Best of blog posts for week of October 2nd

JD at Get Rich Slowly talks about mortgages with Pros and Cons: 30-Year Mortgage vs. 15-Year Mortgage Personally I really like the option of getting a 30 year mortgage and paying it down early. It doesn't cost much more in interest and it gives you more flexibility.

JD also points us to another free credit report resource with Your Credit Report Card

FreeMoneyFinance discusses a guy that got a huge break on the cost of college just by asking : Asking for Discount Nets Guy $40k I suspect that kind of thing would only work on a private school.

Bargaineering shares the news about: Disney “Give a Day, Get a Disney Day” Rewards Volunteers

Don't Worry About Estate Taxes

If you're rich then you can skip this article. For the rest of us...

A lot of people seem to worry about paying estate taxes when they pass away. But those people shouldn't really be worrying about estate taxes at all. The overwhelming vast majority of people will never have to pay any estate taxes.

The estate tax has a very large exemption which means you do not need to pay taxes on that portion of the estate. Currently the exemption rate for 2009 is $3.5 Million. So right now only people who have estates worth more than $3.5M will have to pay a cent of estate taxes. Only about 2-3% of Americans have estates worth over $1 M, so very few of us have estates worth more than $3.5M. Under current law only a handful of rich people pay estate taxes. Are you a multi-millionaire? If you answered 'no' then you don't currently have to worry about estate taxes. If you are a multi-millionaire then congratulations, but you may want to consult with an estate planner to properly handle your estate after you pass including ways to deal with estate taxes.

Estate tax laws have been in flux for a few years and are going to change one way or the other in the next couple years. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 changed estate tax laws. Previous to 2001 the exemption was $675,000 and the law changed it to increase the exemption rate by steps through 2009 when it hit the $3.5 Million level. If current law isn't changed then there will be no estate taxes at all in 2010 and then in 2011 the exemption will drop. Its hard to say what will happen in 2011 exactly since it is quite possible that new legislation will be introduced to change the estate tax system yet again. Worst case the law will expire in 2010 and then in 2011 the exemption will drop back down to the $675,000 level. Still less than 10% of Americans have a net worth over $600K level.

Updown Performance : Up 15% in 2009, up 5% in Sept.

My Updown account is currently UP 1.6% overall. I was up about 5% in the month of September and up about 15% since the start of 2009.

The S&P is down -20% since I started in Updown.

I only made a couple trades in Updown in Sept. I sold off my HRP holdings after it doubled and I picked up some NRF.

Net Worth Update : September 2009

I track my net worth monthly on NetworthIQ.

In September 2009 our Net Worth is $638,974 which is up $7,450 since August.

This is another record high figure for our net worth.

Mostly the difference is due to retirement accounts increasing about $5,000 due to improvement in the market and my home real estate value increasing about $3,500. We also continued to pay down our mortgages and the debt balance dropped $1,800. On the negative side our cash balance dropped about $1,300. We have a vacant rental so lost out on over $900 rent.