goals. I’ve run several online calculators but keep coming up with VERY different numbers and I’m really feeling confused. We’ve been following Dave Ramsey’s advice to get out of debt and he says to save 15% of our income for retirement. Is that acceptable? But even with that I have no idea what we should be saving for college. Our children are 2 and 4 and we’re 28, if that helps.

  • Reply Da big D |

    How much is enough? I have paid off my debt, sans mortage, max my 401k, my IRA, and save 10% to another account for a rainy day. But since I didn’t start till 5 years ago (39 now) I am way behind the curve. I have no clue what I need for retirment. So how much should I be saving??

  • Reply sf mom |

    My question(s) are along the same lines. I’m 32, my husband is 41. I max my 401(k), Roth, put $175 a month into our 2-year-old daughter’s 529 plan, we have no credit card debt and I have $25K in an emergency fund (HSBC online savings earning 5.05%). What’s next? A non-tax-deferred online brokerage account seems like the next logical investment. My uncle highly recommends Buyandhold.com because of the very low fees.

    My goal is to work hard in my peak earning years, sock as much money away so that I can retire comfortably, help out my children (we have #2 due in August)with a bit of college if not all of it, and travel.

    We have a home here in SF and an investment property in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So, what’s next? My husband wants to invest in another property, I say that I want to diversify and put some cash away in a brokerage account? Help!

  • Reply KCLau |

    I’ll have a new born baby this September. My question is simple: When should I start teaching him about money?

  • Reply spinsterlady |

    How do you pay off $13,500 in credit card debt when you’re already the most frugal person you know? I make $24k a year, and my husband makes about $28k after child support payments. This credit card debt has sneaked up on me over the years, and I relied on cards to pay for “life’s emergencies” such as unemployment, car repairs, a modest wedding, vet bills, etc. I have a house with some equity, but I don’t want to take out a home equity loan. After basic bills, our budget is stretched tight as a drum. Help!

  • Reply FlatGreg |

    Mortgage acceleration programs have been available in certain countries and are now starting to appear in the US. There’s only a couple programs available, but they all work similarly by combining your checking account with your mortgage. The amount you normally keep in your checking account reduces your principal, however it’s still available to use whenever you wish. The benefit is a significantly quicker payoff of your mortgage without making additional payments.

    Do you have any comment on these programs? They’re so new they’re hard to find information on. I’ve also heard you can accomplish the same thing yourself using a HELOC and your existing mortgage.

  • Reply Tyler |

    I am 24 y/o and my wife is 26. Our annual income is around 65k net. The only debts we carry are our mortgage and my wife’s student loans. We decided to make minimum payments on the student loans (10k left) since the interest is at almost 2%, and accelerate the process right now of saving 5 months expenses into our emergency fund. The thing we would like to do is refinance our mortgage. We currently have a 80% of around 121k remaining on it, and a 20% HELOC of 30k remaining (all interest payments). We want to combine these two to a one 30 year loan to start reducing principle on the HELOC. Should we still combine our 2 loans even though we may move in about 3 years? Also, I go to school part time and we pay cash for it – reducing the ability to get a 15 year. We are also holding off on our retirement until Jan of next year (due to the funding of the full efund). When we finish this, we’ll be contributing 30% (to make up for a couple years lost). Does this make sense for a couple our age?

  • Reply Renee |

    I have a Roth IRA that I started when I was about 22 based on financial advice from my mom’s financial planner. I’m now 25, and I’ve barely contributed to it (around $800 total). I realize it’s early in my life and I have time to build it up, and I usually need the money in a savings account “emergency fund” instead of a long-term IRA. Question is, at my age, how much should I be contributing to the IRA per year? And when I get a little extra cash, should I immediately save some of it in the IRA for long-term, or put the whole amount in my savings account, then transfer only the pre-decided amount to the IRA every year?

  • Reply Rich |

    I have started my own business and it has been going for about 8 months. I am happy and lucky to report that I am already making a profit on the business and have made more than I have invested, and the business appears to be growing. I have quite a bit of credit card debt from before I started the business and am in the process of paying it off aggressively. My question is, my wife and I have three 401 (k) accounts from previous jobs and I need to know where I should put the money as a self-employed person. What would be your recommendation?

  • Reply kristy |

    I’m about to get married, and my husband to be, has terrible credit.

    I am just starting to astablish my credit, and I don’t want to take on his bad credit with mine.

    After we are married, I understand that the only effect his credit will have on my credit, is if we open joint accounts in both of our names.

    Does this include a checking / savings account with our bank?

So, what do you think ?