Debt Education Alliance Your Guide To Debt Relief

We have searched long and hard to find the top paying savings accounts that can help in these tough times.

Obviously we cannot guarantee that these rates we are about to disclose will remain because they are variable but for the time being these are the highest paying we could find.

These nationally available accounts are:

1. Franklin Synergy Bank: With a $25,000 minimum deposit you will be able to take advantage of the 1.75% that this account offers.  Franklin Synergy Bank is located in Franklin, Tenn.

2. Palladian Private Bank: Based in Chicago the Palladian Private Bank offers a 1.70% savings account with a $10,000 minimum deposit.  Locations in 10 states.

3. UFB Direct: With only a minimum deposit of $1 you will be able to benefit from the .55% APY.  UFB Direct is an online affiliate of Waterfield Bank.

4. Chesapeake Bank: Also with only a $1 minimum deposit you can receive a .55% APY savings account.  Chesapeake Bank is located in Williamsburg, VA.

If you have been looking into money market accounts you might want to consider one of these savings accounts as they pay out more.

This post was brought to you by USA Debt Help

In today’s economy you might want to think about investing in CDs.  The returns might not be that terrific but they are guaranteed.  Umbrella Bank is offering a top paying CD that might be worth looking into.

It’s offering 2.75% APY on an 18-month CD, beating most yields on 12- and 24-month CDs.

The minimum deposit is only $1,000 and if you’re looking for the income, you can get monthly or quarterly interest checks.

UmbrellaBank.com is the online division of New South Federal Savings Bank, which has one full-service branch in Birmingham, Ala., and mortgage offices across the region.

New South is losing money and its portfolio of bad loans nearly tripled last year, so it earns only one star out of five stars on Bankrate’s Safe & Sound ratings.

But that’s so typical of banks offering the best rates and it’s FDIC insured, so your deposits are guaranteed.

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Getting out of debt needs you to be disciplined in order to achieve this goal. As I mentioned earlier on the post How To Spend cutting back on your credit card use is critical in becoming debt free.

Many credit card companies have great interest rate incentives for balance transfers, which can be extremely helpful to efforts of reducing debt. You should be able to find introductory rate offers of 0 percent for a year and rates of 13 percent or less for the following years and all without annual fees. Be sure to find a credit card that does not hike up its interest rates after the appealing introductory rate, though. Also, do not be seduced by unimportant benefits, such as shopping gift certificates as rewards or promotional gift offers for signing up. The point of this new credit card is to lower your debt, not to make spending more fun. Transferring your credit card debt to one of these cards can save you incredible amounts of money on interest and fees.

Before you make the switch, you can call your current credit card company to give them the chance to give you a similar deal without losing your business. If you explain to your company that you will transfer your balance to another company unless they lower your rate, you should be able to get your rate dropped below 10 percent. If your credit score is very poor, you may only be able to get your rate lowered by a few points, but even this is very helpful in the long run.

Remember, your credit card company wants you to pay your minimum payment each month and take 30 years to pay off your debt – this is how they make a profit. However, they cannot count on making a profit off of you if they cannot keep your business, so if they are not willing to give you what you want, you can find another company that is.

[singlepic id=3 w=150 h=150 float=left]Most people these days are questioning how they could have safeguarded themselves from the rapid decline of their 401ks.

You say I should have picked better funds and taken less risk with my Retirement Portfolio.

For those who are facing retirement soon all this discussion might not help you but for those who have many more years of planning for retirement listen up. You need to improve your investing strategies and you need to save more. You heard me correctly. SAVE MORE!

I know it is not what most of you thought but lets look at it from a logical point of view. You are worried that by saving more you are throwing money away especially in this downturn of the market. 36% of people over the age of 45 have stopped putting money into their 401K.  (Source AARP) Well this is the wrong strategy. There is one way to avoid a market downturn and that is to have more money saved.   Makes sense , right? That is the right strategy.

Why gamble that the stock market will produce double digit gains and lets make a retirement plan that will work for you.

If you have seen your account balances drop 20% then saving more can be added insurance.

Lets say you earn $100,000 and are at the age of 40. You also have $200,000 already saved. You would would a nice cool $2 million to play with at age 65. This assumes you will receive a 3% pay increase each year with a 10% contribution at a growth of 7%.

Then the unthinkable happens, your portfolio suffers a 20% loss. Your new retirement portfolio would now come to $1.6 million. That is considerable change in you annual income at retirement.

