How to Get the Best Deal on Your Cell Phone Plan

In today's modern world, cellphones have become almost a necessity for everyone. Unfortunately cellphone plans are often confusing and seem to always have extra fees that come out of nowhere. Luckily, there are some steps you can take to help lower your monthly bill and get the most gab for your tab.

Avoid A La Carte
Many cell plans offer unlimited minutes, at least to a certain number of your most common numbers. However, text messages are often a different story. Some plans will charge ten cents or more for each message you send or receive. If you send more than one text message a day or have a shared plan, ask about unlimited text for your plan. Many younger users send dozens or even hundreds of messages a day. At ten cents a message, that can add up in a hurry.


Never Take Sides Against the Family
Many new plans will limit a user to a certain number of minutes for general calls, but will give unlimited calls to anyone that's on the same network. In other words, if a user has Verizon, they can call anyone on Verizon for free. At the very least, families should try to stay on the same network, as studies show that typically fifty percent of phone calls are made to immediate family members.

Consider Your Actual Needs
Everyone wants to get the newest and greatest iPhone or Droid, but in actuality most people never take advantage of all the extras anyway. In many cases, people are never far from a computer, so they don't really need a multimedia phone. However, if you do decide to get a multimedia plan, make sure to check out all the options. Some plans cost as little as six dollars a month, while others may cost more than sixty.

Go Prepaid
Many users never get close to their monthly minute limit. If you use your cell phone less than two hundred minutes a month, you can save almost fifty percent by switching to a pre-paid plan. For example, two-hundred anytime minutes costs twenty-five dollars, as compared to a full plan which may cost forty or fifty dollars a month.

Ask
Finally, you can straight out ask a carrier about available discounts. In many cases, a new user may qualify for a discount and not be aware of it. For instance, many carriers will give discounts to government workers. This is usually pretty loosely defined, and it may include librarians, teachers, city employees, or other jobs not typically considered government. Non-profit groups may also qualify for discounts.

Britney Baker is a freelance blogger who normally ranks prepaid phones for PrepaidCellphones.net.

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Teaching Your Kids About Money

How to manage money is a valuable lesson that not enough parents impart to their children. We’ve all seen spoiled kids that have turned into spendthrift adults in debt.

It doesn’t have to happen to your child – teaching kids about money isn’t that complicated. Here are some great ways to show your child how to manage money.

The Weekly Allowance

In order to learn how to manage money, a child actually needs to have money to work with. Consider giving your child a weekly allowance.

Some parents give their kids an allowance without requiring anything from them, but if you like, you can have your kids do chores around the house in exchange for this money.

Short Term Pain, Long Term Gratification

It’s never too early to teach children how to save money instead of squandering it on throwaway purchases. If your son wants to buy something that is out of his budget, you can explain to him that the only way he will be able to afford it is if he stops spending money and saves instead.

Make a chart tracking the amount of money saved so the kid can actually see the results of delaying his short term gratification.

Budget Like a Pro

If you teach your kids how to budget early on in life, when they get older they’ll be pros at it.

A simple way to teach budgeting is to require your child to split up her allowance money. For example, if you give your daughter ten dollars a week in allowance money, you can require her to set aside two dollars for charity and two dollars for savings. She is then allowed to spend the remaining six dollars however she likes.

Will Work for Cash

Getting your child a job is a great way for them to appreciate the value of money. Younger children can rake up the neighbor’s leaves or have a lemonade stand, while older children can wash cars, babysit and shovel snow.

After experiencing a week’s worth of hard work, your child may have a different perspective on money.

Instead of regarding parents as walking ATMs, a working child can begin to understand where all the money comes from. Before starting to work, your kid may not have understood why you couldn’t buy them those expensive designer sneakers.

After having a job, hopefully they’ll understand enough to start saving up themselves.

Immersing your children in discussions about financial matters will help them understand the world of money as they grow into adulthood.

This is a guest post by Christine Vaughan from the website LifeCover.ca, which provides life insurance in Canada. Christine lives in Vancouver, BC.

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Finance Tip for Parents: Save Big with Cloth Diapers

Did you know that if you wisely invested the money you spend on disposable diapers, it could pay for your kid's college? The typical family will spend over $2000 on diapers. This money literally is being thrown in the trash.

