Benefits of a 529 plan

A 529 plan gives consumers a tax-advantaged way to pay for education, and that’s a boon for parents and other family members who want to save for a child’s schooling. A 529 plan offers several other benefits, including the ability to invest with potentially high-return assetss such as stock funds, instead of being limited to low-return bank accounts.

Among other things, “these plans can be used as estate planning tools by grandparents to help their grandchildren save for college, or by a family to create a relatively flexible education fund that can span multiple children with proper planning,” says Bill Van Sant, CFP, senior vice president at Girard, a wealth management firm in the Philadelphia area.

1. Tax-free growth for education
A 529 plan gives you a tax-advantaged way to save for education. You can stash money on an after-tax basis and then grow it tax-free. When you withdraw the money for qualified educational expenses, you won’t pay any taxes on the gains, either. But you’ll have to be careful to use the money exclusively for the items that meet the plan’s rules – otherwise you’ll pay penalties.

2. Potentially high-return investment options
Depending on which plan you choose – each state has its own options – you can invest in stock funds and other market-based investments. That gives you the ability to earn outsize returns on your contributions and the potential to beat the galloping cost of college.

3. Potential tax breaks for contributions
If you invest through a 529 plan, you may even be able to get a tax deduction on your state income taxes. Not all states offer a tax break on your contributions, however, and you won’t get a tax benefit in a state where you don’t pay taxes. So, choose carefully.

4. Two 529 plan types
An education savings plan that allows you to open an investment account that can be used for future education expenses, including tuition, room and board, books and other costs specifically related to the educational program.

A prepaid tuition program allows you to buy future college credits at current prices, though they’re available only at participating institutions and are not available for primary and secondary schools.

5. The beneficiary can be changed
A 529 plan gives you a lot of flexibility about who can use the plan and when, says Van Sant.
“Parents can change the beneficiaries on a 529 plan in case the originally designated child chooses not to go to college,” he says.
But you can also use the same 529 plan for multiple children. For example, if your children don’t attend college at the same time, then the beneficiary can be changed after the first child graduates and the plan can be used for the second child. However, it probably makes more sense to simply establish a 529 plan for each child.
You’re under no obligation to close the account once a child graduates or opts out of college.
“529 plans can hold assetss indefinitely as long as a living beneficiary is listed,” says Van Sant. “This means that an original beneficiary could change their mind and go back to school later in life, or they could have their own children and name those children as the new beneficiaries of the plan.”
But you could even name yourself as the beneficiary and use the funds if you go back to school.



How to start investing in cryptocurrency: A guide for beginners

5 steps for investing in cryptocurrency

First things first, if you’re looking to invest in crypto, you need to have all your finances in order. That means having an emergency fund in place, a manageable level of debt and ideally a diversified portfolio of investments. Your crypto investments can become one more part of your portfolio, one that helps raise your total returns, hopefully.

Pay attention to these five other things as you’re starting to invest in cryptocurrencies.

1. Understand what you’re investing in
As you would for any investment, understand exactly what you’re investing in. If you’re buying stocks, it’s important to read the annual report and other SEC filings to analyze the companies thoroughly. Plan to do the same with any cryptocurrencies, since there are literally thousands of them, they all function differently and new ones are being created every day. You need to understand the investment case for each trade.
In the case of many cryptocurrencies, they’re backed by nothing at all, neither hard assetss nor cash flow. That’s the case for Bitcoin, for example, where investors rely exclusively on someone paying more for the asset than they paid for it. In other words, unlike stock, where a company can grow its profits and drive returns for you that way, many crypto assetss must rely on the market becoming more optimistic and bullish for you to profit.
Some of the most popular coins include Ethereum, Dogecoin, Cardano and XRP. So before investing, understand the potential upside and downside. If your financial investment is not backed by an asset or cash flow, it could end up being worth nothing.

2. Remember, the past is past
A mistake that many new investors make is looking at the past and extrapolating that to the future. Yes, Bitcoin used to be worth pennies, but now is worth much more. The key question, however, is “Will that growth continue into the future, even if it’s not at quite that meteoric rate?”
Investors look to the future, not to what an asset has done in the past. What will drive future returns? Traders buying a cryptocurrency today need tomorrow’s gains, not yesterday’s.

3. Watch that volatility
The prices of cryptocurrencies are about as volatile as an asset can get. They could drop quickly in seconds on nothing more than a rumor that ends up proving baseless. That can be great for sophisticated investors who can execute trades rapidly or who have a solid grasp on the market’s fundamentals, how the market is trending and where it could go. For new investors without these skills – or the high-powered algorithms that direct these trades – it’s a minefield.
Volatility is a game for high-powered Wall Street traders, each of whom is trying to outgun other deep-pocketed investors. A new inves
That’s because volatility shakes out traders, especially beginners, who get scared. Meanwhile, other traders may step in and buy on the cheap. In short, volatility can help sophisticated traders “buy low and sell high” while inexperienced investors “buy high and sell low.”

