One of the many things that parents should teach their children is how to manage money. You can start teaching your kids about money as early as age five; even children that young can grasp the basic concept of money.

It’s good to start early – far too many teenagers and adults lack basic personal finance skills such as the ability to pay taxes, save money and use a credit card.

Start By Giving Them Money

If your children are between the ages of five and ten, you can start their financial education by actually providing them with some kind of finances; in order for them to learn anything, they’ll actually need money to work with. Institute a weekly allowance in exchange for doing household chores. If the kids want extra money, let them do additional chores. Make your children divide the money they receive into three portions. One portion will be spending money, one portion will go into savings and one portion will go to charity. Help your children learn how to delay immediate gratification by assisting them in picking out items they really want; once they’ve saved up enough money, they can then buy the item.

Go Shopping With Your Kids

For kids who are between the ages of eleven and fourteen, you can bring them along when you shop. Show them how much the things they take for granted cost, and demonstrate how to shop smartly. Some things you should teach your children include how to compare products and prices and how return policies and warranties work. At this age, your children are old enough to start taking on odds jobs such as walking dogs, raking leaves and baby-sitting. With this money, your children can start to buy their own accessories and toys.

Get Them A Savings Account

Reinforce the value of saving by again helping your children select higher-priced items and encouraging them to save up enough to purchase these items. A great place you can direct your children to is the American Savings Education Council (ASEC). The ASEC website has a fantastic online calculator that your children can use to figure out how much money to save each month in order to reach a savings goal.

Once They Get A Little Older

Children between the ages of fifteen and eighteen are old enough to make more serious financial decisions. For example, you may choose to give your children a seasonal clothing allowance so they can purchase their own clothing. If you feel your teenager is mature enough, you can add their name to your credit or debit card and allow them to shop for the family. You can even get your teenager their own student credit card. This is the age to start talking about how to save for major financial goals such as buying a car or paying for college.

LifeCover is a website about life insurance that is based in Vancouver, BC. For more information visit their website: www.lifecover.ca/vancouver/.

We have all heard about life insurance, but the details for many of us remain rather fuzzy. While we know that it’s a good idea to have, what are the different kinds of life insurance and which one is right for us?

While it is always best to consult with a business professional in serious financial matters, we will lay out some of the basic truths, pros, and cons about the different kinds of life insurance available for you.

Whole Life Insurance

Whole life insurance, in simple terms, is a life insurance policy to which you contribute monthly premiums, which is payed out to your family in the event of your death. This policy covers the policy-holder – as the name implies – for their whole life. Whole life insurance has come under fire from financial advisors because it is often billed as a retirement savings plan as well as a life insurance policy, but it has been found not to be a very solid investment.

Whole life insurance policies guarantee an amount to be paid to your family in the event of your death. You select that amount to be paid, and then contribute premiums every month. Over time, if you contribute more than the amount of your policy, that money is saved and grows at an interest rate better than most savings accounts. As such, in the years of retirement that you don’t die, the money can be used like a retirement fund. In the event that you do die, at any stage of life, your family will receive a payout of the amount you selected to be paid.

The major pros, then, of whole life insurance is that it covers your whole life; you or your family are guaranteed to receive the benefits of payout at some point. The cons, however, are that most whole life policies only pay families the amount of the original policy, even if you contributed more money of the course of your life. That money is then lost to your family and goes into the insurance company’s pocket. The premiums for these policies are generally much higher than for term life insurance, and also include more fees and extra costs.

Term Life Insurance

Term life insurance is an insurance policy to which you contribute monthly premiums for a term – usually 10, 20, or 30 years – during which time, if you should die, the amount of your policy would be payed out to your family. For most people, this is the absolute best option.

Many people opt for term life insurance because it provides security when you need it and doesn’t demand money from you when you don’t need the same security. For example, a 30-year-old man with a wife, a new baby, and a home mortgage, may opt for a 30 year life term life insurance policy. During the course of his policy, his family is heavily dependent on his income to help cover costs of both child and home; in the event of his death during this period, his wife would need the payout from his life insurance in order to maintain their current life. After thirty years, however, when his child is an independent adult and his home is paid for, his spouse would be less financially impacted by his death. They would have fewer obligations, as well as more savings by that point. As such, when the policy term ran out, it would make more sense to stop paying monthly premiums and apply that money to retirement savings.

Based on the example, the pros of term life insurance are clear. You pay for coverage when you need it, and you can stop when you don’t. The cons would be that your family is not always ensured a payout in the event of your death, and that you may contribute to the fund for thirty years without it ever being needed (if you don’t die).

