There are many options to save for a child’s education including 529 and college savings plans, but many of these would most likely eliminate or reduce financial aid.  If you’re worried about financial aid impact, a  good way to approach the savings is to avoid savings and investment vehicles listed in college Expected Family Contribution (EFC) Calculation EFC Formula and on the FASFA form.  Some ideas include:

• A cash value insurance policy
• Roth IRA or other retirement savings
• House equity (though some private colleges take this into account)

Deal Specialist makes his own baby wipes. Not necessarily to save money (even though it does), but because he believes it is safer since he can control what goes into the wipes.  It’s much easier than you might think.  Here’s what you need to make the baby wipes:

• Roll of paper towels (something that stays sturdy when wet, we use Viva towels)
• Seal-able plastic container that will fit a roll of paper towels that has been cut in half
• 3 tbsp Light Olive Oil
• 3 tbsp Baby Shampoo (any will do, but we use Johnson’s baby shampoo)
• 3 cups of water

This is what you do:

1. Cut a roll of paper towels in half (perpendicular to where you pull the paper)
2. Remove the paper towel cores from both halves
3. Put one half in storage and the other half in the sealable plastic container (you will be pulling the baby wipes from the center of the half paper towel)
4. Mix olive oil, baby shampoo, and 3 cups of water in another container
5. Pour mixture on top of paper towel half
6. You’re Done!!!  Since no preservatives were added, I would use up the wipes within 3 weeks just to be safe.

Deal Specialist tip:  We use these at home, when going out, we do purchase baby wipes just for convenience.  You could put a few of these in a smaller container if you wanted to use these when going out.

Printable Paper

The Deal Specialist is always looking for ways of saving on everyday expenses.  My last endeavor was to to reduce my phone costs.  An obvious target to reduce cost was my home phone since I mostly use my cell phone.  I maybe used my home phone on average of 1-3 times a week and it was costing me about $30 a month, if you do the math that is $360/year or $2.50/call.

However, I was not ready to completely get rid of my home phone completely due to it being a good method for me to make long calls and receive calls.  Did a bit of research and found Ooma.  Buy the equipment and get free phone calls for life.  Sounded too good to be true, but the product had great reviews.

I took the plunge and ordered it from Amazon here.  I received it and I have to say I was impressed.  Once unpacked and briefly looking through the manual, I activated the Ooma device online at the Ooma website.  Setup was a breeze:

• I plugged the Ooma device into my router, phone, and power
• Waited for the Ooma device blue light to come on to indicate a connection
• Set up my voicemail and was good to go

Voice quality was comparable to a land line and was actually better than my office work line which uses VoIP as well.  I found the numerous reviews on Amazon were quite accurate and I am very happy with my purchase and savings.  Overall, thumbs up for Ooma!

• Open a regular non-retirement investment account
• Leave the account open, with your referral money in there, for at least 6 months.
• Fund your account with at least $1,000 within 30 days of opening the account
• Make a minimum of one trade within 180 days of account opening

About 10-20 minutes of work for $50, not bad.  Deal Specialist does use Tradeking for his equity trading, but if you are only interested in the promotion, you can buy one share of penny stock and leave it there (SGRP and TCX are under .50 at the time of this post).

I disagree with many financial experts in that I believe that credit cards are a good thing to have if you are responsible with your money.  It’s all about tracking your spending.  In fact, I have a harder time controlling my spending when I use cash since I can’t track it in my Financial Aggregation Tool.  Here are my Fave 5 reasons that I have a credit card.

5. Float  your debt
I pay my balance in full every month so I don’t accrue any interest.  In essence, I am getting free interest on that money every month.  For example, if I pay a $100 electric bill every month with my credit card, I can keep an extra $100 in a Certificate of Deposit or Money Market account to earn interest.

4. Get gifts/rewards for signing up
From cash to free toasters many cards offer some sort of incentive to sign up.  As long as you don’t go crazy signing up for every card that has some kind of gift with it you can use this to your advantage.

3. Save on interest
May cards have special terms on interest.  0% or reduced interest rates… some are promotional and some cards have a fixed low interest rate.  Use this in conjunction with Reason 1 (float) and you can get some extra interest.  Just make sure you read all the fine print and have the money to pay in full when the promotion period ends.

2. Get a reward for making purchases
Get cash/points/rewards for spending.  If you’re going to make a purchase anyway why not get an instant 1% discount.  Just don’t go overboard with chasing points.

1. Build your credit for big purchases
And the NUMBER 1 reason for getting a credit card is to build your credit.  Some day you may need financing.  The deal specialist does not believe in financing for cars (unless you can get <3%), but someday you will want to buy a house.  Easiest way to build up credit is to get a credit card.

Free Birthday treats

Very often people ask me where they should be putting their money for Retirement. Here’s the short answer, Contribute to your retirement in this order:

1. 401K up to company match
2. Roth IRA up to maximum contribution
3. 401K up to maximum contribution

Need more detail?

A 401K is an employer-sponsored retirement savings program. 401K contributions are tax deductible which means that you are not taxed on what you put into it. So… assuming a 25% tax bracket, for every $100 dollars you put in, you get $25 off your taxes.

Find out if your company has a 401K program and see if they have a company match. If they do, basically you are getting paid to save money for retirement. For example, my company matches 50% for the first 6% of my income. That means in addition to my tax benefit, my company gives me $50 for every $100 I put toward my retirement. WHAT A DEAL! This is a no brainer. You’d have to be an idiot not to take advantage of it.

After contributing to the 401K up to company match, you should start up what is called a Roth IRA. You can start it up fairly easily at an investment company like Vanguard or Fidelity. Unlike the 401K, the Roth IRA provides no deduction for contributions, however, there are great advantages:

• All earnings are tax free when you or your beneficiary withdraw them
• You can take out the money you put into the Roth IRA (not the earnings) at any time with no penalty
• Unlike other retirement plans you don’t need to take minimum distributions after age 70.5

If you still have money after contributing the company match, you should contribute to your 401K so you can get more tax savings.

For more info on 401Ks and Roth IRAs go to IRS website at http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc424.html and http://www.irs.gov/publications/p590/ch02.html Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://www.dealspecialist.com/2009/07/24/retirement%e2%80%a6-where-should-you-be-putting-your-money/feed/ 0 http://www.dealspecialist.com/2009/07/23/newly-proposed-bill-could-extend-8000-housing-credit-to-all-homebuyers/ http://www.dealspecialist.com/2009/07/23/newly-proposed-bill-could-extend-8000-housing-credit-to-all-homebuyers/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:00:01 +0000 Simon Eurek http://www.dealspecialist.com/?p=72 A new bill introduced in the house of representatives could extend the $8000 tax credit to all homebuyers, removing the income and new home restriction of the currently existing $8000 housing credit bill.

Info on Proposed Bill

For those that are not familiar with the existing First Time Homebuyer Credit bill that was released this year,  an FAQ is on the IRS website.

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