Savings – Frugal Living

529 College Savings Plans Get Supercharged in 2018

January 3, 2018 by Andrew Leave a Comment

One of the most significant tax changes enacted recently and also one that received very little media attention was the turbo charging of 529 College Savings Accounts.

If you weren’t using one before, you definitely need to start now if you have kids!

In the Olden Days

529 plans allowed parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc… to invest money in stocks, bonds, or money markets and then pull that money out to pay for college expenses without paying taxes on the investment gains. If that weren’t sweet enough of a deal, most states won’t charge their income tax rate on any contributions. Essentially, you win on both the front end and back end. You get a tax break on the state level by putting money in and shielding it from state taxation AND you get a win on the backside by pulling money out and not getting a tax bill from Uncle Federal Sam on the 100-300% appreciation that you’ve likely made ($100 invested for 18 years compounded @ 6% yearly growth would be worth $285.43).

2018 Onward

Now, you can pull the money out of a 529 to pay for K-12 private school tuition. This is YUUGEE. As an example, let’s consider a family of four living in the great state of Illinois.

Illinois income tax rate is a flat 4.95%. For this hypothetical, let’s pretend that private school tuition is $6,500 year per pupil. That would be 2 kids x 13 x $6,500 = $169,000 in tuition payments.

But if the parents were savvy, they would use a 529 plan to shield money from state taxes. They could be risk averse and simply choose a stable money market fund that won’t sway with the broader stock market, in which case they’d simply contribute money every year and withdraw it as needed to save 4.95% on tuition. $8,365 saved!

Obviously, the higher the state’s income tax the more beneficial this becomes. There is a cap of $10,000 a year of withdrawals for K-12 expenses so it cannot be over abused.

It would probably be a good idea to open two 529 accounts per child. One for K-12 expenses and another for post secondary education expenses.

More Reading… http://www.savingforcollege.com/articles/coming-soon-big-changes-to-529-plans

A Rebate Date

April 1, 2017 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Shae and I are an odd couple, so it stands to reason that we’d have odd dates. Yesterday’s date was to Menards to take advantage of some great rebate sale deals that they have going on.

The best deal was for paint brushes. We picked up 8 packs, 4 for us and 4 for the business. We just finished using up the brushes from the last deal.

They were sold out of the Blow Gun Kits. I may have to check back later to see if they have restocked.

We picked up four 75 watt replacement LEDs. I might pick up another four for the business. The extra light is nice on long winter nights.

There are some other freebies that I couldn’t justify a postage stamp for like matches, microfiber clothes, and deck cleaner. I try to only get things that we actually use.

You can see the Menards sales flyers online here. Happy hunting.

Frugal Boy’s First Savings Account

January 28, 2017 by Andrew Leave a Comment

This morning, Shae and I opened a kid’s savings account for Frugal Boy. We were able to do the entire process online in about 10 minutes including the initial funding requirement of $25. Later on, when the bank was open, Grandpa and I took Frugal Boy to a brick and mortar branch to deposit his very full doggy and piggy bank.

He looked ready to ride his money all the way to the bank.

The grand total of his little banks was $41.10. Thankfully, he was not sad about emptying out his little banks. In fact, he was kind of the opposite. When we got back to the house, he went up to Grandma and asked her for more money to fill up his now empty banks. Umm, we still have a lot of parenting work ahead of us.

In the future, any cash gifts Frugal Boy receives will go into his savings account. Any checks will continue to go into his 529 College Fund unless otherwise requested. In another year or two when he better understands the concept of money, we will probably switch all of his gifts towards his savings account.

Thank you to everyone that has gifted Frugal Boy with money over the years. We are trying to teach him how to be frugal and know the value of a dollar.

Home Depot’s Secret 11% Off Rebate

December 8, 2016 by Andrew 2 Comments

If you live in the Midwest, you probably already know about the home improvement store Menards and their fantastic 11% rebate sales. What you may not know, is that Home Depot has a double secret probation rebate match program.

https://www.homedepotrebates.com/11percentmatch/

Whenever Menards is running an 11% rebate sale, Home Depot also runs a corresponding “Rebate Match” sale. The only difference is that Home Depot does not advertise it in any way that I’ve seen.

This is the first time that I am trying to take advantage of the secret match program. Hopefully my submission results in success. I have read on various forums that Home Depot does limit this to areas where Menards exists, so if you aren’t in the Midwest you might still be screwed.

Hacking RockAuto Closeout Parts Sale

November 30, 2016 by Andrew 4 Comments

If you work on your own car and don’t know about RockAuto.com shame on you! RockAuto has an amazing selection of car parts at rock bottom prices. Geez, with all this talking up, I should be getting paid by them. Alas, today I’m going to share a secret about how to hack the RockAuto.com wholesale clearance sale.

I received an email from RockAuto.com informing me about their wholesale closeout parts sale. The email contained two links, one for each car that I have ordered for in the past. If you just open a browser and go to RockAuto.com, there is no mention of the sale. So how do you get in on this super secret savings?

You’re going to need to roll up your hacker sleeves and construct a special URL.

The basic template is this:

http://www.rockauto.com/RSS/vehiclefeeds.php?carcode={ENTER_CAR_CODE_HERE}&m=wc&l=en&html=true

Did you see the part {ENTER_CAR_CODE_HERE}? You’ll need to figure out your car’s code. To do so, you can follow the instructions listed here. Paraphrasing,

Go to rock auto home page, click view catalog, and browse all the way to your car year, make and model and engine. Notice a small icon that says RSS next to the engine size. click that AS IF YOU were wanting to subscribe for updates for that particular model. the pop up window that results will have a url with your car code in it. replace the link above with the desired car code, and voila!! a list of wholesale closeout parts for the car you are working on.

for instance, a 70 monte carlo with 350 is car code 1055584

So why go to the bother of all that work? I scored:

3 sets of premium windshield wipers
2 air filters
3 high mileage oil filters

for $36 with tax and shipping. If I bought all of that at our local brick and mortar auto parts store it would have cost $146. We saved $110 by stocking up on clearance parts and consolidating the shipping charges.