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Matt: This morning on today's Two Cents: Getting your finances in order. The annual ride of packing up the kids and sending them off to school can be the perfect time for mom and dad to do a little financial homework of their own. Jonathan Murray is a senior vice president of Investments at Legg Mason in Baltimore, his brother David is vice president of Wealth Management at a private bank in Bloomfield, Michigan. Brothers Murray, good morning. (hey, Matt!) Nice to see you both. (Hi, Matt! Glad to be here!) David, let's start with you. Why now? Why is it such a good time?
David: Back to school is all about preparing for a new start, a new beginning. Our kids have new school books, new classrooms, new teachers. It's a great time to take a same approach to managing your money.
Matt: So get focused, it's a good time to get focused.(You've got a clean slate.) One of the things you guys talk about is this kind of massive paperwork (right)that everyone has lined around the house, bills, financial statements, (Yeah.) things like that. How do you know what to save, how do you know what to get rid of? You think it's important to weed it out.
Jonathan: It really is. And I'm guilty of that myself, Matt. I've got the old shoe box thing going, you know, with receipts, (Right!) and writes and drawers and everything. But it's so important, I think, to try to consolidate that, so that you can get your arms around it because only then can you really be organized and structured with your finances.
Matt: So things like monthly banking and investment statements, you keep those for how long?
Jonathan: Keep them for one year. Everything's electronic now; keep a file for investment statements, banking statements. But you really don't have to keep them beyond one year and your financial institution has all of that electronically.
Matt: Bills, tax returns, things like that.
Jonathan: The other rest that you gotta keep that for three years.
David: Now on the records, (Yeah!) On your tax records, keep them for three years. But on your returns, you wanna keep those forever.
Jonathan: I would. Yeah.
Matt: All right, you mentioned online, so many people, and so many institutions offer online access to our records now, so do you really need to keep the paperwork?
Jonathan: Well, I still wear it as a backup. (In)short length of time you hold on to those paper records, maybe only hold them for a year or so with the exception of your tax return, but I don't know about you, but I still like to have that paper. (Right!)
David: After the second(year) Jonathan's gonna go back to his closet and get rid of stuff, pretty 1973.
Matt: And by the way you get rid of it, shred it, (absolutely) that's really important.
David: Absolutely. That's really important.
Jonathan: Absolutely. There are wackos out there to go through your trash.
Matt: Alright. It's also a good time to update your portfolio. (Sure is!) Where do you turn if you're not great at doing this yourself?
Jonathan: I think it's best, Matt, to talk to a live human being. You know, unfortunately, today, when you call your 401k administrator; you get for this, press 1, for that, press 2. If you can find a financial adviser who will help you rebalance and upgrade your portfolio, specially your 401k. I will do so.
David: Take your last month's statement and bring it to a trusted financial adviser, and he or she can help work it through.
Matt: And the rules to remember when you're updating or upgrading your portfolio, diversify, avoid the hot fund or yesterday's winner, because it's just that, it's yesterday's winner.
Jonathan: But that's hard to do, and so many people at cocktail parties are bragging about what they made last year and it's going to be tempting for you to get in that fund now, only to see it fall down.
Matt: And when you see a stock starting to do badly, if your goals are long term, don't sell it in a panic.(No.)
Jonathan: Not necessarily.
David: No. It really is based on the underlying fundamentals of the company, Matt. Sometimes when the stock goes down, it's a great time to add to it. Other times, it's time to sell.
Jonathan: Yeah. That's a tough one, that depends on your individual goals and your time horizon.
Matt: Good time of year also to pay down you debt, this is critically important. I think the average debt in this country per family's like $9000.
Jonathan: $9300 is the average credit card balance, can you believe that? I mean, that's just staggering.
Matt: So where do you start?
David: The people are overwhelmed with that. I think that the most important thing is for individuals to assess their expenses. To figure out what they are paying and how often. Start with the highest paying interests first, if you had a home equity loan, and millions of Americans do. We've seen rates go from four and a half percent up to seven percent. That's gonna represent.
Matt: A big jump.
Jonathan: Yeah. Be careful with the home equity loan. Because it's variable rate. Right now the prime rate is up to six and half percent. (Right!) Folks might still be thinking that their home equity line is four percent, it's not. It's going up.
David: That's going up. As well as your payment.
Matt: Well, while we were doing all these other things, you say: Don't forget you must continue to save. What is the rule of summing turns of your yearly income? How much you should be putting aside.
Jonathan: Generally, we advise people to start with 10%, and we think the way to do it is to sock it away before anything else, there is an old adage. It says: pay yourself first. If you can automate your savings, automate your 401 k contribution, so that at least 10% is going in to savings and investing. You're on a good start.
David: It's not too late either, Matt. For example, if you started out with $10000, if you're a baby boomer, and you're 50 years old, you're overwhelmed with credit card debt, and many are. And you think it's just too late, it's too late for me to save, it's not. 30 years ago, if you put $10000 as a starting savings account into the S&P 500, feed it with $200 a month, and many Americans can afford that, especially if they're baby boomers. Today, that account would be worth one point two million dollars. You'd be a millionaire. Just adding $200 a month.
Jonathan: It's not too late…
Matt: And just quickly, another thing to lump upon here, don't forget to save for your retirement and you make a great point here. You can, if your, kids going off to college, you can borrow money to pay for their college, you can not borrow money to retire.
Jonathan: That's exactly right, Matt. A lot of people make a mistake of taking from their 401k or their retirement plan to pay for their kids' college. Don't do that, folks. There're some really low-interest loans to pay for college, there are 529 plans, Coverdell education accounts, Custodial Accounts, so talk to you adviser about those.
Matt: Again the bottom line focus at this time of year, because otherwise it's gonna be a new year, (All the time.)because we'll be talking about this next year. David and Jonathan Murray, good to have you guys here.
Jonathan: Well, it's a pleasure. (Thanks)
Matt: My pleasure as well.
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