If you plan on sending your child to college, you know that it’s expensive. The cost of an education rises each year. And, while you are hopefully saving up for college with the help of a savings account or a 529 plan, it doesn’t hurt to look for other ways of paying for school.

Scholarships can provide a way for your child to get free money for college. A scholarship can reduce the burden on you, as well as reduce the burden of student loan debt for your child. If you want your child to get a scholarship, though, you both have to start preparing ahead of time.

It’s important to work hard for decent grades, as well as to consider extracurricular activities and involvement. If your teenager starts at the beginning of high school to prepare to be eligible for scholarships, he or she is more likely to find success down the road. You can also start looking around at different scholarship options so that you know what your teen needs to work on.

You also need to start applying before your teen goes to school. Applying late in the junior year of high school, and in the early part of the your teen’s senior year, is often a good idea. Check scholarship deadlines to make sure that you are on track, and make sure to fill out the applications in order so that you don’t miss options.
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Take a quick peek at the best CD rates and you’ll know that they’re abysmal right now. 1% for a 1 year CD? No more than 2% for a 5 year CD? Those are terrible yields.

Consider this – you can buy shares of blue chip companies with yields greater than 1-2%. You can start by looking at the dividend aristocrats but ultimately you can easily find safe companies who have stable cash flows capable of supporting dividend yields much greater than 1-2% (and you’re taxed at a much lower rate!).

In the end, both are financial tools that serve a specific purpose. Knowing which to use can be crucial in getting a little more out of your money.

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Did you decide that this year you would start saving more and making your money work for you? That’s a great resolution but in order to do that, you’re going to have to go outside of your normal bank account and become an investor. Often, that means investing in stocks but before you put your money to work in the stock market there’s a lot to learn. Losing money in the markets is a lot easier than making money so let’s go in armed with knowledge.

Although not a hard and fast rule, it’s best to save $5,000 or more before putting it in the stock market. This allows you to diversify your portfolio without the broker commissions eating away a large portion of your gains. If you don’t have that much money ready to deploy, keep reading but start saving. We aren’t going to head to the market just yet, there are a few more steps to take before putting real money to work.
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As February 14 steals ever closer, many wonder what they can do to show how much they care — without breaking the bank. The good news is that the vastness of your love doesn’t have to be measured in dollars.

Indeed, if you can find a heartfelt, sincere way to express your love, you don’t need to spend a lot of money. A good relationship doesn’t have to be based on expensive things and grand gestures. Instead, here are 9 ideas that will cost you less, and help you show your love more:

1. Play hooky together: Instead of going in to work, take the day off. Or, take a half day. Either way, you can play hooky together and have a great time. This is especially effective if your kids are in school. You don’t have to pay a baby-sitter and you can spend some quality time taking a walk, watching a movie at home, or going to lunch (which is much less expensive than going to dinner).
2. Save on flowers: Instead of getting flowers for Valentine’s Day, get them a couple of weeks early, or a couple of weeks late. My husband almost always gets me my Valentine’s Day bouquet sometime around the end of January. The flowers are just as beautiful, and just as romantic — but at half the price.
3. Share your feelings: Write little notes expressing how you feel, or sharing the good qualities of your significant other. Leave them for your partner to find in unexpected places like the purse or wallet, inside a frequently used drawer, or some other hiding place. Best of all: If your partner doesn’t find them all on Valentine’s Day, s/he will get a fun reminder later on.
4. Cook dinner together: You don’t have to go out to have a romantic dinner. If possible, cook dinner together. Make something you both like, and enjoy it — add candles for a special touch. It’ll provide you with some quality time as you cook together, and then eat slowly.
5. Use deal specials: If you must go out, use deal specials. Look for discounted gift certificates online, and get your meal for cheap. Just remember that the tip is supposed to be on the original cost of the meal.
6. Go for dessert instead: If you want to get out, but don’t want to spend the money for dinner, consider just going for dessert. You can pay a sitter to come for a couple hours (less expensive than an entire evening) and head to the local pastry shop or coffee shop. Share a dessert and have some coffee or cocoa, then head back home.
7. Get your candy for less: Don’t worry about having candy on the day-of. Instead, consider how much you can save if you head to the store on February 15th. Go shopping together and pick out your favorite chocolates for 50% to 75% off. Yum!
8. Memory box: Decorate an empty box, and then fill it with favorite memories. Use items that remind you of times spent together, including photos, ticket stubs, and small trinkets. Your partner can go through it and remember all the loving times you’ve shared.
9. Homemade goodies: You can make homemade goodies for Valentine’s day together. Heart-shaped cookies, chocolate-drizzled popcorn, and other tasty treats. Create a special dessert for dinner, that you two can share with a special drink and a movie later. No need to go out.