Summary

Whether you prefer to consult with a professional or you educate yourself on these issues, it is important to take life insurance very seriously. For anyone with a spouse, a family, a mortgage, or any other major financial commitments and dependents, life insurance is a necessary thing to consider. Weigh the pros and cons of both kinds of policies in order to select the best one for you.

Joy Paley is a freelance writer for Article Writing Services and Personal Finance Blogs.

Everyone wants to save money.  However, not everyone is committed enough to do it.  Follow along to learn some strategies to execute your plan.

Before You Formulate a Plan

It’s difficult to find out where you should be, if you don’t know where you are and where you have been.  Apart from financial reasons, sometimes we just need to see the mistakes we’ve made and the damage it has caused.

Review your budgets from the past.  If you don’t have well-kept budgets available, that might be an initial lesson you can learn from.  In this case, though, you can look at credit cards and banks statements online to get a good sense of your past finances.

Look for themes.  For instance, you might notice the following:

• Debt: What strides have you made to battle it?  Has it gotten worse, gotten better, or stayed the same – and why?
• Unnecessary Expenses: This can be to the demise of any budget.  Take a look at certain problem areas, such as eating out and your favorite shopping locations.
• Goals: Analyze the execution of any goals that you had.  For instance, perhaps you were able to increase your retirement funds.  How do your insurance policies and emergency savings accounts stand?  Items like these can protect yourself against disaster; couple these with goals to help you see the big picture.

The Plan

Now is the time for a fresh start.  Once you identify progress, difficulties, and other dynamics from your past financially, you can determine a course of action.

It will be different for everyone.  You will have to look at your income, necessary expenses, and find a way to “put it all together,” so to speak.  There may be debt looming over your head, the prospect of your children’s education, and other stressors, indeed.

There is a universal tip that may help you during this stage.  If you are having problems figuring out what to do with your finances, there are few better solutions to seeing a financial advisor.  It will be well worth the time and fee to see one, where you can come up with a course of action and maintain responsibilities, goals, and other objectives in your finances.  Don’t ignore this powerful resource that is available.

Stick With It!

Many people have no problems with what we’ve addressed, up to now.  You can have the best financial plan, with careful consideration given to current expenses, future goals and investments, and much more.  But if you can’t follow it, what’s the point?

Spend some time considering what it’ll take to meet your goals.  You might have to find a way to restrict yourself on purchases, for instance.  Put a dollar amount on it each week/month, or use the “envelope” method if you have to do so.  Place a picture on your fridge of your future vacation destination, right in front of those expensive takeout places (telephone numbers).

Find a way to stay on top of your budget.  Often the toughest part is controlling those negative trends that can undermine a budget.  How will you do it?

Albert Duran is a life insurance specialist. In addition to no medical exam life insurance, the company provides great insight for people looking to get the most out of their life insurance policies with a great life insurance quote.

These days, it’s all online – even personal finance programs, which once were the exclusive province of Quicken and Microsoft Money have now been supplanted by online person finance program. But which one is the right choice for your personal needs? To answer that question, we looked at five of the most popular online personal finance programs and dissect what each one does and why it may or may not be the perfect fit for your needs:

Mint.Com

By far the best known of the online personal finance programs, Mint suffers from just one thing: it tries to be all things to all people. Now if you aren’t really sure what you need to do (maybe some budgeting, maybe balancing your checkbook, maybe planning your retirement), Mint can be a great choice for the simple reason that it provides you with everything you could possibly want in the way of an online personal finance program. On the other hand, if you have more specific goals in mind, then other tools may be a better choice.

GoalMine

This is a relatively new product on the online marketplace and it’s one of those niche tools which is really perfect for those who have very specific needs. In essence, GoalMine is all about saving money and nothing else. It doesn’t allow you to balance your checkbook or plan a budget. However, if you are trying to save money for something (buying a home, going on vacation, paying off debts, etc.) GoalMine can be an absolute godsend.

In essence, GoalMine allows you to set up various savings goals and then helps you pick one of their products to reach that goal. They offer just three products, a savings account, a money market fund and a mutual fund. However, for those who don’t have a lot of money and who want a simple way to save up money, these are pretty much all you need. You tell GoalMine about your goal and how long you want to take to reach it and they recommend a product and tell you how much you need to invest each month to make it to your goal.

You can switch the numbers around to see approximately how long it will take for each goal (for example, if you want to save $100,000, they estimate it will take 39 years if you invest just $25 per month) as well meaning that you can be more realistic about your savings. You can also post your goals on Facebook to encourage friends and families to help out with reaching the goal.

