Milky Way Retirement

  Bạn có thể đọc bài viết bằng tiếng Việt ở đây.  Hi all, A friend asked me a question a few months ago about what she should do with the $30,000 in her savings account. Another friend also asked me where she should put her hard-earned money away? I answered the questions via text messages and felt proud that I was the trusting person whom my friend can turn into. Now I put my answers into a blog post, which needs more reference resources. So, as normal, my blog post is still long, but it may help explain why you should follow the advice but sometimes you don't. A lot of Americans have known about Maslow's pyramid since high school. My friend in Vietnam, who specializes in Psychology knows about it, but I didn't know about it until learning about finance. Simplified hierarchy of needs - Maslow from Wikipedia We work. Everyone works. Since the primitive era, human has worked for food, water, and shelter for rest and warmth. Then we want to find a stable place to stay and bui...

  Hi all, April rain brings May flowers. However, it hasn't rained as much as it did last year. Most of the plants in my yard were wilted because I was busy with lotus planting and forgot to water them. Will there be a drought this year? A few days ago, there was a Red Flag warning about the chances of wildfire in my area. Strange! The weather keeps changing unpredictably due to climate change. Farmers may have a year of loss, which may also affect the consumption price and inflation. I'm not a farmer, just an amateur gardener, but I felt the worry about the weather and the crops. April is also Financial Literacy Month. Do you think we are all literate about our own money? 20% of students lack basic skills of financial literacy skills, which means they may know nothing about budgeting, saving, or managing their own money. Adults are not better. 29% of working women showed basic skills of financial literacy skills whereas 47% of working men did. This means that around 50% of hou...

Bạn có thể đọc bài này bằng tiếng Việt ở đây.    Hi, Spring has sprung with a lot of flowers blooming early everywhere. However, a lot of people have been shaken by the news of the bank collapse since the beginning of March. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was ordered to shut down on March 10, days after being featured as Forbes' 20th of the top 100 America's Best Banks 2023. Crypto banks like Signature Bank and Silvergate Capital also collapsed in about one week. However, SVB is mentioned a lot in recent news because: - SVB executives sold millions of shares before the collapse . - SVB operated without an official Chief Risk Officer for 8 months during a difficult transition in the venture capital market.  - SVB executive was the Lehman Brothers CFO before the 2008 collapse . - The bank's business was concentrated heavily on startups financed by venture capitalists , which is extremely risky itself. Source But the craziest thing SVB did was it invested billions of dollars int...

Hello, As promised, this month's newsletter will answer one of my client's questions, " Should I buy I-bonds ?" To get a complete answer, you will have to read a long piece of writing as usual. 😊 I bonds- what you should know about before buying them Bonds are fixed securities. Stocks are variable securities.  There are so many kinds of bonds out there, issued by federal, state, or city governments, and corporations.  According to Ric Edelman's book " The Truth About Money- Everything You Need to Know About Money " 4th edition , investors use bonds to produce income because the bond issuers have to pay back the bondholders the principal with its interest. So bonds are also named "fixed-income securities". CDs are also considered bonds because you lend the bank your money (yes, the bank says that you deposit your money). After a while, you want your principal back with the interest. However, CDs are mostly issued by banks and brokerage firms.  ...

  Bạn có thể đọc tiếng Việt ở đây.   Happy Lunar New Year to you! From now on, the monthly newsletter from Milky Way Retirement will focus on the questions my clients asked me during the last year. I answered them all via video call or chat, but now I'll put them in writing so that others can benefit from them also.  This January will start with questions about Individual Income tax. Although we get tax return forms every year, it may be hard for some to understand the difference among tax terms like marginal tax rates, effective tax rates, or tax brackets. I am not ambitious to be a CPA, but I hope this newsletter can give you a basic view of your tax landscape.  The Federal income tax has seven levels of tax rates, which are known as marginal tax rates : 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37%.  It's obvious that the more income you have, the higher tax rate is applied. It also depends on your marriage status: single or married. Source So, how is your income tax...

  Happy New Year to you and your family! Out with the old, in with the new! Which of the old ones will you throw out this year? And which new ones will you adopt? I'd like to share  my experience  with you.  Looking back to my past self , I was not a planner. I did everything spontaneously and randomly. The schedule of my job pushed me through a day. After finishing working, I let my emotions lead my life. I may read or wander around bookstores. Or I may see my friends and chat with them to relieve the stress.  No plans. I didn't plan how much to earn, how many places to visit, or how many books to read. I just went with the flow that life threw at me.  I was a teacher of English in Vietnam then. I taught my students about New Year's resolutions, in which people set out goals for the next year. Even when I was in the U.S., I still found that New Year's resolution was not for me.   Are your resolutions like this? It was the same when I had kids. My...