When you are leaving a job where you have contributed to a 401k plan, you have three options: cash out your 401k, keep it in your current plan, or move it to another qualified retirement account. A qualified retirement account could be your new employer’s 401k plan, a Traditional IRA, or a Roth IRA. The movement of your 401k to this account is called a rollover.

Why You Should Rollover Your 401k To An IRA

Before we discuss why 401k rollover to IRA is the best option, let’s look at why you should not cash out your 401k.

Cashing out your 401k is a bad idea

Typically, this is the worst thing your could do to your 401k fund. When you cash out your 401k, you’ll be taxed on the withdrawal. The combined federal and state taxes could be significant due to the higher marginal tax rate that the withdrawal will bump you into. Also, you may be subjected to a 10% early withdrawal penalty if you are not yet 59 1/2. Assuming an effective combined federal and state tax rate of 35%, a $100,000 cashed out of 401k could cost you $45,000 in taxes and penalty leaving you with only $55,000.

401k rollover to IRA is usually the best course of action

Unless your current 401k plan is great — i.e., excellent investment options and low fees — this usually is not the best option. And unless you know for certain that your new 401k will be great, you shouldn’t consider a 401k to 401k rollover either.

With an IRA, you can usually lower your investment expenses significantly and gain access to much wider variety of investment options. You can even switch to a different discount brokerage firm to take advantage of different investment options, tools, features, prices, fees, etc. Additionally, you have the option of converting your 401k to a Roth IRA, which allows your retirement savings to grow tax-free.

How To Do A 401k Rollover To IRA

Now that you’ve decided to go with the 401k rollover to IRA option, here are the main steps on how you can accomplish the rollover.

1. Open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) with any financial institution that offers an IRA — usually, this end up being one of the many discount brokers. Here’s a guide to help you choose a discount broker. In general, you want to pick the investment company that offers the type of investments you want that are accessible at low trade commissions and fees.
2. Inform your employer that you want to do a 401k rollover to IRA. Make sure your employer makes the check payable to the investment company that you choose. This is call a trustee-to-trustee transfer and it helps you avoid the automatic 20% tax withholding.
   
3. Once the transfer is complete, your money will be sitting in some sort of interest bearing investment such as a money market account that earns very little interest. You will have to invest your money according to your asset allocation plan. The exact investment options you have will depends on your investment company. In general, you want to invest in a well-diversified portfolio of low cost and passively managed mutual funds or ETFs.

If you are facing this decision, consider performing a 401K rollover to IRA to take advantage of the opportunity to lower your costs and gain greater flexibility. Remember to research the investment company well before you open an IRA with them, and do your due diligence when selecting your investments. If you are uncertain, it’s usually a good idea to consult a professional to help guide you through this process and answer your questions.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

There is good news if you are an Ally Bank customer and have certificates of deposit (CDs) coming up for renewal. Starting August 31, 2009, Ally Bank is expanding its popular Ten-Day Best Rate Guarantee that has been available for new CD deposits to renewing CDs. This means that you are guaranteed the best interest rate for 10 days from the maturity date.

According to Diane Morais, executive of Deposits and Product Innovation: “Our customers will get the best rate we offer at maturity or for nine days thereafter. This reduces the angst for people who are worried about getting a great rate the day their CD matures. It’s one of the steps we are taking to do what’s right for the customer.”

Ally Bank is a U.S. online bank offering online savings accounts, money market savings accounts, and certificates of deposit ranging from three-month to five-year terms. Ally Bank challenges traditional banks by offering:

• No minimum deposits
• No monthly fees
• No minimum balances
• No sneaky disclaimers
• 24/7 customer service
• Compounding interest daily
• Sleeping Money alerts
• A nine-month no-penalty CD

Customers with questions about new or renewing CDs can contact an Ally Bank customer service representative around the clock at 1-877-247-ALLY or visit www.ally.com.