Now lets take those same numbers and assumption but this time you have been contributing 15% to your retirement. The market once again affects your account balance by 20% but now that you have been contributing 15% you will have close to 1.9 million at age 65. That number looks much nicer and healthier doesn’t it.

This is just one method of increasing your savings. Other include IRA’s and tax-efficient funds in a taxable account. Just stay disciplined by having your company directly transfer cash from your checking account to the fund. It never hurts to save more into you Retirement Portfolio.

Cutting up your credit cards is perhaps a bit too finite of a gesture, but in order to get out of debt, you definitely have to cut back if not stop your credit card use. The long-term relationships you have with your credit card companies and the unused credit your cards make available to you are beneficial to your credit score, so do not close your credit card accounts, but do act as if you have closed them.

Determine a healthy amount of money you can afford to spend each week on typical day-to-day costs and carry that amount of cash with you each week. This cash will be what you use for all of your purchases for the week, never touching your credit cards. When you actually see the money that you are spending, instead of just the handy credit card swiping machine, you are much more likely to make wise spending choices. Furthermore, having this limit – remember that amount of cash has to last you the entire week – keeps you from spending more than you can afford and puts a limit on your purchases. When you run out of cash, you stop spending.

Of course, there are purchases, such as online or mail-order buys that have to be done with plastic, but use your debit card, instead of your credit cards. Your debit card can be your emergency backup, too, in case you run out of cash and absolutely cannot go without for some reason. The goal of these changes is to completely cut yourself off from your credit cards. You want to live your life in a way that only decreases the amount of debt on your credit cards and never adds any debt to them.

The best way to make sure you follow through with this change is to take your credit cards out of your wallet. If you do not have your credit cards with you, you cannot use them. Instead of constantly tempting yourself to charge your next purchase, place your credit cards in a safe place that you cannot easily access, such as your safe-deposit box or in the care of a responsible family member.

If you are truly concerned about the temptation your credit cards hold for you, consider getting your credit limits lowered and go ahead and cancel your least favorable accounts. If you have more than a few credit cards, closing some of your credit card accounts is definitely a practical option to avoid temptation. You can even stop most credit card offers from piling up in your mailbox, tempting you to collect one more charging option, by opting out of pre-screened credit card offers online.

Once your credit cards are safely out of reach, do not figure they are incapable of harming you. Stopping your credit card spending is only part of the battle; now you need to concentrate on making your credit cards less harmful to your debt situation while you work to pay off that debt. Lowering your credit card rates is the perfect place to start.

Money Magazine has a nice little section where  you can send in your questions and the answers will be printed in the next addition.  I thought it would be a good idea to post for all my readers to see.

Q. I plan on retiring in Five to 10 years. For asset-allocation purposes, should I consider myself a short-term or long-term investor?

A. You definitely a long-term investor.  The past year has clearly demonstrated why you don’t want a portfolio made up mostly of stocks when you’re within a few years of retirement.  But you’ll be living on this money for decades.  Even though the 10-year return on stocks looks poor right now, equities have come out ahead over a 30-year period.

Rather than Solely focusing on time horizon to determine your stock/bond mix, figure out how much long-term growth you need from your portfolio, suggests Allan Roth, a financial planner in Colorado Springs.  Among the things to consider:  the value of your savings today, what you’ll collect in pensions or Social Security and what you expect your expenses will look like post-retirement.
– Carolyn Bigda

Q. I’m thinking about putting most of my cash in Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac stock, since the price of the shares is so low. Shouldn’t the bailout help those stocks rise?

A. Putting all your money into one or two stocks is an invitation to disaster and that true even if the company isn’t, like these, losing billions of dollars in an imploding market.  Moreover, it’s not even clear that Fannie and Freddie are a deal at today’s prices.  Such bargain-basement temptations are usually cheap for a reason, says Erick Ormsby of Alcosta Capital Management.  “These companies have a whole host of problems that will take a long time to work out,” says ornsby, “even if the government doesn’t let them fail.”
– George Mannes

Q. If a large investment firm went bust, would I lose the money I have in Mutual Funds, IRAs or other accounts?

A. To date, no mutual fund company has failed.  In this market, though, anything is possible.  But even if a fund family were to go belly up, the money you have in its funds – whether in an IRA, a 401(k) or any other account – would be safe.  Here’s why.

