Six Money Moves You Should Make in 2013.docx

Are you ready for 2013?Most financial-planning advice, like most New Years resolutions, is too complex or too banal.Half of it is designed for Type-A drill sergeants who already alphabetize their refrigerators. The other half youve heard before.Lets assume you are already paying off your credit cards, contributing to your 401(k) at work and flossing after every meal.Here are six unusual, and doable, smart money moves for the new year.1 Work out your biggest savings goal.Many people working today are likely to live for three decades after they become eligible for Social Security, but few of them have a clue what that means financially.Just 42% of working-age Americans have even tried to calculate what they will need in retirement, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.The grim reality: 60% of them have less than $25,000 saved up, excluding the value of their home, and 30% have less than $1,000. Good luck with that.How much will you need? To replace your current income for 30 years, you would need - assuming an investment return of three percentage points above inflation - about 20 times one years income. Social Security aims to replace about 40% of your annual income: By that yardstick you would need to save about 12 times your annual income before you retire.For a more precise number, use the Social Security Administrations retirement estimator. Subtract your expected annual benefit from your current yearly pay, and multiply by 20.2 Ramp up your investments.Open a Roth individual retirement account, if you dont have one already. You can invest up to $5,000 for 2012 and $5,500 for 2013 and a nonworking spouse can invest the same. If you are older than 50, add $1,000.Then invest some money in a fund, such as the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Small Cap Dividend exchange-traded fund (DGS), specializing in smaller-company stocks in emerging markets. It shouldnt be the whole of your portfolio, but it should be in there. This is likely to be a volatile growth investment.Emerging markets offer the best overall returns of any investment at the moment, according to two groups of experts who successfully predicted the last two financial crises: Research Affiliates, the investment advisory firm founded by Robert Arnott, and GMO, the fund company co-founded by Jeremy Grantham. GMO estimates that emerging markets offer an investment return over seven years of 50% plus inflation, handsomely beating any rival asset class.3 Try homemade month.Say goodbye to the soy chai lattes, burritos, pastas primavera and Overflowing Bucket O Fries (a genuine bar food item spotted in Boston). Pick a month - any month - and try not eating out at all, for breakfast, lunch or dinner.Its not easy. But these meals add up.It costs you $10 to get a sandwich at work for lunch. It would cost you $2 in ingredients, and five minutes of time, to make that sandwich at home. Do you earn $96 an hour, after tax? If so, you can ignore the rest of this article. If not, try making the sandwich.Financial planners say that when new clients audit their household spending for the first time, the biggest shock is usually how much they spend in restaurants - 70% of which goes to paying the restaurants rent and labor costs.Why do we go out to restaurants that promise homemade food?4 Stop the bleeding.If youre like a lot of families, you spend $200 or even $300 a month on cellphones, cable or satellite TV and Internet.Take a scalpel - or an axe - to that budget and see what you can cut. Call your cellular provider and your TV company - cable or satellite - and haggle. Chances are, they will