Investment Playground.NET

On an earlier post, we talked about how easy it is to set up your child’s college fund. Just a couple clicks and a barely noticeable monthly deposit can give your child a secure future no matter what school he/she decides.

After posting the article, I received a couple comments via the CONTACT button above. One comment was very interesting. A small and thriving company has been developed known as The Freshman Fund, which enables people to give the GIFT of college - i.e. giving the gift of a deposit directly into a 529 fund. I dug through the site and thought about what a great idea this is. A gift that ensures it’ll be used for college and grows with time!

The way the site works is you sign up for a free account and create a student page for each of your 529 enrolled children. Very simply, the next step is to tell friends and family (using the site’s embedded address book feature) about the site, and inform them that now you can give your child the gift of a 529 deposit.

Alternatively, you can give a Freshman Fund gift certificate to someone who may not have signed up yet. This is a great method - because the moment you give a gift, you know that this amount will be accruing gains and returns for several years - making your gift much more valuable by the time the recipient goes to college.

That’s basically it - it’s really simple. What I like is the fact that instead of giving a cash gift which may or may not go to college (unlikely), this ensures your gift is going to certainly be used for college education. You are, in every sense of the phrase, giving the gift of college. And don’t forget our previous “accrued returns” posts. At a 10% rate of return, a mere $100 gift will grow six times in less than twenty years. For my son’s first birthday party, I’m wondering if we could collect perhaps $2000 from about 20 different people. By the time my son hits school, that one party we threw would have generated $12,000 toward his college. Not bad at all.

The site apparently is a free service. There are no commissions, monthly charges, nothing of the sort. The site does say that in the future they are planning to offer other types of 529-related merchandise, and I’m assuming they’ll start to generate a small revenue at that point. But for now, it seems like four guys with tons of start-up experience wanting to fill yet another void they’ve found… giving the gift of college.

In an age of tightening credit and high gas prices, we the consumer are looking for shortcuts where we can. We want to ensure that we can still have access to credit when an emergency surfaces. Further, anywhere we can cut costs and save a few dollars are desperately sought after. Sites like bankrate.com are great for credit card reviews as they provide a holistic view of what rates are the best and where. But as I’m looking for something more detailed, I came across creditcardbest.com and was impressed with the breadth of detail this site goes into.

Before going on - I have to give this disclaimer. Paying interest on a credit card is a surefire dangerous and dumb thing to do. If you can’t afford the item - don’t buy it! If it’s of a necessity, then make sure you are disciplined enough to pay a regular amount of money, paying off your balance soon. And above all - don’t increase your balance by putting more on the card than you’re paying down. I have an alert on my Citi Premier Pass card to email me the moment my balance is over $500 - this is where it is bordering on becoming unmanageable. I know that a $500 balance, although high, can be paid off without much change in my personal habits. So keep your balances low, and check out this site review to decide which card is best for you.

Creditcardbest.com essentially just finds the top credit cards based on a myriad of options so you can find the best card for your needs. Right off the bat on the home page, you’ll find choices to decide the card that’s best for balance transfers, purchases, or those with bad credit. Clicking an option such as “bad credit” will even give you further “best choice” picks such as bad credit to get back on track cards, or low-credit cards and the like. Once you click DETAILS - you find out just what you need to know. APR, monthly/annual fees,
grace period, available rewards, flexible payment date, etc. Unfortunately there are no detailed text-based entries on the cards, which is something that I would’ve liked to see.

The site goes into detail to the point where you can select the best card for Foreign banks, best card by Issuer (Visa, MC, etc), best card by credit status, or best card by desired need (balance transfers, etc). My favorite is the best card by rewards section. Here you can actually choose what rewards you’re looking for - gas, cash back, miles, hotel rewards, and the like. So if you want to save on your gas expenses (don’t we all), you’d learn from the site that the Discover Open Road card offers 5% cash back on all gas-related purchases. Useful knowledge.

