Category Archives: Planning

Thinking Of Online Legal Services

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So are You thinking of Using an Online Legal Service for a Legal Question you might have?

I once wrote an article about saving money by legally using your free employer’s services, but how do you know for sure if you can legally do this, and more importantly has the rules changed?  Maybe you should consider using an online legal service for a good answer to your questions?

How to Find Quality Online Legal Services

You’ve decided to create a legal document for yourself, your family or your business over the Internet. However, with the large number of websites providing online legal help, you may feel overwhelmed and confused on which services you should purchase. Finding quality online help is crucial, so this article outlines a few steps you should take to ensure that you receive quality online help and find the best online legal help website for you.

Find Out Which Services You Are Looking For

The first and most important step when looking for online legal help is to know exactly what you need. If there is a specific legal document you want to create, you can find it easily on many different sites. If you are not sure you need a legal document for your personal, family or business situation, or if you don’t really know where to start, you should consider talking with a lawyer first before relying on online legal help. Keep in mind that criminal cases or complex family legal matters will almost always require you to consult with a ‘brick and mortar’ attorney’s office, no matter what you may read online.

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Look for Services that Offer Real Lawyers

The best way to weed out fraudulent or poor quality online legal help websites is to only look for sites that have real attorneys you can talk with. Look for a directory that will point you to local professionals you can consult with if you have specific questions or concerns. A great way to find out if the services you are looking at have real attorneys or not is to go through the disclaimer. If the professionals displayed on the site aren’t attorneys, this should be somehow indicated.

Ask for Personal Referrals

You probably aren’t the only person who had to deal with creating a legal document or have questions answered by a lawyers. Chances are your relatives, friends or acquaintances probably used an online legal help website in the recent past. According to nolo.com, asking your family and/or friends for recommendations can be a great way to find out what websites are worth looking into and which ones to avoid at all costs.

Read the Fine Print

Yes, reading fine print may seem like a waste of time and (may) be boring. However, it is essential that you do so before your purchase services from an online legal help website. As mentioned above, there are very important facts about the website in the fine print that you may not see anywhere else in the site. For example, the legal credentials of the website, fees, prices, subscription requirements and other details about the services offered may only be mentioned in the ‘terms and agreements’ or ‘disclaimer’ paragraph. Always rely on the information contained in these sections to make a decision rather than on the site’s main page or marketing offers, which may not be 100% truthful.

Consult Online Reviews

If you relatives and friends have never dealt with online legal advice, you may not know where to find reviews and ratings about the online legal help websites you are looking at. There are many websites specializing in comparing and reviewing online legal services. There are also blog posts, public forums and customer’s sites that offer testimonial and more detailed comments about specific websites. As long as you look at more than one online resource, you will likely be able to obtain a good idea of whether a website is worth investing time and money into. According to nextadvisor.com, legal online help site that truthfully compares its own performance to competitors usually feels more credible than a site who claims to be the #1 legal help site with no numbers or reviews to back it up.

Therefore, keeping a watch out for such kind of information can be really helpful as this will help you select the best legal online help site for you, your family and/or your business and thereby avoid any potential below the par services when you are out seeking online legal help. One great example of such a site happens to be Legalzoom, which allows potential clients like yourself to check out how Legalzoom’s services fare versus other legal services out there on the internet.

When looking for online legal help services, make sure that you can receive legal services that are in accordance with your local and/or state’s laws. If you are not careful, you may end up purchasing legal services that deal with laws in another state than the one you live in! Make sure that the professionals that answer legal questions online are from your area. This could be easy to verify by navigating through the website, as most of them should ask for your zip code or your state of residence. You can also find online directories that will help direct you to legal websites and lawyers in your area.

In today’s society, a online legal service seems to be a very viable and value added service to me?

What do you think?

Chase

My Take on the Five Worst Pieces of Financial Advice

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While reading FreeMoneyFinance.com a few days back, He included a MSN Money online article called: five worst pieces of financial advice.  It was so interesting that I thought I’d give my personal take on those 5 points.

My take on the 5 worst pieces of financial advice

1. Pay off your debt before saving for retirement.

This approach is too risky.  While paying off both my house and car early, I also continued to put at least 10% of my salary into my employer’s 401k plan and I also put away money each month into a 529 plan for my kids.

For the last 5 years before my house was paid off, I bump up my saving percentage by an entire 1% each year.  Then once my house was totally paid off, I did bump up my 401k yearly contribution to the maximum.

2. Don’t borrow for an education.

With a combination of having money from working as a teen, a decent investment portfolio created when I was very young with help from an uncle, working jobs through college, and going to a relatively cheap university, I was able to avoid going into debt to pay for college.  I had to live very frugally, but it was a great financial accomplishment.

I guess in this area it depends on the overall potential return from the degree.  Had I going into medicine, I would have borrowed to get the degree, but if I got a degree in the “history the french painters”, or something without an immediate financial gain, I wouldn’t have borrowed to get my degree.

3. Pay off your mortgage as fast as you can.

This is complex, and for me it was more than a simple math problem.  I think I’m in a better position today by paying off my house early.

But even I didn’t pay off my house as fast as I could.  I still put money aside for my employer’s 401k, a 529 plan, and was still able to save a little bit still for investments in my regular brokerage account.

Today more than ever, I wouldn’t pay off my house as quickly.  While I might pay an extra $50 or $100, the interest rates are so low, and there are so many great opportunities now!

