Savings

Budgeting Extra Money vs Extra Income

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As a former financial planner in Denver, I get involved in a lot of interesting personal finance discussions. Recently, a writing colleague was remarking on the difference between getting money one time, and having a new stream of money. In particular, he noticed that while the latter should be better, the former is actually the more fun of the two. Psychology of Money One of the interesting things about money is that it is so concrete a mathematical concept, and yet, so nebulous as an actual artifact in our lives. On the first hand, money is easily understood as an exact match of mathematical numbers. For any decision, a spreadsheet-type answer is easily obtained. Higher interest rates are better for savings, worse for borrowing. Saving more is better than spending more, and so on. However, the reality is that the higher interest rate from an online bank that is less convenient and useful might not actually be better. And, is having an extra $5,000 in the bank really better than having spent a week seeing the great museums in Italy? Which brings us to the freelance writer‘s incongruous concept of steady income versus unreliable, extra income. Most people have a steady …

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When Can I Spend My Emergency Fund?

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Most professional financial advisors, and most non-professional know-it-alls as well, say that you should keep three to six months worth of expenses in an emergency fund for, well… emergencies. They aren’t wrong. You never know when life will throw you a curve ball, and when it does, you don’t want a few months of problems to turn into a crushing blow to years of hard financial work and smart decisions. However, the reality is that an emergency fund will never stand up to the worst financial calamities (long-term medical problems). Another reality that causes a lot of people stress is that your emergency fund is designed to be used. Over the course of your life, you fund will likely get drawn down, and then get refilled by more saving. Emergency Fund versus Reserve Fund When I was a professional financial advisor in Denver, I stopped calling it an emergency fund when people would find themselves torn about using it when they needed the money for something worthwhile. For example, imagine your son or daughter spent the last several years in the band. During that time, there have been numerous practices, and your child has built up a real love for …

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Saving Money Into 529 Plan

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OK, if you have already opened a 529 plan, and you have chosen which investments to use in your 529 plan, then the next step is to actually start getting money into your college savings account. And, it is here where the most important thing about saving money for college comes into play. The most important thing, more important than choosing the right college savings plan, more important than choosing which investments to use in your college savings plan, and more important that updating your higher education financial plan, is consistently automatically investing money in your college savings accounts. Let me go into a little more detail, it’s that important. We get caught up in the notion that what matters when saving or investing money are things like investment returns, taxes, using the right account, or getting the right financial advice. None of those things matters nearly as much as consistently investing more money. When I was a financial advisor some of the biggest 401k accounts, or 457 plans, I ever saw were from people who didn’t know a thing about them. These people opened the account when they were hired, set some sort of amount to contribute, picked an investment, or …

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Types of College Savings Accounts

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When it comes to saving money for college, there are a lot of options. A parents saving money for children’s college fund there are different ways to title those accounts, jointly or otherwise. Believe it or not, saving up money so your kid can go to college is a lot more about actually doing it, than how you do it. Most parents let a sizable amount of time pass in between college investments and that is a much bigger deal than exactly which kind of college savings account is right for you. Ways to Save Money for College Assuming you don’t want to stick money into a mattress, you are going to need some kind of bank account or other financial account to store up that money you need to save and invest. Here are the options. 529 College Savings Plans If the 529 plan came first, there wouldn’t be so many other ways to save for college. It is, quite simply, the best possible way to invest for college for most people. A 529 college account works a lot like a Roth IRA plan for college. You don’t get a federal income tax deduction for your contributions, but the …

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Youth Accounts at Banks

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Banks have long offered various types of checking accounts and savings accounts. Some of these accounts are actually fully developed products that are different from other offerings. Others are merely gimmicks, and some bank account types lie in between. Youth Accounts Banking One such niche account offered at many banks is a youth account. These accounts are typically broken up into youth savings accounts and youth checking accounts. Just what each account is, and how it differs from other accounts depends on the bank. For the most part, special bank accounts for young people are joint accounts with limited access for one person. For most purposes, a person under the age of 18 cannot legally enter into a contract. No contract, or banking agreement, then no account, not even a kid bank account. Instead, in order to open a kid savings account or student checking account, the bank will require an adult’s signature. No matter what it gets called on the statement, what you have really just opened is a joint account with the child. So, then what is the point of a youth accounts? As an adult, you might not like the idea of joint account with your child. …

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Bumper Sticker Financial Advice

