saving account

Financial Motivation For A Two-Year Education

When it comes to college, you are considering an expensive proposition any way you look at it. There are, however, ways in which you can significantly reduce your overall expenses when it comes to getting your college degree. The first method, which in many cases is the most preferred, is by attending a community college for the first two years of your college educational experience. Believe it or not, you can literally save thousands of dollars throughout spending two years on the community college level.

You will hear all kinds of arguments on why it is better to attend all four years at a university. The universities almost always make these arguments. Unfortunately, their opinions are a little bit biased in these matters. Most universities offer equivalent courses with community colleges meaning that the first two years of study should transfer with no problems or snags along the rocky road to your degree.

The universities make money each semester you begin classes as a student. It is in their best interest financially to have you from the beginning rather than as a transfer. In fact, many universities offer lower level classes as auditorium classes. They pack more students into categories and have fewer professors or graduate students teaching the courses and maximize their money off the first- and second-year students rather than those in upper-level classes. Yet another reason to consider a community college for the first two years of your education.

Most community colleges are mainly commuter campuses. This means you won’t face the high housing costs that are associated with universities, particularly if you are attending college close to home. Community colleges also offer far fewer distractions that cost additional money than most major universities. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t ample social opportunities; it merely means that there are fewer of them. This also leaves fewer distractions than universities present when it comes to studying.

Community colleges simply cost less all around. While it would be nice if you could receive a full four-year education at this level, they are able, for the most part, to keep expenses down by not requiring the level of qualification that universities need of their professors for upper-level courses. You will have excellent, if not a superior quality of education at lower levels than you would have on the university level, but you will also eventually need to move on to the university level to complete your education.

For this reason, you would do well to save half of your savings over university costs for each of the two years you are attending community college and apply it to your university education. This will ease the burden of the additional costs of the university and feel as though you are paying the same amount for tuition throughout your education although you are literally saving thousands of dollars on your educational expenses.

Some states have educational savings plans that allow parents to save for tuition at current costs by enrolling. These plans cover two years of community college education and two years of university education. By locking in today’s prices, you are eliminating inflation. When you consider the fact that college tuition is increasing at an alarming rate this is by far an excellent way to go. You should check with your state and see if they offer a similar plan to parents of younger children and what the requirements are to enroll your child today.

If you are looking for a real value in education whether you only go for your two-year degree or move on to a university to finish your four-year degree you should find that a community college education offers a significant value for the money. Most people see that every penny they spent in a community college was a penny well spent.

We hope this information was beneficial. You can have anything you want if you are enthusiastic about putting in the time, effort and plans to get to your goals. Discover the secrets why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. Click Here to view a video with more life tips!

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Educational Savings Accounts

When it comes to getting a college education, financing is one of the most important considerations that you will need to make. Unfortunately for far too many, it is one of the last factors thought about when it comes to the education of our children. If you are a parent, you owe it to your child and yourself to plan and plan carefully to cover the cost of your child’s education. There are, fortunately, a few great ways in which you can do this.

The most common is to begin by opening an educational saving account for your child (under the age of 18). When you open educational savings account for your child, you can contribute up to $2,000 per year per child. It is a combined total contribution however and includes the financial gifts of grandparents, friends, and family in addition to your contributions. The money from these funds can be withdrawn tax-free if they are used for educational purposes.

Educational expenses, in this case, include books, tuition, fees, supplies, and college room and board provided that your child is at least a part-time student. If you do not use all the funds for your child, there are options as far as what to do with the remaining funds in the account. The first option would be to leave the funds in the account and allow the account beneficiary to withdraw them up until the age of 30. There is a penalty involved, and the recipient will be required to pay income tax on those funds. You could also elect to roll those funds over to the next child under the age of 18 who will have educational expenses in the future.

The money you set aside in these accounts to cover the cost of the education of your child or children is not tax-deductible. However, it is a great way to begin saving money and investing in the future of your child. If you start spending the maximum amount $2,000 per year upon birth, your child should have a nice nest egg to help cover educational expenses.

If your child is fortunate enough to qualify for scholarships and other sources of financial aid you can turn the funds over as a graduation gift or save it for the next college student in your family that comes along. Either way, you’ve saved yourself a good part of the worry that goes along with providing for your family by having this fund set up for your children.

You can sign up for programs like Upromise to subsidize your contributions with donations from corporate sponsors as their way of thanking you for buying their products or using their services on any credit cards that you, your friends, and your family members have registered to go into your child’s account. Every edge you give yourself when it comes to investing in the education of your children is an edge worth having. College tuition rates are rising at an alarming rate while corporate expectations of college degrees are growing at the same near lightning speed. It means that a college degree is more critical for our children than in any past generations.

Take the time now to check into securing the future of your children by establishing an educational savings account. Let friends and family know that any gifts they are planning to give your children that involve money would be appreciated if they instead invested in the future of your children rather than now. You can also ask your friends and family to sign up their credit cards with Upromise to provide a little bump in donations to your child’s college savings account. These small steps add up to significant savings throughout 18 years. You might find that the investment you are making is adequate to cover the costs of your child’s tuition in full.

