From: "Elle" 
Newsgroups: misc.invest.financial-plan
Subject: Re: fund vs credit
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:27:03 -0600
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	=9OZG

Can you clarify: Is any of the money you want to use to pay 
off your debt in an IRA? Otherwise, it seems you have three 
concerns:

1.
How do you get rid of your debt as economically as possible?
If you can sell your shares in the mutual fund (= "cash out" 
below) within about two to three months, worst case, then 
you should not consolidate to the 1.9%, $60 tranfer fee 
card. Reason: Each month, the $2500 of debt is currently 
costing you around $21 in interest. ( = 10% * 2500/12), 
worst case. The transfer fee is higher than what you'd pay 
in interest. BTW, you do want to pay off this debt. That 
8-10% credit card interest is very likely more than stocks 
are going to return for awhile.

2.
After paying off the debt, should you continue to hold 
shares in American Century Ultra, or should you find another 
mutual fund? I just graphed TWCUX vs. the S&P using 
finance.yahoo.com's graphing tools, and I'm not impressed. I 
suggest reviewing all of your retirement allocation and 
re-allocate as needed per guidelines like those found via 
the free online tools linked at 
http://home.earthlink.net/~elle_navorski/id4.html. Stick 
with no load index funds (or no  load domestic stock and 
bond funds with expense ratios lower than 0.5%; 
international funds not more than 1%) for now.

3.
How do you attain a high FICO score?
I can only comment here that this notion that one needs a 
high FICO score is one pushed by the credit industry, 
bottomline, to get people to borrow so they make humongous 
profits from fairly modest households. Generally speaking, 
the only time a low FICO score should seriously impact a 
couple is when they want to borrow money to buy a house or 
condominium. Have you checked your score lately?

Where are you with your health insurance? Emergency fund? 
Retirement portfolio? Have an IRA? 401(k)?