Disclaimer: when you click on the links to open an account with Ally, I get a small referral fee. Not much, but enough to make a difference.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

If you’re cashed up from living frugally all these years, now is the time to go on an eBay rampage! Many rich are now forced to sell of their goodies on the cheap because they too need cash flow to fund their expensive lifestyle. eBay happens to be a great portal to buy just about anything for great bargains. You can indulge your fantasies for your own piece of dream bling or that car you’ve been craving, but never managed to afford until now:

1. Buy a Luxury car at Toyota Camry Prices

Image credit: News Week

Sports cars, any type of car can be had on the bargain right now thanks to the global recession. A lot of people are forced to see their cars in order to raise funds to pay their bills. You can find good deals just about anywhere you look these days: in classifieds, in car yards and of course on eBay.

2. Cruising With A Bruising Thanks To Luxury Boats

Image credit: News Week

Luxury boats are floating the second hand market like never before. If you are lucky to live in Florida or any other popular boating destination with its own top rated harbor you can take your pick right there and then.

Otherwise, it’s back to classifieds or eBay to make your move. Yeah!

3. Castles at Caravan prices

Image credit: Treehugger

Now or never is the time to upgrade your home to get one step closer to living in your dream home. As interest rates are still lower than ever before (at least half a century,) you can take advantage and lock in your interest rates with a fixed rate home loan.

With the governments extension on the first-time home buyers grant you have all the reasons to jump on board and make your dreams come true. Now is your best opportunity to save thousands of dollars in the process.

4. Flaunt Your Bling!

Not far away from famed Rodeo Drive — where the rich and famous flaunt their stuff — lies the Beverly Loan Company, a pawnbroker to the upper class. The owner reported to have given out loans to the rich never seen in 70 odd years in business. He hands out loans in return for goodies such as jewelery and some paintings and says the sums are ranging from $50 all the way up to seven figures.

5. Bond Anyone? It’s Gadgetry Heaven Out There!

Image credit: News Week

OK, so you might never match the gadgetry arsenal of James Bond, but you can make a dent in your personal geek wish list with all the goodies that float around on the secondary market.

Think refurbished Macbooks, refurbished iPods or buying new from many of the discounted stock sellers in the market place. If you shop around, chances are you too can buy for a nice bargain. I bought myself a digital recorder only last week (brand new mind you) for a steal on eBay. If you know where to look you will save heaps of money.

6. Picasso Or Monet? Now It’s Time To Make That smART Move!

We all know that paintings and art is very personal. What might be seen as a piece of art by one person is considered trash by another. However, art lends itself very well to being loaned in return for extra funds. As it happens, this is exactly what Beverly Loan Company offers its clients. Collateral loans against fine art is all the rage in Hollywood right now.

7. Smart Brides-To-Be Buy Their Wedding Gear with Glee!

Forking out thousands of dollars for a dress that is only ever worn once in your life (provided you ARE female an don’t have some weird dress fetish,) is madness to say the least. Why pay full price when you can buy these dreams of silk and satin for a steal on eBay? Many designer gowns can be picked up for a ridiculously low price these days. If you are lucky enough you might even snap up Jennifer Aniston’s wedding dress since she probably never needs it considering her luck in love.

8. Dress for Less

Image credit: News Week

Clothes prices have dropped and its time to dress yourself for success at half the cost. Would you rather pay full price for your favorite clothing designer, or would you like to use the sneaky tactics thousands of other buyers are using when clothes shopping?

Do as those collectors, connoisseurs, avid shoppers do and visit eBay to snap up some real bargains. Granted, you probably aren’t too fond of buying Madonna’s used underwear (although some probably are, eek…) but, you might be able to snap up a used leather jacket from some well known celebrity or designer.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

Due to the credit crisis and recession, there are a lot of houses for sale. Homeowners who are trying to avoid foreclosure are selling many of these homes. Needless to say, it’s a buyer’s market and homeowners need to know all the tricks to help them sell their homes quickly. Fortunately, there are proven techniques that you can use to help you sell your home quicker and some of these will even help you get more money for your home.