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Bumper stickers are an interesting way to convey an idea. They aren’t very big, so the message must be small. They tend to be ignored, so the message must be clever. You can’t ask the person driving the car what they mean, so they must be clear in any context. On the other hand, a lot of the information is lost when a message is conveyed as a bumper sticker. Entire political debates boiled down to a certain sounding phrase are one example. In the financial world, bumper sticker financial advice often comes from books where repackaging existing financial ideas in new sounding ways is the fastest way to personal finance stardom. Pay Yourself First What Does It Mean?   One of the most ubiquitous financial planning as a simple phrase is, “Pay yourself first.” What pay yourself first means, literally, is that you should set aside money to be saved or invested before spending money on anything else. The concept works like this. If each week (or month, or whatever) you get a paycheck if you pay yourself first, then you won’t spend too much money and you’ll save for your future. Sounds good, and it is. In practice, …

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Is Paying Off Debt Better Than Investing?

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As a former financial planner I know that not all finance is just about the math. The truth is that earning money, spending money, and saving money is a highly emotional thing. While it is fine to suggest that people eliminate emotion when dealing with money, that’s a little bit like telling people to eliminate hunger when dealing with dieting, it just won’t work in the long run. Is It Better to Save Money or Pay Off Debt? One of the things that gets thrown around like a solid, no-exceptions, rocket science idea from time to time is the concept of paying off debt as a high, guaranteed return. The theory goes a little something like this: If you pay off a credit card with an 18 percent interest rate, then that is like getting a guaranteed 18% return on your investment. Obviously, a sure thing 18 percent return is probably the best possible investment in the world from a risk/return perspective. But, is it really that simple? Mathematically, paying off higher interest debt is always the right move. However, that isn’t necessarily always the best move for real life, particularly if your finances are not in very good shape …

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Is Extreme Couponing Worth It?

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The extreme couponing fad hit its high water mark a few years ago. That doesn’t mean it’s gone away, and every time someone shows up on TV or a magazine article is published, the race is on again to figure out how to do extreme couponing. If you’re wondering how using coupons can get extreme, consider this hypothetical example. You see a coupon in the newspaper for $1 off of something. For our sake, let’s say it’s $2 off of a bag of cookies. Now, let’s say that the grocery store is having a sale where those cookies are 2 for $4. Bam! You’ve got yourself some free cookies. That’s not really extreme, yet. Now, imagine that you go through the recycle bin at your office building and find eight of those coupons and you get eight bags of free cookies. That’s a little more extreme. Now, imagine that you build your entire shopping list around this sort of deal and you roll home with $300 worth of groceries for just $23. Now, that’s extreme. Is Extreme Couponing Right for Me? Coupons can save you money, there is no doubt about that. If you have a coupon for something you …

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Little Things Can Cost Money

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Generally, this website focuses on the slightly more complex personal finance advice and other money issues. However, every once and awhile, I get enough motivation to fire off a tidbit of money saving advice on something smaller and easier. This evening, I finally got pushed over the line by one of those little things that companies do to wring a little extra money out of their customers. The Laundry Soap Scam Years ago, laundry soap came in big boxes and big bottles. The bigger the bottle of laundry soap, the more loads of wash it did. Then, laundry soap manufacturers figured out they could concentrate their liquid laundry soap. In doing so, they could ship more product to the stores for the same cost, and stores could keep more product in stock thanks to smaller bottles. Of course, at first, this took a fair amount of consumer education because people were very used to the concept that bigger meant more. Finally, laundry companies settled on printing on the bottle just how many loads of laundry each bottle could do, and that was that. Along the way, however, those same companies couldn’t pass up a chance to cheat their customers out …

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How Should I Invest $3,000

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A recent Money magazine tidbit on Twitter caught my eye. Someone asked how they should invest a small amount, in this case, $3,000. The response suggested a target-date retirement fund. However, I don’t think that is a very good answer in this case, or in most cases. How To Invest a Small Amount When I was a Certified Financial Planner, I would come across people all the time who wanted to know how to invest a small amount. It isn’t hard to see why. We are constantly reminded that we should be saving and investing money. Books like The Richest Man in Babylon (the single best book for beginners in personal finance) extol the virtues of investing some of everything you earn and letting the power of compound interest turn that on-going investment into millions of dollars. However, this very simple concept is actually very misunderstood. First, remember that compound interest is NOT fast. If you invested that $3,000 and were able to earn 8 percent per year you’d have just $4,408 in five years and $5,141 after a full seven years. That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t invest that money, you should just understand what your realistic expectations …

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