Flexible Spending Accounts, or FSAs, are “use it or lose it” and, come June 30th, I’m going to lose what remains on my balance since my benefits plan refreshes every July 1st. I wrote something on FSA’s a little while back, called How Does a Flexible Spending Account Work, and now the time has come for me to apply it. We all have a set of expenses we believe are health related, well, the government has added a bunch of expenses you probably didn’t think you can use with an FSA. Additionally, reading this list is probably easier than reading this IRS document
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Actually, according to CNNMoney,Columbia, Maryland is the 25th best place to live in the East with a population of under 100,000 (barely) for 2005. I’m not entirely sure when this was released and I, by nature, am always skeptical of these “Best Of” lists only because the whole “your school is ranked whatever in US News and World Reports” soured me to the idea that any sort of subjective ranking system has any merit whatsoever. But these lists are always fun because the will show you some interesting statistical facts you probably would spend hours trying to find otherwise.

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For most of the working population, or those who are listed as a dependent for someone in the working population, health insurance isn’t much of a concern. The reason for this is because you are part of your employer’s group health insurance plans with your employer footing part of the bill. What happens when you leave your job? What if you aren’t eligible for the group health insurance plans? That’s where a COBRA health insurance plan or an individual health insurance plan steps in.

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With thirteen articles in a short time frame, the first Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by ConsumerismCommentary was a success. Now I’m charged with the responsibility of keeping up the pace with the second Carnival of Personal Finance, which will be published on Monday, June 27th. We are current accepting contributions until 10:00 PM Sunday, June 26th and the Carnival will be published sometime on Monday.

The rules will be the same: nominate one personal finance article from your blog, please do so via this contact form, and the entries will be posted in the order they were received. Any blogger who contributes (and is interested in doing so) will be eligible to host one of the next Carnivals, based on this schedule.

Thanks!

I’d like to say hello to all the new readers of the site and a hearty thank you to those of you who have taken the time to leave advice, criticisms, requests, or just a plain old comment. For some of my posts, it’s the comments that give it any value whatsoever and for that I thank you.

For those of you who haven’t yet discovered Really Simple Syndication (RSS), I want to introduce you to it. If you use an aggregator, using RSS let’s you see the site quickly. The only downside is that a lot of the aggregators won’t let you leave comments so ultimately, coming to the site to comment on something will still be necessary. I’ve since decided to remove the full post syndication because I’ve found a lot of sites just republishing the feed and I don’t want to deal with tracking them down, having them give me credit, etc. I’m sorry to have to do this but until further notice I’m only posting summaries via the RSS feed.

RSS Feed

The state of online banking and online transactions looks bleaker every day. Back when the only way your data was stolen was when a “hacker” intercepted it, I was confident that 128-bit encryption was going to protect us forever. Now, with data being stolen at the destination, or when it’s being backed up, or when it’s being processed by a third party – we need some serious thought to the actual benefits of online banking.

1. Statements – Seriously, finding a statement online is usually about a million times faster and easier than looking for it in your files, if you even keep nice and orderly files.
2. Billpay – A double-edged sword, Online Billpaying can automate the paying of your bills, if you remember to set it up. And if you don’t do it automatically, you sometimes might forget to do it month to month. However, if you do utilize it, paying bills at the last minute could earn you a few extra bucks (both in interest and in stamps) a year for doing little more than typing a few words and clicking a few buttons.
3. Direct Deposit of Paychecks – What’s easier: having your paycheck automatically deposited in your bank account, or, receiving a check in the mail, signing it, driving it to the bank and depositing it? How about what gets dollars into your account, and earning interest, faster? Everyone should have direct deposit.
4. Transfers – Doing this online, with no waiting, is so much faster than driving to the ATM or branch (or calling and navigating a frustrating voice menu system). You save on gas and your valuable time.
5. “Real Time” Balances – You can check your balance and know where you stand anytime you want with nearly real-time data.

Even with all the data being lost, the benefits of online banking are obvious and might outweigh the risk of a bank losing your data. Personally, I always conduct as much business as possible online because the recent stories you’ve heard could happen to strictly off-line banks. Loss of data during a backup? Loss of data due to theft from the inside? It’s all possible even if your bank doesn’t have a website. What do you think?

Flexo of ConsumerismCommentary is trying to get together posts for a Carnival of Personal Finance, a highlight of the week’s most informative and useful postings on personal finance topics. For more information on this, check out the post at ConsumerismCommentary. The Carnival is scheduled to be posted tomorrow so get your entries in (or suggest entries you think should be in this week’s Carnival).

The Carnival has begun so get your articles in before the 10pm deadline tonight. Early bird gets the worm, Blueprint gets lead billing as the first submission. We are accepting entries for the second Carnival of Personal Finance. The rules are the same and first come first printed.

I received a free copy of David Bach’s The Automatic Millionaire as part of a promotion from American Century (your fund fees at work) and this is a brief executive review of the book.

Executive Summary:
Automate the saving of retirement funds directly from your paycheck, monitor them periodically, and check back in thirty years to discover you’re a millionaire. Buy a home, don’t rent, and pay down half your monthly mortgage bill every two weeks to shave, on average, 7 years off your liability and tons of money.

Read on for a more in-depth review of the book.

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