Tips To Sell Your Home In A Buyer’s Market

To make sure your home sells in a buyer’s market, there are a few things that you could do. Here are 9 home improvement techniques to help you sell your home more quickly:

1. Make sure you are selling at the right price

I know it’s very difficult to sell your home for less than what you bought it for a few years ago. It’s even harder if you’re upside down on your home loan.  But you can’t insist on unrealistic price if you want to sell your home in a down market. To find the right price, you can check other homes for sale in your area, check web sites like Zillow and HomeGain, or get an appraisal.

Although you can’t compete with banks that are selling foreclosed homes, you’ll be in a much better position to compete against other sellers who aren’t as flexible on price.

2. Remove clutter from your home

Photo by Annahape via Flickr

No one wants to buy a messy rat hole. So make sure your house is clean and organized. Remove as much clutter as you can, even if you have to store your stuff in storage. You can get an idea of how your home should look by browsing through magazines or even IKEA catalog. And here are some general tips to help guide you:

• Tables, desks, and countertops should be mostly clear to show as much surface space as possible.
• Remove family photos from walls, shelves, and fireplace mantle (if you have one). You want the potential buyers to picture themselves living in the house, not looking at your family history.
• Remove any unnecessary furniture and put it into storage to give your house more living space.
• Remove unnecessary electronics, extension cords, and power strips. Most buyers don’t care about your mega entertainment system. And you don’t want it to be obvious that your electrical system is old and lacking.
• Remove clothing from your closets and put it into storage to make the closets feel bigger.
• Remove all the extra clutter throughout the house to make it feel bigger and more spacious.

3. Improve your home curb appeal

Photo by MichiganMoves via Flickr

First impression means a lot, and for your home the name of the game is curb appeal. If you’re a fan of HGTV Curb Appeal, you’ll know exactly what I mean. The goal here is not to spend a lot of money to improve your home, rather you’re trying to do inexpensive things (that may require some sweat equity) to improve the appearance of your home. You want your home to look better than other houses in the area and in a “move in ready” condition.

Here are a few things you could do to improve your home curb appeal:

• Trim hedges and mow your lawn.
• Clean all windows and surfaces.
• Repaint walls, doors, and trims in neutral colors.
• Replace old window blinds or drapes, and update the window treatments.
• Power wash or paint the exterior.

4. Fix problems around the house

Now go throughout the house room by room, and take notes of all the things that need fixing. Little things matter and they could turnoff your buyers.  If you noticed them, the buyer will too. Take the time to go around and fix those things one by one. Remember that fixing these small problems doesn’t have to be expensive, but it will take time and effort.

5. Learn the Art of Home Staging

Photo by Wonderlane via Flickr

Home staging is not decluttering and cleaning. Home staging goes beyond that and happens after the steps above. It involves much less tangible things that include:

• Making the home smells fresh and airy. Some will even go as far as baking cookies before a showing to give the house a pleasant aroma.
• Making sure the temperature is right. You want the potential buyer to feel comfortable.
• Making sure rooms are properly lit by adjusting the window treatments and turning on/off lights.
• Arranging pieces of furniture in an appealing manner.
• Putting vases of fresh flowers on tables, or a small fruit basket on the dinning table.
• Showcasing various fabrics, decors, and knickknacks.
• Arranging items on shelves, bookcases and fireplace mantels to draw attention to predetermined areas.

You can read more about home staging at: Home Staging & Staging a House – What is Home Staging.

6. Leverage the power of the web to market your house

This is the Internet age and you should not let your agent limits your reach. Leverage online venues to help sell your house.  For example, put home for sale ads on Craigslist, Zillow, and HomeGain. Promote the house through your online social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can also send out a copy of your listing to people on your email list to see if they know anyone that might be looking for a house in your neighborhood.

