I try to max out a Roth IRA each year. I like this type of account, which I’ve referred to as the little black dress of personal finance, because of its versatility. It’s designed for retirement, but since it’s an after-tax account, you can take your contributions out tax free at any time. That makes it a great save for emergencies, save for a big ticket item account.

Although, of course, if you have all of your money in aggressive stock funds, you could risk losing some of your principal and not having it available if you need it. So I have another smaller emergency savings account too.

Anyway, this weekend I received a statement for my 2007 contributions to my IRA. In 2007, you could contribute $4,000; this year it’s $5,000. You can contribute to an IRA for the prior year through tax day– aka April 15th. So my monthly contributions in January through March actually went towards my 2007 limit. Confused, yet?

So the statement said that I saved $4,000.95 for tax year 2007. But the max is $4,000. How annoying is that? I blame it on my mid-year attempt to save exactly $4,000 through dollar cost averaging. Clearly, I goofed on my math, which is no surprise since I often make tweaks to my finances at night when everyone else is asleep and I have the time, but not always the brain power.

I called A.B.C. mutual fund company and told them of my situation. The woman said she couldn’t tell me to do nothing on the recorded line, but that she’s never heard of the IRS flagging a return because a person saved .95 cents too much in a tax advantaged account.

If I wanted to, she would send out an excess contributions form, which would guide me through the calculations to determine how much I earned on that .95 cents and what penalty or taxes I would owe. That sounds time consuming on several levels.

With the contribution limits for IRAs indexed to inflation going forward, I hope that A.B.C and other fund companies that undoubtedly have thousands of customers who wish to max out their IRAs by automatically socking away a sum each month will streamline this process. Anyone know a company that does make this easy?

For those of you who want the whole excess contributions enchilada, here’s IRS Pub 590 .

I am now 31 and thank goodness! According to a new book released yesterday called “The Dumbest Generation,” by Mark Bauerlein, you should not trust anyone under 30 because they got stoopid using the Internet. Bauerlein is an English professor at Emory University who has also lamented the death of literature readers as a researcher for the NEA.

I haven’t gotten my hands on the book yet, but come, now. I know he wants to sell books (and I may even pick up a copy and READ it since at at my age I am only on the cusp of being dumb), but where does he get off calling millions of people a “bad word,” as my kids would say?

I came across the book and its thesis at the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtor’s blog: The Skinny.

I’ve always been a proponent of making money a less taboo subject. Then we can finally put those Joneses to rest and perhaps some of the credit card debt along with ‘em.

Today, the Wall Street Journal’s work and family blog The Juggle has a post about whether sharing salary could be beneficial, helping to reduce salary disparities at work and eliminate the sometimes damaging assumptions that people might have about who makes what.

The blog mentioned a story in The New York Times from a couple of weeks back that I’m surprised I missed (Oh– they put it in the Fashion section– I guess it’s fashionable to talk salary).

Anyway, the story is about how people in their 20s and 30s are more likely to share their salaries with each other than workers in older generations.

It’s a thought provoking story, but when I read this paragraph, I couldn’t help but think, oh puh-leeze:

For people old enough to remember phone booths, a blunt reference to salary in a social setting still represents the height of bad manners. But for many young professionals, the don’t-ask-don’t-tell etiquette of previous generations seems like a relic.

There was a phone book junking up my front steps when I got home from work yesterday. They aren’t like do-do birds or dinosaurs. Clearly I am so old that I need glasses, or so young that I hadn’t even heard of those booth-things so I figured it must be a typo. Sorry for the confusion.

And I bet that most people still don’t reveal their salaries without at least considering whether they should first– even if they are 25.

I’ll say from my experience that salary still is not a comfortable discussion in my circle of friends.

What do you think? And if you’ve been dying to tell people how much you make, or are willing to trade your salary in a “safe place” in order to gain insight on others’ salaries, do spill.

I’ve mentioned this in the past– about how I shop in spurts. Part of it is time– it’s hard to find hours to mill about the mall with a job and a family. But part of it is also keeping temptation at bay. I love to shop and know I’ll find plenty to buy if I give myself the opportunity. Which leads to guilt. Which leads to returning items. Which leads to more buying. Which leads to a stern conversation with myself about wants and needs. And then I inevitably end up on Monday morning with a pile of new clothes and nothing that seems to go together.

So on my most recent trips, I’ve spent maybe $100 on my kids for several outfits and a couple pairs of shoes and multiple pairs of sunglasses (why do I even try with a 2 year old? I don’t think I owned a pair until I was in high school…then again, they were only $2.50).

