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Monthly Archives: November 2006

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Excessive 401k Fees Under Fire

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I’m glad to see that someone is finally taking a look at excessive 401k fee structures! The scoop is that several major firms are being sued by a St. Louis attorney alleging that plan structures are designed to obfuscate the amount of fees charged by the plan management companies. If you get a chance, you might want to check out the story here. The firm that’s filing the suit is here.

The only thing I can say is, thank goodness for the legal system! These kinds of suits can only force big pension plans to clean up their act and become more transparent.

Best,

James

Conferencing in LA

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For most of last week, I was at a conference in Los Angeles. Professional conferences are great. Usually the social scene takes on a bit of a party atmosphere and everyone has mutual interests so its often pleasurable to get caught up.

Since our blog is about personal finance, not attending professional conferences, there were a couple of “take-aways” from my trip to LA.

1) Poverty is relative. Judging from the quality of peoples clothes and the look of the neighborhoods in the city, the average joe has less wealth in LA than in Washington DC. To save money, I ended up taking the subway a few times so my observations are based on the subway rides.

2) Its good to split a hotel room with a friend. I ended up sharing a room with a fellow grad student. This was great because I only had to pay $300 instead of $600. Three hundred is still a lot of money, but I wanted a hotel closer to the conference center. Conferences are rare opportunities to establish valuable social capitol in your field. Since a lot of informal socializing occurs in hotels after conference hours are over, its important to be close to the “action”, so to speak, and is therefore worth spending the extra money.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Best,

James

Bloggers and Spirit of Capitalism

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So, my wife I don’t normally say much about other bloggers here at Dual Income No Kids.

There are a couple of bloggers that I did want to bring to your attention.

First, off, I think you should check out Adventures in Money Making. His post on investing in pornography was truly one of a kind. While I don’t think investing in porn is for the DINKS, I do want to commend the author for having a lot of old-fashioned get up and go. He’s sent me some interesting opportunities and seems adept at generating fresh and new perspective on building wealth.

Second, I want to voice some appreciation for the author of pfblog.com. While his site has been heavily criticized for the amount of advertisements it has, the authors relentless focus on building wealth has paid off. His networth has grown from $400,000 to nearly $520,000 in months I’ve been following his site, largely due to discipline, focus and hard work.

In my view, creativity and discipline are aspects of what makes capitalism the compelling force it is today. You might want to keep these guys on your radar screen.

Best,

James

Crazy Russians Might be on to Something

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We learned in our last post that Russia is still sorting out it’s wealthy elite. They may be struggling, but a few folks seem to have benefited from this.

At the same time, Moscow is now the city boosts the largest number of billionaires, 33 whereas NYC has only 31. It is estimated that a quarter of Russia’s wealth is in the hands of just 100 people! Some of these may be questioned for fraud and tax evasion, but with $15.2B in your pocket you might not be too worried.

Folks in NYC thought they had it bad in finding an apartment. Looking for a two to three bedroom in Moscow and you’ll pay $25k a month! Fine with your broom closet apartment? We are used to those in DC, but not at $5k a month!

Seems like some things have changed since I was there in the early nineties, but I bet the Babushkad women are still begging at churches.

Best,

Miel

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