Use every channel that you have at your disposal!

7. Get a good agent to help you sell

In general, it’s better to work with an agent than trying to sell the house on your own. It’s their full time job to find buyers and show your home. This is harder than it looks and it’s generally better to leave this to the pro. However, you have to remember you’re the boss and that we are dealing with a lot of money here. So don’t just pick any agent that comes along. Call several real estate offices and ask to talk to their top sales agents. Make sure you are comfortable working with the person and ask questions. Here are some good questions you can ask your real estate agent.

Another important thing to remember is never go into an exclusive contract with your agent. You want to be able to fire your real estate agent if he or she sucks.

8. Be creative

This is a buyer’s market, but even so, a house is still very expensive for most people. If you have a buyer that needs help to close the deal, consider offering some sort of incentives to make the deal happens. For example, you can offer to cover some parts of the closing costs. This works especially well with first time homebuyers).

Be creative!

9. Don’t be there

When you are having an open house, leave the house. It’s uncomfortable for you to have strangers in your home, and likewise, it’s uncomfortable to be in other people’s home. So why create any more tension? Leave the house and let your real estate agent takes care of business. Let your buyers look around at their leisure without your scrutiny.

Selling your house in a down market isn’t easy, but you can do some work to make your chances better.  In the end your house will show better, and you’ll be able to sell your house that much quicker.

Do you have your own tips to help a home sell faster?  Were there things that you did when selling your house that made it more attractive to buyers?  Let us know about it in the comments section!

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

I recently came across the How to Drive Free and Retire Rich slideshow on Dave Ramsey site via a fellow blogger Pat. The slideshow basically said the normal way thinking about car ownership is all wrong and there is a better way to go about this. Dave Ramsey proposes that you save your money first, invest, and use the proceed to buy your cars. After a while, you will accumulate enough money to make your car purchases self-funding for life, leaving you with enough cash flow to fund your retirement — which could be worth $5.5 million after 40 years. Essentially, the basis for “Drive Free” and “Retire Rich”.

The Normal Way of Thinking

Most Americans take out a car loan to buy a car. For a typical $26,000 car, the average monthly payment is $475 at an average interest rate of 9.6%. And after 6 years of ownership you’ve paid almost $33,000 for your $26,000 car, which is now worth may be $6,000. At this point you’re probably thinking about a new car and the cycle continues.

The Drive Free Method

Dave Ramsey challenges the normal way and advocates these different ideas:

Trading up

Let’s say you have a car that’s worth $1,500 today. Instead of going out and buy a new car, save the $475 for 10 months and you’d have $4,750. Add that to the $1,500 and you could upgrade to a nicer car that’s worth $6,250. You can keep going an in another 10 months trade up to a car that’s worth $11,000.

That’s pretty sweet!

Invest the savings

Since the new car loan in the scenario above is 72 months, let’s continue saving $475 per month for the next 52 months. Assuming you invest your savings in a mutual fund that returns an average of 12% per year, you’d have $32,000.

By this time, your $11,000 car is quite old. Let’s say you spend $12,000 to buy another used car, you’d still have $20,000 left. This means that if your investment continues to earn 12%, you could afford to buy $14,000 to $18,000 cars every five years for the rest of your life.

The Retire Rich Part

Since you’ll never spend another dime on your cars for the rest of your life, you are now free to invest that $475 per month for your retirement. If you keep investing $475 per month in the same mutual fund returning 12%, you’d have

• $100,000 after 10 years,
• $470,000 after 20 years,
• $1.6 million after 30 years, and
• $5.5 million after 40 years

Retire rich…sweet!

Not So Fast Mr. Dave Ramsey

This sounds wonderful doesn’t it? My dad always said, “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” I think this is the case here. Although the concept is great, I don’t think the math is realistic. Let’s see some of the critical things that are missing from the picture painted above.

