Money

REPORTING THOSE PESKY 1099s

In QuickBooks, no personal preferences exist for 1099 tax reporting. Company preferences, however, exist as indicated by the Company Preferences tab. This tab lets you tell QuickBooks when you are required to file 1099-MISC forms. The Company Preferences tab also lets you identify the threshold amounts for the different types of miscellaneous income that you can report, and you can change these amounts by editing the value shown in the Threshold box. Note that different types of 1099 miscellaneous income have different reporting thresholds. For example, in Box 9, you see that the reporting threshold is $5,000 for Direct Sales. Confer with your tax advisor if you have questions about these amounts, or visit the IRS Web site [ http://www.irs.gov ].

MAKING PAYROLL CONTRIBUTIONS to 520S

Contributions through payroll deductions aren't available to everyone, but more companies are offering a payroll deduction for 529 college savings plans. This option works just like all the other payroll deductions that you may be familiar with, such as medical insurance premiums, flexible spending accounts for medical and dependent care expenses, and tax-deferred retirement savings. Payroll withholdings offer several benefits:

Automatic state tax benefits, where applicable: If you live in a state where contributions to your state plan(s) are tax-deductible, the adjustment for state taxes is made on your paycheck rather than waiting for a refund at the end of the year.
Flexibility: Most people procrastinate when faced with a call to a mutual fund company or a state agency to change amounts being transferred; however, a trip down to the personnel office of your company to make a change is easy -- and on company time.
Automatic cessation of fund transfers when employment ends: No one wants to contemplate losing a job, but it happens. When it does, you may want to consider halting contributions to a Section 529 plan, at least until you've found a new job. If you fund your plan through payroll withholdings, the fund transfers stop when your paychecks stop.

FORCING AN ACCOUNT TO BALANCE IN MICROSOFT MONEY

If, despite all your detective work, you can't find the problem that keeps your account from balancing in Microsoft Money, you can force the account to balance. Forcing an account to balance means entering what accountants call an adjustment transaction -- a fictitious transaction, a little white lie that makes the numbers add up. If the difference between what your statement says and what the Balance Account window says is just a few pennies, enter the adjustment transaction and spare yourself the headache of looking for the error. A few pennies here and there never hurt anybody.

The words Account Adjustment appear in the register on the Payee line when you force an adjustment transaction. Money gives you the chance to categorize the transaction on your own. After you have torn out your hair trying to discover why an account doesn't balance, follow these steps to force an adjustment transaction:

Click the Next button in the balance Account window.
Click this button even though the account has not been reconciled. The Balance dialog box appears and tells you that the account isn't in balance and asks what you want to do about it.
Select the Automatically Adjust the Account Balance option button.
Choose a category from the category drop-down menu.
Click OK.

ADOPTION AND YOUR FINANCES

Most child adoption agencies aren't seeking out wealthy adoptive parents. Instead, they're looking for parents who can adequately provide for a child. They want families to be able to provide adequate medical care, food, and clothing and a stable home environment. Agencies check this by requiring you to submit a financial statement that discloses your monthly income, your monthly debts, the amount of savings and investments you have, and so on. Basically, they're trying to make sure that, at the end of the month, you have enough left over to provide for your child's needs.

Here are some financial situations that may warrant more scrutiny from the adoption agency or, in some cases, cause you to be denied: a history of bankruptcy, out-of control debt, and failure to pay child support.

TAXPAYER ADVOCATE SERVICE

Despite what some people think, the IRS really doesn't want to ruin your life. Of course, your best bet is always to pay all your taxes on time. However, if circumstances have become overwhelming and you're in trouble with the IRS, help is available. One section of the IRS, the Taxpayer Advocate, has the power to intervene in any case where significant hardship would result from action taken by the IRS.

If an IRS action would prevent you from being able to afford basic necessities, like housing, food, transportation, and utilities, you can get help. Form 911 is the Application for Taxpayer Assistance; it's the way you enlist the aid of the Taxpayer Advocate Service [ http://www.irs.gov/advocate/index.html ].

AUTOBUDGETING IN MICROSOFT MONEY

In Microsoft Money, one way to take some of the tedium out of setting budget goals is to click the Autobudget link in the Enter Your Income window and the Enter Your Expenses window. An Autobudget is a bit like the 1040EZ tax form: It does the job as long as your finances are not particularly complicated and you don't have a lot of categories to budget for.

When you click the Autobudget link, you see the Autobudget dialog box. The dialog box analyzes your past spending and lists the amounts that it thinks you should spend in most of your categories. Autobudget doesn't work, however, if you haven't entered at least a month's worth of transactions.

To enter new budget goals quickly, get the numbers from the Autobudget dialog box. To do that, click the Clear All button, select the check box next to each category and subcategory that you want to enter in your budget, and then click OK. The numbers from the Autobudget dialog box are transferred to the Enter Your Income and the Enter Your Expenses windows.

GET THE BANK ON THE LINE

Quicken provides a means of sending and receiving e-mail to and from your bank. Just click the E-mail tab of the Online Center window.

Quicken sends and receives e-mail with any transactions when you click the Update/Send button and then lists any messages that are received in the text box on the E-mail tab. In order to read a message, you just highlight it (by clicking it) and then click the Read button. Quicken displays the e-mail message window. Click Close. After you finish, Quicken returns you to the Online Center window. If you don't want to save the message, click it to highlight it and click Delete (available at the top of the Online Center window) to remove it from the list.

If you want to send your bank a message, click the Create button. If you have a general question about the bank's online services or an online account, select the E-mail about an Online Account option button and select the online account from the Account drop-down list box. If you want to send a message regarding a specific online payment, select the E-mail about an Online Payment radio button and select the online account and payment. Click OK. Quicken then opens a message dialog box.

Quicken automatically fills in the date and the To text box. Fill in the other text boxes by clicking them and then typing the necessary information. Open the Regarding Account drop-down list box by clicking the down arrow, and then choose the appropriate account.

After you complete your message, click OK. Quicken records your message and forwards it to the bank the next time that you click Update/Send.

WHEN NOT TO DECLARE BANKRUPTCY

Everyone should think very seriously before declaring personal bankruptcy, and consider all their alternatives. Bankruptcy may be the wrong solution if you fall into any of these situations:

Your debts are small enough that you can probably pay them off in full in a few years without too much trouble.
You don't owe the money. Just because someone says you own him money doesn't necessarily mean that you do. If you sincerely believe the debt is an error, and can prove it, fight.
You won't be able to shed your most nettlesome debts by filing. Bankruptcy won't eliminate all your debts. Criminal fines, student loans, most taxes, support obligations, and personal injuries caused by drunk driving usually can't be wiped out in bankruptcy.
You have valuable nonexempt assets that can be taken to satisfy creditors, and you don't want to risk losing them.
Your goal is just to delay a creditor or jerk him around.
Your biggest debts are secured (by your house or car, for example), and your unsecured debts are relatively insignificant.
You have transferred property to or put title in someone else's name to keep it away from creditors.

BANKRUPTCY'S AUTOMOBILE EXEMPTION

Most states allow debtors to exempt at least one motor vehicle, but the amount of the exemption is limited. The federal exemption scheme allows each debtor to claim $2,775 in a motor vehicle.

Whenever the equity in your car exceeds your total exemption, a Chapter 7 trustee can sell the car and pay you the value of your exemption.

For example, when your motor vehicle exemption is $1,500, and your car is worth $2,500, the trustee can sell your car but has to pay you $1,500. You're usually given the opportunity to keep your car by paying the net amount that the trustee would receive from selling the vehicle.

In a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, the trustee can't sell the car, but you'd have to pay the amount of nonexempt equity ($1,000 in the previous example) over the life of the bankruptcy plan.

You may also be able to claim an exemption for your motor vehicle as a tool of the trade -- if that's what it is. For example, a professional driver's semi rig is likely to qualify, and a specifically modified pickup truck used by a carpenter probably fits the fill. But you're really pushing your luck if you try for an exemption on the sports car that you use to impress your sales clients.

