Robinhood offers an improved 3% match on IRA contributions if you subscribe to their Gold membership, which costs either $5 or $6.99 per month. Through 4/30/24, you can also get a 3% match on IRA transfers and 401k/403b/457/401a rollovers. Please start with my initial 3% IRA Match overview, the Robinhood FAQ, and Robinhood Terms & Conditions [pdf]. After doing hours of additional research, this is a follow-up post with a lot of details for other folks that also like to cover all the bases. I’m currently in the middle of my own transfer, and here’s the walkthrough so far: Open a Robinhood ..read more

Savings I Bonds are a unique, low-risk investment backed by the US Treasury that pay out a variable interest rate linked to inflation. With a holding period from 12 months to 30 years, you could own them as an alternative to bank certificates of deposit (they are liquid after 12 months) or bonds in your portfolio. New inflation numbers were just announced at BLS.gov, which allows us to make an early prediction of the May 2024 savings bond rates a couple of weeks before the official announcement on the 1st. This also allows the opportunity to know exactly what a April 2024 savings bond purchas ..read more

Each year, I challenge myself to earn the equivalent of the maximum annual IRA contribution limit ($7,000 for 2024 if under 50) using the profits from various finance promotions alone. I earned $5,592 in 2021, $6,259 in 2022, and $5,444 in 2023 (plus another $2,500 in stock special situations). Here’s a progress update after the end of the first quarter of 2024. If you combined these hobby profits and steady investing, this CAN create enough for a house downpayment (unlike perhaps spare change roundups). If you had put $6,000 into your IRA every year for the recent 10 year period (2014-2023 ..read more

If you don’t remember, Acorns was a hot app for a little while due to their primary feature of allowing you to automatically “round up” your purchases and invest them into a portfolio of ETFs. So if you made a $10.45 purchase, it would be rounded up to $11.00 and $0.55 would be invested. This Axios article managed to obtain some proprietary data from Acorns and reverse-engineers it to estimate how much the average Acorns user saved (and spent) from their Roundups from 2015 to 2024. While the big-picture conclusions aren’t exactly surprising, the fintech geek side of me appreciated the peek in ..read more

There is a new class action settlement involving Walmart and weighted groceries. The pertinent details are below. My standard recommendation applies – If you are affected and choose to participate, file a claim now quickly before you forget, and then… forget. Be pleasantly surprised if and when any money eventually arrives. Who is eligible? Anyone who purchased weighted meat or bagged citrus at a Walmart in the US and Puerto Rico between 10/19/2018 and 1/19/2024. File a claim here: Official Settlement website. Deadline to file is 6/5/24. Read more details here: NY Times article (gift article ..read more

Target is running “Target Circle Week” from April 7th-13th and there are bunch of new announcements, rebrands, and promos attached. It took a while to figure out which Circles meant what. Lots of Circles. Here are the highlights and the best graphic explaining it all: Target Circle remains their free discount membership system. But now, they say that all their special and personalized “coupons” will apply automatically at checkout, so you don’t have to add or “clip” them to your account beforehand. That’s good, because I never remembered to add them. They also give you 1% back on your purcha ..read more

Here’s my monthly roundup of the best interest rates on cash as of April 2024, roughly sorted from shortest to longest maturities. There are lesser-known opportunities available to individual investors, often earning you a lot more money while keeping the same level of safety by moving to another FDIC-insured bank or NCUA-insured credit union. Check out my Ultimate Rate-Chaser Calculator to see how much extra interest you could earn from switching. Rates listed are available to everyone nationwide. Rates checked as of 4/4/2024. TL;DR: Future Fed rate cuts appear expected, and some banks are a ..read more

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just announced an upcoming fee change for some of its most popular Trusted Traveler Programs, including Global Entry (which includes TSA PreCheck), NEXUS, and SENTRI. Starting 10/1/24, the application fee for Global Entry will rise to $120 every 5 years, up from $100. NEXUS and SENTRI will also have the same $120 fee. TSA PreCheck on its own is still set to stay at $78, but again Global Entry includes TSA PreCheck. This is potentially actionable news in a few different ways: It’s a good reminder to use up any of those $100 Global Entry/TSA credits ..read more

Deep in my accumulation stage, I drastically underestimated how much retirees hate spending down their nest eggs. I have since struggled to convince my parents to spend their money, while also working longer than I planned (albeit not crazy hours) for likely similar underlying reasons. Watching your hard-earned nest egg shrink is hard. Check out these findings from the Blackrock whitepaper titled To spend or not to spend? [pdf]: This was not what we expected to find: on average across all wealth levels, most current retirees still had 80% of their pre-retirement savings after almost two deca ..read more

Here’s my quarterly income update as a companion post to my April 2024 asset allocation & performance update. I prefer to track the income produced as an alternative metric to performance. The total income goes up much more gradually and consistently than the number shown on brokerage statements (market price), which helps encourage consistent investing. Here’s a related quote from Jack Bogle (source): The true investor will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies. – Jack Bogle Here is the hi ..read more