Retirement Archives - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

Pay For College Without Busting Your Retirement Nest Egg

When your salary stops at retirement, will you have enough to pay your bills, travel and live the lifestyle that you want in your Golden Years? Sure, you may be one of the lucky ones with a pension. Social Security may even still be around. But if you want to live your vision of retirement, then saving and investing properly is important. And how you pay for college for your kids will impact your own retirement. Think about this: College tuition, books, fees and housing continue to increase at a rate faster than inflation in general. Based on current trends, the cost of sending just two kids to a private or elite college for a total of eight years will cost more than $360,000 if paid after taxes. This means that those in the 28 percent tax bracket need to earn more than $500,000 in order to meet the costs from cash flow. Regardless of where you send your kids to school, the bottom-line fact is this: How you pay for college impacts how much you save for retirement. For every dollar that you save on college costs means more for your personal retirement down the road.

There are a number of strategies you can use to improve your chances at a better retirement and a solid education at a lower personal cost. There are more than thirteen strategies for increasing needs-based aid. There are at least a dozen cost-cutting ways that any family can use to improve their bottom line. Ultimately, it depends on how well you know how to use the IRS code for your advantage to lower your own Expected Family Contribution (or EFC in financial aid parlance). Regardless of whether you expect to qualify for needs-based aid or not, here are some examples of cost-cutting strategies available to you.

Strategy 1: Get College Credit Through Exams By taking Advanced Placement exams or even a “challenge” exam for basic college courses, a student can get through school quicker potentially saving thousands in tuition and fees. Opportunities are available for Advanced Placement (AP), College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) or DSST exams for 37 different courses. For more information on these, check out the CollegeBoard or search “Get College Credit.”

Strategy 2: Stay Local In-state tuition and fees at a public higher education institution is a bargain compared to the elites and even crossing the border to go to another state’s public college. If you are considering going across the border or away, consider having your child establish residency in that state. Find out what the residency requirement are ahead of time by contacting the admissions office.

Strategy 3: Get the Credit You Deserve from the IRS Use the Hope Education Credit, renamed the “American Opportunity Tax Credit.” This was recently increased to $2,500 (from $1,200) and now applies to all four years of college, not just the first two. In addition, forty-percent of the credit is now refundable. Another helping-hand comes in the form of the Lifetime Learning Credit which is available for one family member and allows you to take up to 40% credit on educational expenses up to $10,000. Income limits apply so be sure to consult a qualified tax professional or visit the IRS website.

Strategy 4: Employ Your Child If you own a business, work as an independent contractor or own rental real estate, consider hiring your child to work for you. Maybe your child can provide administrative support or help with marketing or real estate related chores. By hiring a child and paying him or her, you will lower your own personal taxable income through a business expense deduction and provide income for your child. In addition, the child can use the earnings to open a Roth IRA, a tax-favored retirement account which is not assessed as an asset for financial aid purposes. And if needed, a child can withdraw a portion of the proceeds to pay for qualified educational expenses. There are certain limits and time restrictions that apply.

Strategy 5: Establish a Section 127 Educational Assistance Plan As a business owner you can establish a Section 127 employer-paid tuition benefits program for your employees. This plan allows the business owner to pay up to $5,250 per year to employees (including employed children) as a qualified tax deductible expense. This can be used for both undergraduate and graduate programs of study. Assuming that Junior was going to work in the family business during the summer and throughout the year, Junior can earn a wage (deductible expense for the business) which he can use for his own support and Roth IRA contribution (which may be eligible for paying educational expenses) and earn a tuition benefit (another deductible business expense). If you were going to give the child the money anyway, you may as well structure it to be tax deductible. Consider this: There are more than 110 different other strategies for you to consider. All the more reason to have a coordinated plan in place by speaking with a professional advisor who can help evaluate these options with you. Food for thought:

Encourage your pre-teen to open a Roth IRA with earnings from their paper route or other jobs.
Consider hiring your child to work in your business or help with chores related to your investment property.
Use a CollegeSure CD issued by an FDIC-insured bank to accumulate savings
Think about using a fixed income annuity to hold a portion of money for college to avoid the potential loss in principal that can happen with a 529 plan invested in mutual funds.
Pursue private and merit-based scholarships (For more information on some of these options, check out Fast Web, the CollegBoard and the Scholarship Experts or the Scholarship Coach on the web.

Home Base Network Marketing Business For Your Retirement

Sorry that I had to start this article in a very grouchy manner, but my friend someone just come to me last week asking me this questions.

“Jason beside the Online business that you can become rich, is there any other way ?”

“This Internet thing is still not right for me.”

Well, i really hate to say this because it sounds like a old broken record, but sometime it really need to be play for someone, who I think their right brain is still in a coma stage.