• First, the most glaring problem I see is the 12% return on investment. The stock market has not performed at that rate for a long time. And some experts believe the more realistic level is closer to 7-8%.  This means that you would need to either save twice as much, or wait twice as long between buying your cars.
• Second, I can’t understand why Dave Ramsey would advocate investing in a mutual fund for a short-term goal. The stock market is volatile and your principal is not protected. For example, if I were following this Drive Free plan and were waiting to buy my next car this year, almost half of my “car fund” would have been wiped out during the 2008 stock market crash. You cannot depend on a plan that involves investing in the stock market to achieve a short-term goal — it will fail.
• Third, Dave Ramsey forgot to pay capital gains tax. When your investment increases in value and you liquidate, you’ll have to pay capital gains tax. For most people, the long term capital gains tax rate is 15%. This means that you’ll have to liquidate quite a bit more than $12,000 to have $12,000 to spend.
• Last but not least, there are a lot of expenses involved when you buy a car. For example, sales tax, destination fee, and registration fee — just to name a few. These fees add up quickly and could be significant depending on the price of the car.

Again, I am not trying to say that the idea is bad — in fact, I think it’s a great concept. However, I do think it is unrealistic. So what can we take away? Well, here are a few good points that Dave Ramsey made:

• Don’t buy new cars. Buy used cars that meet your needs.
• Avoid financing. Try to save money and buy with cash instead.
• The less money you spend on cars, the more money you’ll have to invest for your retirement.

So what do you think? Let’s hear it.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

Zecco Trading is offering 20 free stock trades — a $90 value — to all new brokerage customers who sign up by Sunday, September 13th 2009. You must use promo code “bonus1” to qualify. These trades are in addition to the 10 free stock trades Zecco Trading customers can earn every month when they keep a balance of $25,000 or make 25 free trades per month at the low stock trading commissions of $4.50 each.

Additionally, these free stock trades are special, because you have a whole 90 days to use them. Some other brokerages give you free equity trades to use within 30 days of signing up, so by the time you transfer money into your account, the free stock trades might have expired! With Zecco Trading, you have more time to use your free stock trades when it makes sense to trade.

Be sure to use the promotion code “bonus1” when signing up. Be sure to use all lowercase or the code won’t work.

Special terms and conditions:

• New Zecco Trading accounts must be opened and approved by Sunday, September 13th, 2009.
• The 20 free stock trades will be granted on or before September 16th, 2009. The free trades will expire 90 days after the date they are granted.
• Offer not eligible to existing Zecco Trading customers.
• Limit one bonus per household.

Join Zecco Trading and get 20 free trades with bonus code “bonus1“

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

Do you love to “stick it to the Man” as much as I do? Especially when “the Man” is your credit card company? Would you take fiendish delight in telling them to take a well-deserved “time out”? I love it. Maybe I shouldn’t take such pleasure in this…but I do. Recently, I had occasion to really hand my credit card company it’s head on a plate. Here’s what happened.

Photo by Power to the People via Flickr

They sent me a new credit card with no explanation whatsoever. To make matters more confusing, they canceled my old card…again…without telling me why. I called the company and asked what was going on. Of course, the person who took my call didn’t know anything. In fact, I got tossed around from department to department for more than 20 minutes before I landed a person who could explain what had transpired. You know that drill all too well.

Apparently, a hacker had broken into one of their vendors’ systems and stolen the card information. My credit card company was just trying to protect me, according to the person I was speaking with.

I told him that I understood what they were trying to do. I even appreciated it — but it was an extreme inconvenience. You see, I download all my transactions to Quickbooks. Many of my suppliers are set up on automatic payment. By issuing me a new card, they were forcing me to spend hours and hours of my time to re-tool all our systems. What do these jokers think I do all day? Sit around and watch Spongebob? Wait around to clean up the mistakes that they make?

