Everybody else is offering year-end money tips. Why should this column be any different? Here are 31 New Year's resolutions:
- Find out if any of your colleagues fail to take advantage of your employer's retirement-savings plan. Then taunt them mercilessly.- Ask to see your broker or financial planner's portfolio.
- Annoy your credit-card company by paying off your balance every month.
- Make sure your ex-spouse is no longer listed as the beneficiary on your insurance policies.
- Ignore market timers, Wall Street strategists, technical analysts and bozo journalists who make market predictions.
- If you buy an appliance, stereo or automobile and the salesman pressures you to get an extended warranty, ask if the policy is made necessary by the product's shoddy workmanship.
- At the next family reunion, announce your funeral wishes.
- Do your own taxes and then complain to your congressman about the ridiculous complexity involved.
- Make just one cash-machine withdrawal each week.
- Cancel one of your credit cards.
- Get much of your junk mail stopped by writing to the Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, P.O. Box 9008, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11735-9008. Until the flood recedes, recycle all junk mail and mail-order catalogs, preferably unread.
- Exercise so that you last almost as long as your money.
- Arrange to invest automatically in a stock mutual fund.
- Every time you buy a new investment, sell something else so you keep your finances simple.
- Stop listening to your brother-in-law's investment advice.
- Cancel your cable subscription or at least get rid of the premium channels.
- Stop giving your brother-in-law investment advice.
- Vote "no" if your mutual fund tries to push through a fee increase.
- Next time a salesman calls, say your parents aren't at home. Meanwhile, stop phone solicitations by writing to the Telephone Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, P.O. Box 9014, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11735-9014. Make sure you include your name, address and telephone number, including area code.
- Bug your bank by keeping just enough in your account to avoid checking charges.
- Put off buying a new car for another year.
- Dump your savings account and get a money-market fund.
- Pray for a 20 percent stock-market drop so you can buy shares at cheaper prices.
- Burn the checkbook for your bond fund before you mess up your tax return by writing a lot of checks.
- Try to find somebody who got rich by market timing, investing in baseball cards or buying options and futures.
- Cut your state tax bill. Don't buy lottery tickets.
- Check on your likely Social Security benefits by requesting a "Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement." To do so, order the necessary form by calling the Social Security Administration at 800-772-1213.
- Round up your mortgage check to the nearest hundred dollars, so that you pay off your mortgage more quickly.
- Make a shopping list before you go to the stores, and then buy only items that are on the list.
- Wait one week before acting on any investment decision.
- Admit to your therapist that you can't beat the market.