Update on the millionaire goal- March

We are inching closer and closer to our millionaire goal. We now have $9222 in invest accounts/bonds thanks to our investing, ing's bonus and the two percent reduction in social security. We plan to increase our retirement funding in April. By doing so we believe we will pass the $10,000 mark in July of this year.

Investing Stocks vs Real Estate

My fiance and I were looking for a rental property but we have been looking for almost seven months now and have not found anything that works for us. It would be easy to give up but we refuse to. However, with classes, the wedding and work it looks like we will be pushing off looking for any properties so unless something drops in our lap. Also, we are working on improvements on our current rental.

While we are dealing with all our craziness we will be funding our Roth at 10% of our income starting in April. We do want to increase the retirement savings to 20% but until we get the second property or my fiance gets a raise ten percent will have to do.

Patience is key to investing no matter if the investing is real estate, stocks or bonds. Though I would never say to time the market, one should only invest when the timing is right for the person.

ING came through

Wow, this was the quickest bonus money I have ever received. In the last post I spoke about using my EF money to deposit in a Roth IRA from ING to get $50. I was expecting the bonus to take two or three month to deposit (normal time line for bonuses) but I was pleasantly surprised. The $50 was deposited on the 25th of this month.

My DF and I have been talking about what track we will take now, for investing. We know we want to move his money away from T Rowe Price so we won't have an annual fee and eventually we want to move most of our money to Vanguard. However, we also want to buy at least one property here in western New York, we hope to buy three.

We do have our eye on one property right now and may need to put off increasing our Roth deposits and the move to Fidelity until we decide if we want the house or hopefully buy the house.

A Roth and an opportunity

I got a wonderful deal from ING offering a $50 bonus if I opened a IRA with a minimum contributions of $200. The deposit could be considered either a contribution for 2010 or 2011 but the $50 had to be a 2011 contribution.

The problem with this deal was the contribution had to be deposited by February 7th, 2011 and I had only $11 this month to invest, excluding the $50 required to be invested in T Rowe Price. I wanted to take advantage of this deal, obviously, it had a 25% return but how could I?

Starting in March we were planning to up our retirement contribution from $50 to $200. But where to get the money by February 7th? Thankfully I had money in my EF. In my mind my EF is not just for emergencies but also for opportunities such as this.

I opened the Roth today in a Roth IRA savings account and to repay my EF I will up my contributions in April not March.

People may wonder why I do not just roll over the $200 once the $50 is deposited. The reason is the Roth at T Rowe Price is in my fiancee's name and my only Roth is at my credit union earning less than the Roth at ING.

In April my fiancee and I will roll over his Roth from T Rowe Price to Fidelity and start depositing $200 per month until there is over $2000 in the account, then we will roll the account in ING over to Fidelity as well and begin depositing the $200 per month in my Roth.

What to do with the 2% Savings from Social Security

As some may know, for this year everyone will be paying less on social security, 4.2% down from 6.2%. In the long run all this will do is make social security more likely to collapse and less likely for our generation to be able to rely on it. Therefore my plan is to increase my retirement savings by the amount I am "saving".

The IRS gives companies until Jan 31 to get their payroll computers set up and until March 31 to get the excess money back to you but that still gives everyone time to up their 2010 contributions.

Update on the millionaire goal

I was reading tax information and discovered that while my fiance is a full time student we are ineligible for the saver's credit. So no extra money for us, but oh well. This will not stop us from getting to a million dollars in our retirement accounts.

I did start a serving job as well as taking a tax class and we are talking about me going back to school so we have more money right now but that money does have places it needs to go. However, we are trying to put money aside for an EF as well as adding to the retirement accounts.

Groupon

For those who do not know, groupon is a online deal website. They (along with others such as living social) post deals daily at a discount. The only problem is you have to buy the deal that day. It is great when you have self control and only buy when you have been looking for that deal but without self control can end up costing a lot. Right now buycostumes.com is doing the rounds on groupon, for $15 you get $30 worth of merchandise. It is in San Francisco today and was in Baltimore yesterday. You do not need to be in any of those cities to get it but it is funny that buycostumes.com is traveling the cities. Wonder were it will be tomorrow?