I’m also going to be writing about side incomes some time in the future. I think everyone would like to make a bit of change on the side.

I AM looking at ideas for some side income flows, though. I want to pump up the emergency fund and stock up the pantry. There will be a garden in the back yard next summer, too. And I’ll be couponing more. Free cash flow is the key to getting though this.

I am strickly not looking at my account balances! I know, but I don’t want to KNOW (lol)

@Joe: Sounds like your fate depends on how the market reacts to this bailout. Doesn’t look good right now…

I definitely saw it as a ‘buy’ opportunity. Had I used non-IRA funds for this, I probably would have done it as a quick win and paid down other debt.

I’ve got plenty of time until retirement, so I’m also considering just keeping it for a while. If it tanks, I’ve only lost $5000 and have time to make it up.

My other investments haven’t been doing that well, so I stopped contributing to my 401k back in March and have been using the snowball method to pay down my debt. I was losing around %13 on my TransAmerica funds (through my employer) and then paying around 11% on the debt. At my current rate, we’ll have our car loan paid off in November, credit card debt in April 2010 and just have our mortage by April 2011.

I hope the advantage of IRA and 401(k) in the future doesn’t turn out to be, you’ll save income tax because you’ll have a lot less money when you withdraw it.

Of course paying it off early, piece by piece, saves you interest in the long run. It depends on how quickly you can pay it off and what the rest of your situation looks like.

@Joe: Interesting investments you made there — with quite the return. Planning to sell to quickly net your profit?

Also curious if you saw this as an investment, or more of a quick bet. Let me know!

@Russell: Not sure if the tax status of your investment has much to do with the overall return in a bear market. Care to provide extra insight? Taxed or tax-deferred, the holdings have gone down either way.

At least you get that match!

I’m going through a transition from employment to self-employment (contract), so I’ve had to postpone any new investing while expenses of setting up an office are taken care of. I should be opening a new IRA account next month which may be good timing.

I did consolidate some accounts in the past 4 to 6 weeks, but I stayed in similar investments to keep myself in effect without change. Some fixed-income annuities I moved into other fixed-income annuities, the stock mutual fund 401(k) accounts moved into other stock mutual fund IRA accounts. It was tough to see the rollover statements showing how much my investments had decreased, made me wonder if the whole 401(k) idea cost me money, but selling bargain-priced funds for other bargain-priced funds I figure either one would recover about the same.

I did roughly calculate those rollover losses to the extent to see if the employer match at least exceeded the loss incurred, and they did. And having more dollars (from tax deferral) invested should pay off in the long term. If those funds were solely employee contribution I’d really start to wonder about the wisdom of the tax deferred account.

-R-

I took $350 I had sitting as Money Market in my IRA @ and bought 480 shares in Freddie Mac @ $.78 share, closed 9/25 @ $1.89.
I sold my Qualcomm shares, bought way long ago and bought 6000 shares of Fannie Mae @ $.70, closed 9/25 @ $1.74.

I’m 45 right now, so I have some time until retirement… probably at 80
I’m hoping to ride this up for a good bit, but don’t see it as a long term hold.

In general right now, paying down the principle of our mortgage looks like the safest “investment.” It has looked that way to me since we got the mortgage two years ago. The economy is only helping me to bring the spousal unit around to that way of thinking.