So, What’s the Buffet Rule?

The Buffett Rule is a proposed law that would establish a minimum effective tax rate for anyone making over a million dollars. Such individuals, who comprise approximately 0.3 percent of all American taxpayers, would have to pay a 30 perc ent effective income tax on all of their income. Thus, it is similar to the alternative minimum tax, but is meant to act as a replacement for it. Some estimate that the Buffet Rule will create between $50 billion and $160 billion in additional revenues for the federal government over the course of a decade. Whether this would have a significant impact on the budgetary big picture is a topic of debate. For comparison, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire could raise about $80 billion a year. Other analysts point out additional means of reducing the deficit, such as cutting entitlement spending.

Why Is It Called The “Buffet Rule?”

The Buffet Rule is named after famed investor Warren Buffet. In 2011, Buffet said that he didn’t think it was fair for millionaires to pay a lower effective tax rate than ordinary Americans. He has since then championed what has come to be called the “Buffet Rule,” which is effectively an increase in the minimum tax rate paid by millionaires.

Why Am I Paying More Than Millionaires?

Capital gains — money made from an investment increasing in value between the time of purchase and the time of sale — is taxed differently than ordinary income – often at a lower rate. Since the wealthy often make a large part of their money from investments, they pay taxes differently than income earned from labor. People who earn the majority of their income from working, on the other hand, may pay a higher rate.

Why Are People For It?

Most advocates of the Buffet Rule are for it in the interest of fairness. Some Buffet Rule advocates, say that middle-class Americans paying a greater share of their income in t than the rich was “indefensible.” About half of all Americans think that investments should be taxed in the same manner as income, with over two-thirds of Americans supporting the Buffet Rule as of last month.

Why Are People Against It?

Some call it “class warfare.” Yet others believe it will have a detrimental effect on the American economic recovery, by effectively raising taxes at a time when the economy is already fragile. Some point out that capital gains are taxed differently than income in order to encourage people to invest. On the left, the Buffet Rule has been criticized as not going far enough and not truly being a form of progressive taxation: It merely taxes the very wealthy at the same rate as middle-class Americans, not a substantially higher rate, as under progressive taxation.

So Why Do I Care?

Even if you make less than a million dollars per year, you might still have a stake in the outcome of the bill.  It will possibly affect the overall economy, but it’s not clear precisely how: For example, there was strong economic (and job growth) during periods when the capital gains rates were higher. And its impact on the deficit, wealth distribution, and so forth, remains to be seen. Regardless of where you stand on the Buffet Rule, it is proving to be a pivotal economic debate worth watching.

Nicholas Pell is a freelance writer based out of Hollywood, CA. He makes under a million dollars a year, in case you were wondering. 

Even the Luddites among us seem to recognize the value of investing in better tech and evolved office products that not only look sleek, but help make your workspace more efficient and can potentially improve your quality of life.

Like the most popular kitchen gadgets, some tech toys look great but aren’t worth the investment in the long run. The shiny and new don’t always compare to the tried and true. A great rule of thumb is to hold off purchasing anything 1.0 and wait until most of the bugs and necessary updates are ironed out.

A few incredibly helpful products to consider investing in:

Neat!

You’ve probably seen the commercials extolling the virtues of the NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System and wondered if it was worth the investment. Priced at just under $400.00, this small, but efficient, piece of office equipment can help tame the clutter monster both at home and at work. While earlier versions had some issues with paper sizing and filing, the latest model seems to have ironed out those kinks.

I’m a little obsessed with my NeatDesk and regularly rave about it to friends and family. I thought I’d use it exclusively for receipts and business documents, but find myself obsessively scanning in business cards, articles, even travel documentation. Best of all, the IRS now accepts scanned documents, so you can shred the originals.

Once you set up the system and install the software, you can choose where to file your documents in your computer based on home and business with the option of setting up additional files. You can easily search your system by details including names, dates and phone numbers.

And as you regain control of the work clutter and pack up old CD ROMS and other clunkier information storage, the Dymo LabelManager 500TS can help you to ease the process. With a touch screen and complete ease of use, you can organize everything before storing, and print on fabric or plastic labels.

Feeling creative? Attach to your PC or Mac and you can further customize your fonts and even add graphics.

