Re: Do you understand your personal finances?
Yes, I manage it myself.
Until recently, our money was split about 1/3rd in Vanguard funds, about 1/3rd in a handful of stocks (Scottrade account, buy and hold philosophy), with the rest in a couple managed Asia funds and a Japan ETF. Something like 80/5/15 stocks/bonds/money market, 60/40-50/50 US/Intl.
Retirement money is mostly in "Target Retirement" type accounts (the kind that get more conservative over time), international index funds, with like 1/10th in a random aggressive stock fund I opened five years ago. One thing I want to do soon is rollover a couple old retirement accounts into a single IRA.
Also have a primary bankroll and a backup money market account "assigned" to poker.
But we just bought a condo; so nearly all of paragraph 1 is now invested in Chicago RE! Time to rebuild.
I have a spreadsheet I use for forecasting savings/targeting an overall allocation. Not very good about details of monthly budget, but have a handle on average monthly expenses.
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