On myself I spent in the ballpark of $150 for three shirts, two pairs of pants, some jeans, and an $89 sweater I never would have bought but did thanks to $125 in gift cards at Banana Republic that I earned through my rewards credit card.

And still I found myself second-guessing whether I really should have bought much of it –even the $3 and $4 sweaters at Gymboree. My daughter would be happy to wear the same skirt every day of the year if I let her (and maybe I should). So what drove me to buy any of this stuff at all, except that it was cheap? And it was there?

But then I popped on over to MSP-Magazine and came across the tally that accompanied this blog entry about shopping with toddlers and I realized that I didn’t even go close to overboard.

Shoes at Nordstrom, $78. Summer wardrobe additions, $400. Ride at MOA, $20 pass. Lunch in sunny courtyard, $19. Photo booth, $5. Shopping with my daughters, priceless.

I’d revise the shopping with my daughters phrase to include the words annoying, distracting, frustrating, and expensive. I know when I’m with my daughter I tend to spend way more than I do when on my own because I listen to her opinions and find myself raising the threshold for how much I’m willing to spend on kid’s clothes (usually, no more than $15 on anything– going above $10 makes me cringe). And then we get home and she refuses to wear what I bought her anyway.

In other retail news, the latest survey from the National Retail Federation found that 40 percent of Americans plan to spend some of their rebate money, although much of that will go for necessities. But I’ll bet that when that money appears and people see that puffed up bank account balance, at least some of that money goes to buying that ump-teenth pair of toddler sunglasses.

Being a consumer in this country is an identity that’s going to be tough for many to shake.

“Opinions are for show, numbers are for dough”

Don’t you love that? It’s one of Minneapolis money manager and researcher Steve Leuthold’s phrases, which he shared at the group’s annual luncheon today. Leuthold runs six mutual funds, but is best known for the research that drives the investment decisions behind the funds.

Leuthold is about as down to earth as you get. He started his group’s annual meeting, which was held on the 50th floor of the IDS Center, with an anecdote about how the reason he’s not wearing a suit is because he went to China, gained 8 pounds and can’t button any of his suit pants.

Then again, that’s the kind of thing you expect from a guy whose team named one mutual fund the Undervalued and Unloved Fund with the ticker UGLYX and has a pricey monthly research report that features reader-submitted jokes.

Have you heard the one about the– gosh, I seriously was just looking through their reports and the jokes are either super crass or novel-length. OK, here’s one, titled “You Gotta Love the Irish:”

At a U2 concert in Ireland, Bono (the lead singer) asks the audience for some quiet. Then he starts to slowly clap his hands. Holding the audience in total silence, he says into the microphone…

“I want you to think about something. Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.”

A voice from the back of the audience yells out…”Then stop yer clapping, ya wanker!”

But seriously, here are a few things of note that Leuthold and friends said today:

They are currently “neutral” on the stock market, meaning the money they manage is 50 percent invested in equities. Leuthold explained that sometimes you just have to wait for the market to reveal its direction. If we could all be so disciplined.

Leuthold thinks we’ve been in a recession for two quarters now despite the official GDP numbers. He called the use of inflation figures that don’t include food or energy prices as “a big joke” and a “seriously flawed” approach. I can’t disagree.

He said based on the historical length of a recession, which is between 11 and 16 months, the time to buy stocks will come about as early as next month, or maybe in August.

He also predicted that interest rates are on the up and up.

And that despite that fact that Wall Street has “gotten through the sub-prime slime,” it’s not time to buy big commercial banks yet (although regional banks look pretty good).

I’ve always struggled with regular exercise. Once I’m doing it, it feels great. But if I’m not already donning gym shorts and tennis shoes, I’m more likely to reach for a drink or hang out than hit the running trails.

So…a few weeks ago I wrote about Stikk.com, which helps you to keep your commitments by pledging money to a person or a cause. Read the entire post here.

I said I’d exercise four days a week. I knew it was going to be tough. At first, I ran in the rain, got up at 5 am twice a week and did all I could to ensure that none of the readers who signed up to accept my failure money got a cent. But then I went to LA for a wedding and spent more time sitting by the pool than swimming in the pool. Last week, I made it to three times, but not the fourth.

So…I lost $40 because I pledged $240 for 12 weeks and have $20 on the line each week. And I randomly picked a winner from the people who emailed me to receive my money. Congrats Soren24! I’ll pick another winner if I fail again. To get in on the action, send an email to kara@startribune.com with the subject line: Stikk.

I only ran once so far this week which means I have to work out today through Sunday or I owe more dough.