TAKE A BOOKSTORE BREAK

Sometimes the best way to reinvigorate your career search is to broaden your horizons a bit. Rather than spending the afternoon sitting in front of your computer screen or staring at your television, take the opportunity to roam your local bookstore. Even if it feels utterly counterproductive to take the afternoon off, treat yourself anyway. You may be surprised with the results.

Allow yourself to spend several hours just browsing and exploring with no time constraints, goals, or shopping lists. Let your intuition guide you. Try the following:

Visit the sections that you are drawn to.
Take a look in sections that you've never visited before.
Pick up books that call to you.
Look at any book that falls off the shelf into your lap.

When you feel bored, move on. When you feel intrigued, investigate. Pay attention to the topics and categories that interest you.

Your bookstore journey resembles your career-change experience in more ways than one — the possibilities are endless, and sometimes overwhelming. Just immersing yourself in the unknown and getting a feel for how to navigate vast numbers of available options may help you dance more gracefully with the unknown of your own future.

KEEPING YOUR SMALL BUSINESS PLAN Au Courant

Two things are guaranteed when you run a small business: The progress of your business will deviate from your original plan; and your business will change dramatically over the years.

To make the necessary adjustments in response to this deviation and change, you must keep your business plan current. How? Take a day away from the office and the phone every 6 to 12 months and dissect the important portions of your business plan by answering the following questions:

Has the business developed according to plan within each of these key areas -- staffing, marketing, distribution, and product development? If not, why?
In the areas where the business hasn't developed according to plan, do you want to get back on track? If so, what adjustments will you make in each area to get back on track?
Given the passage of time, where do you want your business to be a year from now, and how and what changes will you make to support that new direction?

Then work away at making your changes to the plan, remembering that, if those changes have a financial impact on your business (and most important changes will), you must also apply the changes to the pro forma profit-and-loss statement and to your balance sheet and cash-flow projections. This is hard work for one day, it's more sensible to tackle all this at once than to try to do a little at a time as things are changing.

PRINTING A PRACTICE CHECK IN MICROSOFT MONEY

After you've recorded a check to print in Microsoft Money, Print Checks appears in a couple of places. You'll see it in the Reminders notice on the Home Page and under To Do on the checking register page.

Before you print your first check, however, print a practice check. Insert a thin, transparent piece of paper into the printer. After you're done experimenting, you can lay the sheet of paper over a sheet of real checks and hold both sheets up to the light to see if the text landed in the right places.

Follow these steps to verify that your printer handles checks correctly:

Open the checking register if it's not already open.
Click the words Print Checks under the To Do notice, or choose File, Print Checks.
You see the Print Checks dialog box. For now, don't worry about the confusing options in this dialog box. You're interested only in the Print Test button.
Click the Print Test button.
Click the Cancel button to close the Print Checks dialog box.

Money prints a check with a bunch of Xs on it and the words This is a VOID check. How does it look?

NEGOTIATING CHILD SUPPORT

In a divorce, you can negotiate your own child-support agreement without the help of a judge. Start by reviewing the following: a budget that reflects the cost of raising your children; your estimated post-divorce budget and your spouse's; and your state's child-support guidelines. You and your spouse likely will want to provide your children with more than what the guidelines indicate because they generally define the minimum amount of support to be paid.

Remember to factor inflation into your child-support agreement, because ultimately, increases in the inflation rate decrease the value of the child support that one spouse pays the other. A practical way of dealing with this issue is to build nominal increases in the amount of child support into your agreement.

GETTING FREE COLLEGE MONEY FROM ORGANIZATIONS

When applying for free college money from organizations, you have to look at the question of eligibility. Just because an organization offers money for the college-bound doesn't mean that you're automatically eligible to receive it. Most scholarships have some sort of eligibility criteria that you must meet before you'll even be considered for the award. Nicely, organizations tend to explain the criteria upfront.

The standard evaluation categories consist of the following:

Background (ethnic, religious, family history, employment)
Intended field of study
Geographic location (home or college)
Impairment (physical, learning, visual, hearing)
Talent (sports, arts, languages)
Community service (the voluntary kind, not the kind that the judge orders you to do when you've been bad)

You can't do anything to change your ethnic heritage, but you can do something to qualify for the talent or community service awards. Of course, a few awards have no eligibility limitations; they're available to anyone entering college and are generally assessed by highest marks or performance in a contest.

SAVING FOR COLLEGE IN YOUR HOUSE

Many of you probably never thought about using your house as a piggy bank for your children's college tuition. Your house may be not only a place to lay your head at night but also a valuable asset to consider when saving for college tuition. Your house is similar to a college savings plan in the following ways:

You put money into it each month.
The money you put into it appreciates in value.
You can cash in that value for your child's college education.

When you spend money at the grocery store or on clothes, what you purchase has a value that is quickly consumed. On the other hand, money that you spend on your house often creates value that you keep, the same as money that you put into a bank or college savings account.

ANALYZING THE BENEFITS OF COST

A cost-benefit analysis is a comparative assessment of all costs that will be incurred to perform your project and to introduce and support changes resulting from it and all benefits anticipated from your project.

Some anticipated benefits can be expressed in monetary equivalents, such as reduced operating costs or increased revenue. For others, numerical measures can approximate some, but not all, of their aspects. If your project is to improve staff morale, for example, you may consider associated benefits to include reduced turnover, increased productivity, fewer absences, and fewer formal grievances.

The further into the future you look when estimating anticipated benefits, the less confident you can be that you'll actually realize them. For example, you may expect to reap benefits for years from the purchase of a new computer system, but changing technology may make your new system obsolete after one year.

Therefore, two key factors influence the outcome of a cost-benefit analysis:

How far into the future you look to identify benefits
The assumptions on which you base your analysis

While you may not want to go out and design a cost-benefit analysis by yourself, you definitely want to see if one has already been done and, if it has, what the specific results were.

SIZING UP DOLLAR COST AVERAGING

Dollar cost averaging (DCA) is the practice of investing a regular amount of money at set time intervals, such as monthly or quarterly, into volatile investments, such as stocks and stock mutual funds. If you've ever deducted money from a paycheck and pumped it into a retirement savings plan investment account that holds stocks and bonds, you've done DCA.

Most people invest a portion of their employment compensation as they earn it, but if you have some extra cash sitting around, you can choose to invest that money in one fell swoop or invest it gradually via DCA. The biggest appeal of gradually feeding money into the market via DCA is that you don't dump all your money into a potentially overheated investment just before a major drop. Thus, DCA helps shy investors to psychologically easy into riskier investments.

EYE-OPENING COVER LETTER OPENERS

The best information to put into your opening line of your cover letter is a name: the name of the letter's recipient or of a mutual friend. Name-dropping virtually guarantees that your letter will be read. To get attention, nothing beats the coattails of someone whom the letter's recipient likes or respects.

The second-best information to put into the opening line is a clear statement of what you want, followed by the benefits you offer -- specific skills or qualifications you have that directly relate to the qualities the hiring company seeks.

Don't waste space in your opening line by citing the source of a job opening notice ("I saw your ad in the KoKoMo Express last Sunday"). Handle that in the "RE:" line in the upper-right quadrant (below your contact info and opposite the recipient's name and address).

RECORDING A CREDIT IN MICROSOFT MONEY

If you receive a credit from a bank or credit card issuer, you can record the credit in Microsoft Money's credit card account register. To do so, click the Credit tab and fill in the blanks in the Credit form. The Credit form works exactly like the Charge form.

Be sure to record the credit in an expense category. Seems odd, doesn't it, to record credits as expenses? But when you recorded the purchase in the register, you assigned it to an expense category. Now that you're getting a refund, assign it to the same expense category so that the amount you spend in the category is accurate on your reports.