First, unlike when you buy a CD at a bank, the money you invest in a mutual fund doesn’t become part of the assets of the parent firm.  Instead, it goes to whichever mutual fund you’re buying, which is a seperate entity.  In fact, the fund company doesn;t even own the funds under the firm’s name; it merely has an agreement to manage the assets and sell shares.  if the parent company went bankrupt, the assets of individual funds would not be avilable to the firm’s creditors.  Finally, to protect shareholders, federal law requires funds to have insurance that cover instances of fraud, embezzlement and the like
– Waletr Updegrave

ETrade has returned their ever popular promotion where they are offering a $25 bonus on their online savings account. It was such a success the first time around they figured why not bring it back.

All you need to do is sign up for a new 2.5% APY online savings account and $25 gets credited to your account. Easy as that.

There is however the ever daunting $1 minimum to sign up.

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Sign up for a personal checking account at Bank of America and receive a free $50 bonus. The minimum deposit needed to attain this bonus is only $100, so this is a very hot deal.

With the recent troubles of the banking industry now is a good time to find deals.  Bank of America is offering a $50 bonus if you open a personal checking account with them and that is required is a minimum deposit of $100.  I would have to say this deal is worth looking into.

Offer end on february 28th 2009.

[singlepic id=1 w=300 h=200 float=left]If you are in the market for a credit card, here are three important tactics that these companies use to entice you to sign up. There are many credit card tricks that you just have to watch out for these days. The banks and credit card companies are always looking for new ways to get you to fork over as much money as possible.

1. Like the old free interest period one.  You get the offer of a credit card with a free interest period as long as you make the minimum payment. But what happens when that free interest period is over?  If you haven’t paid off your entire balance, you can be hit with interest that’s retroactive to when you got the card.  That free interest?  It was really running the whole time.

Of course, if you’ve paid everything off, it’s not problem. But if you’ve done like the bank expects you, then you will have a total near your limit and not enough money to pay it off. The bank just hit the jackpot

2. Then there is 0% balance transfer game, in which a bank entices you to move your balance over from an expensive card to their card. First there is the free for doing the transfer that the bank makes, which averages about 3 percent of the total balance.

Then there are the new purchases on your card that the bank wants you to make. Why? Because the money you pay for your payments from then on will go to your zero percent interest balance first, the bank has more time to charge you a larger amount on your new purchases.

The banks like to roll out zero percent offers before the Holidays, to make sure you are going to spend at the higher interest rate while working to pay off the big balance your transferred.

3.  Another “benefit” that the credit card companies roll out is credit protection insurance. The plan helps you with your minimum payments in case you are unemployed or disabled. The amount of the premium is based on your balance, but when you look at the fine print, you will see that if you have a $10,000 balance, it will cost you $89 per month for insurance in order for you to make the minimum payment if you can’t. That’s could be as little as $10 or 2 percent of your balance! You are paying $89 a month so you can afford to pay $10? Or $200 in the case of a $10,000 balance? Why don’t you just save the $89 and put it toward your balance. Of course, that’s not in the best interest of the credit card company.

The point of bankruptcy is to have a new financial beginning. A similar idea is usually part of the motivation behind getting out of debt before having to resort to bankruptcy. When making the effort to get out of debt, the thought of having a financial situation at the end of the struggle that is stable and free from the stress and difficulties of debt is like a light at the end of the tunnel. After reestablishing your financial stability and after pulling yourself out of the stifling problems of debt, you have a brand new start on financial responsibility and monetary well-being.

For most people, when they get to the end of their dark tunnels of debt, they are disappointed by the cold receptions they get from their credit reports. A fresh, new start means that you really are starting over. After debt problems, you can count on finding that you have poor credit if any credit at all. After overcoming bad debt or bankruptcy, you are starting out almost like a teenager who is trying to get his first credit card and has to have mom co-sign in order to be approved. This situation may be difficult and limiting for you at first, but, like that teenager, you can build and repair your credit over time and, through some effort, put yourself in the same place if not in a better financial situation than when you first began accumulating debt.

Repairing your finances takes time, but, more importantly, requires effort on your part. If you want to achieve good credit, you have to take steps to gain that better credit for yourself. Sitting back and letting the memory of your financial difficulties fade in your own mind will do nothing to make your former money problems fade away from your credit report or from the memories of your creditors. Even before you are completely out of your debt problem, start to plan and carry out as many credit-repair options as possible. The sooner you repair your credit and the more you do to improve your credit, the better off your financial situation will be.