So what are you planning on doing with all that stuff? Will you have a sale? Put it on Ebay? Will you give it to Goodwill? Or, throw it away?

Just curious.

I posted this over at GRS under the very good Roth IRA post.

If you want Vanguard and their low fees in a Roth but can’t afford the $3k min for most funds, pick the STAR Fund. It only has a $1,000 minimum and is a very diversified (20-30% bonds) and well allocated (has growth, value, large, small, and international coverage) fund of funds. You can’t beat getting a piece of those 11 different funds for the price.

The expense ratio is only about 0.35% with no load. The 15 year annualized return* on that is 10.38% with a standard deviation of 0.096. I dare you to find something that beats that return with a comparable risk.

PS – Setting this up will take under 20 minutes at vanguard.com.

*Past performance blah blah blah

If you don’t sell your books, there is a great book exchange at http://www.paperbackswap.com. You should check it out.

Edit: Apparently I forgot that I learned about the PaperbackSwap on this site. The Simple Dollar comes through again!

As a grad student on a fellowship that is technically “unearned income” (then why am I in lab 50 hours a week?), I can’t contribute to any IRA. I really wish I could put money in there to compound. .

Trent–good luck with the packing. I am mid-move, and even though for the first time I’ve had the luxury of having my employer pay for my moving expenses, I was still shocked by how much stuff I own & how much stuff I got rid of in preparation fo moving. I think I’m more aware of all the “stuff” because I read this site every day, so I’m really grateful to read about somebody else’s experiences.

So, this is in response to the link about “having what you want and wanting what you have.” I’ve found that as I got ready to move, a lot of stuff ended up going to Goodwill. Some went to friends. I didn’t have the energy/time for eBay (but might sign up for Paperback Swap once I get my stuff out of storage). But after seeing all of my stuff being packed up (and knowing how many boxes it took), I’m really trying to re-affirm my belief that shopping is no longer a leisure activity for me. I’ve been working at that for a while now. Instead, I want the things that I buy to either be something that has a great story attached to it (e.g. it’s from my travels or it’s something I found while spending time with a good friend, AND is something that brings me a sense of joy every time that I see it) or is something that is in routine use. I also have had to realize during this moving process that I simply had too much stuff in my fridge/freezer, so I’m going to try to re-adjust my shopping to be more realistic in terms of shopping for one. (My parents are big users of the extra freezer so I think I’ve learned to be a little too good at stockpiling.)

Wishing you & your wife the best of luck with the packing!