DETERMINING DEDUCTIBLES

In insurance lingo, the deductible is the amount of a loss that must come out of your own pocket. On an auto insurance policy, for example, if your collision deductible is $100 and you get into an accident, you pay for the first $100 of damage, and your insurance company picks up the rest. Low deductibles, however, translate into much higher premiums for you. In the long run, you should save money with a higher deductible, even factoring in the potential for greater out-of-pocket costs to you when you do have a claim. Insurance should protect you from economic disaster. Don't get carried away with a really high deductible, though, which could cause financial hardship if you do have a claim and lack much savings.

PAYING DEPOSITS FOR A WEDDING

Update your wedding budget as you make deposits with various vendors. If you pay with a check, make a note on the memo line exactly what the deposit is for. For example, "wedding cake: first 50%." Paying deposits with credit cards is also a good idea because if the vendor fails to deliver, goes out of business before your wedding date, or commits some error -- and you can convince the credit card company of that -- the charges may be reversed. Buyers' remorse doesn't qualify for a reversal of charges. If a check is required, use a credit check, which looks like a personal check but gets charged to your credit account.

WHAT AN EXECUTOR OF A WILL DOES

In your will, you name who you want to be your executor, or personal representative -- that is, the person in charge of your estate after you die. Before you choose someone as your personal representative, double-check that the person understands his or her responsibilities. For that matter, you need to be aware of your personal representative's responsibilities so that you can select the most appropriate person.

The personal representative follows a critical path method -- a road map of the most efficient way to proceed -- in the administering of your estate. The general steps of the critical path are

Collect and inventory estate property
Manage estate property
Process creditors' claims
File tax returns and pay taxes
Distribute estate property

PLAYING FAVORITES

In Microsoft Money, checking accounts, credit card accounts, and other accounts that you have to dig into on a regular basis are good candidates for "favorite" status. The names of favorite accounts appear on the Favorites menu. All you have to do to open a favorite account is choose Favorites, Favorite Accounts and the name of the account.

You can also make your favorite accounts appear on the Microsoft Money Home Page, so that account balances stare you in the face, for good or ill, when you start Money. By clicking an account name on the Home Page, you can view the account's register and enter transactions.

Follow any of these instructions to make an account a favorite account:

Right-click an account name in the Accounts List window and choose Favorite (click the Account List button to open the Accounts window).
Choose Favorites, Organize Favorites, Accounts and, in the Select Your Favorite Accounts window, check the names of accounts.
Click the Add Accounts to My Favorites link on the Home Page and, in the Select Your Favorite Accounts window, check the names of accounts.
Select the Favorite Account check box in the Change Account Settings window.

FINANCIAL AID AND ADMISSIONS: TIMING IS EVERYTHING

A popular myth going around these days is that applying for financial aid when you apply for admissions adversely affects your chances of being offered a spot at the college. This myth is absolutely untrue! In fact, most admissions offices and financial aid offices are kept separate to avoid even the appearance of bias when assessing a student's worthiness for admission.

However, accepting early admission may hurt your chances of getting entrance scholarships. Most financial aid packages -- including tuition discounts, waivers, entrance scholarships, and other scholarships -- are offered in the late spring along with general admissions. Early admissions merely tell you that the college is offering you a spot and you'll hear the financial news later. Unfortunately, the college wants to know immediately if you'll accept its offer. You can defer the offer, but then, who knows, it may not be available later. And, after you've accepted, the college has little reason to offer you a financial incentive because you've already committed yourself.

In this situation, talk with both the admissions officer and financial aid officer at the college as soon as possible. Explain that you want to attend the college, but you can't commit until you know that you can afford it. Do your best to convince them to offer you your college-based financial incentive now. If the financial aid officer knows that he or she can justify it, making the offer may be worthwhile to cut back on paperwork later.

TAILORING REPORTS FOR CUSTOM FINANCIAL FITS

Mavericks will be glad to know that you don't have to rely on ready-made reports in Quicken because you can fashion reports of your own. After you've generated a ready-made report, you can start fooling around with it by clicking the Customize button in the report window (for that matter, you can start fooling around from the get-go by clicking the Customize button at the bottom of the Reports and Graphs window). After you click the Customize button, you see a Customize Report dialog box. Depending on the kind of report you are trying to modify, the options in the Customize Report dialog box differ a little bit.

Hint: When it comes to fashioning a report of your own, consider starting with one of these reports on the Reports menu: Account Balances (Own & Owe), Transaction (Spending), Banking Summary (Spending), or Cash Flow Comparison (Business). These four reports are the basic report types on which all of Quicken's ready-made reports are built.

Here's a brief rundown of the four tabs of the Customize Report dialog box:

Display: Changes the title and layout of the report.
Accounts: Tells Quicken from which accounts to draw data for the report.
Include: Tells Quicken which categories, classes, or category groups to report on.
Advanced: Weeds out transactions that you want to exclude from the report.

When you are done filling in the four tabs of the Customize Report dialog box, click the Create button to generate your newfangled report.

BUILDING AN EMERGENCY FINANCIAL RESERVE

Before you save money toward anything, it's a good idea to accumulate an amount of money equal to about three to six months of your household's living expenses. This fund isn't for keeping up on the latest consumer technology gadgets. It's for emergency purposes: for your living expenses when you're between jobs, for unexpected medical bills, for a last-minute plane ticket to visit an ailing relative. Basically, it's a fund to cushion your fall when life unexpectedly trips you up.

How much you save in this fund and how quickly you build it up depends on the stability of your income and the depth of your family support. If your job is steady and your folks are still there for you, then you can keep the size of this fund on the smaller side. On the other hand, if your income is erratic and you've got no ties to solvent, benevolent family members, you may want to consider building up this fund to a year's worth of expenses.

An ideal savings vehicle for your emergency reserve fund is a money market fund.

REDUCING YOUR FOOD COSTS

A great way to reduce your spending is to go to superstores like Costco and Sam's Club, which enable you to buy groceries in bulk at wholesale prices. And, contrary to popular perception, you don't have to buy 1,000 rolls of toilet paper at once -- just 24, or maybe 36.

Price comparisons between wholesale superstores and retail grocery stores show that wholesalers charge about 30 to 40 percent less for the exact same stuff -- all without the hassle of clipping coupons or hunting for which store has the best price on crackers this month! (At these discount prices, you only need to buy about $100 per year to recoup Costco or Sam's Club membership fees, which start at $35 per year.)

In addition to saving you lots of money, buying in bulk requires fewer shopping trips. You'll have more supplies around your humble abode -- so you'll have less need to eat out (which is costly) or make trips (wasted time and gasoline) to the local grocer, who may be really nice but charges the most.

FREELANCE JUGGLING: KIDS AND CLIENTS

If you're a freelancer working from home, be honest (but brief) about your childcare issues with your clients. For example, if you work only until 2:30 each day and then leave to pick up your kids from school, let your clients know that you're not available after that time. Reassure them that you will deliver a quality product in the timeframe they require and they may be perfectly willing to accommodate your schedule.

Freelancing parents often suffer the trauma of their children begging for attention when they really need to work. Instead of asking children to wait until you finish work to receive attention, childcare specialists suggest that you give kids undivided attention first. This takes the edge off kids' needs and may buy you the time you need later. But be realistic about what you can accomplish with your children around. It's silly to expect to complete a full day's work with children in the house.

REMOVING A SAVINGS GOAL FROM QUICKEN

In Quicken, you can remove a savings goal from the Savings Goal Planner whether you've actually met the goal or not. If you've reached a goal and have withdrawn all the money or you've decided to allocate the dollars toward another financial purpose, you also can remove the goal. You can even delete a savings goal if you just decide you're not interested in funding that goal any more.

To delete a goal, follow these steps:

Open the Savings Goals Planner window by choosing Planning, Savings Goals.
Click the goal to delete in the Goal Name list.
Click Delete at the top of the window.
Choose the goal you want to delete.

To remove the savings goal and keep the asset account and its transactions for the savings goal, click Yes. To remove both the savings goal and its transactions account, click No. Either way, the Savings Goal Planner no longer lists the savings goal. If you change your mind altogether, you can stop the deletion by clicking the Cancel button.