Buxfer

For those who want similar features to those found on Mint while keeping a very simple interface, Buxfer may be the perfect online personal finance program for your needs. It is designed to be a super simple system which lets you manage your money and budgets. It doesn’t have lots of bells and whistles, but that’s actually by design – they wanted to avoid the clutter that other sites have. They also include tools which allow you to share expenses with someone else, making it a perfect choice for roommates.

Your Bank or Credit Union

While there are dozens of other online personal finance management programs, the fact is that every one of them suffers from one very big problem – they don’t offer you the chance to integrate directly with your bank account. At most, you can simply link it to your bank account and get some access. That’s why many banks have begun offering their own online personal finance management programs. These programs are often third party applications which the banks sign up for, though they are occasionally homegrown. In all cases though, they may well be all you need, thus avoiding the need to share more information with more online services.

George Gallagher works in finance and education sectors. When not writing for the Internet he helps students find private loan consolidation options.

As a family living on a single income, I think many people envision us scrimping by, pinching pennies and foregoing many of the luxuries dual income families can afford. The truth is, while we work hard at living on a single income, that hard work and the habits we’ve formed allow us to live very comfortably.

Here are some habits we’ve formed that make saving and getting the most for our money second nature.

We bring our lunch to work

Taking your lunch to work 5 days a week can save you $1500 – $2000 a year. We batch cook and freeze meals that can easily be brought to work so packing a lunch everyday doesn’t become a time consuming chore.

We keep a budget

Our budget is our roadmap to financial freedom. It keeps us on track to pay off our debt, alerts us to and helps us avoid excessive spending and keeps us focused on our savings goals.

We buy second hand when it makes sense

We like shiny new things just like everyone else. But before making any new purchases, we always consider whether the same item used is good enough. Often it is and we save 50-75% off of what we would have paid for it new.

We splurge, but we budget for it

We like to eat out and travel so we make sure to include these items in our budget. Every month I allocate a set amount for eating out and we stick to that. We also find ways to make those dollars go further with coupons, by drinking water with our meals and taking advantage of special offers. And we set aside money each month for vacations. Right now we’re looking at cheap holidays to Majorca. We’ve found that we enjoy our budget vacations just as much as some of the more lavish trips we’ve taken in the past. I actually think I enjoy them more knowing I’m not going to be in debt after the trip.

We don’t keep up with the Joneses

We drive modest cars that are paid for and are cheap to own and operate. We live in a modest rental house while we save to purchase a house of our own. We focus on our own goals and don’t compare ourselves to our neighbors. And when I do start to feel a bit envious I think about how we’re almost debt free or about the deposit I just made into my son’s 529 college savings plan and I feel good knowing we’re on the right path.

Three years into a weak economic recovery, many families are still struggling to make ends meet. Unemployment is still above eight percent, and many people have simply dropped out of the labor market after becoming too discouraged to continue looking for work. For those who have been fortunate enough to keep their jobs, wages have stagnated while inflation has started to creep up, especially with respect to food and energy prices.

Given this tough economic climate, families have needed to find more and more ways to reduce their monthly expenses in order to save money. Although this may seem exceedingly difficult after years of ascetic living, there may be some areas of your life where you can further reduce your expenses to help solidify your budget. One often overlooked area is in technology spending, where there are usually numerous competitors to any given service to provide plenty of opportunities to save money.

Cell Phones

With the ubiquity of modern smartphones, phone bills have increased dramatically in recent years as customers have agreed to pay extra for the additional conveniences of things like 3G internet access and unlimited text messaging. Whereas even basic cell phone service can easily run to $40 or $50 a month, many families are now paying more than $100 a month for family plans that include these additional services.

If you are still paying for a land line, one way to reduce your monthly expenses would be to just make your cell phone your primary telephone and eliminate your local and long-distance service. Given the improved coverage areas of modern cell phone providers, this is becoming an increasingly viable option for customers who don’t like to be tied down with a land line.

Alternatively, you could look into the use of a pay-as-you-go cell phone. These have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among people who tend to be infrequent users of cell phones. Thanks to companies such as TracFone and Net10, customers can reduce their yearly cell phone bills to as low as $100. Although your per-minute costs will be higher, your total outlay will be much lower since you won’t be paying for minutes you don’t use.

Another money saving strategy for your cell phone is T-Mobile prepaid plans which offer many options depending on your monthly phone usage. Also, with products like Skype and VoIP products like ooma, it has become very easy to reduce your monthly phone bills.