There is lots of way to become wealthy of course, the quick, easy or lazy way.

Here are just a few:

1. Inherit Wealth

No work, no sweat, no worries.

The problem? It is hard to get adopted by rich and sickly parents. There are not many of these people around, while this method works.

It only works for a few. If you were one of the blessed, well, you wouldn’t be reading this article or finding ways to get rich. You would be cruising in the Caribbean now.

2. Marry someone who is already incredibly rich.

If you are not married now, hey, there is still time for you to find a wealthy spouse. But that’s not the subject of this article, as again, this is a way to wealth that few can do. Talking about Hollywood maybe you can go there and try your luck.

3. Hit it big in the stock market.

Your shares will double and triple in price. However, there is a problem. You have to already be rich to buy lots of stock and yes, there is always a catch in the stock market.But my friend this is a rich man game, high risk, high return, are you game enough to take the risk?

4. Win the lottery

I seen lot’s of people doing that, some even put 10 to 20% of their wages on that. But the math experts already know the truth: “The lottery is a voluntary tax on people who are really bad at math.” You are about 100 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to win the lottery. To put that into perspective, the odds are that you had to be struck by lightning 100 times before winning the lottery.My goodness out of a million numbers there is only one and after struck by lightning for a hundred times do you really feel like going out and having a good time spending your lottery money?

Lottery is entertainment, a reason to watch television or news paper to check if your number won a dollar or two. Play the lottery for fun, don’t use it for your primary investment.

5. Write a hit song or sing a hit song

I can’t sing. In fact, I can barely hum. If you are one of those rare individuals with superstar musical talent….go for it! Use that talent. Go for American idol make a million or two and enjoy. However, this article is not about writing hit songs. So if you are like me and can’t hold a tune, relax. There are plenty of other ways to financial independence.

And how About writing that great romance novel ?

Well, that is also a way to financial wealth, but a very rare way. Very few people are able to take this path.

Well, if these well-known ways to wealth won’t work for most of us, then how do average people become wealthy?

How you can leverage on technology and people for your business.

Ok, listen the first way to increase your income and build your investment fund is to have your money work for you. And, as we have seen, there are several ways to accumulate the money you need to get your investment fund started.

The second way to build your investment fast is through the principle of LEVERAGE on other people’s efforts and technology to help you accumulate and build your investment fund faster.

Here’s how to use people leverage in your business.

As the only employee of your business, you are limited to how many projects you can do in one day with only two hands and 8 hours. If you want to earn more money is by increasing the numbers of projects you can do, then you have to hire worker or helper.

Maybe you decide to pay your employee $20 for every project he or she do. Since you charge your customer $30 for every project, you now make an extra of $10 whenever your employee finished a project for you.

The more people you hire, you have more project in hand and the more money you make. This is what we mean by leveraging your time and effort through other people.

Do you have to hire more employees and use this leverage principle?

This is just another method to build your investment fund. Having extra options and choices are always nice.

Whenever you start a business you can use this people leveraging principle to quickly build your investment fund. However, many people won’t use this means of leveraging because:

1. They don’t want employee headaches

2. They want to keep their business small and manageable.

3. They don’t want to be responsible for overseeing other people.

4. They don’t want the paperwork and insurance headaches, etc.

If this method of people leveraging doesn’t appeal to you, there is yet another way to leverage your efforts.

Most people do network marketing every day, but they just don’t get paid for it.

You see, network marketing is nothing more than recommending and promoting what you like. If you are like most people, you recommend and promote:

Like when you watch a nice movie, will you tell your friend? Or sports team, restaurants, funny joke and the list go on…….

Since you recommend and promote daily, why not get paid for it, right?

Or you can continue recommending and promoting for free. Free isn’t bad. Charity work makes the world a better place. But if you are tired of working for free and want to join some smart entrepreneurs who get an extra income in their mailbox every month, you will want to check out internet network marketing.

Theses companies will actually pay you for recommending and promoting their goods or services. Instead of spending money on television advertising or newspaper ads, these companies rely on word of mouth promotion.

Think about it. Which long distance services promoted on television by an actor you didn’t like it? Or the long distance service recommended by your mother or your best friend, you felt it’s no good ?

Thousands of different goods and services are promoted through network marketing. Word of mouth advertising is powerful. Traditional media doesn’t stand a chance against a trusted friend’s recommendation.

So how does the people leverage principle fit into network marketing and technology?

Think of network marketing as a family tree or genealogy. Companies that use network marketing to distribute their goods and services not only pay you telling other people, but also when the people you tell go out and tell other people, etc, etc…… In other words, you could tell A who tells B, who tells C, who tells D and so on, and you could earn a monthly bonus check on all of their usage and sales.

That’s people leveraging at work.

