Thousands Now Survive Financial Hardship Who Never Thought They Could with a Solo 401k !

Financial Emergency!
It is unpredictable yet it happens to all of us. Whether it\'s college tuition for your daughter, unexpected medical bills from an accident in the yard, covering the higher than expected closing costs on your new home or avoiding foreclosure or eviction because spending got out of hand; you\'re going to need money fast.

As one of the requirements for the tax exempt status of your Solo 401k, distributions of funds from your Solo 401k are limited to termination of employment, retirement, disability, death, plan termination or inservice distributions after age 59.5. Severe options for those needing a temporary cash infusion.

Your Solo 401k to the Rescue.

To cover those temporary situations, the IRS allows Solo 401k\'s to provide disbursements of salary deferral contributions for financial hardships. These financial hardships must satisfy one of the following IRS preapproved conditions:

Medical bills unreimbursed by insurance

Secondary Education for yourself, spouse or dependents

Purchase of your primary residence or

Avoid foreclosure or eviction

These hardship disbursements are not considered Solo 401k distributions with the option to be rolled over to IRAs or other qualified plans. But what happens if the solo 401k financial hardship does not meet one of these criteria? The request is denied and the consequences must be endured.

The IRS recognized that there were other significant events that could qualify as financial hardship and with IRS Regulation 2004-TD-9169, the IRS added two additional circumstances to the list of approved financial hardships.

1.Funeral Expenses and
2.Cost of Uninsured Repairs on your Primary Residence.

These two new additions bring the approved circumstances to a total of six.
The changes to the safe harbor hardship rules resulting from the IRS regulations is the second set of changes to the hardship rules since GUST. The first set of changes occurred when EGTRRA reduced the holdout period for elective deferrals from 12 to 6 months. Please note that all of the changes to the hardship rules since GUST apply only to plans that use the safe harbor criteria for hardship withdrawals.
To add these two additional situations to the financial hardship provisions of your Solo 401k requires an amendment. Such an amendment should adopt the safe harbor financial regulations by reference so that any future additions are incorporated without additional amendment.

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7 Tips For Transforming Students Into Financially Responsible Adults

Yes, it is possible for your student to learn some valuable life lessons while they are away at college. Not all of them may be a possibility for your family, depending on financial ability, but it may be valuable to consider the options. Many things are possible, even though they sound out of reach.

What your student can do to learn some financial lessons:

1.Buy a house. With today's low interest rates and interest-only loans, anyone with descent credit can buy a home with no money down. Sellers can pay closing costs, usually up to 6% of the loan amount. Roommates can help to split the mortgage payment, allowing it to pay for itself. Over the four years, or so, that your student is at college, thousands of dollars will be earned in equity for them to use on the purchase of their next home. At a modest 5% annual property appreciation, a $150,000 home would be worth about $192,000 in five years, approximately the time it takes to graduate from college.

2.Open up a couple of credit cards. Good credit can be built by showing that your student knows how to manage money. By opening revolving lines of credit and paying the balances down monthly, it shows credit worthiness.

3.Open a checking account. Being able to balance a checkbook can be a difficult task for anybody. Checking accounts are also a great way to see where the money is going, and most importantly, what expenditures can be reduced, if not eliminated.

4.Pay their own tuition. Now, this doesn't have to be upfront. Loans can be taken out to pay for schooling, and almost anyone is approved. Interest and payments are deferred until usually a six month absence from school. The loans could probably be paid off with the proceeds from the sale of the home.

5.Get a job in their desired field. This mistake is made by many. Finding a job in the student's desired field may not pay the best upfront, but it will open many doors for career opportunities. A network is built and experience is gained. It's not what you know, but who you know, and this covers both.

6.Take advantage of 401k offered by employers. Many employers these days offer 401k plans to employees who work so many hours. Invest as much as possible in these plans. A couple percent may not make much difference on a paycheck, but it can make a huge difference in the growth of a fund. After five years at college, it may be possible for a student to accrue $10,000 or so.

7.Drive a beater. So many times we see students go out and buy a fancy new car that comes with a fancy new payment. Car payments can be upward of $500. Autos lose their value extremely fast and can result in negative equity faster than many other purchases. Driving a modest vehicle with a minimal or no payment will eliminate the stress of shifting funds around help to reduce other debt.

These are some simple ideas that most students are capable of handling. Lessons learned, like buying a house, will be applied countless times in a student's life, and it is better to learn them now. These teachings will help them to get ahead when they step into the workforce and family life as they look to the future.

Robb Ksiazek is a successful author and publisher for http://www.checks-4u.com. He has researched and written hundreds of articles and can simplify your online search by recommending merchants for the best value and selections in business or personal checks, address labels, rubber stamps and envelopes.

Why the Minority are Rich

Scientific Explanation of Wealth
Wealth is a very contentious subject because almost everyone has a view on it. It is an ancient question which boasts answers in almost every corner of knowledge and experience. There is the scientific explanation, the spiritual explanation, the economic explanation, the psychological explanation and the plain old weird explanation. In this article, I\'m going for the scientific explanation.

This pays no attention to who we actually are when we start out in life. It simply says that there is only a finite amount of resources in the world and the capitalist system of wealth creation functions as a hierarchy resembling a pyramid. The lower levels house the majority of people who toil day and night to support the minority levels above them.

The Pyramid Model
Consider a pyramid at the top of which sits the worlds richest man. Below him the next 100 and below them the next 400. Using a criterion of 100(n x n), where n represents the next level, we find that the people at the very bottom, some 32.5 million of them, are 570 levels below the top. If we now add the people at each level we come to 6.1 billion which is approximately the population of the world. So you see, if the pyramid is to exist we MUST have people at different levels of wealth.

Clearly it is possible to rise through the levels, as well as drop to ones below. We are all capable of going down because it is very easy. Just squander all your money, make a bad investment, give it away etc. and before you know it you are at ground level. The trick is to go up. So we inevitably ask the obvious question.

How do we go up
It\'s almost like a console game. Rising through the levels and reaching some eventual goal. I suppose if we must continue the analogy, the difficulty level we set ourselves has to be the different methods open to us and which of these we select to use. But that is for another article.

As it turns out it is perfectly possible to receive a helping hand from those above you as well as a friendly push from those around you. A combination of both will make your job easier. Examples of getting a helping hand from above are people like relatives who will lend you capital without the urgency of paying them back or even a free handout. Perhaps some kind of inheritance will help. If none of this is open to you, your job is somewhat more difficult. You need to rely on those around you who are at the same level as you and they cannot afford to give you anything substantial. So you have to create something and sell it to them as well as those above you. If you are successful, your bank balance goes up and so do you. I\'ve deliberately left out \bank borrowing\ because I believe one should avoid this method of raising capital simply because the chances are that the loan will require to be paid back before you have made enough money to pay it back.

Just thinking about it makes it obvious that if you want to go up in this world and your relatives cannot help you, not many people know you, and there is no incentive for anyone from above you to help either, you have next to no chance of ever rising above the level that you find yourself. Options like gambling and lotteries are the only possibilities left but the odds simply make these things not even worth mentioning.

The key to it is publicity. You need to do or create something, within the law, that will touch large numbers of people. It really does not matter what it is. Even if it is something as simple as helping people fill a glass of water, it can create this publicity for you or for your product. In the case of fortune through fame, you yourself are the product. I\'ll leave you to ponder this.

If you wish to read more about me or the supernatural/science-fiction novel I\'ve written, please visit my website http://www.willofdreams.com - thank you for your attention.