4. Manage your risk
If you’re trading any asset on a short-term basis, you need to manage your risk, and that can be especially true with volatile assetss such as cryptocurrency. So as a newer trader, you’ll need to understand how best to manage risk and develop a process that helps you mitigate losses. And that process can vary from individual to individual:
Risk management for a long-term investor might simply be never selling, regardless of the price. The long-term mentality allows the investor to stick with the position.
Risk management for a short-term trader, however, might be setting strict rules on when to sell, such as when an investment has fallen 10 percent. The trader then strictly follows the rule so that a relatively small decline doesn’t become a crushing loss later.
Newer traders should consider setting aside a certain amount of trading money and then using only a portion of it, at least at first. If a position moves against them, they’ll still have money in reserve to trade with later. The ultimate point is that you can’t trade if you don’t have any money. So keeping some money in reserve means you’ll always have a bankroll to fund your trading.
It’s important to manage risk, but that will come at an emotional cost. Selling a losing position hurts, but doing so can help you avoid worse losses later.

5. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose
Finally, it’s important to avoid putting money that you need into speculative assetss. If you can’t afford to lose it – all of it – you can’t afford to put it into risky assetss such as cryptocurrency, or other speculative assetss, for that matter.
Whether it’s a down payment for a house or an important upcoming purchase, money that you need in the next few years should be kept in safe accounts so that it’s there when you need it. And if you’re looking for an absolutely sure return, your best option is to pay off debt. You’re guaranteed to earn (or save) whatever interest rate you’re paying on the debt. You can’t lose there.
Finally, don’t overlook the security of any exchange or broker you’re using. You may own the assetss legally, but someone still has to secure them, and their security needs to be tight. If they don’t think their cryptocurrency is properly secured, some traders choose to invest in a crypto wallet to hold their coins offline so they’re inaccessible to hackers or others.



What Is Cryptocurrency?

How cryptocurrency works

Cryptocurrencies are produced, tracked and managed through what’s called a distributed ledger such as blockchain. In a distributed ledger, the currency’s movement is processed by computers in a decentralized network, to ensure the integrity of the financial data and ownership of the cryptocurrency. Think of it like a giant never-ending receipt of all the system’s transactions that is being constantly verified by everyone who can see the receipt.

This decentralized system is typical of many cryptocurrencies, which eschew a central authority. That’s part of the appeal of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin – it keeps governments and central banks out of the currency system, reducing their interference and political maneuvering.

To this end, in some cryptocurrencies, the number of units of currency is limited. In the case of Bitcoin, the system is organized so that no more than 21 million bitcoins can be issued.

But how exactly does cryptocurrency come to exist? One key way is through what’s called mining, to use a metaphor related to the old monetary system based on gold or silver. Powerful computers, often known as miners, perform calculations and process transactions on the ledger. By doing so, they earn a unit of the currency, or at least a part of a unit. It requires a lot of expensive processing power and often a lot of electricity to perform these calculations.

Owners of the currency may store it in a cryptocurrency wallet, a computer app that allows them to spend or receive the currency. To make a transaction, users need a “key,” which allows them to write in the public ledger, noting the transfer of the money. This key may be tied to a specific person, but that person’s name is not immediately tied to the transaction.

So part of the appeal of cryptocurrency for many is that it can be used somewhat anonymously.

There’s literally no limit to the number of cryptocurrencies that could be created. The range of them is astonishing, and literally thousands of currencies popped up in the last few years, especially after Bitcoin soared into mainstream popularity in 2017. Some of the most popular cryptos include Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Tether and XRP.

What are the largest cryptocurrencies?
The size of a cryptocurrency depends on two factors: how many coins are in existence and the price of those coins. Multiply these two numbers together and you get the currency’s market capitalization, or the total value of all those coins. So when experts talk about the largest cryptocurrencies, this is the figure they’re referring to – not the price of an individual coin.

Here are the top cryptocurrencies and their approximate market cap, according to CoinMarketCap, as of April 2023:
1. Bitcoin – $566 billion
2. Ethereum – $236 billion
3. Tether – $81 billion
4. BNB – $51 billion
5. USD Coin – $31 billion
6. XRP – $26 billion
7. Cardano – $15 billion
8. Dogecoin – $12 billion
9. Polygon – $10 billion
10. Solana – $9 billion
Given the volatility in cryptocurrencies, these numbers can fluctuate a lot even in a short period of time.

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What Is A Business Technology Roadmap?

Unlike detailed blueprints that lay out all tasks, deadlines, bug reports, and more along the way, technology roadmaps are high-level visual summaries highlighting a company’s vision or plans.

In an Agile approach, a technology roadmap feeds the sprint and grooming processes, providing insight into how the product will travel from start to finish. It makes it easier for development teams to:

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  • Kristin Watson
    19th August 2022

    Patient Comments are a collection of comments submitted by viewers in response to a question posed by a MedicineNet doctor.

    • Brooklyn Simmons
      19th August 2022

      Include anecdotal examples of your experience, or things you took notice of that you feel others would find useful.

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