Well, I cashed out my Roth IRA from ING Direct (high fees, low performance, not using the convenience it afforded). I had intended to open an account with T Rowe Price, since I have had mutual fund and brokerage accounts with them in the past, and my 401K is there, I thought I might get more mileage out of online analysis tools if all the money was under one management... but unfortunately, both the IRA account application and IRA Brokerage account applications did not comfortably fit my situations (I took a distribution thinking it would actually be easier to send a check and justify it later to the IRS). It seems Price spends a great deal of time thinking about how they'll get your 401K dollars when you switch jobs, since most people do that often. They would take assets from an existing IRA, or try and start a rollover IRA (none of these were what I wanted to do), or they'll let you make an initial annual contribution (I don't want to make a 2007 contribution! I want to credit my prior year contributions). Well, I fished around, since calling them seemed like a bother (yes, this is me explaining how someone lost my business due to a poorly thought out application), and Vanguard had me set up in five minutes... didn't even ask for Beth's SSN. That's convenient, just check the 'give my wife all my money, since she'll get it through the courts anyway' box, and away we go. When I got to what I started expecting to be an awkward explanatory page, there was a check box for "Money from an existing Roth IRA", with no contribution limits... great!
Plus no fees if you sign up for paperless statements (ING only mailed prospectuses and tax info), and the sweet life is mine. So I just grabbed a few mutual funds, spread the money in the least defensible way, and clicked agree. That really was too easy.
This is reminiscent of the terrible time I had trying to figure out how to get my Federal TSP account into an IRA... I have since come to my senses and realised that there probably isn't a better place for my money, I can expect to be charged less than 0.25 percent and can shuffle between options on a daily basis with no penalty. That and it takes 15 notaries to get your money out. Try to add a beneficiary, it takes two witnesses to sign, neither can be a beneficiary. This is what happens when the federal government gets their fingers on something. Hello privatised social security! Look at all the control we'll have. More like subsidised mutual fund companies... but anything beats having contributions taken out of my earnings every year, with no accounting for where it goes after that.
I would be comfortable with a bankrupt social security if thats what it was. That this ponzi scheme lasted longer than one lifespan (that the first generation born under it will die under it) was only made possible by the Reagan era rebalancing. If the system were made voluntary, who would volunteer? If the system were made private, who would be better off. If the system were abolished, who would feed the old people, who are off in palm springs, playing golf? Forgive me for painting a rosy picture of retirement, most people aren't wealthy when they work, or when the retire, and some don't get to play golf at all. I think that comfortable and affluent retirees, like comfortable and affluent boomers, and comfortable and affluent late twenties fashion magazine editors in the big city, are a Hollywood commodity. They seem more common than they are because they're shown so often. Yes, I have been to orange county, and there are smelly people on the buses there, too. Not everybody has crazy hijinx outside the banana stand. And plenty of old people are alone, lonely, sick, and getting gradual poorer as inflation eats away their fixed incomes. Actually, I know plenty of twenty somethings with the same problems.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Incovenient Truths about filesharing
from an arstechnica article 10 inconvenient truths
1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
4. Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth–it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)