Back It Up, Baby

Before you shred anything, make sure that you’ve backed everything up. We all hear about the cloud in terms of online resources from most internet connected devices and especially as a virtual storage space for your digital data. But did you know that you can actually create your own storage cloud? For about an $80.00 investment, the CiragoLink+ allows you to turn any USB mass storage device into your own personal cloud accessible from your computer or smartphone.

So, if you’re too paranoid to trust your data to available data backup systems, or simply want another option, this is a pretty cool way to keep your information safe and backed up. If you want an idea of what remote storage systems are like, try the free options offered by Amazon and many other companies. Mozy and other storage systems offer affordable monthly cloud based backup starting at about $5.99.

After facing several computer crashes over the years, I’ve become somewhat rabid about keeping multiple backups of my hard drive around. At 9 mm thick, the Seagate GoFlex Slim Performance Drive doesn’t take up much space on your desk, attaches via USB cable and can save up to 500 GB of your files. You can configure it to back up regularly or simply drag and drop your files as you save them. Use it together with the Cirago and you can access even your data intensive music or video files while on the go.

Have A Stand Up Day

There have been countless, and sometimes scary, reports about the obesity epidemic. As more of us sit in front of our computers for extended periods of time, it isn’t only our waistlines that can suffer. Reports from the American Cancer Society list higher mortality rates from increased sitting/less movement along with increased instances of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Pretty sobering news for anyone spending much of their day staring at a computer screen.

Charleston-based wellness expert Ann Kulze MD (Dr. Ann on her popular radio show) became alarmed after reading studies outlining the dangers of prolonged sitting. She’d realized that sitting at her desk for sometimes 8 hours a day was doing “horrible things to my body.” She grew sluggish, noticed changes in her shape and had incredible neck and back pain.

About 18 months ago she switched to a stand up desk and noticed almost immediate changes in the way that she felt both physiologically and biologically and studied the results. “When standing you are directly engaging the biggest muscles in your body- the ones in your legs, which are the muscles that burn the most fat. It’s also great for bone health- even if you’re just standing, it’s weight bearing. Best of all, the more your muscles are engaged, the better your brain can focus and think.” And in case you think this is a brand new trend, Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson and some other great thinkers were said to prefer standing desks.

I decided to give the standing desk a try as well. I tried building my own version, which wasn’t terribly attractive or sturdy and mostly just added height to my existing desk. The folks at Ergotron were kind enough to send me a sit-stand desk to try out. After a pretty intensive Q&A session with a company expert about my home, my work style and computer preferences, we decided on the WorkFit-C mobile cart (a significant investment at about $800), which would work best with my laptop or extra monitor.

I’ll admit to being incredibly skeptical at first. After all, anyone who has ever worked in retail can attest to incredible back and foot pain felt at the end of a grueling day. When I asked Dr. Ann about the potential dangers to one’s feet after extended standing, she explained that most conditions, like edema, are a result of prolonged sitting, and when standing you tend to shift and move more, and actually have increased blood flow everywhere- including your feet.

Since this isn’t a health column, please don’t take anything I say to be anything other than purely entertainment-based, but in the few days I’ve been working at my sit-stand desk, I do notice that I have more energy. It’s easier to want to go out for a walk instead of feeling like I’m dragging my sorry bones out of my chair. I needed to invest in a wireless keyboard and mouse as well, but I found that when not doing intensive writing or strictly desk based activities, I felt more awake and engaged when standing. I also started noticing and really hating that slouchy feeling when sitting. I became more aware of random aches when sitting as well. I’ll keep you posted on long term results and would love to hear about your own experiences with standing desks, cool new office tools and options for improving your work life.

Rachel Weingarten is slowly transitioning to using a stand up desk on a more regular basis. She is a style expert, marketing strategist & personal branding consultant for CEOs, politicians and celebrities and the creator of MintStyle. She is the award-winning author of Career and Corporate Cool and Hello Gorgeous! Beauty Products in America ‘40s-‘60s. Rachel writes for top media outlets including CNN, Fortune, Forbes Life, MSN, USA Today, Yahoo Finance and many others. She is a regularly featured expert on TV shows including Good Morning America and The Today Show. Visit her online at http://racheletc.com or on Twitter @rachelcw Write to her with your burning style questions at mintstylerachel@gmail.com

Here are some great tips from home stagers and curb appeal experts on how to best showcase your home’s first impression.

