Comments on: Ten Financial Moves to Consider Before the Year Ends

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I hope I don’t forget to reduce my contribution down to a sustainable amount after the last payday of this year. I can contribute this much in the short term because I have quite a bit of spare cash laying around that I can use to make up the shortfall to my take-home pay. If only I had the foresight and common sense to move that cash (earning an eye-popping 0.9%) into stocks earlier this year… :-/

By: PT

PT — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, 50% contributions to the 401(k). You are the man, Mark. I had to bump mine up to 20% to make the max, but 50% is awesome!

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I’m going to drastic measures because my options this late in the year are pretty limited. I am contributing the maximum to my 401K for the final one or two paychecks of the year. That would be 50% of my salary. I don’t think I can sell any investments for much of a loss because I haven’t invested all that much in non-retirement accounts in the last five years. There’s not a heck of a lot I can do in any case to reduce my AGI.

By: PT

PT — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

@Mark – Good luck in your scramblings. How are you going about that?

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for the reminder about the first-time home buyer tax credit, aka “haven’t bought a home in the last three years” tax credit. I didn’t realize the credit was boosted to 8 grand. And I had thought the absolute max income level to qualify was $75K, and so I hadn’t looked into this enough to realize I could get at least a partial credit. I am suddenly having to scramble to lower my AGI as much as possible in the next few weeks in order to maximize my credit. Makes me wish I’d have sold some investments earlier this year when stocks were down to add some capital losses to my AGI. I should have done that regardless but it’s too much of a pain figuring out when you bought each share of stock (or mutual fund) and how much you paid.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Some great tips here. Roth IRA is the main one for me. Need to start funding one as taxes are only headed one way in the future – up!