Savings

Saving For College

Save For College

It’s easier than paying for Student Loans

It is graduation season – quite an exciting time for many families – and depending on how you planned to pay for school it could be a relief or a financial burden.  I just read an article where a couple accumulated around $500,000 in debt to pay for their children’s college education – that’s cray-cray!  I also hear a lot of co-workers talking about how much their kid’s college tuition cost and how they are broke because of it.

I understand we want the best for our children, but going into debt for them might not be the smartest move.  There are plenty of ways our children can obtain a college education without having to put a dent in our savings – we just have to plan ahead.

According to a recent study conducted by Sallie Mae and Ipsos – How America Saves for College – only about 50% of families with children under the age of 18 are saving for college.  The study also shows that out of those who are saving, about 75% are not utilizing the best options when saving for college.

Ten Simple Ways To Save Money

Ways to Save Money

Source: Taxcredits.net

I’ve been writing about saving for an emergency fund and towards retirement, but what if we don’t have any extra money leftover after paying for expenses?

Having a written budget is a great way to find leaks in our finances – by finding where our money is going, we can eliminate unnecessary spending and hopefully save money.  If you have a written budget and still can’t find where to cut some expenses or if you simply want to save more, here are a few simple ideas that will help you save money.

These are obviously not going to work for everybody and I’m not saying you HAVE to do them all – these are just a few suggestions on ways I save money.  You can pick and choose from these easy and simple ways to save money.

Asset Allocation – Where Do I Invest My Money?

Asset Allocation

What’s The Right Asset Allocation?

When I started my first job out of college, they told me I was automatically enrolled in the company’s 401(k) plan.  I just had to decide what percentage of my salary I wanted to contribute and where I wanted my contributions to be invested.  I then received a package from the company handling my retirement plan. There were pie charts and graphs and numbers that I didn’t understand explaining the different options I had to invest my money.  I looked at all that information and started to panic a little bit.  Where do I invest my money? I don’t want to invest in the stock market.  I’ll lose all my money.  The package also explained that if I didn’t choose anything then my funds will be placed in what looked like a savings account.  So I chose the default because I didn’t know what to do.

I now know that picking the right fund is really not that difficult when you know what to look for.  Here I am going to share with you what I have learned so we can have a better understanding of the choices available to us and about how to diversify our funds to lower our risk.  I will mostly touch on investing in our 401(k) but the information applies for investing outside of your retirement account as well.

The Powerful Force of Compound Interest

“Compound interest is the greatest mathematical discovery of all time” – Albert Einstein.

  albert-einstein-about-his-quotes

 

He probably didn’t say that but I’m going to say it because to me, it was.  And this is how I plan to have a Million Dollars in savings one day.  Now, if you are looking for a way to get rich quick then this site is not for you.  Our plan is to slowly build our savings and not touch it to let compounding do its magic.  All we need is discipline and time… lots of time.  So be patient.  Just start saving early, often, and for a long time.

This is the one of the ways we normal working people become rich.

I decided to write about compound interest first because once we understand its power then all of our saving strategies will make more sense.