And if you can tell the whole world about your product or services, you will be doing business world wide. Let’s say you have a relative who stay in a different states or your brother who is now living in Canada, maybe in Asia. How can you show him or her about your great opportunity and product? You don’t have to travel to them, use your computer.

The Internet.

In every field, from health insurance to electronics, from education to stock trading to home buying, more than 50 percent of American consumers are already going into the Internet, it’s so convenient now that we can call and see each other on the computer or even sent an instant message and picture by hiting on our enter key on our keyboard. Don’t be a “dinosaur” if you read my last article:

The Home Base Business of W=P x T you will know what I’m talking about.

I know of some people who use their network marketing income to accelerate their investment fund. In some cases, their part time network marketing income exceeded the income from their regular job so they decided to make network marketing their full time profession.

Over five million people are already collecting an extra income from their part time network marketing business in the United States alone, but the internet population is bigger than the population of China and India added together.

Since you are already recommending and promoting what you like, shouldn’t you consider getting paid for too?

Internet network marketing is one of the fastest ways to a quick retirement, this is important especially if you are at 45 to 50 years old and don’t have a lot of time for your money to earn compound interest. So if you are no longer young, don’t panic. Network marketing can help you catch up your investment fund in hurry and if you are in your 30’s get ready to retire young and rich.

That’s why I like network marketing.

To the top.

Options for Entrepreneurial Retirement – Gaining A Real Peace of Mind

At some point in every entrepreneur’s life, they have dreamed of starting their own business. When that newly minted entrepreneur steps away from corporate employment and into the wild west of self-employment, they take on the full responsibility of their financial destiny. Gone are the days of contributing to a matching company 401k plan.

These small business owners are now responsible for setting up and contributing to their retirement plan. According to a recent TD Ameritrade survey 7 in 10 self-employed people are not regularly saving (if at all) for retirement. I recently spoke with Heather Banks, a Certified Financial Advisor with First Bank Wealth Management in Asheville, NC. Heather shared with me her impressions of how retirement savings has shifted over the years. “For too many years, U.S. citizens have been reliant on social security benefits to fund their retirement. Social security is simply not capable of fully funding a retirement with any realistic expectation of maintaining the lifestyle they grew accustomed to during their working years. It is vital that small business owners take advantage of the retirement benefit options available to them, and work with financial professionals (financial advisors, accountants, etc.) to determine which option is the most beneficial for them.”

There are several programs a self-employed person can utilize to help them achieve their retirement goals.

SEP IRA(Simplified Employee Pension plan) is a retirement plan that allows a self-employed or solo-entrepreneur person to make pre-tax donations. It is a plan that is similar to a traditional IRA. It does, however, allow you to have a much higher contribution level. This type of program is one of the easiest of open and maintain. Most banks and investment firms can help your open and maintain this kind of account. With this plan, you can contribute as much as 25% of your net earnings from self-employment. The contribution limit for 2015 is $53,000. The deadline to open an account is April 15th following the tax year.

ROTH IRA is a retirement plan where the contributions you make are not deductible in the year that the contributions are made however they grow tax-free and are not taxed when they are withdrawn. The maximum contribution in 2015 is $5,500 if you are under the age of 50 and $6,500 if you are over 50 years old. These amounts begin to phase out for high-income earners who make $116,000 (single/head of household) and $183,000 (married). The deadline to open an account is April 15th following the tax year.

SIMPLE IRA Plan (Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees) is a deferral of the compensation plan. It is easy to open and maintain with banks and investment firms but keep in mind it has a lower contribution limit. This plan is good for businesses where the owners have other income sources as it allows them to set aside a larger percentage of profit. You can put all of your net earnings from self-employment in the plan up to $12,500 in 2015 through salary reductions. If you are over the age of 50, you can increase your donations by $3,000. The employer can also contribute up to 3% of employee’s contribution. This plan is best for self-employed people with fewer than 100 employees. The deadline to open an account is October 1.

The SOLO 401(k) Plan is easy to open and requires little maintenance. It is designed for companies without employees and, therefore, the program is only available to the owner and his/her spouse. This plan follows the same rules and requirements as any other 401(k) plan. You can make salary deferrals up to $18,000 in 2015 plus an additional $6,000 if you are over the age of 50. If you hire employees and they meet the plan eligibility requirements, you must include them in the plan, and their elective deferrals will be subject to nondiscrimination testing. The deadline to open the account is December 31. The program will be required to file an annual report with the IRS if it has $250,000 or more in assets at the end of the year.

For more information on each of these plans, I recommend you contact your local Certified Public Accountant and Certified Financial Planner. They will be able to help you choose which plan is best for you. I agree with Dave Ramsey, who said “I believe that through knowledge and discipline, financial peace is possible for all of us.”