GRASPING QUICKEN GRAPHS

The quickest way to see how you stand financially is to generate a graph in Quicken. As with reports, you can tinker with graphs to make them display the financial data you're curious about. To create one of Quicken's six ready-to-wear graphs, follow these steps:

Choose Reports, Reports and Graphs Center.
Select a topic on the left side of the window and select the name of a graph.
The six basic graph options are:
1. Net Worth: A bar graph that shows, month by month, how your assets and liabilities stack up to produce your net worth.
2. Income/Expense: A bar graph comparing monthly income and expenses and a pie chart showing each expense as a percentage of total expenses.
3. Budget Variance: Two bar graphs, one comparing budgeted income goals to actual income and one comparing budgeted spending to actual spending.
4. Investment Asset Allocation: Bar charts that show how investments perform by allocation.
5. Investment Performance: Two bar charts, one showing the month-by-month value of your portfolio and another that shows your average return for the year.
6. Portfolio Value and Cost Basis: A line chart that shows the value of your portfolio in dollars as well as the value when taking into account the total cost of purchasing securities.
Click the Create Now button or double-click the name of the graph.
The graph appears in a new window.

If you want to change the graph's default data, you can customize it. All categories and all classes of data from all the accounts go into the making of an off-the-shelf Quicken graph; however, you can change these settings to exclude certain accounts, categories, and classes. Also, Quicken graphs cover the year to date, but you can tell Quicken to plot data from past years or from just last month.

PROVIDING (OR NOT!) A SALARY HISTORY

Never mention salary on your resume because it work against you. If a job ad asks for your salary history or salary requirements, revealing dollar figures in a cover letter puts you at a disadvantage if you've been working for low pay -- or if you've been paid above market.

Profile forms on job sites and online personnel agents almost always ask for your salary information. If you decide to participate, state your expectations in a range ($XXX to $XXX), and include the value of all perks (benefits, bonuses, and so on), not just salary, in your salary history.

But first, do two things:

Research the market rate for someone with your skills and experience. Start with Salary.com [ http://www.salary.com/ ], which also provides the salary engine for most job sites.
Find out why the smart money advises against being too quick to pipe up with hard figures on the money you've made and the money you want. What can you expect in return for revealing salary information, job unseen? You get a chance to name you price and hope you find takers, many of whom will want to talk your price down. Get advice by reading articles by Jack Chapman on JobStar.org [ http://jobstar.org/index.cfm ]. Absorb all you can -- salary negotiation is as complex as buying a house.

BUYING HOME INSURANCE

Most of us live a significant portion of our lives in and around our homes, whether those homes are single-family residences, condominiums, town houses, or apartments. We fill these places with the necessary and unnecessary stuff of our lives. Losing the home and/or the stuff would be catastrophic.

Consider these guidelines when buying homeowner's insurance:

Insure your building for 100 percent of its replacement cost new.
Buy a Home Replacement Guarantee that will rebuild your home even if the cost exceeds your insurance amount. Buy the guarantee without a percentage cap.
Buy liability limits equal to your automobile liability limits.
Choose the highest deductible for which you receive adequate premium credit.
Buy Special Perils coverage for building and contents, which covers any accidental loss not caused by a handful of excluded causes.
Don't just accept the standard coverages for detached structures and contents that come with the policy. Make sure that the dollar amount for those two coverages will fully replace what you own.
Read your policy. Discover what kinds of personal property are excluded or subject to dollar limits. Buy the optional coverages you need to eliminate those restrictions.
Read your policy liability exclusions. Buy the optional coverages you need to cover anything you're doing that is excluded.
If you bring work home, buy the optional business liability endorsement to cover injuries to the occasional delivery person.
If you have a home-based business, don't buy the restrictive home-business endorsement. Buy the business owner's policy instead.
Buy the optional sewer backup coverage. And buy federal flood insurance if you're exposed to flood or heavy rains.
Buy earthquake coverage if the risk exists in your area.

LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE

Long-term care insurance is an important part of your estate plan, not only for your elder years but also in the event of a debilitating injury or illness. Whereas long-term disability insurance provides you a salary when you're unable to work, long-term care insurance covers the costs of long-term healthcare coverage -- whether you're at home, in an assisted-living facility, or in a nursing home. Think of it as a cross between health insurance and long-term disability insurance.

Look at both long-term disability insurance and long-term care insurance in concert with one another. Ask your insurance agent to help you figure out how much coverage you need to cover medical expenses; evaluate income replacement needs; the amount of health care costs you need to cover; and other financial and personal factors.

PREDICTING INTEREST RATE CHANGES - GOOD LUCK!

All the logicians out there are probably commenting that the choice between an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) and a fixed-rate mortgage is simple. All you need to know in order to make a decision is the direction of interest rates. It's only logical. When interest rates are about ready to rise, a fixed-rate mortgage would be favorable. Lock in a low rate and smile smugly when interest rates skyrocket.

Conversely, if you thought that rates were going to stay the same or drop, you would want an ARM. Some real estate books even go so far as to say that your own personal interest-rate forecast should determine whether to take an ARM or fixed-rate mortgage!

Now, for the reality check: You are not going to figure out which way rates are headed, no matter how smart you are or how much research you do. The movement of interest rates is not logical, and you certainly can't predict it. If you could, you would make a fortune investing in bonds, interest-rate futures, and options.

Even the money-management pros who work with interest rates and bonds as a full-time job can't consistently predict interest rates. Witness the fact that bond-fund managers at mutual fund companies have a tough time beating the buy-and-hold bond-market indexes. If bond-fund managers could foresee where rates were headed, they could easily beat the averages by trading into and out of bonds when they foresaw interest-rate changes on the horizon.

TOTALING INTEREST WITH MICROSOFT MONEY

Microsoft Money can show how much you spend in interest payments over the life of a loan. You can also figure out the total payments on a loan. To do so, just open the Microsoft Money account register where you track the loan or mortgage, click the Analyze Loan link, and choose View Loan Amortization Schedule. You see a Loan Amortization report.

The report shows, over time, how much of each payment is devoted to paying interest and how much is devoted to reducing the principal. Scroll to the bottom of the report and you see the total payments and total interest payments.

DRESSING FOR INTERVIEW SUCCESS

Most of the people who will interview you -- whether they admit it or not -- would like to see some sign that the interview was worth some special effort on your part. Dress is one way to convey that impression.

Still, you face a dilemma. On one hand, you don't have the job yet, so you may not be entitled to dress like an employee. You want your dream company to know you're professional and interested. On the other hand, you don't want to look like some uptight weenie who won't fit into their hip-yet-casual atmosphere. Your best bet is to determine the standard dress code there, and then exceed it just a little. At a company where employees are casual but neatly pressed, you may want to dress it up a little with a coat and/or tie. If they're wearing flip-flops and cutoffs, your khakis and clean shirt could be just the ticket.

THE WRONG REASON TO HIRE AN INVESTMENT ADVISOR

Don't hire an investment advisor because of the crystal ball phenomenon. Although you know you're not a dummy, you may feel that you can't possibly make informed and intelligent investing decisions because you don't closely follow or even understand the financial markets and what makes them move.

No one that you hire has a crystal ball. No one can predict future movements in the financial markets to know which types of investments will do well, and which ones won't. Besides, the financial markets are pretty darn efficient -- lots of smart folks are following the markets, so it's highly unlikely that you or an advisor could predict what's going to happen next.

SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTING

Socially responsible mutual funds appeal to investors who want to marry their investments to their social principles and avoid supporting causes that they feel are harmful. These funds attempt to look at more than a company's bottom line before deciding to commit their investors' capital. Many of these funds consider such factors as environmental protection, equal employment opportunity, the manner in which a company's employees are treated, and the level of honesty a company displays in its advertising.

Unfortunately, socially responsible funds have failed to bridge the gap between theory and practice. If you blindly plunk down your money on such a fund, you may be disappointed with what you're actually getting. Keep in mind that a mutual fund, by its very nature, is trying to please thousands of individual investors. That's a tall order when you throw moral consciousness into the picture.

