photo credit: Latente § piove merda e dicono che è ciocolata

Like most of you, my 401(k) has steadily been declining despite the money I contribute with each paycheck.  When I checked my balance last night, it looked a lot like my 2005 balance!  So what am I going to do?  Nothing, or rather stay the course.  No one can predict the future so there’s no point shuffling money around and making matters worse.  So I will leave my contributions as is and evaluate my asset allocation at year end, as usual.  Then I will make any necessary adjustments.  Retirement is more than ten years away for Mr. Savvy and I so there’s no need to panic.

But enough about what we can’t do anything about, here’s what we CAN do something about.  As of yesterday, Mr. Savvy’s ‘hobby’ is now a business.  Therefore expenses he has occurred in the pursuit of such can now be written off against the income he’s bringing in.  Also, since he now has a business (a sole proprietorship, by the way), we’ll be opening a SEP-IRA in order to shelter some of that income.   So in addition to working to maximize our income, we utilize all possible (legal and moral) ways to keep as much of that income as we can.

We will also probably delay an upcoming major purchase.  We will still make the purchase but I’m comparision shopping in order to get the best price and I suspect there will be more deals to be had as the year ends.  What, if anything, are you doing differently during these financially trying times?