Thread: The Five Best Financial Moves for 2007

New Year’s resolutions are easy to make and hard to keep, but now is the best time to ensure that your finances are in order for the coming year. Here are five useful tips.

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All five tips in this article are quite good.

1. Paying off your credit card balances first and foremost is excellent advice. Not only do you not waste a ton of money on high interest costs, but if you get in the mindset that credit card balances are taboo then you will have a solid financial base to build on.
   
2. Opening a savings account online with a bank like ING DIRECT makes a ton of sense. 4-5% APR is an ENORMOUS difference over 0-1%.
3. Maximizing your 401(k) matching benefit from your employer should be a no-brainer. It's basically "free money" so why would you not capture all of it that you possibly could?
4. Life insurance is a good idea. Period.
5. And of course, if we don't teach our children... who will?

I wish I could get my son-in-law to realize how much he's hurting my daughter and their family by not enrolling in the 401(k) program at his work.

Do you have any suggestions for how to get someone to see the value in retirement accounts?

Hmmm. Well, other than just showing him a graph of potential returns over 20-30 years I don't know what else you can do. That really ought to be enough, though.

Here's an example for you:

That is a good graph. I will show it to them and pray that he gets it. Thank you!

Maybe take him to an old peoples home and have him talk to the several elderly folks who did not enroll in a 401k or did not have one available.

Then ask him if he would like to live in a home like that.?

LOL - great idea. I'm doubtful that would work because he's the type that thinks he'll never get old. But I might just have to try it.

Well, if Momma says it then it has to stick sometime right? Remember when your parents said "Don't do this and that"

Well, chances are you did and you learned your lesson. Just keep encouraging him and show him some more advantages to having one.

This wouldn't be an issue if I was his mother. But as it stands I am just the old, nagging mother-in-law. He seems to think that disqualifies me from having a legitimate opinion on ANYTHING!!!

Greg, I hope you are good to your mother-in-law. I'm sure you are though!