Budget Shopping for KidsWritten by Kathryn Finney
It's hard to find fashionable and affordable clothes for children. Here is scoop on dressing your little bargainista in hottest fashions for less.Dressing Girls Most of us struggle to find clothing for girls that don't make your favorite five-year-old look like a midget Britney Spears. There are plenty of stores to find age appropriate items like Old Navy, Children's Place, and Gap. These stores offer great pieces, for reasonable prices. Always buy items like pants and jackets one size up, so that it can last into beginning of following year. H&M has some of cutest clothing for girls at even cheaper prices than GAP. Avoid department stores that tend to price children‚s clothing at same price point as adults. There is no justification for a 4T Ralph Lauren skirt to cost that same as an adult skirt. The one exception is at Macys, which has great deals on children's clothing during their major sale events. The best store to bargain shop for girls is at Target. The options are limitless and clothes are well constructed with most items in $10-$17 range. Plus shopping at target is very acceptable (unlike K-MART), so you can save money without worry about "cool" factor. Dressing Boys It seems like designers for boys clothing are hell-bent on making them look like little action heroes. Bargain shopping for these tykes is an art form that few know how to do. Target has great stuff for little guys, with Children's Place giving most for your bucks. However, SEARS is also a great place to find cute little items from designers like Sean John and Levi, for very reasonable prices.
| | Creating Estate Tax Savings For Your Child Using A Roth IRA Written by Richard A. Chapo
Parents must give serious thought to protecting their family through estate tax planning. While life insurance and trusts should be a part of every plan, Roth IRAs can be a simple tool for passing money to your child on a tax-free basis. Roth IRA First, we need a quick summary of Roth IRA. A Roth IRA is an after-tax retirement vehicle that produces huge tax savings because all tax distributions are tax-free. That statement can a bit confusing, so lets break it down. The downside of a Roth IRA is fact that contributions are not tax deductible as with traditional IRAs or 401(k)s. The upside of a Roth IRA, however, is that all distributions are tax-free once person reaches age of 59˝. So how can you use a Roth IRA to pass money to your child? Opening A Roth IRA For Your Child One of biggest keys to retirement planning is “time”. The more years you spend saving money for retirement, more you should have when that blessed day arrives. Imagine if you had started saving for retirement when you were 16. How much bigger would your retirement nest egg be? What if you purchased Microsoft stock in 1990 and watched it split eight times? Okay, that was painful example if you missed that opportunity. Nonetheless, why not do for your child what you didn’t do for yourself? The fundamental goal of estate planning is to pass as much of your estate as possible to your family on a tax-free basis. You can transfer relatively small amounts of money to your child now. If you have a 16 year-old child with a Roth IRA, you can contribute $4,000 in 2005. That $4,000 is going to grow tax-free for 43 years and be worth quite a bit. A ten percent return would result in account growing to roughly $200,000 and full amount would be distributed tax-free. There are other practical advantages to opening a Roth IRA for your child.
|
