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BY WARREN BOROSON
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
BOROSON ON MONEY
Ira and Hope Moskowitz, both 44, of Cherry Hill are thinking of moving to improve their job prospects. Their situation is described in an article in the January-February 2010 issue of Money magazine.
Hope has been managing a hair salon, Ira ran software administration for a mortgage-serving firm. They love the area, and vacation at the Jersey shore every summer.
"If it weren't for losing my job," said Ira, "we'd be happy to spend the rest of our days in this area."
They have two children: John, 17, and Rachel, 14.
Apparently they cannot make it just on Hope's income. Before Ira lost his job, the family made $140,000 a year.He's thinking of looking for mortgage work in Texas and North Carolina, home to several mortgage-serving companies.
Advice they've received:
- Don't move without a job in wherever you're moving to.
- Check out wherever you decide to move. How far will your new pay go? Do the classified ads indicate that your spouse can find a job?
- If you decide to move, put your house up for sale right away. Homes in Cherry Hill are taking an average of five months to sell.
- Don't buy right away. It may take longer to sell your old house than you suspect. Besides, the job may not last – or the area may not appeal to your family. Instead, rent for a year.
The article lists various websites to help people who are moving – such as how far our new salary will go. Click here to find out more.
How does Money get the volunteers to cooperate? Go out to a meal with them. That breaks down barriers. One caveat: No alcohol should be consumed at such meals! Or the information the reporter gets may be unreliable.
How do you get the volunteers to reveal their income -- something most families are reluctant to do? You say: Well, why not give me a range? Like: $100,000-$110,000?
In this article, the exact salaries that Ira had earned and Hope earns now are not revealed.
Answer from David Dietze, JD, CFA, CFP, president of Point View Financial Services in Summit:
The Fidelity Emerging Markets Fund, like nearly all conventional mutual funds traded in this country, is priced once a day, at the close of trading in New York, 4 pm. Then the fund prices each of its holdings, divides by the number of shares in the fund, and announces the fund's per share value.
Events that happen after the close, like trading in the countries where its holdings are located, will impact the prices of the funds' holdings and affect the fund's pricing when the snapshot is next taken, at 4 pm the next day.
Until then you won't know for sure how those events affect the fund's value.
But you can make an estimate if you carefully study the fund's holdings and estimate, for each one, how the events after the previous day's close have affected their prices.
A possible short cut is to track exchange-traded funds whose composition is similar to your fund. Exchange-traded funds, unlike conventional mutual funds, trade throughout the trading day in New York, so their fluctuation is likely to approximate the fluctuation in the value of your fund and provide you with a good idea of what to expect when your fund is priced at 4 p.m.
While no exchange-traded fund has an identical composition to your fund, two that are reasonably similar are Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock ETF (symbol VWO) and BLDRS Emerging Markets 50 ADR Index (ADRE). In 2009, Fidelity Emerging Markets Fund returned 76 percent, VWO 73.03 percent, and ADRE 65.54 percent. The similarity of the returns reflects the similarity of their composition.