CREATING JOB ESTIMATES IN QUICKBOOKS

If you've told QuickBooks that you want to create job estimates -- you do this during QuickBooks setup -- you can create job estimates of amounts that you'll later invoice to customers.

To create a job estimate, choose the Customers, Create Estimates command. QuickBooks displays the Create Estimates window, which mirrors the Create Invoices window. Just fill out this window as you would the Create Invoices window, which makes sense since an estimate is just an example or guess at the future invoice for a job. Predictably, you need to collect and supply the same information, and you fill in the fields in the same way.

If you didn't originally turn on Estimates when you set up QuickBooks, you can do so after the fact. Choose the Edit, Preferences command, click the Jobs & Estimates icon, click the Company Preferences tab, and then select the Yes radio button next to Do You Create Estimates? You may also want to select the Yes radio button next to Do You Do Progress Invoicing?

DEALING WITH DIFFICULT JOB REFERENCES

Sliding by in a job interview without identifying a present or former boss is almost impossible. Suppose that you and one of your supervisors tangled.

Leaving a job in a huff or telling off your boss on your last day of employment may feel great, but doing so can destroy your chances for getting a good reference later. If you've done something similar, or if you know you'll get a bad reference from someone, immediately start rehabilitating that reference.

Make an attempt to neutralize the expected bad reference by contacting the former boss and making a frank appeal for a decent reference. Thank your former boss for the informative experience you had while working there. Then ask your former boss to allow bygones to be bygones, adding that you have to earn a living. After the boss has cooled off, trying to keep you jobless may seem petty -- and legally risky.

If the falling out was your fault -- or if you have only one negative reference on the horizon surrounded by plenty of good references -- you're probably not in trouble. When you're certain a torpedo is heading your way, just say something like, "Except for Tom Smith, I've always hit it off with my bosses." When the interviewer pursues your statement, asking for details, answer as briefly as possible and quickly steer the conversation to one of your strengths.

When you're in deep trouble and about to be fired for cause, immediately see an employment lawyer. Get advice on framing a statement -- called a reference statement -- that all parties agree will be the standard answer as to why you're out the door.

THE ART OF LINK-MINING

Web sites are mines of job-related information -- you just need to know where to tap into their veins. When you visit the Web site of a company you're interested in, scour it by following these steps.

Scan the home page for
a search feature
a contact link
an employment link
a company information link
a product link
a list of recent customers
Scan the customer list first. It should give you a very good idea of how high on the food chain the company is.
Look at the company information area. If you're lucky, you may get an entire company profile with a mission statement and a chronological history of corporate milestones.
Systematically work through every major link. A Literature link, for example, may enable you to request printed materials, such as a company brochure.
Head to the employment page. Don't just look at job openings -- take notes on the corporate culture and expectations expressed on this page. Also note whether you can submit an electronic resume by e-mail or if the company prefers that you mail a paper resume.
Check the contact page to see whether you can locate any executives or use the search feature to try to uncover any specific information you may want.

CALCULATING LOAN BALANCES IN QUICKEN

In Quicken, to calculate the loan principal amount, select the Loan Amount option button under Calculate For in the Loan Calculator dialog box. Then enter all the other variables.

For example, those monthly payments of $29,977.53 for the monster mansion seem a little ridiculous. So calculate how much you can borrow if you make monthly payments of $1,500 over 30 years and the annual interest rate is 6 percent:

Select the Loan Amount option button.
Type 6 in the Annul Interest Rate text box.
Type 30 in the Number of Years text box.
Type 12 in the Periods Per Year text box.
Type 1500 in the Payment Per Period text box.

After you click the Calculator button or move the selection cursor, the Loan Calculator computes a loan amount of $250,187.42.

USING THE LOAN CALCULATOR TO FIGURE PAYMENTS

Suppose that one afternoon, you're wondering what the mortgage payment is on one of those gigantic estates; the Quicken Loan Calculator can help. You know those estates -- the ones with a house that is tens of thousands of square feet, has acres of grounds, cottages for the domestic help, a full-size basketball court, stables, pool house, and so on.

To calculate what you would pay on a 30-year, $5,000,000 mortgage if the money costs 7 percent, follow these steps in Quicken:

Choose Planning, Financial Calculators, Loan to display the Loan Calculator dialog box.
Move the cursor to the Loan Amount text box and enter the loan amount.
Enter the annual interest rate in the Annual Interest Rate text box.
Move the cursor to the Number of Years text box and enter the number of years you want to take to repay the loan.
Indicate how many loan payments you plan to make a year in the Periods Per Year text box. For example, if you want to make monthly payments, type 12.

Quicken calculates the loan payment and displays the amount in the Payment Per Period field.

To get more information on the loan payments, interest and principal portions of payments, and outstanding loan balances, click the Schedule button, which appears on the face of the Loan Calculator dialog box. Quicken whips up a quick loan amortization schedule showing all this stuff.

THE LOAN RANGER'S QUICK FIX

If you want to track your debts with Quicken, for every loan or debt -- such as your mortgage, your car loan, your student loan, and so on -- set up a liability account. Setting up a loan account requires a couple of dozen steps, so it wouldn't be surprising if you made a tiny mistake in setting up either the loan or the loan payment, but it need not be major financial crisis. Just use the View Loans window to identify the incorrectly described loan and then make your corrections.

To display the View Loans window, choose Household, Loans. If you have multiple loans set up, click the Choose Loan [x] button and select the loan that you want to change. Quicken gives you all the dirt on the selected loan in the View Loans window's Loan Summary tab. If you want to change something about the loan, click the Edit Loan button to display the Edit Loan dialog box. Make your changes, and then click OK. If you want to change something about the payment, click the Edit Payment button to display the Edit Loan payment dialog box. Make your changes, and then click OK.

By the way, do you see those two tabs labeled Payment Schedule and Payment Graph? You can probably guess what they do, but if you click the Payment Schedule tab, Quicken displays an amortization schedule showing the interest and principal portions of each loan payment. If you click the Payment Graph tab, Quicken displays a line chart that shows how you pay off the loan balance over time. You may want to take a minute and experiment with these two tabs. They're pretty neat!

BULLS VS. BEARS - MARKETS, THAT IS

Curious about what bull market and bear market really mean? You first need to understand how economic cycles affect the stock market. Bulls are people who believe that all is right with the world and the stock market is heading for an increase. They definitely think the economy is expanding. Bears are people who believe the economy is heading for a downturn, and stocks will either stagnate or go down. A bull market is a market in which a majority of stocks are increasing in value, and a bear market is a market in which the majority of stocks are decreasing in value. Bears definitely believe the economy is either in a recession or headed that way.

Regardless of whether the bulls or the bears are right, you can make money as a trader. The key: Identify the way the market is headed and then buy or sell into that trend. During a bear market, traders make their money by selling short or by taking advantage of falling prices. Traders sell short by borrowing stock from their broker and then selling it with the hope of making a profit when the price falls.

Even during a bear market, some stocks offer opportunities for traders to make money, including oil and gas stocks and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Petroleum stocks and REITs pay higher dividends and, therefore, are most attractive when the rest of the market is falling or showing no growth potential. During a bull market, riding a stock through recovery but getting out before a fall is key.

REFINANCING YOUR MORTGAGE

There comes a time for many homeowners when refinancing that old mortgage seems like the thing to do. Here are a few of the reasons you might consider refinancing.

To cut costs. Lowering your monthly loan payment by replacing your present mortgage with a new one that offers a lower interest rate could save you thousands of dollars over your new loan's term.
To restructure your financing. You may need to refinance if you have a short-term balloon loan coming due that you must replace with long-term financing, or maybe you want to trade-in that unpredictable adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) for a less exciting but more stable fixed-rate loan.
To pull cash out. If you've owned your home for a long time and built up some equity in it, you might want to replace that old mortgage and pull out extra cash to use for starting a new business, paying for your kids' college education, or anything else.