You can also apply for any of these cards right on the site. Great benefit - but I particularly don’t like this aspect. The reason is because anywhere you click on a card description will lead you to an affiliate page where you can apply. Of course, we are all trying to secure an income for ourselves, so I don’t blame the site creators. The only way to avoid this is by clicking the tiny word DETAILS under the card pic. Other than that, the site also features a great write-up on each page explaining exactly what “credit” is or something else related to the section you’re reading.

All in all - if you’re looking for a good detailed site to review your credit cards, I’d check out www.creditcardbest.com. But again - tread carefully. Credit isn’t always your best friend.

Although this site is indeed about investing - I’d like to take a minute and explain my absence as well as save you some money.

AVOID GODADDY AT ALL COSTS

Awful. They’ve used the old “sex sells” technique to sell domain registration and website hosting, among other service options. Their domain management is okay - however don’t count on them for anything else.

1. I’ve tried to give my readers - you - a nice new interface and build my blog up over years to come. So having flexibility of website design makes sense - therefore you must have your own hosting account. But at the cost of not being able to post anything new in three weeks - not worth it!
2. GoDaddy’s 24/7 customer support is a bunch of arrogant college kids who don’t do much “support” at all.
3. My site - http://www.investmentplayground.net - has been down the MAJORITY of the last 3 weeks.
4. I estimate I’ve made probably about 12 service calls in three weeks (just about every other day) - each one lasting between 30 and 90 minutes. I’ve never been on the phone with them less than thirty minutes. Which totals an average of 12 hours lost. I could’ve spent that time writing for you all instead!
5. Their support representatives give contrasting information. Half of my time is spent undoing what the last guy told me to do.
6. They are very quick to point out third party software and that they don’t want to speak to me afterwards. I called asking, “How do I upload files to my site so the wordpress software will work?” The response - “Sorry we don’t provide support for that.” “But how do I upload?” “Well I can’t tell you that because you’re using Wordpress software.” “But you told me to download Wordpress software yesterday!” “Yes that’s fine for you to use Wordpress software but we can’t help you with it.” “So how do I upload files??” “You’ll have to find it on the Internet.” “Can I talk to a supervisor?” — and so on. Wait time isn’t pleasant either.

The solution - I’m going to do what it is I love doing - WRITE. I will continue to use wordpress and http://www.investmentplayground.net to teach the world about making investing fun. If within a reasonable amount of time there’s enough demand to commercialize - then we’ll cross that bridge once we get there. I’m not in this for money - I just want to invest and teach you how to do the same. It really saddens me when you see some new blogspot blog pop up with one post in it and fifteen ads! Come on people - making money is hard work - as is blogging.

But we’re back - and investing just got easier.

Here’s another chance to save money.

Don’t subscribe to Netflix.

Sure it’s a great convenience to have DVDs mailed to you. Shipping is free, envelopes included. It costs maybe $6, maybe $11, maybe $20 per month including tax. What a great idea. So I got duped into this plan and I’ve been putting up with them for a year now. Of the last eight DVDs I’ve ordered, SEVEN have been scratched beyond readability. My DVD player will spit the DVD back out, or the whole thing would stop playing in the middle, or it would skip so bad that I’d have to forward over ten or twenty minutes worth of quality viewing time. I’ve resorted to watching the ends of my movies on YouTube or I’ve had to go to Blockbuster and pick it up. Netflix has offered me a month free just about every time - but it doesn’t really matter does it.

Here’s the clincher - I’ve sent back scratched DVDs to Netflix and demanded they send me a new one. Interestingly, this problem happens so often that you can click a box on your account online and say “This DVD is scratched. Please send a new one.” So they’ve complied - and the new one they send is ALSO scratched.

Total frustrating waste of money. Save some money and avoid these two bit used DVD clowns. Go with Blockbuster online. If your DVD is scratched you can at least get a new one without paying more - and I’ve never had thta problem at Blockbuster anyway.