Walk to the curb

The first order of business: walk to the curb or street and look at your home from the road.

This will probably be the buyers’ or the buyer agent’s first, real-live impression of your house. Take the time to review the way your front yard looks. Does the front door look fresh and inviting? Is the landing or porch neat and tidy? These are the details that can make a huge difference for that ever-important first impression.

And if you sense something’s off, clip home improvement ideas from books, magazines or professionals who can really help you maximize the appeal of your home and get it ready for the market!

One professional, Michelle Molinari, has the perfect way to consistently spruce up exteriors of listings. She adds flowering white flowers to yards in Louisiana because they “always look great on photos,” she said.

Molinari also recommends a layer of mulch to finish out garden spaces and — a fun little tip — she suggests coordinating the mulch color with the roof color. The match will make the entire front appear more complimentary to the eye.

In lieu of green grass in the U.S. Southwest, xeriscaping is used because of the way this water-conserving method makes use of natural landscape items like rocks and desert-friendly plants.

The money shot: Your front door

One big item: Don’t forget the front door!

Some home stagers recommend using the same exterior color for the front door, but I prefer to a color to complement exterior house colors. For instance, a Tudor-style house with cream walls and grey trim would be great with a hydrangea blue on the door. A gray wall Colonial with white trim would look stunning with a black door. Most of the paint manufacturers have suggested exterior combinations (walls, trim and doors) to help sellers determine which color works well with the exterior paint colors and style of their house.

In addition to the front door, potted plants and tables and chairs are great additions for a front porch. For the smaller landing, Karen Eubank of Eubank Staging in Dallas, Texas suggests a pot of rosemary by the front door. What a great way to have potential buyers enter your home after taking a nice whiff of rosemary at the door, signaling their welcome.

Numbers add a punch

Last, but not least, don’t neglect the house numbers or lighting. House numbers are best seen with dark numbers on a light background and are very important when selling! Ensure there is enough light to read them comfortably from the road. And if the front of the house is hard to see from the road, place another set of numbers closer to the road so buyers don’t miss the house!

Hopefully all of these tips will help your home make a great first impression!

 ”Tips to Enhance Your Curb Appeal” was originally run as “Make Sure Your House is Appealing from the Curb” and was provided by Zillow.com. 

Most recently, there was the story of the tow truck driver posing as a Good Samaritan in Miami. William Lopez reportedly came to the rescue of stranded drivers and then charged them $900 to tow and store their car for one day. (The flat rate in South Beach is $250.)

Motorists believed they were in no position to turn Lopez down, and he probably knew it. It wasn’t until long after he swooped in with his tow truck that they realized they’d been had.

A significant percentage of the shady deals out there are perpetrated under pressure. How do you make sure you’re not the next victim of an unscrupulous tow truck – or worse?

Pay attention.

The tow truck victims failed to notice that Lopez hadn’t been sent by their automobile club. (Normally, a tow service for AAA will have a logo on its trucks.) But other victims of this type of “gotcha” also fall for it because they don’t pay attention, failing to read contracts or even look at the service provider. A good number of the consumer problems I deal with every day could be avoided by simply reading the terms and conditions on an invoice. Sometimes, it’s as simple as looking at the final price you’ve agreed to.

If you’re not sure, ask.

One popular money trap I deal with is hotel resort fees. Clever property managers think they can get away with these exorbitant extras (anywhere between $10 and $30 per day added to your bill) by disclosing them, and often not too prominently. Guests don’t realize they’re on the hook for this mandatory fee until they check out. But then they recall the fine print under their bill and the little sign that greeted them when they checked in. Had they asked about the fee then, all of this might have been avoided. I’ll have more on that in a moment.

Negotiate.

Knowing how much a business will charge you for a product is, of course, the first step to making sure you’re not overcharged. The second step is negotiation. Had the motorists known about the $900 charge, or the hotel guests been aware of the $30 resort fee, could they have persuaded the business to lower its rate? I’ve seen businesses lower or eliminate unjust fees in order to keep a customer, and I suspect that refusing to pay the going rate before you agree to a service, would yield a different result.

Turn them down.

When you’re dealing with an unethical business that tries to stick you with a fee when you can least afford to pay it, you’ll always want to keep your options open. Should the negotiation fail, you’ll want to walk away. Call another tow truck, stay in another hotel, use another real estate agent – but whatever you do, say “no.” The unscrupulous business won’t expect it, because they’ve carefully laid a trap and think you have no choice. But you do have a choice. Now take out your phone, because you’re going to need it.

Report them.

If you ever stumble across one of these companies – and I sincerely hope you don’t – you owe it to the rest of us to report them. Call your local, state or federal authorities and tell them what happened to you. Otherwise, the scam will continue, and many more people will get hurt. You don’t want that on your conscience.

Money traps like this are almost always perpetrated by the most unethical and corrupt companies. Not only do they not deserve your business – they probably also deserve to be put out of business.

Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate who blogs about getting better customer service at On Your Side. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook or send him your questions by email.

1. Where have you been all my life, dishwasher quick cycle? I have no idea why I’ve ignored you until now, but your ability to produce hot and steamy dishes in 38-minutes is a major turn on. Sayonara 1:54-minute regular cycle. Mama’s got a move on!

2. I’ll admit I’m showering less frequently now that my baby leaves me with scant personal time. (Read: none.) But it’s also a great money saver! In a pinch, I wipe down with a wet hand towel.

3. A secret of professional housecleaners is to skip any work a machine can do. I now let my dishwasher wash – gasp – our big knives. How can something so wrong feel so right?!

4. If it’s yellow, let it mellow. Even my husband is getting on board with infrequent flushing now that he’s seen how high our water bill can go. Every drop counts!

5. Mulch is super cheap – about $2.50 for two cubic feet – and helps soil retain moisture in your soil. If you layer it on three inches thick, weeds are less likely to grow. Double win!

6. When I do shower, I skip washing my whole head of hair to save time. Instead I wash the crown of my head, which gets the dirtiest. This way I only do a full wash, which requires more time and water, once a week.

7. I’m not a fan of 2-in-1 shampoo conditioner concoctions, but soaping up and rinsing once does save time. And water.

8. Putting dishes into the dishwasher dirty, instead of pre-rinsing, saves us a few gallons. It also makes me hate cleaning the kitchen a little less.

9. Cold showers are my favorite way to cool off in the summer, but they also mean I get in and out in under two minutes.

10. We only grow edibles, which means every drop of water we pour into our garden eventually comes back as food. Unless the bugs or mildew or fungus or caterpillars get there first. Grrrrr. 

11. A rain barrel has the potential to feed our entire kitchen garden, but the upfront investment, about $100 for a 50-gallon barrel, has me balking. With every 1,000 gallons of water costing me $6.43, this barrel will pay off after 311 full uses. It’s not exactly the quickest payoff. If your rates are higher, your payoff will come sooner.

12. When the baby was first born, we were careful to wash her cloth diapers separately. But that meant two additional loads of laundry every day! So, we added in her onesies, blankets and teeny tiny socks. It cuts our laundry in half and everything comes out just as clean.

13. Drought-resistant plants are a no-brainer, especially if you live in a dry climate. Rosemary and thyme are two of my favorites because they are edible, too!

14. If you don’t want to spend a drop on your lawn or garden, patches of red and white stones are an option. Perhaps a slightly embarrassing option, but an option nonetheless.

Julia Scott founded the money-saving blog, BargainBabe.com.

It’s possible to prepare every course on the grill, from salad to dessert, for very little cash. That’s true even if you want something more interesting than grilled burgers and hot dogs. We asked bloggers, chefs and other experts to share some of their best cheap, grill-worthy fare. (Add your own recipes in the comments!)

Here are eight that could be a good fit for your holiday weekend repertoire:

Mustard and Pistachio-Crusted Pork Chops

“Spicy mustard and salty pistachios make for an irresistible combo,” says Richard Wachtel of GrillingWithRich.com. The crucial first step: an overnight brine before coating the chops.

Toasted Coconut S’mores

Sure, you could use the heat of the grill to toast marshmallows for standard s’mores, but Robyn Medlin of  GrillGrrrl.com has a version that’s less messy and more gourmet, incorporating ginger snaps and shredded coconut.

Coca-Cola Chicken

Even same-old, same-old chicken gets a gourmet take with this inexpensive marinade, made from cola soda, kosher salt and a few other items you probably already have on hand.

Grilled Hanger Steak with Bacon Chimichurri

Bacon fans will be pleased to know their favorite food can be used to enliven grilled meats, too. Chef E. Michael Reidt of Area 31 in Miami uses it in a version of tangy chimichurri sauce. “All told, the dish costs $5.85 per person,” he says.

To make it: In a large, shallow dish, combine two smashed cloves garlic, one chopped sprig of thyme, half a chopped sprig of rosemary, a quarter-cup dry red wine, half a chopped red onion and a half-tablespoon olive oil. Add two hanger steaks and turn to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least four hours.

In a food processor, pulse one clove garlic, two tablespoons each of parsley and oregano, two tablespoons rice vinegar, the juice of half a lemon and a quarter-cup olive oil until the herbs are pureed. Scrape into a bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste.

In a large skillet, cook a quarter-pound bacon 
over moderate heat until crisp. Drain on paper towels and let cool, and then finely chop. Pour all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat from the skillet. Scrape the marinade off the steaks, season them with salt and pepper to taste and grill until charred all over. Transfer to a cutting board and let rest for five minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the bacon fat in the skillet. Add the herb sauce and simmer over high heat. Remove from the heat and stir in the bacon to serve.

Grilled Bananas

It doesn’t get much cheaper than this grilled banana recipe from Medlin. All you’ll need is bananas, a sprinkling of brown sugar and cinnamon, and maybe some whipped cream.

Onion Packets

Clara Silverstein, author of “A White House Garden Cookbook,” says this recipe — originally from Tiger Post Community Education Center
in Ipswich, S.D. — “is one of the easiest things to throw on the grill.”

To make, you’ll need an onion, a tablespoon butter and a tablespoon (or cube) of bouillon for each person. Peel the onion and cut off the root end and the top. Use a 
sharp knife to make a small hole in the top of the onion, big enough to fit the bouillon inside, with the piece of butter on top of it.

Place each onion on its own sheet of aluminum foil. Pull up the sides of 
the foil to make a package, scrunching it closed at the top. Place on 
the top rack of a grill for 45 minutes to an hour, until the onion is soft and juicy. Put 
the foil package into a small bowl and let it 
cool for five minutes before unwrapping. Pour any juice from the packet over the 
top of the onion and serve.

Smoky Salmon Kebabs

In January, we pegged this recipe as cheap, healthy fare that might help you stick to a New Year’s resolution. Even if your lose-weight, get-healthy goal has fallen by the wayside, this dish is worth reviving.

Lemon Asparagus

At 50 cents per serving, this veggie dish – cooked in a foil pouch — is both gourmet and cheap. Another take: ditch the foil, coat the asparagus in a mixture of olive oil, sugar and salt, and use the grill to caramelize the spears.

Frugal Foodie is a journalist based in New York City who spends her days writing about personal finance and obsessing about what she’ll have for dinner. Chat with her on Twitter through @MintFoodie.

Want to see how you’ve performed against your budget? No problem – our budgeting feature allows you to track your budget habits over the past six months – from anywhere. Plus, create and edit budgets directly on your mobile device. Now, you can decide whether a new purchase will set your budget off track, while you’re still in the store.

Did you just go on a big shopping trip to the local mega-mart? No worries – these new features allow you to split that transaction, so you can clearly see how much was spent on what – all from the palm of your hand. Slick new touch mechanics allow you to fine-tune your budget incrementally.

These two new features are just the latest for our award-winning apps. Amongst the many features you can also count on are:

• Organize all your accounts in one place. One tap delivers a complete overview of your finances.
• Interact with your data. Pinch, tap and flick through your graphs to drill into spending by category, merchant or budget.
• Get personalized updates. New streaming delivery of account alerts, bill reminders and personalized advice helps you make smart financial decisions.
• Sync automatically across platforms. Changes to one platform – on the Web, smart phone or iPad – automatically sync on all devices.
• Track cash spending on the go: The app’s geo-location capabilities help you cleanly and immediately categorize cash spending. That means no spending goes unaccounted for in your budgets.
• Review finances without an internet connection. Storing data from the latest download allows easier viewing of finances, anytime, anywhere.

Plus, you can always count on Mint’s bank-level security, including  an application-level passcode, read-only account access and the ability to disable access from mobile devices to account information at any time from the Mint.com website.

New and existing users can download the updated Mint.com iOS App free from the App Store.

There are many more notable achievements:  the talent and practice it takes to win American Idol, Lance Armstrong and his many wins of the Tour de France, a successful presidential race or, on a more personal level, someone who overcomes addiction.

Financially speaking, we might consider the person who just paid off all their debt, a fully-funded emergency savings account, a retirement to go and fulfill a dream, and perhaps even the start of a small business. Yes, those are all notable and tremendous achievements!

We Didn’t Have a Goal

Achievements are driven by goals and goals aren’t exactly a new topic of conversation. We all can recognize that some of us are goal-oriented and others are not.  Personally, I’m naturally a goal-oriented person. I find setting goals is a good way to motivate myself.

Am I always good about setting and sticking to those goals? No, not always but who is perfect, anyway?

In fact, a few weeks ago my wife and I were having a discussion about our finances. As we reviewed our savings balance and began discussing the important need to begin setting aside money for our children’s college funds, she caught me off guard with a simple question, “What’s our financial goal this year?”

This should have been an easy answer for a goal-minded person, but it wasn’t. We’re generally on the same page with our finances, by setting a goal at the beginning of the year and having regular conversations about money, but we obviously hadn’t discussed our financial goal or primary focus this year.

Sometimes You have to Refocus

So we decided to take a step back and look closer at the one thing we knew we needed to focus on this year: building back our emergency savings. We used a lot of it at the end of last year because of a bit of a crisis. Perhaps we were shell-shocked heading into the New Year, so we never really discussed the importance of building up our savings up again.

In fact, I wrongly took matters into my own hands out of frustration and just dumped all our extra money into my 401k. That’s not exactly a bad move, but it didn’t involve my wife in the discussion and it’s more important for us to have some short-term savings. Now our new savings goal provides us something to focus on, get excited about, and work together towards, which will be a great achievement our family!

You don’t have to be Goal-Oreinted to Succeed

Truthfully, the person who isn’t goal-oriented still has goals. There are unconscious goals we set for ourselves everyday such as simply getting to work or meeting a deadline for a project. There are family goals, exercise goals, dietary goals, and so on.

We probably all have financial goals but don’t take the time to recognize them and dedicate thought and action towards achieving them. The one thing I’ve learned about setting goals is they don’t have to be complicated and you really shouldn’t have more than 1 or 2 at a time.

This is especially true when it comes to your finances. Personally, my wife and I have found ourselves trying to accomplish so many goals at once, that to we end up not making progress on any of them. The idea behind making one goal at a time is to focus your intensity in one area. Achieve the goal, celebrate, and then move on to the next one.

That’s what we hope to do with our savings goal. You don’t have to be a goal expert to set a personal finance goal. You don’t even really have to be a naturally goal-oriented person. Just pick the next important thing you feel like you need to achieve with your finances (with some guidance) and focus on it without letting anything else distract you.

Mint Can Help

If accountability is a challenge, I think Mint.com has a handy goal feature that helps you set specific goals and follow them. Mint even gives you ideas on how to get started paying off credit card debt, saving for an emergency, or even buying a home. You can pick your goal and follow Mint’s simple instructions to start tracking your progress. Achieving your next personal finance goal becomes a lot easier with a tool in place to keep you motivated and hold you accountable.

I’m thankful my wife put me on the spot with her question. While she asked it out of curiosity because she wants us to make progress along our financial journey together, it ended up helping us surface our financial goal, regain focus, and build momentum to a future of financial freedom.

Jason started blogging in 2009 when he created his personal finance blog, One Money Design, to share practical financial tips and his perspective on money management with others. Since then, it has grown into a group of writers with unique personalities and a common goal of helping people make progress along their financial journeys.

Jason is an IT project manager by day, but you’ll find him blogging about personal finance and exploring web entrepreneurship late at night and the early hours of the morning. He’s also actively involved in a financial coaching ministry in his community where he shares principles of biblical stewardship and helps people learn to manage their money wisely. Jason enjoys spending time with his wonderful wife and two awesome children and lives in north Dallas.

The views set forth in this blog are the opinions of the author alone and may not represent the views of Intuit, or any firm or entity with whom he is affiliated. The data, information, and content on this blog are for information, education, and non-commercial purposes only. 

Now 23, Zac is back with How to Be Richer, Smarter, and Better-Looking Than Your Parents, an all-around personal finance book for young people. Yes, he wrote two books by age 23, and that is him on the cover, in the suit.

You have our permission to hate Zac Bissonnette just a little as long as you don’t ignore his advice, which is designed to keep you out of financial trouble when it seems like everyone (friends, retailers, banks) is scheming to get you in.

MintLife’s Matthew Amster-Burton spoke with Bissonnette about one popular flavor of trouble: credit cards.*

Do Recent College Grads Need to Build Credit?

MintLife: Say I’m just out of college, and I keep hearing from everybody that if I don’t already have a credit card, I need to get one—maybe a retail store card—and use it often in order to build my credit score and credit history. Do you agree?

Bissonnette: Just about the only good thing you can do with a good credit score is buy a house. It can help you get a rental property, but usually they’re not focused on the score; they’re focused on the report. And that’s really a huge distinction. The problems people run into with credit have to do with having bad credit: defaults, delinquencies, too much outstanding debt, repossessions, bankruptcies, liens, that kind of thing. The impact that having a limited credit history will have on your life is much more minimal.

Think about it. I saw someone on one of these morning shows the other day saying, “You won’t be able to rent an apartment if you don’t get a card and start to build your credit.” If that were true, you’d have this huge underclass of homeless people with lots of money but no credit. And that underclass doesn’t exist. If you have a limited credit history, there’s ways around it. You can get letters from a pastor or a rabbi or a teacher to make up for that.

And it’s not such a long process to get a good credit score. Especially, if you’re a first-time homebuyer, to get an FHA loan, which are often the best loans for first-time buyers, the credit score requirements are not as low as they once were, but they’re still pretty minimal.

The Odds Are Not in Your Favor

MintLife: In the book, you say, “Conventional wisdom holds that credit cards are great as long as you pay your balance in full each month. It’s free money.” This is probably the most common argument in favor of not only carrying plastic, but using it every day. If you play by the rules, if you’re a responsible user of credit, it’s not going to cost you a dime, and you’re going to rack up rewards in the form of points, miles, cash back, and it’s silly to pass that up.

Bissonnette: I think you’ve used the line, “You are playing a game with people who know the odds better than you do.” And one of my concerns with credit card rewards is that I think it appeals to this kind of life-hacking testosterone-fueled thing: beat the system, and be smart, and be clever. Absolutely, someone as smart and on top of it as Ramit Sethi can do well with credit card rewards.

As general personal finance advice, however, most people will spend more money when they use rewards cards, they’ll rack up more debt when they use rewards cards. There are different studies on this, and some of them, as you’ve noted, have methodological problems with them, but I think it would be really hard to look at the preponderance of evidence and say that the cost of using a rewards card doesn’t exceed the value of the reward.

Everyone thinks they’re the statistical anomaly. Everyone thinks that these studies don’t apply to them. That’s the nature of all this behavioral stuff. It seems stupid, these studies that showed that people spend more money when a menu has no dollar symbol. And everyone’s like, I would never do that!

I think most people would be better off trying to limit their interactions with the financial services industry rather than trying to make a game out of trying to beat them. If you’re a recent college grad and your credit card issuer is spending however many hundreds of billions of dollars a year trying to kick your ass, I don’t like your chances, personally.

Credit Cards Vs. Debit Cards

MintLife: So what about fraud? Isn’t a credit card safer than a debit card?

Bissonnette: If you go on Visa or Mastercard’s website, they all say that the protections are the same if you swipe the debit card for non-PIN transactions. I hate to say it, but I think people like to worry about identity theft because it’s something that isn’t your fault. It feels a lot better to be paranoid about identity theft instead of being paranoid about your own stupidity and inability to control yourself.

The bottom line is, identity theft is not all that common. It’s not as common as just screwing up.

MintLife: It’s a super-sexy sounding topic. There’s a cloak and dagger feel to it.

Bissonnette: That’s exactly right. That’s the problem.

Don’t Get Your Ego Check at the Checkout

MintLife: Say I’ve heard all of your advice and I’m not going to take it. I’m going to use my rewards card, but I want to do it responsibly and put myself at less risk of my own misbehavior. Any tips?

Bissonnette: If you want to use your credit card for things like your gym membership and putting gas in your car, expenses that are not going to vary tremendously, then it probably won’t matter. You’re probably not going to drive more if you pay for your gas with a credit card. On the other hand, pay with cash when you’re going to be likely to impulse-spend on stuff. Ramit said, and I don’t necessarily disagree with him, if you’re making a big electronics purchase, you should put it on a credit card because of the extended warranty.

On the other hand, you also need to keep in mind that when people talk about all these perks of having a credit card, the reason they give those to you is that they’re not worth very much. Not to be a jerk, but if those perks were worth a lot, you wouldn’t get them. They give them to you because they’re sexy and they don’t get used. Very few people have ever had the warranty on their credit card ever kick in on something.

The other thing is, secured cards can build your credit just as well as regular credit cards. So if you want to use a secured card, fine.

MintLife: But secured cards have the reputation of being only for losers.

Bissonnette: I hate the whole “letting your ego get wrapped up in what sort of card you have” thing. There are so many better things to be narcissistic about. Go to the gym.

*This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Matthew Amster-Burton is a personal finance columnist at Mint.com. Find him on Twitter @Mint_Mamster.

But for now, we’ve got your best options for coverage and how to handle your medical expenses when it comes to taxes. If you’ve already tried or exhausted the usual suspects—COBRA or a spouse’s plan, try these sources:

Find a Professional Association

Many trade or professional organizations offer their members insurance at a group rate. Look into what organizations for your profession offer, or visit:

• National Association for the Self Employed (www.nase.org),
• Freelancer’s Union (http://www.freelancersunion.org/) for people in New York
• Fractured Atlas (http://www.fracturedatlas.org/) for artists and performers

Before you choose a plan, make sure it meets your individual needs. It’s often easy to choose a plan based on the premium alone, but this can be dangerous. There are at least three top things you should check out and understand before buying:

Deductible: This is how much you’ll have to pay out-of-pocket before the plan starts to cover your costs. So the lower the deductible, the better. There are a lot of high-deductible plans that look attractive because they have a low premium. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just know what your plan covers and be prepared with savings to cover your deductible if you need to.

Exclusions: This is all that fine print stuff. For example, prior authorizations, limitations on coverage, and exceptions to the rules. Let’s face it: most people aren’t going to read it all.  But you should at least understand the summary of benefits to make sure there aren’t huge holes in your coverage.

Network providers: This is important if you choose a PPO or HMO and you have specific doctors or hospitals where you get care. Make sure to check with both the plan and providers to see if they’re covered. 

If you’re really unsure, listen to what other people in the association have to say—group insight can be the most valuable!

Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan (PCIP)

Every state operates a plan specifically for people with pre-existing conditions who have been denied coverage from an insurer. To qualify, you have to have been without coverage for the last six months and have some kind of proof of denial. The rates for PCIP are generally more affordable than the individual market. Get more info or apply online [www.pcip.gov].

Become a Group

Employer groups can purchase insurance without being denied the same way an individual can. And guess what? It only takes two to be a group. So if you are working alone, and hire one employee, you can purchase a group plan. Your rates can still be very high, but you will at least have access to coverage. Visit your state’s Department of Insurance or the National Association of Insurance Commissioners [naic.org] for help setting up a group plan.

Comparison Shop

If you still can’t find coverage, visit several comparison websites for quotes. They can each give you different information, even if they work with the same carriers, so shop around. A good starting place is http://www.healthcare.gov. Then, try out:

• www.healthinsurance.org
• www.ehealthinsurance.com
• www.vimo.com
• www.healthcompare.com

And for the taxes…

If you’re self-employed, you can deduct the cost of health insurance for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents. You do not even have to itemize your expenses—the self-employed deduction is completely separate (although, you certainly can and should if your expenses are high). Keep in mind that the health plan must be under your name or your business’ name (not a spouse), and you must have made a net income that year. If you had a loss, you can’t take the deduction.

Tomer Shoval is the CEO and Co-Founder of Simplee, a free online personal health care expense management tool. Connect with him on twitter, facebook or email.