How I Save For College
Posted by moonimus on Apr 28, 2008
I routinely think about saving for Baby Moonimus’ college education. She will be celebrating her first birthday soon and I hope some of our guests will give us cash gifts so we can fund her 529. We aren’t making regular contributions to Baby’s 529 but once her birthday passes and we clear our credit card and personal debts, we’ll be contributing monthly.
A couple of weeks ago, Morningstar rated the Best and Worst 529 College Savings Plan. Unfortunately, the NY 529 plan was rated as one of the worst. New York does not offer many investment options which was one of the reasons for its poor rating. When I signed up, I was frustrated that there wasn’t an international investment option. I will be writing a letter to ask the administrators of the plan to add more investment options. If New York did not offer the tax break for resident investors, I would have chosen another state’s plan.
We also enrolled in Upromise which is a service that helps you earn rewards by shopping at Upromise vendors. If you shop online through the Upromise portal, then you usually receive 1% of what you paid in your Upromise account. If you register all your credit cards online you can earn 1% - 8% of what you spend at participating restaurants. Once you’ve accumulated $25, Upromise will make a contribution to your 529 plan quarterly. We’ve earned about $70 in our first year. Not big money but every little bit helps.
I received an email from Upromise asking us to switch our energy supplier and receive 3% of our electricity charges and a $25 bonus. I need to research this but it seems like an interesting idea. We would earn an additional $36/year through this offer.
Annual inflation for college costs is about 4%. If a 4 year public school costs $60,000 and 4 year private school costs $120,000 today, then a public school 18 years from now would be about $117,000 and a private school would be about $234,000! Hopefully, we’ll have smart, accomplished kids who win some big time scholarships.
How do the readers save for college?
Taxes Part 5: The End of the Line
Posted by moonimus on Apr 18, 2008
We recently eceived our state tax refund. I was pleasantly surprised to see that New York increased our refund by $100! It was electronically deposited into our savings account and won’t be used until Baby Moonimus’ birthday. Now we’re just waiting for our $1,500 tax rebate that should arrive in early May.
I’ve been thinking about how the refund will be treated on our 2008 returns. So I did some snooping and ran into this.
Essentially, the rebate will have no effect on your Federal taxes but you may have to report income on your state return. Since we live in New York, we will not have to pay any taxes on our rebate for our 2008 returns. Hopefully, you won’t have to pay any taxes on your rebate either.
Yum Delicious
Posted by moonimus on Apr 14, 2008
I know the posts have been infrequent but a lot has happened in the last few weeks of my life. My Confirmation sponsor died a few weeks ago and although I’m over the initial shock, it’s still a sad event in my life. My mother’s birthday also passed. We’ve been planning for Baby Moonimus’ 1st birthday. I hurt my back shoulder. I just had my first vacation in over six months. Did I also mention this little ol thing called work yet?
While on hiatus, I finally discovered the power of del.icio.us and all I can say is, “Where have you been all my life?” The power to bookmark web pages online never really dawned on me. I would usually save links in gmail, email myself the articles and save them under a label or just keep the bookmarks on my browser. Those are all completely inefficient compared to del.icio.us. The only problem is that the content that I bookmark gets old quick so I will have to keep the posting machine humming.
For now, I’ll just post some recent links that I found interesting:
http://www.catalogchoice.org/
Great link to get rid of those bulky catalogs in your mailbox.
http://sentientsenior.blogspot.com/2008/03/but-that-car-belonged-to-my-dad.html
A great post about the psychological baggage we carry when we keep “stuff” piled around.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/getting-green-done.html
Excellent post about going green.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/5-ways-to-get-out-of-faffing-mode.html
I often faff way too much. And as they say, “Time is money.”
http://www.decluttered.com/
One of the best home desk decluttering solutions I have ever seen. I will definitely be trying to do this for my desk and our tv stand.
March Monthly Update
Posted by moonimus on Apr 2, 2008
As promised, I am including our change in wealth in the monthly updates. There is one major assumption that I’m making in terms of our apartment. I’m keeping the value of our place at our purchase price though I’m certain the value has increased 35% even in this awful housing market. Other than that, most of the numbers will be coming off statements. I’m using Excel to keep track of all the numbers and to make the tracking easier, I’ve used hyperlinks in the cells to direct me to each respective login page. I’ll probably show how I did that in a future post.
So our wealth increased .91% mostly due to the receipt of our federal tax refund. We’re still waiting for our state tax refund. I’ll set a goal of a .4% increase for next month though with Baby Moonimus’ first birthday approaching, I don’t think we’ll get there.
Our credit card balance increased again this month and a big reason is due to timing. Since I’m collecting information on the first of the month, there will always be a balance for the credit cards. I’m going to make a big push to see if we can decrease the use of the card just to see if I’m not kidding myself.
As far as my weight and body fat % is concerned, I’m back to where I started. I don’t know what’s happening to me this year but I got hurt last week because of a cough. It wasn’t a particularly violent cough but it was strong enough to tweak my back left shoulder. I went to the doctor and he prescribed me steroids to take for a week. So I’ll be blasting some home runs at a ballpark near you.
Once I’m off the medication and everything feels tip top, I will yet again slowly establish an exercise routine. Also, I’m going to weigh myself every month. I won’t step on a scale until May 1. I’m thinking that I’m putting too much stress on myself during the weekly weigh ins and the informal daily weigh ins. We’ll see if this works out better.
The setbacks are getting frustrating.
