http://www.finhelp.net Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:33:47 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en To qulify for social security benefits you need to earn social security credits. You earn these credits over the years when you work in a job and pay social security taxes. You will earn the credits based on the amount of your earnings for the year that you worked. Social Security Administration ... http://www.finhelp.net/2008/12/27/earning-social-security-credits/ You can combine several of your student or parent loans into a single student loan debt consolidation. You can consolidate your federal student loans too, but make sure that you do not consolidate both your federal student loans and private student loans into a single student loan debt consolidation program. ... http://www.finhelp.net/2008/10/22/the-basics-of-student-loan-debt-consolidation/ Social security is calculated based on your income during the 35 years period in which you earned the most. Your earnings will be indexed to account for changes in the average wages since the year in which you earned the money. Then SSA(Social security administration) will use a predefined formula to ... http://www.finhelp.net/2008/07/11/how-does-the-social-security-benefit-is-calculated/ Standard & Poor's 500 index is a stock index that tracks 500 large cap stocks (mostly U.S Companies). The S&P is commonly used to measure the stock market performance. http://www.finhelp.net/2008/07/11/sp-500-index/ Normal retirement age is the age you must reach to qualify for your full social secuirty benefits. This is also called as "full retirement age". Your monthly benefit amount will be reduced if you start collecting benefits before reaching your full retirement age. http://www.finhelp.net/2008/07/11/normal-retirement-age/ Market timing is an investment strategy that attempts to highlight when the stock market is on the verge of moving lower or higher. http://www.finhelp.net/2008/07/11/market-timing/ There are some penalties if you withdraw money from your retirement savings plans before you reach the eligibility criteria. Withdrawls taken from most of the employer sponsored retirement savings plans taken before age 59 1/2. Ofcourse there are some exceptions  like hardship withdrawls and loans from 401(k) plans, that are fully ... http://www.finhelp.net/2008/07/11/early-withdrawl-penalties/ Most of the people will hold more than one debt. For example you may have high interest credit cards, loans and mortgages. So, to pay off one debt you may need to borrow from someone else, and eventually creating yet another debt. One of the solutions to this problem is ... http://www.finhelp.net/2008/06/16/debt-consolidation-loan-better-explained/ It would be a common question for people who are first time contributors to 401k and for people who are already contributing to their 401k retirement plan. withdrawing money from a 401k during the early stages of contribution is not wise decision, but there would be some circumastances you would ... http://www.finhelp.net/2008/05/05/withdraw-from-401k/ Rolling your 401k to roth IRA will result in a taxation at the current tax rate. Instead it would be beneficial if you convert your 401k to a traditional IRA. If you wanted to roll your 401k to a roth ira the best route would be to convert the 401k into ... http://www.finhelp.net/2008/05/05/401k-to-roth-ira/