4. Buy a home as an investment.

I agree!  A home is not an investment, it’s a place for stability to raise kid and have your own personal fort of solitude (at least when the rest of the family is away).

That said, it’s still wise to treat it as a financial asset!  To have good finances with everything else in life, then go out and by a million dollar home on a middle-income salary wouldn’t be a huge financial mistake!

5. Make an emergency fund your financial priority.

I don’t have an emergency fund in the truest sense of the meaning, but I do have financial assets that serves as a financial buffer if a hardship was to ever hit me.  So even thought I don’t flat-out declare that I have one, I guess I kind of have a stealth emergency fund.

So while I don’t totally agree with the MSN Money article, for the most part, I do.

What is your take on the MSN Money’s 5 worst financial advice points?

-MR

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Financial Planning Isn’t Really A One Size Fits All Model

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There isn’t a “One Size Fits All” model for financial planning.

 

Credit Cards

I love credit cards, no wait, I love reward credit cards!  But this is my one exception where I deviate from the norm with respect to my friends and their spending habits.

I have a few friends that have gone bankrupt (in 1 case a few times) and so I will never say “I love credit cards” to them.  I don’t want them to think that it’s okay to spend so easily.  We have to know our limitations and weaknesses.

However, for me, credit cards are a wonderful discount on my purchases.  Sometimes, I use the reward points to splurge and buy a nice gift that I would have had to spend money on.

Mortgage Pre-Payment

I took a path that I know isn’t considered the best for most, but it was the best for me.  You see, I pre-paid and them totally paid off my mortgage early.  I know that from a mathematical perspective it makes more sense to put that extra money in investments.  But I couldn’t stand the debt hanging over my head, and I doubt I would have consistently put the extra money into investments, thus defeating the plan.

I very proud of my accomplishment with my house, and if I had to do it all over, I’m pretty sure I would have done it exactly the same.  I especially like that fact that the money that I don’t have to pay anymore is like getting a 2nd job in many ways, especially with respect to cash flow!

While mathematically it makes sense to put the extra money into investments, missing in the formula is the human element.  The equation is mathematical but the human element takes away some of the straight math properties and adds emotion and impulse buying elements.  Shoot, I consider myself good with money, and even I sometimes have problems controlling my spending, especially when it some to my kids!

Investments

I tend to invest in stocks, but most of my money is in the mutual funds that are included within my 401(k) plan at work. 

In my stock dividend “Lunch Experiment“, I run a high beta investment portfolio.  This isn’t advisable and I’m only running such a portfolio because the money was money that I would have spent.  I don’t advise anyone to follow such a risky portfolio, but it’s still fun to play with!

Conclusion

So what I’m really trying to convey is that there isn’t a single generic “one size fits all” type of model to follow when it comes to financial planning or advice.  Perhaps start with one of the three financial advisors and then customize it after you find one that mostly fits your goals.  Personally, I’ve always liked David Bach with just a slight hint of Robert Kiyosaki.

-MR

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Thinking Before Paying To Save Money

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All to often, we don’t really think before paying  for our purchases!

I’ve been guilty of this too!  I use to get a bill in the mail and just write a check and mail it in.  But today, I’m here to tell you that this is not the best way to go about paying bills, and I’m going to explain a better approach towards your bills.

Thinking Before Paying

When a bill comes in, you should ask yourself “Is this bill for the best service and price for this particular service or purchase?”

A great example would be bills from insurance companies.  Every few years, you should go shopping for a cheaper price for your various insurance needs!  We routinely jump to different car insurance companies.  This saves us hundreds of dollars versus just sticking to one insurance company.

We do this because  most insurance companies know that you don’t want to go through the aggravation of switching companies, since it’s a bit of a pain!  So over the years they raise the fees on you more and more, effectively milking you for all they can.

I actually hate to change car insurance companies, but doing so will save me hundreds of dollars… so I do it anyway!

After a while, you kind of get familiar with the process and it does get easier each time you do this rotation!

Charging To Save Money

First let me start off by saying that I pay my credit cards in full each month.  Okay with that out-of-the-way, when possible, I like to charge expensive bills to my credit card(s) as much as I can!

Why?

I only have reward credit cards, so this give me an instant discount on the purchase price whenever I use it!  While 1% or 2% isn’t a huge discount on the cost of the product (or service), every little bit helps.

If you put some thought into it, you should use certain credit cards for certain purchases.  I say this because some credit cards provide higher reward points for certain types of purchases.

Thinking Outside of the Box

  • First, do you really need to make that purchase?  Why not try to find alternatives or try repairing the item that you are thinking about replacing?
  • Next, can you buy used (ex. cars), that could save you some big buck on high ticket items like automobiles!
  • Have you check out freecycle.org?  This is a no brainer if you are aware of the site’s existence.
  • Check out eBay, Craigslist and other online sites for deals.
  • Can you borrow the item (like an edger) from a neighbor, family or friends.  Doing this is especially good from a tool to accomplish something that is needed very infrequently (again, the edger is a perfect example).
  • Can you use your credit card reward point for the purchase?
  • Buy the item at deep discounts or when special are going on.
  • Haggle if possible…  I couldn’t hurt!

I see so many friends buying at the wrong time of the season (don’t go coat shopping at the start of winter) and on things that aren’t really necessary.

I would advise mulling over a purchasing decision on something you want to buy for at least 1 week if possible.  During this mulling week, try to think of ways you can get it for free, or reduce the cost of the item.  You’d be surprise what solutions you can come up with or comes your way.

-MR

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