TIPS FOR NEGOTIATION

Skillful negotiators get what they want through mutual agreement -- not brute force. Brute force is rude, crude, ugly, and decidedly unfriendly. Here are some concepts that you may find useful for negotiating with finesse when buying a home.

Phones are for making appointments. Never, never, never let your real estate agent or lawyer present an offer or attempt to negotiate significant issues over the phone. Saying no over the phone is too easy for the sellers. Even if they agree with everything you want, they may change their minds by the time they actually have to sign the contract.
Oral agreements are useless. In our society, we have written contracts because people have notoriously selective memories. If you want your deal to be enforceable in a court of law, put everything about it in writing. Get into the habit of writing short, dated MFRs (Memos For Record) of important conversations (such as , "June 2 -- lender said we'd get 7.5 percent mortgage rate," "June 12 -- sellers want to extend close of escrow a week," and so on). Put these notes into your transaction file just in case you need to refresh your memory. Heed the immortal words of Samuel Goldwyn: "A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on."
Deadline management is essential. Real estate contracts are filled with deadlines for things like contingency removals, deposit increases, and (of course) the close of escrow. Failure to meet deadlines can have dreadful consequences. Your deal could fall apart -- you could even get sued. Most deadlines, however, are flexible -- if you handled them correctly. Suppose, for example, that you just found out that completing the property inspections will take longer than anticipated. Immediately contact the sellers to explain the reason for the delay and then get a written extension of the deadline. Reasonable delays can usually be accommodated if properly explained and promptly handled.

SOMETIMES THE NUMBERS LIE

Most e-commerce businesspeople check in on their business' growth and health by relying on site statistics. Your Web server logs compile these numbers and tell you interesting tidbits, such as how many visitors came to your site today. The problem with these site statistics is that they are unreliable.

Internet technologies contain inherent problems that make tracking data, such as the number of visitors to your site, difficult. Programs from companies like WebTrends [ http://www.webtrends.com/ ] gather site statistics and use mathematical stuff to turn hard-and-fast numbers (such as the number of page views) into the kind of information that managers like to see (the number of people who visited the site). You can customize almost all the available Web utilization applications to work according to the different rules and assumptions that best suit your needs.

Rely on traditional business indicators, such as the number of sales you're making, the dollar value of each sale, the number of returns you process, and so forth. These numbers tell you how your business is really doing.

AND NOW, PAGE TWO

Do realize that multiple-page online resumes are not discouraged. Computers can easily handle multiple-page resumes, allowing you to give more information than you might for a formatted (paper) resume. After an employer's computer begins to search and retrieve for skills and other points of background, it laps up information to determine if your qualifications match available positions.

Here are some generalized guidelines:

New graduates, one page (two with heavy facts)
Most job seekers, one to two pages
Senior executives, two to three pages
CV (curriculum vitae) users, three to six pages

THE LAST PAYMENT: REMOVING A LOAN FROM QUICKEN

You can change the amount of your final loan-payment in Quicken. After all, it's not unusual for that final payment to be slightly different from the previous ones you've made. Either there is a slight rounding difference on the last payment, or perhaps you want to consolidate the last couple of payments and get the loan over with.

To change the amount of your loan payment in Quicken, click the Make a Payment button in the Loan Accounts Summary section of the Property & Debt Center. When the View Loans window appears, click the Edit Payment button.

When the Edit Loan Payment window appears, enter the amount of your payment. If you're ready to make the payment now, click Pay Now. Verify the amount and the bank account you are using, and then click OK to record the payment.

If you want to pay later instead, click OK in the Edit Loan Payment window and the amount you entered takes the place of your next scheduled payment.

There's no need to remove the paid-off loan from your account list. Quicken takes care of zeroing out the loan balance.

STOP A PAYMENT IN MICROSOFT MONEY

What? You sent a payment (using Microsoft Money) over the Internet and now you need to stop it? If you sent the payment within the past four days, you can try to stop it by following these steps:

Click the Bills tab to go to the Bills Summary window.
Click the View Electronic Transactions link.
The View All Electronic Payments and Transfers window appears. It lists all transactions you sent in the past 60 days.
Select the electronic transaction you want to stop and click Delete.

INSURING PROPERTY YOU DON'T OWN

Homeowners insurance policies exclude coverage for damage to the property of others in your possession, whether you rent it (a boat), occupy it (a friend's cabin she lets you use for the weekend), or use it (your employer's laptop computer). There is one coverage giveback -- coverage for fire, smoke, or explosions that you cause, such as for a kitchen fire you cause in your rented apartment.

Once you know this pitfall exists, you can protect yourself, at least partially. Here's how:

Buy a Personal Umbrella policy that plugs this gap by covering damage to property you don't own that is in your care.
When renting equipment, boats, and so on, if the value of what you're renting exceeds what you're willing to pay for out-of-pocket, see about buying coverage from the rental company.
When renting hotel rooms or borrowing cabins, you do have coverage for fire damage, which is probably your biggest risk.
When using other people's property on a long-term basis, like a laptop computer, you can specifically insure it on your Homeowners policy (called scheduling). Be sure to list the owner as a loss payee on the policy to protect the owner's interest.

VOIDING A TRANSACTION IN QUICKBOOKS

If you've changed your mind about a transaction after you've put it into your QuickBooks Checking register, you can void or delete it. What's the difference? If you want to keep a record of the transaction but want to render it meaningless, then you void the transaction. But if you want to obliterate the transaction as if it never happened, you delete it.

Decide to void to delete, and then follow these steps:

Find the transaction in the register.
Choose Edit, Delete Check or Edit, Void Check; and then click the Record button.

There, the deed is done. If you voided the transaction, the word VOID appears in the Memo column. If the check had been deleted, it wouldn't even show up in the register. An alternate method is to select the check in the register or on the check screen, then right-click and choose Void Check from there.

CREATE A QUICKEN QUICKREPORT

Quicken supplies a quick-and-dirty report called, cleverly enough, a QuickReport. If you're working with the register, you can produce a quick report that summarizes things, such as the checks written to a particular payee or the transactions assigned to a specific income or expense category.

To produce a QuickReport, first select the field that you want to summarize in the report. Then click the Report button at the top of the register window. Finally, choose the report you want from the Report menu that drops down.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT IN AN ANNUAL REPORT

Although companies must follow set rules for how they format the key financial statements in an annual financial report, how they present the rest of the report is left to their creativity. No matter how fancy or plain the annual report is, as a careful reader, you need to focus on four key parts, listed in order:

Auditors' report: This includes statement by the auditors regarding the findings of their audit of the company's books
Financial statements: These include the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows.
Notes to the financial statements: These give additional information about the information found in the financial statements.
Management's discussion and analysis: Management gives its perspective regarding the company's results.

PLAYING FAVORITES WITH CUSTOMIZED REPORTS

After you go to the trouble of customizing a report or chart in Microsoft Money, you may as well put it in the My Favorites category of the Reports Home window. That way, you can generate it again without having to tinker with the settings in the Customize Report dialog box.

Follow these steps to add a report or chart to the My Favorites category:

Create and customize the report or chart.
Click the Add to My Favorite Reports link.
You see the Add to Favorites dialog box.
Enter a descriptive name in the Report Name text box.
Click OK.

Besides landing in the My Favorites category of the Reports Home window, the name of your customized report or chart also appears on the Favorites, Favorite Reports menu. You can select it there, too.

To remove a customized report from the Reports Home window, choose Favorites, Organize Favorites, Reports. You land in the Modify Favorite Reports window. Select the name of the report or chart, click the Delete button along the bottom of the window, and click Yes in the confirmation box.

RETIREMENT PLANNING CALCULATIONS IN QUICKEN

Quicken can help you estimate your retirement income. Imagine that you decide to jump into your employer's 401(k) profit-sharing plan, which allows you to plop about $3,000 into a retirement account that you think will earn about 9 percent annually. Fortunately, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what your retirement income will look like: You can just use the Retirement Calculator.