I really thought I was so cheap that this incentive thing would work. But I’m learning that when time and money are competing as precious commodities, time can win out.

Well, I didn’t get mine yet. But plenty of others have shared how they decided to use theirs at the web site: HowIspentmystimulus.com.

Now why didn’t I think of that?

The photo-posts tell stories about everything from people spending money to travel to the World Beard and Moustache competition (seriously?), to buying an As Seen on TV pancake puff pan, to taking a puppy to the vet for a “particularly messy case of giardia.”

Interspersed with the impulse buys, travel plans, and medical bills (oddly the majority of medical bills were for animals), are mentions of paying down debt. Not much saving going on.

It’s one of those sites that can suck you in, so be careful. My only wish is that you could sort stimulus use by location and map out the pix to see if anyone else in your hood is heading to that beard competition. Then you could caravan.

Two new reports on 18-29 year-olds came out today from public policy groups Demos and American Progress.

The message that came out of the joint press conference the two just held is that the younger generation is strapped, that they are progressive and willing to pay higher taxes for things such as universal health care and cheaper college tuition, and that the government needs a new deal.

Tamara Draut, who also wrote a book about the topic a couple of years ago called “Strapped: Why America’s 20 and 30-something’s Can’t Get Ahead,” blames lower wages and the rising cost of college and housing for the “fragile” state of young Americans, who will be lucky if they can “work or educate their way into middle class.”

She backs the points up with stats galore, all which can be found in the report. I encourage you to take a look.

For example, since the 1970’s, the median earnings for young workers ages 25 to 34 have declined for men and women at all education levels except for young women with bachelor degrees—those wages have increased by 10 percent.

Student loan debt is “dampening the ability to build assets and even make jump to home ownership,” said Draut. The average grad leaves with nearly $20,000 in student loan debt; in Minnesota it’s $23,375.

And four in 10 in this generation spend more than a third of their income in rent compared to 18 percent of 18-29 year-olds in 1970 and 30 percent in

I’m a member of Gen-X. And while I listened to the call, I was reminded of an entire genre of slacker fiction by authors such as Douglas Coupland that came out. The stories starred disenfranchised young adults who also complained about poor job prospects and other financial woes.

And while I glanced through the report I was struck by how much other age groups have also lost ground. Grandma’s with too much credit card debt? Sadly, yes. Is economic suffering really divided by age?

What do you think? Do you feel as if the deck is stacked against the under-30 set? Are you a poster-child for these reports, or exactly the opposite?

Geez, I always feel like I’m apologizing for not updating poor Ka-Blog as much as I’d like. Believe me, the ideas are stacked to high heaven, but finding the time to write is always the challenge.

This week, on top of my writing for the paper, my parents have been in town in search of a house. They’ve decided that they’d like to retire near the grand kids and miraculously sold a house in the Detroit suburbs in little time. As an editor of mine said when I told him the news, “the housing market has hit bottom.” We’ll see….

So they’re searching for a new abode and told me something I found extremely interesting and annoying– lenders don’t like to make small mortgages. According to their mortgage broker, lenders will charge a higher rate for loans that are less than $70,000. So he suggested they take out a loan that big and invest the rest. Uh, no thanks.

The other thing they can do is “recast” the loan, which means pay off a chunk of the mortgage with some of the cash they’ll have from their home sale, and then have the lender re-amortize the payments so they have smaller payments based on the new loan amount. But the lender will charge for this, of course– a couple hundred bucks according to my Dad.

Any mortgage experts out there who can explain to me why a mortgage company won’t take out a smaller loan without charging an interest rate premium, except because they are greedy?

Another thing to complain about while I’m exercising that muscle? Those credit card checks that come in the mail. These checks are coming fast and furious to my address these days. Is that because creditors know that the more strapped Americans feel, the more they might be tempted or might need to use the checks? Or are creditors worried that people are going to charge less these days and want to entice with teaser rates?

I don’t know, but these checks to me are invitations for identity theft and credit scams, sitting there in mailboxes just waiting to be used. In a perfect world, credit card companies would have to ask me if I want these checks. My answer would always be, uh, no thanks!

For those of you who aren’t sure if you’re receiving a rebate or exactly how much to expect, here’s a handy tax rebate calculator from Kiplinger’s.

And if you’ve forgotten about when approximately your pay day is, check out the following IRS chart. They’re about a week ahead of schedule, I believe:

Stimulus Payment Schedule for Tax Returns
Received and Processed by April 15

Remember, you have to have filed your tax return to get a payment. If you’re late, it will take about six weeks from when you file to get your payment in hand, or later if you aren’t direct depositing.