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Manage Money Without Depriving

It is a fact that there would always be a system wherein we will not be getting everything we want because of financial limitations. In short, we cannot have everything at the instant we would want it. There would have to be planning or if not, some careful deliberation about whether we would be getting the item we want or not. This is because sooner or later, finances would always fall short of the expenses. That is why we manage our money and budget for the things that we would want to acquire. Nevertheless, when we manage money without depriving, we would want to be able to enjoy a certain degree of satisfaction and fulfillment without compromising our savings.

Deprivation would mean curtailing our freedom to the point of not being able to enjoy some of our hard-earned resources. Though it is an irony that we are already limited with finances and yet would not want to be deprived, a balance of enjoyment and requirement is what dictates the existence of deprivation if ever.

Earn More

One of the most common means of people to raise the level of financial freedom is to earn more by working more. However, this is limited with the many social factors which include the degree of educational attainment, time, job availability, and often, personal accomplishments.

Some may get lucky to be in the lighter side of personal assessment by the human resource personnel and be accepted for a job despite the incomplete compliance of requirements. There are also some who, despite their educational attainment and personal socio-civic accomplishments, are still not able to land a job they desire due to a personal prerogative of the recruiter to not accept the applicant.

What this presents is a semi-random chance of a person to fully comply with all the factors which constitute the landing of another job than the current one.

Save More

A classic means of how to manage money without depriving is to focus on saving the excess money that flows in the household after deducting all the other monthly expenses and bills. Saving money means having money when the need for an important expense is required.

Saving more would merit to having more extra cash, but also poses a paradox in a way that when you save money, you are already keeping that for something projected as an event that could happen. In this manner, there would be a difficulty in using that fund intended for an important thing to be spent on something that would just be for leisure and satisfaction.

Learn to Be Content

The degree of limitation and deprivation on a person’s financial resources are dictated by the personal level of satisfaction. A person’s idea of contentment is the same as his perception of what he needs and wants. A person who is “want” oriented will always be seeking for things that may already be unattainable at the current financial level and would feel deprived of such. On the other hand, a person who is “need” oriented would be able to do away with leisure and may also feel deprived deep inside of finer things that may have been acquired.

The key to managing money without depriving is to learn to already accept what is possible to be attained and work from there. If there is a rather unattainable thing to spend money on, then that is the time the person should plan and think about the means to reach that and make that attainable.

You can have anything you want if you are willing to put in the time, effort and plans to get to your goals. Discover the secrets why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. Click Here to view a video with more life tips! In closing, We invite you to share your comments on this subject and the other posts. If you find the information useful, Like & Share us on Facebook, Google Plus and other social media platforms. Remember to keep an open mind and Shift 4 Freedom.

Best Saving Accounts What Must You Look For

Most people begin their financial journey by opening a regular account which they use for nothing more than depositing and issuing checks. A lot of these people allow money to remain in these accounts till it reaches an amount and then they begin looking at options for saving accounts. It is needless to mention as to why people would want the best saving accounts they can get at this stage, because their financial life is almost on the verge of or already has become stable. The account they are opening now is an instrument of savings. This can be call a freedom account.

Probably you are contemplating on opening a freedom account too. If you are doing that, there are certain things you must look for. One of the first things that you must remember is that the bank or credit union where you have your regular account is not necessarily the bank or credit union with the best saving accounts too. With a freedom account, the stakes are higher because banks or credit unions must pay you interest on the deposits that you make. Naturally, the bank or credit union that can provide you the best rate of interest will be the best saving account bank or credit union for you.

Understand what is a freedom account all about. The freedom account is where you set aside into a savings account from 3 to 10% of your total income each month for education, self-improvement, or asset building investments only. Not for personal or entertainment items that cost you money. It is called a freedom account because it’s goal is to help you free yourself from the credit rat race. But there are some other considerations to make here.

Here we list the five important points you must look at when you are scouting for banks or credit unions that can provide best saving accounts.

(I) The first thing you must look at is naturally the rate of interest. Since it is the bank or credit union that will be paying you the interest, you must select the bank or credit union that provides you the highest rate of interest. This should be one of the primary points that you should be looking at, but certainly it should not be the only point.

(ii) The second thing you need to check is the amount that the bank or credit union needs you to deposit so that you can open the account. Different financial institutions have different limits here and hence you need to ask them personally or check their written brochures.

(iii) Since these are savings accounts, you will need to keep some amount in the bank or credit union each month. This amount is called as minimum deposit. It acts as a kind of security for the bank or credit union as well as it helps you to save that amount of money, adding more meaning to the concept of savings accounts. But you must see if you can afford to keep this minimum deposit with the bank or credit union because if your total deposited amount goes less than this, you must pay an additional charge.

(iv) There may also be a limit on the number and the amount of withdrawals that you make from the savings account. See if that meets your needs. With some banks or credit unions, you can make more withdrawals than the number that they allow but you must pay an additional charge for that.

(v) One more point that you must check is the notice period before you can make a withdrawal, which is typical of most savings accounts. If this period stretches out to too long (in some banks or credit unions it could be as much as three months), the account may not be suitable to your needs.

Hence, choosing best saving accounts is not a very easy task because there are several things that you need to consider. But being aware of what you need to look at, you are liable to make a better decision.

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