Choose Planning, Financial Calculators, Retirement.
Quicken displays the Retirement Calculator dialog box.
Fill in the blanks under Retirement Information to suit your current situation.
If you haven't received an update lately, you can request an estimate of your future Social Security benefits by visiting the Social Security Administration [ http://www.ssa.gov ].
Indicate if you plan to save retirement money in a tax-sheltered investment, such as a 401(k) or a traditional Individual Retirement Account.
As a practical matter, tax-sheltered investments are the only way to ride. By deferring income taxes on your earnings, you earn more interest.

If you're investing in taxable stuff, you need to enter the combined federal and state income tax rate that you paid on your last dollars of income in the Current Tax rate box.
Enter your anticipated retirement tax rate.
You may want to enter 0, but the fact is all that pretax income becomes your taxable income when your start withdrawing it. Make your best guess as to which bracket that might put you in.
Enter the anticipated inflation rate (historically, just above 3 percent).
Select the Inflate Contributions check box if the additions will increase annually by the inflation rate.

After you enter all the information, take a peek at the Annual Income After Taxes field. If you want to see the after-tax income in future-day, inflated dollars, deselect the Annual Income in Today's $ check box.

SAVING FOR YOUR CHILD'S FUTURE

Saving for future events in your child's life should begin no later than the day he or she is born, but you shouldn't be the only one putting money away for that purpose. Your child eventually can help fund his college accounts, too. Use the occasion of your child's birth to open up one or more college savings plans and an account in your child's name, into which you can deposit any gifts he or she receives at birth. You can add birthday gifts and other such sums to it regularly, until your child is old enough to begin making his or her own deposits. There's no better way to show your child the benefits of saving than to have a ready-made example with his or her name on it.

Putting small sums of money aside in your child's name (with you as custodian) is great, but you may want to consider depositing larger sums into an account in your name (perhaps as trustee for your child, but using your Social Security number to open the account) or even using that money to start a Section 529 savings plan for your child. Teaching your children about money is key if they're to become successful adults, but if your child will need any sort of need-based financial aid down the road, the value of the accounts held in his name will be counted more heavily than one in your name.

ADD REGULARLY TO YOUR STOCK INVESTMENTS

Although the stock market may be able to double the purchasing power of your money on average ever ten years, the real key to creating wealth with stocks is investing in them regularly. Put $1,000 into stocks, and ten years later, you'll probably have $2,000. But if you put $1,000 into stocks every year for ten years, you end up with $14,000 -- that's 700 percent more. Remember the power of combining these two simple but powerful financial concepts: Regular savings and investing in growth-oriented investments lead to simply amazing long-term results.

Another advantage of buying in regular chunks (some call this dollar-cost averaging) is that it softens the blow of a major decline. Why? Because you'll make some of your stock investments as the market is heading south; perhaps you'll even buy at or near the bottom. After the market rebounds, you'll show a profit on some of those last purchases you made, which will help to soothe the rest of your portfolio -- as well as bad feelings about the decline. If you'd used dollar-cost averaging during the worst decade for stock investors last century (1928-1938), you still would've averaged 7 percent per year in returns despite the Great Depression and a sagging stock market.

UNDERSTANDING STOCK OPTIONS

A stock option is the right to purchase a specified number of shares of a company's stock at some point in the future at a contractually specified price -- rather than the market price (whatever the stock price will be on that future date). And, if the fates smile upon you, that contractually specified price will be lower -- hopefully much lower -- than the market price for the stock on that future date, meaning instant profit for you.

For example, suppose that you begin a new job at GreatPlaceToWork.com as a software developer. In addition to your starting annual salary of $50,000, you also receive a stock option grant, which is a legal agreement between your employer and you. This particular stock option grant gives you the right to purchase 10,000 shares of GreatPlaceToWork.com stock at the price of $3 per share.

At some point in the future -- say, in five years -- GreatPlaceToWork.com has done fantastically well, and the stock price is $103 per share. Because of your stock option grant, you could buy 10,000 shares of GreatPlaceToWork.com stock at only $3 per share, turn right around and sell those 10,000 shares for $103 each, and make a gross pre-tax profit of $100 per share -- or $1 million! Pretty good, huh?

You can substitute the term employee stock options for the more generic phrase stock options. You will almost always find yourself holding stock options as a result of being employed at a company that has a policy of issuing stock options to its employees.

GET STOCK QUOTES ONLINE

In the past, the average investor had to wait for newspapers to discover stock prices. Today, real-time and 20-minute-delay stock quotes are available on the Internet. In fact, during the last few years, the number of Web sites offering free real-time and delayed stock quotes has proliferated. Here are a few examples of online quote servers:

MSN Money [ http://moneycentral.msn.com/ ] provides free access to delayed and real-time quotes.
Quote.com [ http://www.quote.com/qc/default.aspx ] offers investors free delayed quotes and free real-time quotes.
FreeRealTime.com [ http://quotes.freerealtime.com/ ] requires registration for your free access to real-time stock quotes, financial news, and corporate profiles. There is no limit on the number of quotes you can get per day.

SUBROGATION (SUB-RO-WHAT?)

You're in a wreck. Another driver caused the accident, but you choose to have your insurance, under Collision coverage, pay for the damage to your vehicle. Your legal rights to seek reimbursement from the other driver are transferred to your insurance company. This transfer of rights is known as subrogation. Your company gets compensated by the other driver's company.

When your insurance company subrogates against the other driver, it usually attempts to get your deductible reimbursed too, saving you a lot of hassle. For various reasons, it often collects less than 100 percent of the amount that it spent fixing your car. Whatever percentage it collects, you get the same percentage of your deductible back. The bad news is that the collection process often takes six months or more. So when you spend your deductible, don't look for the cash to come back to you any time soon.

BEWARE THE FEDERAL ESTATE TAX

The simplest definition of the federal estate tax is "a tax on the transfer of property from your estate to others." Basically if you own something today and somebody else owns it after you die, the federal estate tax comes into play for that transfer of ownership.

Don't panic, though! Even though the federal estate tax technically applies to every single transfer of ownership, your estate may not actually owe any taxes. The potential tax depends on your estate's total value and how that total compares to the exemption amount magic number.

The federal estate tax is part of a unified tax system along with the gift tax. Essentially, between the gift tax and the federal estate tax, everything you own is at least considered for taxation when you transfer ownership, either while you're alive or after you die.

"Everything you own" includes property that

Is mentioned in your will.
Is covered by a will substitute, such as joint tenancy or a living trust.
Is covered by your state's intestate laws if you don't have a completely valid will and therefore die either intestate or partially intestate.

So when we say the federal estate tax applies to everything you own at the time of your death, we mean everything! So don't think that "if I leave something out of my will" (or if you don't even have a will) the estate tax won't catch up with you!

LOCKING A TRANSACTION IN QUICKEN

Whenever you record a transaction, Quicken "remembers" it and puts it on the Memorized Transaction List. The QuickFill feature remembers how much you paid or deposited the last time around and enters the same amount in the Payment or Deposit box the next time you record a transaction that involves the same person or party. Suppose, however, that you want QuickFill to put in a default amount in the Payment or Deposit box that is different from what you entered last time and will remain the same from here on out. You can do that by "locking" the transaction on the Memorized Transaction List.

To lock a transaction, open the Memorized Transaction List (by choosing Banking, Memorized Transaction List or pressing Ctrl + T), click the transaction you want to lock, and either click the Lock icon in the lower-right corner of the window or click in the Lck column. Transactions that have been locked show a picture of a padlock in the Lck column. To "unlock" a transaction on the list, click its lock icon to remove it.

Note: If Quicken isn't memorizing transactions automatically, choose Edit, Options, Register, click the QuickFill tab in the Register Options dialog box, select the Auto Memorize New Transactions check box, and click OK.

