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big stuff disguised as small stuff

March 16th, 2007 at 02:14 am

Saving log - $0
Spending log - $0

No spend day. I ate the other half of my sub sandwich while I listened to the 403B talk from the Merrill Lynch broker. It turned out that this was a check-in meeting, not too horrible or drastic. Trying to calm the troops from the sell-off from a couple of weeks ago. But there were some highlights:

1. There was more than 5M in total in our office's 403B retirement accounts, so now we will have A-shares, instead of R-shares. A-shares, we are told, have slightly lower fees - about .25% to .50%.

To an data geek like me, that's good news. Of course I will verify. Smile My lawyer friend joked that I was sweating the small stuff. Au contraire, I said, I'm sweating the big stuff disguised as small stuff. Fees look small when you see them on the page, but when applied secretly on your account, they loom large. Worse, its not like there's going to be a line on our quarterly statement that says: Fees!

2. Someone asked about the socially responsible fund - who picks it and what criteria do you use? I'm not saying I told you so .... I'll just link to it instead. Tee hee.

3. I asked this one: because stocks are so volatile, when is the best time to rebalance? Now or wait a bit when things settle down?

The broker hemmed and hawed a bit. Now if you want to buy stuff cheap and you think this is just a burp (his opinion), or a little bit later if you are nervous. Luckily for me, everything went down in about the same measure, so eh...

4 Responses to “big stuff disguised as small stuff”

  1. Joan.of.the.Arch Says:
    1174023808

    You have 5 M in your retirement accounts?! M as in million?

  2. tinapbeana Says:
    1174050790

    i think the 5M references the 401k account of the office as a whole, as in all participants. but i could be wrong! in that case: baselle, i have this great idea... Big Grin

  3. PRICEPLUS Says:
    1174096487

    I think the number is for the office as a whole. I am conservative and I like to go with the indexes. Some people make more but in the LONG run I think indexes are the way to cover the bases! Just my.02 cents!WinkSmile

  4. baselle Says:
    1174099806

    Apologies - the office as a whole. Not me alone. I'll edit to make it clearer.

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