Tuesday, July 22, 2008

How I'm Saving for Retirement

Boo picked up yesterday's mail and in it were two very important pieces of mail. One I will discuss in a later post and the other kept me busy all day. That piece of paper was my quarterly retirement saving account statement from my second job. This piece paper prompted me to immediately make some changes to the way I'm saving for retirement. This is bit complicated because there are four different venues that I am using to save for my retirement.

#1 Part Time Job 401k
This was the statement that I received in the mail today. My account balance is $2710.00 which is all vested. $1890.24 are my own contributions and 819.76 are from my employer contributions. You might think that this is pretty low but I only work there on Friday and Saturday nights.

I was contributing 12% of my salary pretax to Vanguard Lifestyle Target Fund 2045. Now that I know more about investing I have decided to take control of my retirement and pick my own funds and that is what I did today. Instead of having all my money invested in a Target Fund my future investments will be:
10% Bond
35% Large US Equity in Fidelity Contrafund
20% Mid US Equity in T Rowe Price Midcap Growth
35% International in Morgan Stanley International Equity Fund
Today I bumped my contribution up to 13% with it going up to 14% on Sept 12 which is my three year anniversary with the company.

#2 School District Defined Pension
6.5% of my school district salary goes directly into my pension plan

#3 School District 403B TIAA CREF
I started contributing 60.00 a paycheck to school district paycheck about a year and a half ago. One day I decided to change the contributions to 100.00 a pay period it never went through to TIAA. Every couple of months I call Human Resources and they say that there is a problem with the computer system and that is why it never comes out of my check. Now I say forget about it, there is no match and right now its not really worth my money.

#4 T Rowe Price Roth IRA
160.00 a month goes into my 2045 Retirement Fund at T. Rowe Price. The fund is very aggressive with 85% in domestic and international stock. I want to max it out this year and I have until April 15. Right now I am focusing on my debt snowball but in January I can possibly contribute 1250 until April and then it will be maxed out.

things may change but for right now this is what I am doing to save for my retirement.

until next time, think prosperous thoughts

YBP

2 comments:

Shen Dove said...

Just wanted to stop by and say I'm enjoying your blog. I discovered it when your post was featured on the Budgeting Babe's recent carnival hosting.

oldwhiteandpoor said...

I'm contributing over half my income to my landlord's Lifestyle Fund.