Unequivocal Notes

An Experiment in Personal Development

Update on Traditional IRA

Bought FFNOX! Thanks to Joe for encouraging me to look away from Precious Metals Mutual Funds. I am pretty sure it is not right for me right now.

March 20, 2008 Posted by unequivocal | Mutual Fund, finance, ira | , | 1 Comment

Opening a Traditional IRA

We did our taxes this weekend. We will be receiving a federal refund, but we owe money to the state. If we open a traditional IRA, the money owed would be equal to the refund.

First of all, we thought we will not qualify to open IRA. But since I do not have a 401k through my employer, it happens so that I am eligible to fund a traditional IRA. This link here provides how things are different based on whether you or your spouse participates in a retirement plan at work.

So we have decided that we will be opening a traditional IRA for tax year 2007 and would invest the money in an Index fund.

The question we are facing right now is where should we open the IRA. We have relationships with Bank of America. But we are not sure if they are our best option. We will be investing only in no-load NTF mutual funds. According to this comparison at zecco.com,  Etrade, TD Ameritrade and Scotttrade have free no load mutual funds. If in the future we want to buy company stocks or etfs, scotttrade provides the lowest fee. They also have physical office locations in our city. So I am leaning towards Scotttrade. Am I overlooking something? Is there a better option?

February 11, 2008 Posted by unequivocal | Investment, Mutual Fund, fee, finance | , , | 3 Comments