Ashley Ma
Keeping It All Straight
I’m not only my parents’ only child, but also the only niece and granddaughter in my mother’s family. As such, my first experience with family estate planning came early on, as my grandparents began making annual transfers of their assets to the next generation. With each year’s gift, my grandfather provided specific guidelines on which equities to purchase, which my mother as my custodian followed explicitly, even keeping the same brokerage. She trusted his years of investing experience more than her own judgment, and we felt that since it was ultimately his hard-earned money it should be his decision anyway. Though I was aware of the account, as a minor I paid little attention to it. When I joined an NASD-regulated firm after college and moved to open my retirement accounts, I took a look at the list of permitted Read More…
Own No Evil
The ongoing BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico highlights another argument for understanding what’s in your mutual funds. I don’t hold, or flaunt, many strong political views, but environmental causes are dear to my heart, and as the oil spill has continued to grow I’ve been reminded that if you don’t know what you own, then you don’t know what your companies are doing with your dollars. I don’t trade actively enough to have instant recall of my holdings, particularly within my 401(k), so as news first broke of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, I went immediately to check my accounts. Since nearly all of my individual investments remain in individual equities, my first move was to look into my 401(k)’s plan holdings. My firm offered relatively few options, so I am split primarily in a handful of mutual Read More…
Five Years Gone: Investing After College
With my five year college reunion coming up this weekend, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned in the last five years. Plenty of lessons have nothing to do with money (e.g. drinking champagne, then whiskey, is a bad idea; buying a AAA membership is a good idea), but I’ve picked up a few useful tricks on the way: Pay your taxes: I’d always taken for granted that taxes, along with insurance and social security, were handily deducted from my bi-monthly paychecks, with a single end-of-year true-up made to the government. Outside a traditional firm-employee structure, however, the process is a bit more complicated. For anyone self-employed or working as an independent contractor, you pay the IRS in quarterly installments of estimated taxes , explained more simply by Learnvest.com. Tools such as Evernote or ProOnGo’s Receipt Reader are great to Read More…
There’s Always More To Learn
Last weekend, I joined my extended family to watch my younger cousin graduate from USC. Afterwards, over dinner at a Beverly Hills steakhouse, a conversation about his plans for next year somehow evolved into a lengthy discussion of value investing. As a graduate of USC’s Marshall School of Business, and a member of one of their student-run funds, he’d had plenty of exposure to the ins and outs of the public markets and developed a definite perspective on his own investment strategies and goals. It made me wonder how many of his 5,000 classmates, or how many of the millions of graduates in the Class of 2010 across the nation, are similarly prepared to face their financial futures. I suspect many recent or soon-to-be graduates have never considered learning about investing, thinking “what’s the point? I don’t have enough money Read More…
Planning For Two: Combining Your Financial Futures After Marriage
Over the past few years, I’ve watched a growing number of friends get engaged and then get caught up in the excitement – and chaos – of planning their weddings. In the midst of preparing for the big day, it can be easy to lose track of planning for the long term. All the wedding blogs will tell you that agreeing about money is critical for a happy, balanced marriage, but if you’ve never had the conversation before, how do you know where to begin? If you’re already living together, you may have a head start in some of these areas, but it’s still important to discuss these money issues before you get married, keeping in mind the importance of being open and patient with each other. Your wedding represents the start of your future together – and managing your Read More…