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For many people, the terms charity and deduction are practically synonymous. But if you’re giving to a charity to save money, you’re giving for the wrong reason. You haven’t saved money, you’ve just basically un-earned it from a tax perspective.

Usually Mondays here at MomVesting are reserved for financial definitions, but I have been meaning to share my first foray into the stock market with readers for a while. So I hope you don’t mind if I steal the limelight from our definitions series to take you on a journey through investments.

Ah, yes, summer is fast approaching. For my part of Western New York, this means two things: tons of roadwork and a festival/carnival/fair pretty much every weekend. You'd be hard-pressed to find a pair of kids who love fairs and their accompanying midway rides any more than my two. And a few years ago, when their ride-obsession started, you'd be just as hard-pressed to find a family wallet flatter than ours.

As my girls' school year winds down for the summer, I began to think of ways to challenge them during the summer months, and I developed a program I call “The Summer Challenge.” You see, I’ve noticed in the past that it's too easy to go from a year of school and scheduled activities into full-blown lazy summer mode. While I do believe there is definitely room for some well-earned relaxed, do-nothing days (it is summer, after all!), I also think summer can be an opportunity for moms to invest in their children and families.

I love my husband’s family. Honestly! They are all kind, fun, caring people who I am very happy to now call “My Family.” I know, I know; I am one of the lucky ones, and I count my blessings every day. That being said, however, in-law vacations can still be taxing, especially when it comes to money issues. Let’s look at some ways to handle your cash during in-law family vacations.

Pick Up the Tab

When you truly decide to work from home, you’ll find that many opportunities abound online. However, working online can be scary at first, because you don’t really know who’s on the other side of that monitor. Are they a legit customer or someone trying to get just enough information from you to steal your identity — or worse? Well that mystery goes two ways.

Upon first glance at the term "fractional shares," you may think it has something to do with the universal sharing phase of children. You know, the phase when they will only share some of the time (or "fractionally").

While this is true in the world of moms, though, fractional shares actually have an entirely different meaning in the world of finance. Let's take a gander at this term.

According to Webster . . .

Here on MomVesting, you’ll find that along with investing our money, we often explore the topic of investing in self. Well, this Friday evening I spent half of my day punching holes in my magazines. I haven’t decided if this was a good investment of my time yet or not.

Emotional baggage seems to come with the territory of relationships. Many people define their newest life and love by their past, and this can often reach into the financial realm of budding romance. This was the case recently for one of my friends.

My Friend's Baggage

Recently, my friend invited my husband and me to dinner. We all sat around the table sharing laughs and generally having a blast. Then her boyfriend left the room, and things turned instantly sober.

We here at MomVesting continue our west-to-east overview of all fifty states' 529 plans. We last focused on the West Coast of this great nation, and this week's plan was to look at the entire Southwest. However, Arizona is a fabulous state with some fabulous (and lenghty) 529 perks, so we'll take a detour to look at Arizona on it's own today and continue our journey to the other states in a few weeks. So here's the lowdown on Arizona.

Arizona College Savings Plans