“Wait a minute Neal” you might be saying to yourself, “I thought you said you understood and appreciated what they were trying to do”.

I do understand it but I still believe that my security is their responsibility. If somebody stole my credit card information from their vendor, why is it my problem? Of course, the clerk I spoke with didn’t see it that way so I had to communicate a bit differently. I asked him what he would do if my checks got stolen and I couldn’t pay the credit card bill at the end of the month. I asked if the company would suspend interest charges.

He told me they would not.

Exactly! They wouldn’t freeze interest charges because it’s my responsibility to pay my bill just like it was their responsibility to protect my information. They don’t care about excuses when it comes to paying their bill. I don’t care about excuses when it comes to doing their job and protecting my credit card info.

The clerk agreed with me. At the end of the first round it was Wealth Pilgrim 1, Credit Card company 0. Sweet.

Of course, the card representative was limited in what he could do for me. He couldn’t undo the past. What was done was done. I agreed with him (and by so doing….lulled him into a false sense of security). Round 2 — Wealth Pilgrim 2, Credit Card company 0. Indeed.

I told the representative that I didn’t blame him individually (always a good practice when you want to get someone on your side) but that I felt the company had failed to live up to its side of our bargain. As a result, I asked him to refund my annual card fee. He threw me a left hook and slammed me down with a resounding “NO…we can’t do that.” Round 3 — Wealth Pilgrim 2, Credit Card company 1.

At this point, I whipped out my magic 6 words:

“What can you do for me?” I asked.

“We can give you 5000 free miles on your travel account” we replied.

At that point, I felt like a winner. By giving me the free miles, he was admitting the company was responsible and he was trying to make up for it. (Either that or he just wanted to get me off the phone — I didn’t care.) I didn’t want blood. I just wanted satisfaction.

“Done” I said and with that I ended the conversation.

What did I learn?

1. I don’t have to sit there and take it from anybody and neither do you — no matter how big they are. As a last resort, I had the choice of closing my account and doing business elsewhere. Is it a pain? Yes, but less painful than doing business with someone who doesn’t play fair or nice.
2. I didn’t get everything I wanted, but I did get something. I’m glad I didn’t take “no” for an answer.
3. It pays to get the person on the other end of the telephone on your side. The best way to do that is by being kind to them and by trying to get them to see themselves in your shoes. Truth be told, they probably dislike their employer more than you do. Give them an easy way to show it.

I’ve written this for a number of reasons. First, you might get a new credit card in the mail without any explanation one of these days. If so, turn that nightmare into a little bit of good news. Don’t take no for an answer. Second, if another party inconveniences you, don’t accept it. Calmly express how you feel about the situation and ask for what you want. You never know…you just might get it.

Do you have any David and Goliath stories? What was your most delicious “stick it to the Man” moment?

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

Like it or not, your credit score matters whether or not you plan to borrow money. As such it’s a good idea to learn as much as you can about credit score, how it works, and how it impact your finances. Below are some great articles about credit score I found around the web this week. These articles cover a wide variety of aspects and I recommend that you read them all.

• 15 Reasons Why You Should Ignore Your FICO Score at Money Ning
• Five Things That Don’t Affect Your Credit Score at Bible Money Matters
• 11 steps to improve your credit score at MSN Smart Spending
• Credit score changes at Gather Little By Little
• What’s a “Hard Pull” on a Credit Check? at Green Panda Treehouse
• Freecreditreport.com vesus myFICO.com: Do you know the difference? at The Dough Roller
• FreeScore.com: More Credit Score Confusion at WSJ The Wallet
• Your Credit Sucks – A simple, five step plan to improve your credit score in 30 days at Rate Nerd

Additionally, I put together a list of Free Credit Report and Credit Score Online Sites that you can use to get your credit score and report for free.

Weekly Highlights

Here are a few highlights I’d like to share this week.

