Fidelity offers Age-Based 529 investments. Just pick a year.

The best time to save for your children’s college tuition is when your child is born. A small investment now will help them cover their college costs in the future. Say you invest $10,000 when they’re born. Assuming a 12% annualized return, it will grow to about $80,000 by the time the kid’s 18 years old and ready for college. $10,000 investment to pay for $80,000 in school costs? Not a bad price to pay for college at all.

Watch out though: You don’t want a bear market to challenge your kid’s future. You’ll want to secure that fund as cash as the child gets older. Use an age-based 529 investment to save for college.

Age-Based 529 Plans automatically adjust from aggressive (mostly stock investments) to conservative (mostly bonds and cash) as the child comes closer to their project college years. All you have to do is pick a projected year and the fund will handle the rest. The downside is that you pay a bit more in management fees since it’s an actively managed funds. The upside is that you get to spend more of your time playing with your kid instead of balancing their investments.

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The sooner you and your spouse can agree on where the family money goes, the better. The best time to figure out finances is before you’re married when both of your money is separate.

I’m getting married in November. The shared finances discussion has begun. It will continue for the next few months until we’ve covered all of the ground rules. These premarital financial discussions should minimize the fights while we’re married.

[Photo Credit]

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Last week, I noticed the main article on MSN.com was about somebody (probably a mom) calculating the salary of a stay-at-home mom to be a ridiculous $138,095 per year. I didn’t bother reading the article because it was early in the morning and I don’t like getting annoyed before I’ve had my Cheerios. I completely forgot about the whole thing until today when I saw a link to reader feedback about the article. Not surprisingly, the feedback was overwhelmingly negative, and probably was written mostly by men.

Some of my favorite reader responses:

“What a load of baloney! If these stay-at-home moms are doing all they say they’re doing, they wouldn’t have time to answer your bogus survey. Do you pay them per hour for watching soap operas and Oprah?”

“The majority of stay-at-home moms spend most of their waking hours on their cell phone or computer, and running to garage sales or thrift stores. Their houses are a disaster, they probably haven’t cooked a decent sit-down meal for their family for months, and the laundry is piled knee-deep in the basement. I was a working mom — 40 plus hours per week — and I don’t know of one stay-at-home mom worth that kind of money.”

“Many of these mothers are unqualified for the positions you described, given the fact that American kids are fat, poorly educated and arrogant at best. Moms are worth no more than the product they are producing.”

Geez, stereotype much? People seemed to be legitimately angry about this article, so I decided to check it out. Admittedly, the $138,095 figure was based on some absurd assumptions, e.g., equating part of a mom’s job to that of CEO, thereby calculating part of her “salary” by using an average CEO’s salary. Add to that the fact that the whole thing was based upon a survey that asked moms to report how much time they spend on each of their daily activities (perhaps some exaggerating going on?), and you can see why a lot of people were bothered by the article’s claim.

Personally, I just think it was a fun article with a intentionally inflated dollar amount that was designed to get a reaction out of people, and the author certainly succeeded. Unfortunately, now my mom is claiming I owe her a lot of money. Geez, I already pay for the nursing home, what more does she want?

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Recently, a soon-to-be-married friend of mine and I got to talking about prenuptial agreements. We only spoke about it jokingly since he clearly has no need for a prenup, but my interest was piqued nonetheless. I personally don’t think I could ever ask someone to sign a prenup before I marry her, but I’ve always been a bit curious as to how you’d go about broaching the subject, what constitutes a valid prenup, etc.

I found this article on Bankrate, which has a lot of good info on prenups. It covers topics like: who should ask for a prenup (besides the wealthy and untrusting), when you should ask for one (the earlier the better), and what constitutes a valid prenup (it probably shouldn’t be written on a napkin ). Most notably absent from the article was how you actually get someone to agree to marry you in the first place. Thanks for nothing, Bankrate. www.howtopickupchicks.com, here I come!

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Kite flying - don’t knock it until you try it.

Yes, you read that correctly, a money-free weekend. My initial thought was that it was some sort of cruel joke, like a non-alcoholic beer or a stripper-free bachelor party, but after reading the article it appears like a solid way to save money while spending some quality time with friends and family. I don’t have a wife or child (that I know of, at least), so my money-free weekend would probably be a little different than the one in the article. I’d probably just eat a lot of ramen noodles, finish off some old bottles of liquor, call up some girls for some card games (strip poker, anyone?), and do some kite flying. It’s been a long time since Mr. Dragonopolous has spread his wings and soared with the birds. Sorry to neglect you, old friend.

Article [via The Simple Dollar]

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Baby Do My Banking.

McSweeney’s Baby Books are part of a hilarious series that teaches your baby some practical skills. It’s more for entertainment purposes but this one made me chuckle.

Baby Do My Banking By Lisa Brown

Are you a parent? Have your finances become a chore? Perhaps you should hand over those onerous fiscal responsibilities to someone with a little more time on their hands: your child. Let them wait in line at the bank–what else have they got to do? Thanks, Baby!

Tots will be entranced by the shapes and colors, all the while learning how to write a check. An essential purchase for expectant parents, harried mothers, hungry fathers, and overly involved grandparents.

More pics…

Well, now that we’re organized, you can pay the bills.

and get my will from the safety deposit box.

Get the book here.

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