Reader Mail: IRAs, MYM and More May 11, 1999February 12, 2017 RISKY STOCKS IN AN IRA “I agree with your general principle about not putting risky stocks in your IRA, but I did want to point out if one had a Roth IRA (which I do) that the proceeds will never be taxed (that is if Congress does not change the law in the future to raise revenues….I know that is a big if).” — John Bogen True. But risky stocks are risky. Many crash and burn. Inside the Roth IRA, you get no tax benefit from the losses. They just sap your precious capital. GIFT CERTIFICATES “In California it is illegal for gift certificates have expiring dates.” — Lorraine Baldwin IS “BUYING IN BULK” BETTER FOR EVERYBODY? “A walk through the supermarket will reveal many cases where larger containers cost more per unit than the smaller. Got to watch those guys every minute.” — Orval Fair enough. UPDATING YOUR MYM PORTFOLIO PRICES “I’ve developed a utility to convert various downloaded stock price quote data formats to the Managing Your Money [DOS V12] format. This utility will enable MYM users to download stock price quotes from the various online sources (Yahoo, Lycos, Quicken, MS Investor, AltaVista, Excite, etc, etc.) and pull that pricing information in to MYM. As you probably remember, for years many MYM users downloaded stock price information from Prodigy’s QuoteTrack. Well, Prodigy Classic and QuoteTrack are going away at some point in the not so distant future. When my father, a diehard MYM user, expressed his dismay at this loss of functionality and his lack of desire to switch to another personal finance program, I took a look at the problem and developed ConvertTrack. I now have a web site for ConvertTrack where folks can download a full featured demo copy of ConvertTrack and test drive it for 30 days.” — Roy Berger Tomorrow: Bees, Mary Poppins, etc. . .