• Moolanomy was featured on the Buck List with some high praises — i.e., the golden standard of personal finance blogs — thank you Buck!
• A guest article 9 Really Weird Ways to Make Money by Linda McCormick was featured on The Daily Crux — awesome work Linda!
• Suze Orman Reveals Her Top Six Money Tips at Restoring Your Finances and Your Faith
• 4 Reasons Why Student College Loans Are Dangerous at The Debt Hawk
• 6 Innovative Banks That Change Online Banking at Mint Life
• Discovering (and Challenging) Your Financial Values at Get Rich Slowly

Giveaways

• Bob Lotich is giving away $100 Amazon Gift Card to celebrate 1,000,000 visitors milestone on Christian Personal Finance — congratulation Bob…great job.
• Green Panda Treehouse and a bunch of other blogs are giving away some HP computers to celebrate back to school season.
• Spend On Life is hosting a Bad Poetry Contest for a chance to win $1,000.

Carnival

Lastly, I participated in a few carnivals this week:

• Carnival of Twenty Something Finances
• Best of Money Carnival
• Carnival of Money Stories
• Carnival of Road to Financial Independence

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

Textbooks are necessary for your educational success, but they are lousy purchases. They cost a lot to buy, lose value quickly, and worth little when you sell them. Instead of buying your textbooks from college campus store this semester, you could try renting them from online bookstores. If you still want to own them, you could also buy them online at a fraction of the cost.

Photo by Here In Van Nuys via Flickr

Where To Rent Textbooks

There are several web sites where you can rent textbooks. For example, Chegg offers textbooks for rent at about 65% to 85% off the retail purchase price. You can select from thousand of textbooks, get them quickly, and ship them back for free. Chegg also offers 30-Day “Any Reason” Guarantee, which gives you:

• Full refund for all orders returned within 30 days
• Guaranteed delivery date
• Guaranteed quality of books

Last but not least, Chegg promises to plant a tree for every book you rent.

Where To Buy Used Textbooks

Instead of renting, you could also buy used textbooks from places like Amazon.com and Bookbyte.com. For example, Bookbyte sells Human Anatomy and Physiology (8th Edition) for $88, which is 55% off the retail price of $196.33. Amazon.com sells the same book for $157.

These are just a few examples and I encourage you to shop around a bit since there are many web sites that sell and rent textbooks online. Textbooks are becoming more and more expensive each year. A full time student could easily spend more than $500 per semester on textbooks. Why not rent or buy online and safe a few hundred dollars?

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Successful people realize that one of the best ways to advance in your career is through networking. Whether it’s getting a promotion at your current job, or finding a new job that gets you to the next level of your career, having a strong network gives you an advantage over those who do not. Building a professional network of colleagues and mentors is not always easy for many people, however there are some steps you can take to get started.

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Maybe one of your concerns is public speaking? You could join a group like Toastmasters and not only learn how to speak in public, but the people you meet there can become the start of your network. Other simple ways to start meeting people for your network is to volunteer. Anything from a Chamber of Commerce to the political party you support would be a good place to start to find like-minded professionals.

A great way to introduce yourself to people at any gathering is to not just simply hand over your business card, have a 10-30 second speech ready to tell them who you are and what your career path is, not simply your job title. Also, make sure you remember their name. If you are sitting at a table as everyone introduces themselves, you could simply write down their name and what they do. Saying their name when talking to them will create a great first impression and a much deeper connection.

Another more recent source of network building is with online social networks. While these can be great if used to build meaningful connections with people, they will not be helpful if your only goal is to get as many “friends” as possible. A great site for building a professional network is LinkedIn, as it allows you to basically post your resume online and connect with those you know and have access to their connections as well.

Finally, keep in mind that your network connections are not just there to help you. Build the relationships within your network by staying in contact and offering to help them when you can. Then if you are looking for a promotion, or perhaps find yourself without a job, you can rely on your network to give you job leads and provide references to help you take the next step in your career.

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Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance