Throughout our surfing of the internet, we have found many useful resources. Below are the links to the internet resources we believe are extremely valuable. If you come across other sites or alliances that you think would be useful to others, please let us know.
College Information
For current RESIDENTS of Illinois, there are 3 state sponsored Section 529 plans with increased tax advantages for you. Contrary to popular belief NONE of these programs require your child to attend a college in Illinois:
College Illinois
This is by far the BEST plan for current residents of Illinois. Unfortunately, due to its name, many people think this is only to be used if you are sure that your child(ren) will go to an Illinois college. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. This plan is specifically designed for current residents of Illinois. It doesn't matter if you move outside the state later on or if your child goes to a college outside of Illinois. This plan essentially lets you pay for future college
tuition costs only in today's dollars. You are essentially investing at a rate that is equal to Illinois' education inflation rate. Based on what has happened with Illinois tuition costs in the past few years, this rate appears to be greater than 11% per year. That's a great investment. Please
contact us if you have any questions about this program or would like to determine how this can work for you and your family.
Bright Directions College Savings Program
This plan enables you to create a diversified investment portfolio for your future college costs in such a way that all of the growth will be exempt from both federal and Illinois state tax, provided the money is withdrawn for educational purposes only. In addition. Illinois will give you a deduction on your taxes for contributions made, up to $20,000 (if filing joint) in a tax year. You will have your choice of investments from several different fund families such as PIMCO, Fidelity, DFA, American Century, Northern Funds, Legg Mason, William Blair, AllianceBernstein, Ariel Capital, T. Rowe Price, Barclays Global Investors, and Calvert. Please
contact us if you have any questions about this program or would like to determine how this can work for you and your family.
Bright Start College Savings Program
This program is essentially the same as Bright Directions except the investments are only managed by Citigroup Asset Management. Please
contact us if you have any questions about this program or would like to determine how this can work for you and your family.
College Board
The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association whose mission is to connect students to college success and opportunity. Founded in 1900, the association is composed of more than 5,200 schools, colleges, universities, and other educational organizations. Each year, the College Board serves seven million students and their parents, 23,000 high schools, and 3,500 colleges through major programs and services in college admissions, guidance, assessment, financial aid, enrollment, and teaching and learning. Among its best-known programs are the SAT®, the PSAT/NMSQT®, and the Advanced Placement Program® (AP®). The College Board is committed to the principles of excellence and equity, and that commitment is embodied in all of its programs, services, activities, and concerns.
Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)
Federal Student Aid, an office of the U.S. Department of Education, ensures that all eligible individuals can benefit from federally funded or federally guaranteed financial assistance for education beyond high school. In many cases, the financial aid available is not solely based on your family's income.
Saving For College
Saving for college education is one of the top priorities for most people. This site helps you to learn more about the available options.
Section 529 Plans - Financial Education Center
This is a website with all the plans listed by plan and by state and the ability to compare side by side and other in-depth information.
Section 529 College Savings Plan Comparison
This is a great website with all the plans available for ANY state but on this site, you can compare the different state plans SIDE BY SIDE. When you click this link, we have set the page to compare the plans available in Illinois, but you can change the dropdown choices or state yourself.
Upromise
If you do NOTHING else to save for your child or grandchild's education, you've got to go to this website and enroll for FREE in this program that will have many vendors and services put money away for your child. Please, do this NOW!
Investing & Finance
Bankrate.com
This appears to be one of the best websites providing up-to-date information on the interest rates for certificate of deposits (CDs), mortgages, credit cards and other types of loans.
Curian Capital
Curian Capital is one of the investment sources GCD works with. For more information about our involvment with them, go to our
Investments page. Clients of Curian can click on this link to login to their accounts.
FINRA
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. All told, FINRA oversees nearly 4,800 brokerage firms, about 171,400 branch offices and approximately 644,000 registered securities representatives. Created in July 2007 through the consolidation of NASD and the member regulation, enforcement and arbitration functions of the New York Stock Exchange, FINRA is dedicated to investor protection and market integrity through effective and efficient regulation and complementary compliance and technology-based services. Before you work with ANY broker, you should click on the
FINRA Broker Check to confirm that this individual is not suspended or have any other issues that you should be aware of.
PersonalFund.Com
Want to really know the "true" cost of ownership of some of the mutual funds you may hold? This is a great site to learn things you never knew. (Registration is FREE) For many investors with more than $100,000 to invest, investing in mutual funds can cost far more than with Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs), which provide far less "style drift" and better guarantee proper diversification. After reviewing this site, click
here to learn more about this "managed money" process.
Taxes - Income & Other
Federal Estimated Tax Payments (EFTPS)
This is the federal government's website for being able to make federal estimated tax payments, and the final amount due with your 1040, online.
Illinois Estimated Tax Payments
This is the Illinois government's website for being able to make Illinois estimated tax payments, and the final amount due with your 1040, online.
Complete Tax
This web link is for those of you that wish to prepare your tax return by yourself. In the past, many people that did not want to use a professional to prepare their return used TurboTax or TaxCut when preparing returns. Now you have the ability to use a customized version of the same professional software we use.
Pay Income Taxes With a Credit Card
Charging your government payments on your credit card is fast, convenient and easy. It helps you defer the payment, giving you flexibility in your cash-flow management. And, if you participate in rewards programs offered by your credit card issuer, you actually earn rewards for your government payments. This website can handle all of the details of paying by credit card. Either go to the site or call 800-2PAY-TAX.
