Saving Freak

If you have not shopped your insurance in the las year you should do it now.  Most people do not shop their insurance regularly and, as a result, the insurance company raises their rates slowly over time.  This means most people are overpaying for insurance.

I just came across a great site to accomplish this task, insure.com.  This site will shop over 200 different insurance agencies for you no matter what type of insurance you are looking for (home, life, auto, etc.).  Even if you do not want to switch agencies this can give you some leverage for negotiating with your current provider.

Also if you search around the site you can find info on when and when not to file claims.  This could keep you insurance premiums down and save you money in the long run.  Overall this is one of the best sites I could find to help you with insurance quotes and questions.

Can the government do anything without making it confusing? The economic stimulus package has been passed and I spent a few hours trying to figure out what the heck was going on. I finally figured it out thanks to some help from Clark Howard. Clark is a radio host who spends three hours a day on the air talking about consumer issues. He did a service to us all by breaking down how the stimulus payments are going to work. One quick note. If you or someone you know does not usually file their income tax because they do not make any money, make sure that a return is filed this year. If you do not file then you will not receive a payment. Here are the links from Clark’s site:

Married with Childern

Married no Children

Single with Children

Single no Children

My wife and I do financial counseling at our church. Our church offers financial counseling for free and the program is headed up by Joe Sangl, who has become somewhat of a celebrity in these parts. In these sessions we help people set up a budget and look at places where they may be overspending. One of the biggest areas is Insurance. Most people set up their insurance and never look back. They don’t check to make sure that they are getting the best deal and the thought that an insurance sales person doesn’t necessarily have their best interests in mind doesn’t come up. So we always recommend shopping your insurance at least once every two years. You see insurance is a very competitive industry. So rates, by nature, will drop over time. Now this does not include extenuating circumstances like living in a hurricane zone. However, just the threat that you look elsewhere on a regular basis lets your agent know that you mean business and are not to be trifled with.

That being said I just started my own insurance review. I have had auto insurance with State Farm since I was sixteen. I now have two cars, home owners, and a small policy for my wife’s ring. As soon as I am done with my weight loss I will be getting new quotes on my life insurance. I learned about a new company called Horace Mann.  They are an insurance company set up specifically for educators.  I had them run a set of quotes and their auto was almost as inexpensive as my State Farm.   Now let me clarify, State Farm has always won on my auto because of the loyalty discounts I get for having been a customer with zero claims for 14 years.  My newest insurance is my homeowners.  This came out to be $300 per year less with Horace Mann.  I even made sure the coverage was comparable.  This really confused me so I went online and got another quote for homeowners and it was similar to the previous one.  This means they snookered me for $300  or $25 per month.  I could have been putting that toward the principle on my mortgage.  So even with the experience I have had with insurance companies I still got ripped on the newest of my insurance policies.  Be sure that this will be corrected and make sure the same thing isn’t happening to you.  If you are looking for quotes just find and independent insurance agent in your area.  These people are not held to any one company and can search quotes from multiple sources.  Happy Hunting!!

I have been watching the mortgage rates drop and drop and have been weighing the option to refinance my home. I am living in the first home I have ever purchased so all this is a new experience for me. Right now we have a 30 year fixed rate of 6.125%. I am looking at refinancing into a 15 year fixed rate somewhere in the range of 4.8%. The goal is to keep the payments relatively the same (within 100 dollars of each other) and cut the number of years to finish payment in half. So I went trolling the internet to find calculators that would help me see if this is possible. There are hundreds if not thousands of these type of calculators. The best I have found so far is at Dinkytown.net. They have a great tool called the Mortgage Refinance Breakeven calculator. Using this I have been able to estimate how long it will take me to break even from paying closing costs. So far my bank hasn’t stepped up to the plate to give me low closing costs. They are talking somewhere in the range of $2000. I told them that wasn’t good enough and they better get it down below 900 or I would be taking my business somewhere else. If I can get closing costs down I will break even in about half a year and cut 14 years off of my mortgage. I am 30 now and hope to have my house paid off in at most 7 years. This would free me up to work wherever I want and not worry about money. Also that is a big stress off our shoulders. My wife and I really don’t like having debt and our goal is to be done with debt as soon as possible.

Back in November I did a post about CashDuck.  I am loving this website more and more.  I just received another $25 gift card.  It doesn’t cost me a thing to get these gift cards.  All I do is login to the website every day and make sure I complete enough free offers to get 15 feathers (just like points but keeping with the duck theme).  Then at the end of every month I cash them in for a $25 gift card of my choosing (usually I choose Wal-mart because I can get gasoline, groceries, or pretty much anything else I want).  You can earn more feathers for completing offers that are free trials but you have to make sure you cancel or you will be charged.  I prefer to take the slow, steady, and safe route and complete surveys and other promotions to earn this easy money.  You can sign up by clicking here or if you want more info read my previous post.

In the past two days I have covered good places to put your savings for higher education. Now, in the typical saving freak way, I am going to unveil FREE MONEY FOR COLLEGE!!

There are two programs out there that will give you free money just for shopping at vendors that you buy stuff from anyway. The first is Baby Mint and the second is UPromise. Here’s how it works, both of these programs have partnered with various merchants, most of them big name retailers, to give you cash back into your college savings plans. All you do is shop at the stores you normally would and receive free money for your college savings. There are some slight differences so here we go:

Baby Mint– You go online to their website and register for the program. Right now you can only purchase items online and receive credit. This is because the provider for the Baby Mint College Savings Credit Card backed out of their deal rather unexpectedly. So Baby Mint is searching for another company to work with. As soon as the program is back up you will be able to use their credit card at any merchant in their network and receive free money back into you account. The biggest advantage to Baby Mint is you can put the money into a 529 or use it to PAY OFF YOUR STUDENT LOAN!! That’s right Baby Mint is good for everyone even if you do not have kids. How awesome is that!!