Cable Bills

In all likelihood, the single largest expense on your monthly technology budget is your cable bill. Despite the increasing competition from various satellite television companies, cable providers have still been able to raise their rates and maintain their healthy profit margins. However, the growth of entrainment options, especially on the internet, is making cable service increasingly superfluous.

Indeed, there are very few shows any more on the big networks that can not be found on the internet within a week of their first broadcast on television. Hulu has become a popular destination for internet users to watch their favorite recent television shows. In addition, users can usually just go to the television channel’s website in order to find the most recent episodes of its shows. As a added bonus, you will usually be subject to fewer commercials than that which you would see on cable television.

In addition, NetFlix has done a lot to reduce the costs of entertainment. Despite the recent chaos regarding their pricing changes, NetFlix has still remained a cheap way to watch movies and television shows. Indeed, their streaming service is less than $10 a month. However, even that cost can be reduced thanks to the growth of Red Box and other DVD kiosks, where you can often rent movies by the day for only $1. If that is still too expensive for you, then consider your public library. Many people don’t realize that, in addition to books, many libraries have a fairly extensive collection of DVDs that can be checked out for free.

Simply put, entertainment lovers can save a lot of money by taking advantage of some of these inexpensive or free alternatives to cable. Indeed, by making just a few simple choices, families can do a lot to drive down their monthly technology expenses without substantially sacrificing their ability to talk with friends and family or watch their favorite movies and shows.

Kade Phillips is a retired auto insurance broker, and possesses a keen interest in financial matters.  If you’re planning on doing some expense cutting – Kanetix is a great place to find opportunities.  Consider doing some comparison shopping for your auto insurance, credit cards, and mortgage rates.  These high ticket items often can fluctuate in cost considerably between companies, and finding the best compromise can often provide ample savings.

As parents, it is our role to help our children develop into well-rounded responsible adults. One of the best ways to help children mentally grow and learn responsibility is to give them chores. Chores are a perfect way for children to learn how to be a family team player; give them a sense of satisfaction in helping around the house. While there should of course be a balance of letting kids be kids, there are also ways to have them help you, while they learn to be better people by doing so. Here is a list of age appropriate chores for your children to get you started:

Dishes:

Dishes are a traditional way to have your children help around the house. The chore will teach them responsibility when it comes to cleaning their plates after meals, and the importance of having clean dishes for meals. A great age to have kids start loading and unloading the dishwasher is 8 years old. However, you could start your child helping unload as young as they show interest, about a year and a half. Allow them to help you remove any non-breakable items and give to you. Your toddler will love helping, and you’ll get some housework done! As your child gets older (about 8), you can put more responsibility on them and have them either hand-wash or just load and unload the dishwasher. They can work on their observance skills by making sure the dishes come out clean.

Making Beds:

Teaching your child the skill of making a bed is another chore that will help teach self-discipline since it is a daily chore, perfect for a child beginning at age 7. Learning how to get rid of wrinkles in the sheets and properly set the bed is a terrific way to show them the importance of presentation and living in a clean, put-together home.

Dog Care:

Owning a pet is a terrific way to help show your children what it takes to care for another being and receive love from something that has complete dependence upon them. There are a number of tasks related to the animal that your children can help with, including playing with the dog. A great way to kill the proverbial bird with one stone is by having your child take responsibility for your pet’s daily exercise. By running around the yard together, your child and pet will reap the healthy benefits. A chore of this nature could be effectively assigned to a child as young as 4. If the property is fenced traditionally or with an invisible fence you can feel confident the pet is staying within its boundaries. At about 5 or 6, your child may be ready to help feed the dog. Teach your child the correct amount of food to place in the dish and the times to do this (for example after their breakfast).

Vacuuming:

At about 9, your child may be able to help vacuum the house. This is another great task to help achieve a good eye for detail ensuring all of the carpet is swept, and nothing is left behind. You don’t think about the benefits a basic chore like vacuuming may teach, but attention to detail and organization can easily be taught with this classic household chore. The earlier you begin work on developing these types of skills the better they will become later in life.

Raking Leaves:

Raking leaves is an excellent chore for a child of about 9 years of age. This chore provides a crafty way to incorporate exercise, responsibility, and a chance to enjoy some fresh air. If you aren’t in a huge hurry, you could also turn this into a game to make it more fun. Let your child rake all the leaves together and then run and jump into the leaves! It will of course make the chore last longer, but will also help create some pleasant childhood memories.

Gayla Baer is a Social Media Professional of more than 13 years and blogs at www.gaylabaer.com. She is a mother of twins, and a dog mom to three very spoiled girls. Gayla keeps her dogs safely enclosed using the best invisible fence alternatives.