(Photo: Sugar Daze)

Did you put in any wagers on the big game last night? I didn’t but my friend did and he cleaned up. Remember the safety to open the game? Tom Brady steps back, throws it down the middle with no one within twenty yards of the ball? Intentional grounding, safety, two points for the New York Football Giants? Well, as it turns out, the payout on a $20 bet that the first score of the game would be a Giants’ safety was $1500. I knew this because my friend, who was sitting next to me, had won it.

This was right after winning a few bucks that Kelly Clarkson’s singing of the national anthem lasted a hair under one minute and thirty five seconds. Oh, he rolled that over into a bet that the final scoring touchdown would be made by Ahmad Bradshaw (I bet the little hesitation made him nervous… but at that point he was playing with house money). So while I didn’t make a single bet… sitting by him, and winning vicariously, was awesome. Oh… and he is a Giants fan, so his team also won the Super Bowl. Not a shabby Sunday!

So now the real question remains… does he owe taxes on those gambling winnings? Yep.

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Do you absolutely hate going to the dealership and buying a car? Do you hate the games, the time wasted, the haggling and the long drawn out dance? It’s one of the reasons why CarMax has been so popular (we bought a car from CarMax just last year because they offered the best price and no dance), people just hate this silly game that dealerships make you play just to buy a car. The reality is that your average car buyer, who buys a car only one time every few years (hopefully many years if they’re lucky) is up against someone who sells cars every single day. We’re just not well equipped to battle in this arena, which is why buying a car when you’re a dealership, on their home field, is a mistake.

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When I first looked at the Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School by Andrew Hallam, I thought I was seeing yet another investment guru book that was going to collect dust on the shelf. When you throw around words like millionaire and wealth, it might catch the eye but I’ve seen enough of these to immediately think that the book was going to try to convince me to invest in something I didn’t fully understand. I was completely wrong.

Andrew Hallam isn’t an investment guru, he’s a teacher in Singapore who has amassed a net worth over a million dollars doing everything you’re supposed to. Spending less than you earn, investing in a smart way (keeping costs low), and all the various tenets we learn over our lifetimes that, honestly, should’ve been taught in high school. How your neighbor driving the Porsche is probably still paying off that car note and you shouldn’t be that envious of an asset that, in reality, is a liability that constantly loses value.

Best of all, the book is entertaining and easy to read. It’s not dry, it’s not boring, and it has plenty of anecdotes to keep you interested.

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Tell a few personal finance bloggers that you keep cash in your house and you will invariably be asked why. Why keep cash in your account when you can put it into a high yield savings account and earn a percent of interest? What if there is a fire? What if you get robbed? Why not put it in the warm embrace of FDIC insurance at th ebank?

I don’t keep much, usually only one or two hundred dollars, and the reason I do so is so I can get cash easily if I need it, whatever the reason. I don’t keep a lot, I don’t see the point given credit cards, but I do want to keep a little for those times when cash is king and credit can’t be accessed. I’m talking about those rare cases, like a black out or a big snowstorm (like the major snowstorm a few years ago in the Baltimore Washington metropolitan area), where you need some cash but just can’t get to a bank.

To be perfectly honest, the number one reason I do this is because I’m lazy. I don’t really think that there will be a calamity where I won’t be able to get to an ATM or use a credit card, but sometimes I’m going out somewhere and I need cash but don’t want to make a trip to the ATM. It’s nice to have a few bills at home so that I can tap that reserve instead of make that trip. That’s why I keep some money stored away at home, instead of earning a few pennies at the bank.

One final bit of warning, cash is usually not completely insured by your homeowners or renter’s insurance. So if you are robbed and they take cash, or there is a fire and the money burns, you may be limited in how much cash is covered – that amount will be listed in your policy. I don’t recommend keeping thousands of dollars at home, but a few hundred will probably be covered by your policy.

Do you keep cash at home? If so, why?

(Photo: amagill)

Even reality TV doesn’t give justice to the real world and the funny, eye popping, or jaw dropping events that happen every day that very few people hear about. If your job involves working with the general public in any capacity you probably have stories that all of us would love to hear but since it’s tax season, I scoured the internet to find what I thought were some of the most “unique” (how’s that for politically correct) tax stories worth telling.

And before you start laughing, remember that given what our tax rates our, it’s no surprise people are trying to reduce their liability – but claiming one of these ridiculous tax writeoffs is the wrong way to go about that!

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It seems like, regularly, we hear stories about how some database was hacked and personal information was stolen. In such a world, it becomes increasingly important to protect your online accounts.

Whether you are trying to protect an individual account from being compromised, or whether you are trying to limit the damage due to a breach at some other company, there are some things you can do to protect your online accounts as much as you are able.

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