Illinois Cook County Treasurer
This is a website for tracking down unclaimed inheritance money within the State of Illinois.
Use the information on this website to arrive at an acceptable value for your non-cash donations. These are merely guidelines and are not the only amounts allowed by the IRS.
Employees of Abbott Labs or Hospira
Within the
Financial Planning process that we provide to all Abbott/TAP/Hospira employees, all of the benefits provided by your employer must be considered. Below are the links to several of the wonderful benefit providers:
|
Provider |
Maintains.... |
| Mercer |
company's 401k plan |
| Hewitt - Abbott |
retirement annuity plan |
|
|
retirement annuity plan |
|
|
stock option administrator |
| UBS - Hospira |
stock option administrator |
Computer Resources
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Many websites, including ours, provide you with files in a format that requires Adobe Acrobat Reader. Click on this link in order to download this Free program.
Dell DataSafe (NOT just for Dell owners)
Since so many of us are going paperless, it is essential that we all consider backing up our home computers the same way business are already doing so. Recently, Dell created an online backup software service that we have found to be the MOST inexpensive, the easiest, and is NOT only available to people that own Dell computers.
Efax
This is a great productivity tool that will enable you to receive AND fax from within ANY application using just your internet connection.
LogMeIn
This valuable productivity tool allows you to connect to
any PC in the world provided you can get to an internet connection. Think of all the possibilities for connecting to a remote site, working from home but not taking home any computer files, etc. Believe it or not, this works through virtually any internal firewall too. This product named LogMeIn Free allows for connection to one or more PCs but has some limitations that may not impact you. Please read about the different products before deciding which version to purchase.
Microsoft Clip Gallery
This is a great resource, provided by Microsoft, for adding clip art to any presentation you make.
Microsoft Template Gallery
Another great resource, provided by Microsoft, for giving you ideas for various templates, regardless of which Microsoft program you are using: Word, Excel, Powerpoint or more.
Chances are you have a lot of important stuff on your computer like financial documents, email, digital photos, music and more. Unfortunately, computers are vulnerable to hard drive crashes, virus attacks, theft and natural disasters, which can erase everything in an instant. Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable. This costs as little as $5 per month for unlimited space on one computer. This is a GREAT deal!
By now, must of us have too many usernames, PINs and passwords for various websites. Yes, we try to use the same ones for all the websites but then a website demands an uppercase letter, a lower case letter, 4 number, 8 characters, etc. and it's now hard to use the same one. Well, this utility is PHENOMENAL for this kind of thing. With just a single passcode, this utility will memorize all your information in a massively encrypted environment so that you don't have to remember all of this information ever again. AND, it memorizes the website address too so you can just go right to the site and login. The other FREE feature it comes with is a web backup of all this information (in an encrypted environment of course) such that you can get to ANY of this information from ANY web browser in the world. This is a GREAT time saver.
This free service allows you to connect remotely from one computer to another computer. This is different than LogMeIn above because it requires that both computers are attended by a person. Logmein can be set for an unattended computer. This is great for quick support. We at GCD use this for our remote connections to clients that require our assistance.
Shipping Services
Fedex
You can track any packages sent by or TO you using this site. You can also sign up to produce the normal shipping documents using your own printer.
United Parcel Service (UPS)
You can track any packages sent by or TO you using this site. You can also sign up to produce the normal shipping documents using your own printer.
United States Post Office
Many people don't know that you can now print your own postage on this site as well as being able to calculate postage, track packages and much, much more.
Internet Search Engines
Google
Probably the web's premier web search engine.
Dogpile
Another comprehensive search engine pulling from various sources.
Info.com
Another comprehensive search engine pulling from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and About.
Metacrawler
Search the search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.
Consumer Issues & Charity
Hybrid Cars
We feel ethically responsible to make this information available to everybody. If you are wondering if the premium for the hybrid car is more than the gas savings, please contact us.
Inflation Data
This website is dedicated to providing you with the most current Inflation Rate Data on the web, in addition to information on the other monetary activities of the Federal Government and US Treasury.
Charity Navigator
This is essentially everything you always wanted to know about a charity. From its organizational efficiency to capacity to even comparisons to their peers. We are big believers in charitable giving but believe it's better when your money gets directly to the charitable purpose, not overhead.
Stop Certain Catalogs From Getting Mailed to You
Catalog Choice is a FREE service that lets you decline paper catalogs you no longer wish to receive. Reduce the amount of unsolicited mail in your mailbox, while helping to preserve the environment.
Opt Out of Insurance and Credit Card Offers
If you ever have wanted to stop your home mailbox from filling up with senseless credit card offers, and the like, this is the official Consumer Credit Reporting industry website to accept and process requests from consumers to opt-in or out of firm offers for credit cards or insurance.
For Your Family and Privacy Issues
Lifelock
The industry leader in proactive identity theft protection, offers a proven solution that prevents your identity from being stolen before it happens. They protect your identity and personal information for only $10 a month - and guarantee their service up to $1,000,000. They also offer the only identity theft child protection program available in the market, so guarantee your good name today and enroll now.
Private Matters
This is one of another website we have found where you can electronically store documents and your wishes in case something ever happened to you.
You Departed
This is one of two websites we have found where you can electronically store documents and your wishes in case something ever happened to you.