Cloth diapers are the latest craze in parenting. Newer, high-tech cloth diapers are user friendly and a snap to use. There is a slight learning curve, but once you get used to them, they are no harder to use than disposable diapers.

A decent starter kit for cloth diapering has a startup cost, but it is no comparison to the amount of money you can save in the long run. Most kits can be had for $200, around 10% of what would be spent on disposables. The cloth diaper is even useful as rags after your baby has been potty trained.



For parents unwilling to pay an upfront cost on something they might not like, most cloth diaper stores have 30-day money back refunds. Alternatively, parents can subscribe to a diaper service, a program that takes used diapers away and delivers new cloth diapers every day. Depending on the type of service, this can still be cheaper than using disposables.

Not only can you save money by switching to cloth, some parents switch solely for the benefits to the environment. Americans are throwing out 570 diapers a second! The terrible thing about disposable diapers is that they take 500 years to decompose. This means that every diaper ever made is still sitting in a landfill filled with toxins.

Getting Started with Cloth
There are many choices and options with cloth diapering. The most economical is a diaper cover with a pre-fold diaper inside. The easiest to use cloth diaper is an all-in-one diaper but it is a little more expensive. The diaper with the best of both worlds is the pocket diaper.

A diaper cover is simply a waterproof wrap that goes around a rectangular piece of cotton called a pre-fold diaper. The pre-fold placed surrounding the baby's bottom, and the diaper cover holds the pre-fold together and adds an additional leak barrier. The cover comes in many different colors and patterns, and the pre-fold can also be made with hemp, organic cotton, or even bamboo.

For parents that are willing to spend a bit more for convenience, there is the all in one diaper. This is diaper cover with the pre-fold sewn inside, making it one piece. This makes it as easy to use as a regular disposable diaper, but makes the drying process a bit longer.

The ultimate in convenience and ease of use is the pocket diaper, which is a diaper cover with a pocket for holding an absorbable insert. This makes the diaper as easy to use as a disposable, and comes apart to make washing the diaper extremely simple.

Cloth diapering is an easy way to benefit the environment as well as your pocketbook. Many parents that cloth diaper love it, and you’ll find by making the switch, you will love it too!

Author:
This guest post is contributed by Jennifer Mizuhara, who writes on the topics of cloth diapers.

Products:
Gerber 12-Pack Flatfold Birdseye Cloth Diapers - White
Gerber 12-Pack Prefold Birdseye 3-Ply Cloth Diapers with Padding - White
Gerber Brand 6 Pack Prefold Birdseye Organic Diaper, White

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Managing Personal Finance

It can be very hard to manage your finances when you just start your career. With just enough money earned, it is hard to maintain a good living as well as save for the future. However, with good thinking and action you can accomplish them both without much of a hassle.

Investment is a vital aspect when it comes to managing your finances. The major purpose of an investment is to make sure the money invested increases at a higher rate compared to the rate of inflation. By doing this you’re accumulating a good amount of wealth for yourself rather than just making money to pay off bills.


If you’re someone just getting into the world of investment, it is best that you stay away from stock trading if you aren’t being guided efficiently. Investing in mutual funds is a safer bet. Also with the help of mutual funds it is possible to predict which way the stock market is headed. To start of your journey, it is best you invest in a Systematic Investment Plan. Mutual Funds for the most part are open ended, giving an investor the opportunity to get into the market at any given point of time. The type of investment you make depends largely on your risk profile.

With a person being married and having the responsibility of his children’s education and health, his risk enduring limit is reduced by a great extent. Insurance coverage is highly recommended for him. It is available in both the Traditional Plan which ensures returns being low for the complete time frame during which the coverage is provided. Unit Linked Insurance Plan is the other type of insurance coverage. This is similar to mutual funds but additional insurance benefits are provided.

It is vital that you have access to money at any given point. This brings into the picture the concept of liquidity. Gold, Mutual Funds and Unit Linked Insurance Plan are preferred as they offer great flexibility and withdrawals can be made at any time.

To get your investments right, take time, analyze and understand the market at first with proper guidance. Once you have all the facts gathered, put your money in appropriate investments and ensure your financial security.

