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Archive for January, 2006

Promises Promises

January 28th, 2006

NCN

Edit August 2008: The information in this post may be out of date. Click here to view the latest on Upromise’s policies: Time To Request A Withdrawal From My Upromise Account

If you have signed up at Upromise, you might like to know the following. You can get your money sent directly to you, and avoid putting it into a 529 Plan. The following is a quote of their faq’s:

Can I withdraw company contributions from my Upromise account without transferring them to a savings plan, and if so, how?

You can withdraw your Upromise contributions at any time during your membership. To withdraw company contributions from your Upromise account, submit a letter in writing to Upromise requesting a withdrawal from your Upromise account. The letter must state your full name and exact amount that you would like to withdraw, up to total amount available in your account, pending contributions are not eligible for withdrawal.

For the protection of our members, we require that your letter either be notarized or contain a Signature Guarantee if the withdrawal request is in excess of $200. A Signature Guarantee is a guarantee you can obtain from a financial institution, such as your bank, that your signature is yours and that it is genuine.

Withdrawal letters should be sent to:

Upromise
ATTN: Customer Care
P.O. Box 55555
Boston, MA 02205-5555

Checks are sent once per calendar quarter, so you should typically receive your check within 12 weeks of your request being received.

To make your savings work for you, you may want to consider transferring your company contributions to an investing plan for a future college student.

Personally, I think that taking your money out, and investing it in an ESA is a much better deal than any of the 529 plans that they offer. A week ago I sent them a letter requesting a withdrawal from our account. I received a confirmation email today and the withdrawal check should arrive at the end of this quater. I prefer the ESA to the 529.

Posted in Resources

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Flash Drive Plus Taxes

January 26th, 2006

NCN

I am busy filing our taxes and I think that we are going to get a pretty sizable tax return this year. Yay! Right? WRONG. I wish that I would have had the foresight to adjust our withholding for this past year, thus increasing our monthly take-home pay. In effect, we loaned the government over 3000 dollars, interest free. I have already taken the necessary steps to avoid this same outcome in 2006. Are you going to get a large “return” from the IRS this year? If so, you might want to check your withholding. If you have a personnel director where you work, check with them, to see just what you need to do to decrease the amount of money you send the federal government each pay period. Remember, the more money you bring home, the more money you will have to pay down your debt and save for your future. YOU should be managing your money! Let’s all agree to stop giving Uncle Sam these huge interest free loans.

Oh yeah, I found an interesting article while browsing H&R Block’s web site. Seems that they are going to offer a Kingston Memory Drive Pre-Loaded with their tax software. Pretty interesting idea, unique at least. Cost appears to be about 40 bucks, after a 10 dollar rebate. (Seems high if you compare it to the cost of a CD, but the memory drive can be re-used).

Posted in Taxes

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Free Graph Paper Designs via PDF

January 26th, 2006

NCN

I just think this is cool. Free graph paper, free grid paper, free accounting format paper, via PDF. You can create and size the graph paper into various different shapes and sizes. Really, really cool and absolutely FREE! See Incompetech.com

Posted in Resources

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Google SMS Site

January 26th, 2006

NCN

If you use the SMS feature on your cell phone (Short Message Service), then you might be interested in this page from Google SMS. It is a list of all kinds of information you can receive from Google, in text, via SMS. (You will want to know your SMS send and receive policy from you phone company. Many carriers charge a per message fee, or a flat fee for x number of messages per month) Google offers these services free of charge. I have used the movie listing and the phone number search features, and they both worked.

Posted in Resources

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First Stock Purchase

January 26th, 2006

NCN

I received 300 dollars as a birthday present, so I decided to use it to purchase a stock. I have and ESA opened for my daughter (I have put no money in it for more than 2 years) so I decided I would use this account to buy my first stock. I looked around a bit, and decided to buy Clorox (Symbol: CLX). Why? No real reason. I just think that it is a good brand, and that it will do well over time. I think that the economy is heading for a “soft” patch, and that people will be shining up the things they already have as opposed to buying new. Clorox offers a STRONG brand name, and I like their products. I compared them to other offerings in their sector, and this is the stock I chose. (Really, it’s a guess…) I hope that it does well, but I really just wanted to learn about the mechanisms of my brokerage, etc. I used a limit order and bought 5 shares at 58.28. (Looking at the market RIGHT now, the stock is down a few pennies.) This will be a LONG time hold, probably on the order of 10 plus YEARS. I will probably put a chart up on the right hand page tomorrow, to track its progress. I know that it is only one stock, out of thousands, but I think I can learn some stuff just by watching it go up and down, and because I actually own a tiny bit of it, I will be more inclined to really pay attention. I like to have a vested interest in the things that I am watching. Take a little league game. Have you ever watched a little league game that your child was not playing in? Pretty boring, huh? But, if your kid is playing, it’s as if the game is part of the World Series. Same principle here. I will be more likely (much more, in fact) to actually WATCH the stock, now that I own a bit of it. (Please note: This post is just for information. In no way do I actually think that what I did in purchasing this stock has anything to do with what was REALLY good for my financial condition. I still want to build my emergency fund, put money in my Roth IRAs in mutual funds, etc. This is just “play” money, and I wanted to do something a bit outside my own personal “box”.)