How about this for a great online savings account option?
Over the years, I’ve squirreled spare cash in a variety of jars, old Altoid tins, and a few high yield savings accounts. But I’ve been looking for a much better alternative for my money and one option I’m considering is a SmartyPig savings account.
First off, the APY is 2.01%. A quick inspection of Bankrate showed that popular institutions like Ally Bank and HSBC Direct have savings accounts at rates of 1.50% or lower. Keeping your money in a bank with a higher APY means that you’re likely to reach your goals faster.
SmartyPig Review: Best Savings Account For Your Goals
Here’s what I find intriguing about this savings account. When you sign up for a free SmartyPig account, you can pick a specific goal for your savings: that can mean anything from a new car or a vacation, to the purchase of big ticket items like a new TV or video game console. Or maybe you have more medium term goals like a down payment for a house or a college fund. With SmartyPig, you can set up an automated savings program where you can indicate how much you want to save and the date of your goal. You’ll be
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Lately, I’ve been working with a coder to help me with some back-end issues with The Simple Dollar, as there have been a few bugs floating around in the software I use to update the site, the most onerous of which is that some small fraction of comments seem to disappear before I ever get to see them in the moderation queue. He’s also implementing a few features, such as automated text elements in posts (like the “shelter” bit in the Trimming the Average Budget series, which I couldn’t figure out how to change for about a week).
Anyway, over the next month, you might occasionally see some minor bugs pop up here and there on the site. Don’t sweat it – I’m almost always aware of the bug and it’s usually there in an attempt to make something work better or faster or more conveniently (for me and for you). If you do see something that’s really interfering with reading the site, please email me directly about it.
In the Absence of “Yes” How can we handle situations where the key decision that makes up success or failure is completely outside our control? We all face these situations – in essence, a job application is that very thing. I really like the advice
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When trying to figure out how much you need to retire, there are many different rules of thumb you could follow. While I’ve previously discussed the 4% rule and the rule of 20, which both calculate your likely income at retirement, the most common calculation on how much to save up to retirement may be the 10% rule.
The 10% rule simply states that you should save 10% of your gross income. Note that it’s gross income, not your net income or paycheque. For example, If you earn $1,500 every 2 weeks and get paid $1,000 after taxes and other deductions, you should save $150 every 2 weeks, not $100.
The issue with the 10% rule is that it only really applies to someone that starts saving in their early twenties and continues until their retirement. If you are over 30, you should consider adjusting this percentage to 15% or 20%.
Using the $150 bi-weekly example above and assuming a 7% rate of return and a retirement age of 65, let’s look at how your age can effect the end result of the 10% rule.
- Starting age of 25 would have $804,472 after 40 years of saving.
- Starting age of 35 would have $380,650 after 30 years of saving.
- Starting age of 45 would have $165,200 after 20 years of saving.
Obviously it’s not reasonable to simply say “save 10% of your income” without taking age into account. Wondering h
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The beginning of the year is a great time to take stock and do some financial planning for the new year. Here are four strategies for starting 2010 on a good financial foundation.
- Set up retirement plans
Start a retirement plan that will benefit you and your employees. Each dollar you save will lower your taxable income, give your business additional tax deductions, make your employees happy and give you an edge in employee retention. Plus, you’ll build your own retirement nest egg. Depending on the size of your business and how much you want to save, you have several options:
• Solo 401(k): Solo 401(k) plans allow you to save more than other plans and are the newest retirement plan for the self-employed. “This one is best for business owners where there are no employees except the owner and a spouse and they want high contribution limits,” says Bonnie Hughes, a certified financial planner with American Capital Planning in Reston, Virginia. You can make employee contributions of up to $16,500 in 2010 (with an additional $5,500 if you’re over age 50), plus a profit sharing contribution worth up to 25 percent of your compensation, for a total maximum contribution $49,000 (or $54,500 if you’re over age 50). You ca
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It rained like the cliche, “cats and dogs” today. Loved it. It was fun to finally see sleet and hail pound on the roof of our home after so many long months of having no weather (e.g. I mean: weather that isn’t too exciting ). In California, we have two types of weather: warm and slightly warm. So when the rains visit us, it can be fun.
And it immediately reminded me that our house is now beginning to require maintenance. A good amount of it. For example, it has become mighty obvious that we’ll need to repaint our entire house by the summer. And we need the gutters cleaned. I wanted to get the gutters checked this year but the spouse said no and wanted to save some money. Well, they are overflowing right now because of these winter storms and I hate to say that if anything messes up because of these loaded gutters, I’d be more than annoyed. I’m never one to procrastinate on the maintenance of my home, especially when I learned a long time ago that deferred maintenance just meant that you’d spend much more money down the road. You don’t want a small problem to escalate because of negligence or procrastination or a misplaced need to be frugal. Okay, enough b*ing right now, right? I should just m
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