My experience, knowledge and network of financial professionals makes me a more valuable resource for individuals and small businesses, I am trying to improve their current financial position as well as their future prospect. Check out my blog on personal finances and budgeting.

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Taking Social Security Early

What is Social Security?
Social Security is a social insurance sponsored by the federal government and funded by payroll taxes, called the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, levied on U.S. citizens. This program is also known as the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program and is the largest government program in the world. For retirees, Social Security provides a monthly payment dependent of the amount of money they earned during their working years, and the age at which they decide to begin receiving these payments. For example, if a person decides to start drawing these benefits at age 62, they will receive less money monthly, but for more months. Conversely, if a person waits until full retirement age of 66, they will receive a greater monthly payment, but for fewer months in their lifetime.

Choosing to Take Social Security Early
Last year, 73 percent of all Social Security filers chose to take their benefits early, despite the lower monthly payments. Their decision included several personal factors from job loss to medical expenses, but many based their reasoning on their life expectancy. That’s because the earlier they start drawing benefits, the less time they can continue earning these payments before they eventually break even. So before retirees make this decision, they should all do a personal health inventory, including surveying their current medical conditions and those of their immediate family, and try to accurately determine their expected lifespan.

Working While Collecting Social Security
Because most retirees cannot sustain a normal lifestyle on their Social Security benefits alone, many are forced to seek part-time or even full-time employment to supplement their income. Unfortunately, working while collecting benefits leads to serious tax implications that must be considered. Those that receive benefits are only allowed to earn $13,560 per year from business or employment opportunities. Earning more than that amount will require workers to pay into the Social Security program $1 for every $2 earned. Also, single persons that report a total adjusted gross income of more than $25,000 (including 50 percent of Social Security benefits) could pay taxes on up to 85 percent of the Social Security income.

Avoiding These Penalties
For those retirees that need to work and collect Social Security benefits simultaneously, there are several ways to make additional money without incurring financial penalties. For example, consider purchasing rental properties that could provide enough funds to cover the properties' mortgages, but also a substantial profit. Rental income is not calculated into annual earned income. There is also the option of starting one's own S corporation and setting a personal income below the federal limitations. These entities do not pay federal income tax because their profits and losses are divided amongst the shareholders, who then report this information on their individual tax returns. Starting an S corporation would definitely require the guidance of a qualified tax professional so ensure IRS rules and regulations are met.

Overall, there are serious benefits and deterrents to taking Social Security benefits early and making this decision requires a great deal of financial, medical and personal investigation.

Author:
This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who writes on the topics of online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com.

Resources:

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Words of Wisdom on Personal Finance for Young Adults

You are in the threshold of life where a good decision could make you or break you. It could make you a millionaire or simply be amongst the common few. You need to take prudent decisions on budgeting; savings and ways and means of earning that will take you a long way:


Start building your emergency funds: start setting aside some money irrespective of how small your earnings are. Don’t get bogged down by your loans and forget to provide for the future. Even if it s few dollars a week, setting it aside will help. Put it away and simply forget about it. Before you know it, it would have grown to a good amount which you could use for a down payment or a house, a car or simply to add onto your education

Start saving for your retirement now: am I talking of retirement too early. The more you procrastinate, the more you push it back. The sooner you start saving the better. You can keep saving and use that money to invest which would again result in additional income for you. Use it for short term investments and keep rolling it to add on. Unless you come across a long term investment which would generate enough and be better in the long term, think twice before blocking your money. Being sincere about savings helps in the long run, now and in the future.

Handle taxes smartly: Learn about taxes. Start saving once you have provided for them. Once you have been offered a job and know about the taxes, mentally think about the amount of money that you can put away after paying for your taxes. They need not just be savings but can be some risk free investments that will help you to add on more to your funds. Budgeting your income from the beginning helps a great deal. Even when you are applying for a new job be aware of the salary or the remuneration your employer decides to pay you. Make sure it is at least a good raise to leave enough money in your hands as disposable income which you could use to your liking.

These three little things help you to have a smart buffer as you age. Sometime later, you would be able to look back and thank yourself for being thoughtful about your future.

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