UPromise–Same type of initial registration as Baby Mint except that you register your current credit or debit card with UPromise and they track your shopping using that card. The rebates tend to be a little lower that Baby Mint and they will only let you deposit your money in specific 529 plans. So you will want to measure the plans available with the 529 guide. The key to this is, once Baby Mint gets their credit card back up and running, register that card with UPromise and get double rewards.

Both of these programs will allow friends and family to also contribute to your college savings by registering their cards (UPromise) or setting up an account of their own and transferring the earnings (Baby Mint). Either way this is a great way to get the grandparents help out with college savings.

I hope that this series was informative and that if you enjoyed it you will consider subscribing to my blog via e-mail or in a reader

Yesterday we talked about the 529 plan. The second savings vehicle for higher education is called the Coverdell Education Savings Accout (or ESA for short). The ESA can be an effective way to save for college. Just like the 529 it is post tax money and the interest it earns is tax deferred. There are some downsides compared to a 529. First, you can only put $2,000 dollars into it each year. So if you started late on saving for college it restricts you a little. Second, it can cause problems with certain deductions and tax credits. And third, the money in an ESA actually belongs to the student not the custodian of the account (usually the parents). The biggest advantage of the ESA is that is can be used to pay for primary and secondary schools. So if you want to send your kids to private school you can use the account for those expenses. Also your state determines how much you can have in a 529. So if you need more than that, say for a child that wants to be a doctor, you can use the ESA as an alternate means to save. You will need to make sure the fees for the ESA are not to high. The best place I have found for info is SavingForCollege.com. You can access their list of preferred ESA providers here.

In the final segment of this series I will show you how to get free money for college. It won’t pay for everything but it will certainly help.

Since saving for college should take more than five years we need to consider it a long term investment. Just like saving for retirement there are types of accounts that have tax advantages. The most widely used plan is called a 529 plan.

All 529 plans are sponsored by a state. Meaning there are 50 different 529’s (I have a quick guide here). You can put your money in whichever state plan you want and can spend that money at whatever college you would like to. The money going in is post-tax (meaning you have already paid taxes on it) and grows tax free (meaning you do not have to pay any taxes on the interest) if you you use it for college expenses, such as tuition, fees, books, supplies, and room and board. Basically the 529 is the college savings equivalent of a Roth IRA.  Many states offer tax deductions on state income taxes for residents if you contribute to their plan.  If you live in one of these states you will want to contribute to your state’s plan.  If your state is not listed here you will want to choose a different state.  Any state not listed on this list either has high annual fees or requires you to purchase the plan through an intermediary that will charge you a commission.

There are a few other rules you have to follow with these plans. The first is that they are associated with a single beneficiary. So if you have kids that will be in college at the same time they will each need an individual 529 plan. You can, however, transfer the plan from one beneficiary to another. Therefore if you have two children that are more than 5 years apart (the average student graduates in five years now) you can transfer the account to the younger child before they go to college. Now everyone thinks their child is a genius and, some of them, are smart enough to get scholarships. If this were to happen you can transfer that money to a sibling or relative or it can be withdrawn. If the money is withdrawn for non-higher education expenses then you will have to pay the taxes on the interest earned and a 10% penalty. I was just in a financial class where a young lady, whose parents used a 529, had done just that. She used the money to put a down payment on her house. What a great set of parents!

The only other thing you need to remember is to use the mutual fund investments available in these plans.  You don’t want to be investing in bonds or money market accounts.  These are long term investments and should be treated as such.  Do your home work but invest in mutual funds.

In part three of this series I will be discussing the other tax advantaged type of college savings account.  See you there!

Being the youngest child by eight years has its perks. You get to watch everybody else go through life and learn from their mistakes. Through multiple sources the message has come in loud and clear that understanding how to save for your children’s education is important. In this four part series I am going to cover my journey in understanding the options that are available to us all. I hope this helps a lot of people since for some reason we keep producing these little mongrels and feel some obligation to prepare them for adulthood.

The first rule of saving for anything is to start NOW!! College is coming and kids grow up fast. I have a niece who will be turning 16 in January. The time has gone by so fast and it is hard to believe that little girl is only four years younger than her mother was when she got married (if any of you felt a wince, it came from my brother).

So now that you have separated some money in your budget for college savings where should we put it? Tomorrow we will look at one of the best choices for making that college money grow.

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BUT IT’S ALL OVER THE GROUND! Do you realize how much money you walk by every day? Maybe it is only 30 cents a day, but that translates into $109.50 a year just for bending over and picking up a few coins. On and off I get serious about hunting for change. Whenever I do see change, whether I was truly looking or not, I always pick it up. I mean, it’s free money (and if you have read this blog at all you know my favorite word is FREE!). Since I do not have a lot of experience with this I thought I would check the Internet for some experts and I found fanatics. It is amazing where you can find change and here are a few of the bloggers who document their findings.

The New York City Change Pot: Change has to be everywhere in big cities.

Found Money Jar : This guy also picks up bottles and cans and invests the money with a running total and stock portfolio from his found money.

Thoughts from the Change Race & Race of the Century :These guys are friends that made a challenge to see who could find $100 in change first. Now they just hunt for money. I wonder if my buddy Joe would be up to a challenge like this?

Found on the Ground : This site is solely devoted to things found on the ground. Everything he finds he takes pictures and posts here, well, not everything just interesting things.