cut you a deal.Try dumping pay TV altogether and watching movies and TV instead using an online service like Netflix, Amazon or Hulu Plus (partly owned by News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal), for less than $10 a month.If your family spends $200 a month on cellphones and pay TV, thats $2,400 a year. Over the course of 20 years, if you invested that money instead at 4%, youd have an extra $70,000.Haggle. Cut.5 Hold a two-week auction.Turn your house into Sothebys for two weeks. Go on eB and C and auction off everything you dont need.The spare cellphone(s) in the kitchen drawer. The second, unused lawn mower. The designer vase you never use.Everything.Set yourself a target. Double it. Then see how close you get. Get the entire family involved.Removing clutter is a great stress-buster, as psychologists since Ralph Waldo Emerson have noticed.This project will raise some free money. A process like this also has a remarkable way of focusing everyone in the family on the true value of a dollar.6 Imagine youre dead.Cheerful, isnt it?This is why so few people think about dying. Yet from a financial perspective, they need to. Chances are you havent prepared in case it happens.This is not just about the elderly. About one in eight people currently aged 40 will die before they reach 65, according to government statistics.This means two things.First: Get life insurance, and disability insurance, if you have dependents.Most people have some kind of coverage through work. It is usually desperately inadequate. Both one- and two-income households probably need more. It costs about $250,000 to raise a child for 18 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Four years of private college is another $160,000, according to the College Board. Could your surviving spouse cope on his or her own?Second: It means make a will. If you already have one, make sure it is up to date.Dying intestate - without a will - can be catastrophic for the family left behind. And few disasters can be so easily and cheaply prevented.为2013年做好准备了吗？大多数财务规划建议就像大多数新年许愿一样，不是太复杂就是太平庸。相关阅读2012年最受读者喜爱的亚洲豪宅2012年最佳与最差广告创意一半的建议是专为具有A型人格的军事操练教官设计的，这些人已经按字母顺序给冰箱里的食物排好了序。另一半你已经听说过了。让我们假设你已经还清了信用卡债务，缴纳了养老保险，每次用餐后都用牙线清洁了牙缝。以下是为来年准备的六条虽不寻常但却可行的聪明理财建议。1. 弄清你的最大储蓄目标目前还在工作的人在他们有资格领取社会保障金之后还有可能再活30年，但他们中很少有人明白这在经济上意味着什么。华盛顿智库员工福利研究所(Employee Benefit Research Institute)说，处于工作年龄的美国人仅有42%曾经尝试过计算退休后需要多少钱。严峻的现实是：其中60%的人储蓄不到2.5万美元（不含房屋价值），30%的人储蓄不到1,000美元。祝你好运。你需要多少钱养老？按照你目前的收入水平，退休后再活30年，你需要的资金大概是一年收入的20倍（假设投资收益率比通胀率高三个百分点）。社会保障金大致相当于你年收入的40%。按照这一标准衡量，你在退休前的储蓄量应该约为你年收入的12倍。想要知道一个更精确的数字，可以使用社会安全局(Social Security Administration)提供的退休评估器。从你目前的年薪中减去你预期能领取的年度福利金，将差值乘以20就是退休后需要的资金。2. 增加投资开设一个罗斯(Roth)个人退休帐户（如果你还没有的话）。2012年你最多可投资5,000美元，2013年最多可投5,500美元。没有工作的配偶也能投资相同数额。如果你年龄大于50岁，再增加1,000美元投资。然后将部分资金投资一只基金，如专注投资新兴市场小型股的交易所买卖基金WisdomTree Emerging Markets Small Cap Dividend ETF。这虽然不该是你投资组合的全部，但应该成为其中的一个部分。这可能是一项波动性较大的增长投资。据两组成功预测过去两次金融危机的专家介绍，眼下新兴市场所能提供的整体回报是所有投资中最高的。这两组专家所供职的机构分别是Research Affiliates和GMO。前者是罗伯特阿诺特(Robert Arnott)成立的一家投资咨询公司。后者是杰瑞米格雷森(Jeremy Grantham)与他人共同创立的基金公司。GMO估计，如果算上通胀率，新兴市场在七年内提供的投资回报率可以达到50%，轻松击败任何与之竞争的资产类别。3. 试着在家做饭一个月相关阅读调查：中国富人转投信托和理财产品理财顾问还能为你提供什么服务？两个来自不同世界的人如何理财向豆奶印度拿铁、卷饼、蔬菜意大利面和Overflowing Bucket O的炸薯条（波士顿常见的一种酒吧食品）说再见吧。试着挑一个月（随便哪个月）完全在家用餐，早午晚三餐均是如此。要做到这点并不容易，但省下的餐费可不少。工作日买一个三明治当午餐要花10美元。然而在家做一个三明治的话，购买食材只需要两美元，制作三明治仅需五分钟。你的工资能达到每小时96美元吗，而且还是税后？如果能，这部分你就不用看了。如果不能，尝试自己做三明治吧。理财顾问们常说，新客户在第一次审计自己的家庭支出时，最让他们感到震惊的通常是在餐馆的花费。这些花费中有70%都替餐馆支付了店面租金和员工工资。我们为什么要到餐馆吃家常菜？4. 止血如果你和许多家庭一样，那么你每个月得花200美元甚至300美元支付手机、有线电视或卫星电视以及互联网费用。分析一下这部分预算，看看哪些可以避免。打电话给你的手机服务商和你的有线电视和卫星电视服务商，和他们砍价。你很有可能因此减少很大一部分支出。尝试放弃付费电视，用Netflix、亚马逊(Amazon)或是Hulu Plus等在线服务看电影或电视