Hey Everyone! I was interviewed by Bill over at Credit Card Assist for their Best of the Best Blogger Series. The interview went live today.

Please check it out: Cool to be Frugal – Best of the Best Blogger Series

Regardless of your age, planning for retirement should be critical component of your personal finances. However, many individuals choose to neglect saving for the future in order to serve more immediate needs. Failing to allocate enough resources toward retirement can result in having to work long past the normal retirement age.

Here are 5 ways to build your retirement savings:

1. Start Young

Building wealth doesn’t necessarily require an enormous paycheck. It simply requires time. For example, investing as little as $1000 each year, with an average growth rate of 10%, can turn into a $200,000 nest egg in 30 years. This is the result of interest compounding over time. Waiting until you reach 50 takes time out of the equation, meaning you will have to invest a significant portion of your paycheck without the aid of compound interest.

2. Automatic Investments

The best way to combat the desire to spend is to put it out of reach. One of the benefits of a 401K contribution is the money is taken from your paycheck before it enters your bank account. A matching contribution from your employer will only further increase your retirement savings. Even if your employer doesn’t offer a 401K, you can put automatic tax-deferred or after tax contributions into an IRA. As withdrawing from an IRA early results in penalties, you will have additional incentive to let the account grow.

3. Motivate Yourself to Save

Rather than visualize retirement as a number, think about it in terms of tangible goals. Normally, when people consider saving for retirement, they are saving for some distant, nebulous construct, something far less appealing than the here and now. That is why when you are debating whether to spend or save, tell yourself you are saving for that trip around the world, or weekends out fishing, and not for some vague and arbitrary number. Creating a tangible benefit will allow the future to better compete with the temptations of the present.

4. Age Appropriate Investing

Part of the importance of starting young is the ability to ride out riskier investments. Although past performance is no guarantee of future gains, stocks and aggressive mutual funds have a history of outperforming safer investments such as bonds and money market products. However, this typically holds true over decades of time, and in the short term risky investments can dissolve your nest egg rather than grow it. A smart investor will choose a financial portfolio that best reflects their age group as well as their opinions on the market.

5. Make a Budget

Often times, failing to build your retirement savings is not a product of being unable to save, but rather being unable to not spend. Constructing a budget and finding creative ways to meet that budget will allow you to save without sacrificing your personal life. For example, calculate how much you can save by taking a bag lunch to work, or eschewing high priced coffee in the morning. Remind yourself that all of these tiny expenditures add up, not only in terms of the money you spend but the compound interest you lose over time. If quitting cold turkey seems a bit extreme, try putting off such luxuries until the end of the week. You may find that the less you consume something, the more you appreciate it.

Joel Edwards writes for EquityRelease.net covering a wide range of retirement finance topics.

With tax season right around the corner, it is wise to have a plan of action to deal with your taxes and get the most back from the government as you can. Trying to maximize your refund and make sure that you report everything you earned is very important. However, you have to go about it the right way.

Here are some easy things you can do to make this process simple.

1. Make sure you have everything together before you start working on your taxes.

Don’t jump the gun and start trying to pull all your tax information together online or try going to an accountant without all of your information. Anyone who prepares tax documents doesn’t want to hear from you until you have everything. Otherwise, they cannot do their job well and you are basically wasting their time or your own time.

2. Be organized

When you start preparing your taxes, you have to have everything organized. If you are going to a tax professional, you must have everything organized or they will not be able to quickly pull together your return. A tax professionals job is to help you with your taxes, not to organize your life. Therefore, you have to be respectful and have everything neatly organized beforehand.

3. Don’t get your hopes up

You can never be sure what the tax code is going to look like from year to year. Just because you got a certain refund last year does not mean you will get it again this year. You can bet you might get more back if you made less money. However, you can never be sure.

4. Never go to someone who claims they can get you a higher refund

Anyone who claims they can produce higher refunds is likely doing something on your tax return that is either illegal or, at the very least, highly shady. You do not want that on your taxes because, ultimately, they are your taxes. You need to go to someone who is honest and who is only concerned with preparing your taxes properly. That’s the end of it.

5. Finally. Take your time, but not too much time.

You should not be mailing your taxes on the last day. You should have been done with them long in advance or you should have filed for an extension long in advance. You want to be prepared and get this done quickly so you can move on with your life.

Jen Silva writes for Tax-Compare.com and ChooseWhat.com. Topics of interest include online tax software reviews such as TurboTax and reviews for online fax services.