eBook describing likely causes & cures of diabetic symptoms. Diabetes,the Vitamin&Mineral Connection. -

Do you feel you aren’t saving enough for retirement? Worse, do you feel like what you should be saving for retirement is some huge number you’ll never reach? I think such daunting numbers are what kept a lot of my younger co-workers out of the 401k plan completely. How about 1% then? Let’s see how much 1% is for a household with a single earner making $50,000 gross per year. For simplicity, let’s say they live in a state without income tax like Texas. If you are paid bi-weekly, putting away $500 pre-tax annually (1%) into a Traditional 401k amounts to an additional $19 reduction per paycheck. If you do live in a state with income tax, the actual paycheck difference will be even smaller. I know that even this may be hard for some families, but keep in mind this money is still yours and you’re just using the 401k or IRA container to save you taxes. Now, if you’re convinced that you can handle this (and I hope you are), then go right now and either fill out the proper form from Human Resources or go online and submit for a change. As for the investment choice, if you are undecided consider just going for the target-date option for now until you learn more. Most importantly, increase your contributions by 1% today! Now you can say in 2010 you started saving more for retirement. Fine Print I kept things simple above so you don’t get bogged down. You might be satisfied with your current contributions, or you might want to put away more than 1%. Even better, you might get a matching contribution from your company, which will boost your savings even further. On the other hand, what if my 401k has horrible investment options? Or what if you don’t have a 401k/403b at all? You can start an IRA with just a $50 per month commitment with a low-cost provider. What about Traditional vs. Roth? Check out this Video Post: Roth IRA vs. Traditional IRA. You may find that if you haven’t maxed out your Roth IRA for 2009 or 2010, then you may want to do that instead of the 401k because Roth IRA contributions can be taken out at any time without penalty (but not earnings). See all the 2010 Instant New Year’s Resolutions here.

Ooma Telo for $150 Net ($200 price + $50 Amazon Credit)
Amazon now has a combo deal where you can effectively get the Ooma Telo system for $150. Get a $50 Amazon.com Gift Card with the ooma Telo Through December 26, we’re offering a $50 Amazon.com Gift Card when you purchase the ooma Telo. To take advantage of this special offer, just add both the qualifying ooma Telo and the $50 Amazon.com Gift Card to your cart to see the discount at checkout and you will not be charged for the Gift Card. Simply add both the Ooma Telo and this $50 Amazon.com gift card, and proceed to checkout. You should get both for $200 after $50 discounts. Since you are getting a $50 gift card too, that’s $150 net for the Ooma. I’m very happy with my previous generation Ooma Hub so far; The Telo has some advanced features with DECT 6.0 phones which makes multi-handset use really easy, but also requires a $12 annual tax recovery fee after the first year of ownership (not applicable to Ooma Hub). This creates a weird situation where the Ooma “Classic” Hub usually actually costs more. Of course, if you last past the first year of ownership you’ll likely have broken even on your phone by then and effectively be getting unlimited phone service with voicemail included for just $1 a month. Update: For those interesting in learning more about how Ooma’s business model can work, check out this post on a VoIP blog.

15-Minute Resolution #2: Start Spending Consciously
Alright, now for a 15-minute 2010 Resolution that doesn’t make you spend less, just better. Huh? Achieving financial success doesn’t mean pinching every single penny all day long and watching your net worth ticker inch upwards. It means spending money on what you enjoy, and not wasting it on things that you don’t (like credit card interest). An interesting exercise to help you focus is to list ALL your voluntary expenses, and then organize them by priority. When I say voluntary expense I mean that you should generally ignore bare expenses like rent for a single room and basic food. This is not a rigid exercise, but mostly to get you to think more about spending consciously. Again, don’t spend more than 15-minutes on this. What is your most important expense? What is your LEAST important expense? For example, your list might look something like this, from most important to least important: Mortgage on my dream house Yearly travel … … Monthly iPhone Bill Dining Out Daily Starbucks Rounds of golf Cable TV Beer & Alcohol You might think, well everyone is going to put housing first. No, in fact it may be at the bottom. Maybe you live in a luxury downtown urban condo right now, and would rather save $1,000 per month and share a 4-bedroom house with a bunch of friends and spend that money on private French lessons and wine. Only you know! Now write down your list and place it somewhere visible. Make it your computer desktop background if possible. Next time you spend any money, you’ll think twice about whether you’d rather allocate it to something more important to you. You can now finish the rest of the 2010 with a better frame of mind. In addition, the next time you run into a money hiccup, you’ll know what to cut first before dipping into savings or *gasp* stopping your 401k contributions. See all the 2010 Instant New Year’s Resolutions here.

Ooma Landline Phone Number Porting Timeline & Review
You may recall that I recently bought an Ooma VoIP Telephone system since it offers me unlimited phone service for an upfront price of about $200. Porting your landline phone number over to Ooma costs $40, but can be worth it for some folks. (It’s also free with a 1-year $99 subscription to Ooma Premier service, which includes a second phone number.) Although Ooma warns that it can take up to 4-6 weeks, the results are highly dependent on your local telephone company. I thought I would share the timeline of a friend’s successful port which took 19 days. Day 1 - Filled out port request online. Day 3 - Faxed/e-mailed in required paperwork, which required some signatures and a copy of recent phone bill. Day 9 - Received the following e-mail from Ooma. Emphasis is mine. You ve recently requested your phone number to be ported to ooma. We have submitted all of the information you provided to your current Carrier and are still awaiting confirmation. We will notify you via email once we have confirmation of the actual completion date. Please keep in mind that if you have DSL on the same number that you requested to port, you will lose your internet connection when your number is ported. ooma will not work without a broadband connection, so this is a friendly reminder to insure you do not experience down time. Day 12 - Another e-mail from Ooma. You ve recently requested your phone number to be ported to Ooma. The expected completion date of your request is scheduled for 12/29/09 [Day 19]. Day 19 - Final e-mail from Ooma. Thank you for placing your order with ooma, your porting request has been completed. Please reboot your ooma hub so your account will be updated with this number. You may also contact your local carrier to cancel your account with them. As promised, on Day 19, the regular landline phone went dead. If you called it, it said “This number is no longer in service.” But after rebooting the Ooma unit, all calls were immediately picked up by the new Ooma line. After calling the telephone company to cancel, they said that everything was already terminated and that the final bill would come in shortly. I guess since the number was already gone, they had no reason to try and convince me to stay. In general, I think Ooma did a very good job of providing regular updates during the process. The overall process was as smooth as could be expected, with the worst part being that it still took 3 weeks total.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Social Security News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.