STABILIZING THE MEMORIZED TRANSACTION LIST

Whenever you record a transaction, Quicken "remembers" it and puts it on the Memorized Transaction List. The QuickFill feature remembers how much you paid or deposited the last time around. This feature also enters the same amount in the Payment or Deposit box the next time you record a transaction that involves the same person or party. Suppose, however, that you want QuickFill to put in a default amount in the Payment or Deposit box that is different from what you entered last time and will remain the same from here on out. You can do that by "locking" the transaction on the Memorized Transaction List.

KEEPING AN EYE ON TRANSACTIONS

Sometimes, a check you've written or charge you've made in Microsoft Money needs looking after. A charge on your credit card is under dispute. A check you wrote hasn't been cashed and you're not sure why. In cases like these, you can flag the transaction. Flagging makes it easier to follow up on checks and credit card charges. A flag appears in account registers beside transactions that have been flagged. Move the pointer over the flag icon and a pop-up box tells you why the flag is there.

To flag a transaction, right-click it in the register and choose Flag for Follow-Up. The Flag for Follow-Up dialog box appears. In the Follow Up By text box, enter a date to tell Money how long to leave the flag icon in the register. In the Notes text box, enter the note that will appear when you move the pointer over the flag icon.
To remove a flag from a transaction, right-click it and choose Edit Flag for Follow-Up. Then in the Flag for Follow-Up dialog box, deselect the Flag This Transaction check box and click OK.
To find a transaction that you flagged, scroll through the account register or go to the Home Page. On that page is a list of flagged transactions. Click a transaction to see it in the Edit Transaction dialog box.

SKIPPING TRANSACTIONS IN MICROSOFT MONEY

In Microsoft Money, if you want to skip a scheduled transaction this month, perhaps because you already recorded in the register, follow these steps.

Click the Bills tab to go to the Bills Summary window.
Find the transaction that you want to skip, and click it.
Click the Skip This Occurrence button.
The Skip Scheduled Transaction dialog box asks whether you want to skip it this time around, skip all overdue occurrences, or drop the transaction from the list of scheduled transactions.
Choose an option, and click the OK button.

FUN WITH TRANSFERS

It seems odd at first, but Microsoft Money requires you to transfer funds not only when you transfer funds between bank accounts, but also when you contribute to IRAs or other kinds of investments. Think of it this way: If you open an IRA and you write a $1,000 check for a contribution to your IRA, that $1,000 still belongs to you. You haven't really spent it. All you have done is transfer it from one account (checking) to another account (the retirement account with which you track the value of your IRA). Therefore, when you open a new account, you record the initial deposit as a transfer from your checking account to the new account.

You also transfer money between accounts when you pay a credit card bill. Here's how it works: Each time you record a charge in a credit card account, the charge is added to the amount of money that you owe. Suppose that at the end of a month your account shows that you owe $200 because you charged $200 worth of items. To pay the $200 that you owe, you record a check for $200 to the credit card issuer, but in the register, the $200 is shown as a transfer from your checking account to your credit card account. After the transfer is complete, the $200 that you owed is brought to zero.

ENVISIONING YOUR BUSINESS'S CORE VALUES

The vision you have for your small business -- to be the best in your industry or to be the next Hewlett-Packard -- comes from your personal core values. Here are some examples of core values from real companies:

We believe in total integrity.
Our employees are our most important assets.
We will treat everyone fairly and honestly.
We will be state-of-the-art when it comes to technology.

You no doubt have core values of your own that affect the way you conduct business. Take a moment and list three of your core values.

After you make your list, use an "endurance test" to see if what you listed really are your core values. A core value is something you would never change. Your business is known for these core values. They are sacred. Can you think of any scenario in which you might change one of your core values? If you can, then that value is not a core value.

The great thing about identifying your core values is that doing so makes your decision-making easier. The values serve as guidelines; in other words, you won't make a decision to do something that goes against your core values.

INSURING CUSTOMIZED VEHICLES

Buying vehicles that are highly customized is fairly common today, but don't forget about insurance. Custom features include anything from fancy paint jobs to captain's chairs, carpeting, high-end stereos, refrigerators, and so on. It can also include sliding campers and pickup toppers. And don't forget the specialized equipment installed in vehicles designed to assist the handicapped, such as wheelchair lifts. If the equipment is anything beyond that which comes standard from the factory, the majority of auto policies do not insure that extra equipment for damage (for example, loss through theft, collision, vandalism, or fire.

You can, however, insure the custom equipment if you declare it to the insurance company and pay an extra premium. Compare the price against the benefits and make a good decision. That way there won't be any surprises if you opt not to cover your customizations.

TO DELETE OR TO VOID - THAT IS THE QUESTION

In Quicken, you can delete and void register transactions by using the Edit button's Delete Transaction and Void Transaction commands. If you've looked at the Edit button -- it appears just beneath the selected transaction when you're entering data -- you've probably already guessed as much.

Using either command is a snap. Just highlight the transaction you want to delete or void by using the arrow keys or by clicking the mouse. Then click the Edit button and choose the command. And that's that.

Use the Void Transaction command any time you void a check. Quicken leaves voided transactions in the register but marks them as void and erases the Payment or Deposit amount. So by using the Void Transaction command, you keep a record of voided, or canceled, transactions.

Use the Delete Transaction command if you want to remove the transaction from your register.

DECIDING WHICH WANT ADS TO ANSWER

A common temptation when you're looking through the want ads is to respond to every ad that describes a job that interests you . (Never mind that you're not qualified or are way overqualified.) You figure that you have nothing to lose. And, hey, you never know: You could get lucky.

Put a blank on this impulse. Discipline yourself to apply only for those jobs that meet the following criteria:

The job, as described, genuinely interests you.
Your qualifications, background, credentials, and skills match up reasonably well with those that the position requires, based on the way the ad is worded.
If you were eventually offered the position, you would be in a position to accept it -- given the salary it pays and the special requirements (travel, for example) it entails.

The reason you need to take all these criteria into account when you are deciding which ads to answer can be summed up in one word: efficiency. It makes no sense to pursue any lead for a job that, for whatever reason, you're not going to be able to take. And it is equally foolish to squander time and effort responding to job leads when you don't have any of the credentials or skills specifically mentioned in the ad.

CARVING AWAY THE TRULY WASTEFUL

To save money effectively for college (and anything else, for that matter), the first thing you need to do is to cut out all of the wasteful spending. Right at the top of the list are bank and finance charges. You may consider these charges to be minimal, but adding those minimal costs up can be another story.

Check out the following examples of potential fees you could face, depending on how you manage your money:

Minimum balance penalty: Some banks assess fees if your checking account carries a balance below the minimum for the month. For example, if your checking account drops below $750 in any month (even if it's $749), your bank hits you with a $7 per month fee.
Insufficient funds penalty: Any bank will slap a fee of at least $20, if not more, for bounced checks.
Credit card interest: Carrying a balance on your credit card can cost you between 10 and 20 percent (or more) per year for the loan of that money in interest alone.
Over-limit fees: Most credit card companies charge a fee if you go over your credit limit -- like a bank and a bounced check, any credit card company will charge at least $20 each month for going over the limit.
Late-payment fees: If your payment check doesn't arrive on time, it'll probably cost you at least $20 for the month. (Late payments also decrease creditworthiness and increase the cost of later loans to you.)

PROPOSING AN ALTERNATIVE WORK ARRANGEMENT

The mere fact that you're asking for a change in your working arrangement or schedule presupposes that the change is going to work for you. So when proposing the change to your employer, rather then focusing your presentation on all the reasons the new arrangement is important to you ("My dog really needs me. He gets very upset when I'm not home."), focus instead on the business implications.

Look for the business benefits of the new arrangement. Perhaps the working hours you're seeking as part of the flextime arrangement enhance you company's ability to serve its customers. It's possible, too, that by telecommuting several days a week, you can free up additional office space.

Be careful, though. More often than not, your benefits from any alternate working arrangement outweigh the company's advantage. Be sure you can convince your manager that the change in working arrangements isn't going to impede the company's ability to achieve its strategic goals.