FAQ Edvest: How Do I Set Up Payroll Deduction for My Account?
Payroll Deduction
Simplify your life and make consistent, automatic contributions to Edvest by setting up payroll deduction.
If you leave your employer, contributions will automatically stop. You have the option to start a new payroll deduction with your new employer, if allowed, or you can choose to add contributions to your account by check, an automatic contribution plan or electronic funds transfer at any time.
PDF files require the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Get it here
Treasurer’s Top 5: Racine County
This week, we travel to Racine County. Here’s a look at the Top 5 people and businesses there with unclaimed assets. Do you see anyone on this list you know? If so, have check out www.wismissingmoney.com and search their name to make a claim. They can also call 855-375-CASH (2274)
Racine County
Murad Gengozian
Gail M Lloyd
Money Matters: Buying A Car
Buying a Car
Buying a car is like jumping into a lake. Without some planning and research into what you might encounter, you could be in too deep before you know it. But if you take the car buying process one step at a time and put some time into researching your purchase and your finances before you stop on the lot, our friends at www.practicalmoneyskills.com explain how the process is likely to go a lot more smoothly.
What Can You Afford?
Before you begin shopping for a car, it’s important to take a look at your budget and figure out how much you can afford to spend on a vehicle, without strapping yourself or cutting into your savings. If you don’t have a budget, click here for information about creating one. Can you afford $200 a month for your new vehicle? What about $300? That number will be the total amount that you can pay for the car itself and operating expenses, like gas and maintenance.Operating expenses can be about one third to one half of the monthly cost of a new car. So take the amount you’ve decided you can spend on your car each month and multiply it by .66. That is the most you should consider spending on monthly payments for the vehicle to be able to afford operating expenses as well.
The Down Payment
You’re also going to need a big chunk of change for a down payment. How much? The bigger the better. To get a loan for a car, and often for a lease, you’ll probably need to make a down payment of around 10% of the total price of the vehicle. The larger your down payment, the smaller your monthly payment will be and the less you will pay in total for the car in the long run. But make sure you don’t cripple yourself or deplete your savings account with too large a down payment. Find a comfortable balance.For help anticipating your auto loan payment or determining how much car you can afford, utilize our free financial calculators here.
Treasurer Schuller Condolences to Family of Former State GOP Chair Don Stitt
My thoughts and positive prayers are with the family and friends of Don Stitt today as we’ve learned of his passing. He served Wisconsin as the GOP Chair for years making tremendous contributions. May he rest in peace.
Treasurer Kurt Schuller
FAQ Edvest: How Can I Track Edvest Performance?
Edvest performance for the 22 investment options is available online. Go to Investment Performance.
Wisconsin Saves Fun Tip: Getting You Gas, Week 3 More GAS BUDDY
The Wisconsin Office of the State Treasurer proudly teams up with WWBIC (Wisconsin’s Womens
Business Initiative Corporation) for “Wisconsin Saves Fun Tip.”
The entire month of September, we are committed to GETTING YOU GAS FOR LESS! This week, it’s all about new technology that helps you save.
- Technology is making life easier and also helping you to save at the pump. There is a website that helps you save money when you fill up. Gas Buddy uses your location and provides local gas prices based on either lowest price or location for convenience. Never drive 20 minutes to save a few cents, but if there’s a price just down the street from your normal fill up location, take advantage of the savings. After all, many of us would complain if gas prices increased by a few cents, so why not use technology to save the same amount!
Treasurer’s Top 5: Racine County
This week, we travel to Racine County. Here’s a look at the Top 5 people and businesses there with unclaimed assets. Do you see anyone on this list you know? If so, have check out www.wismissingmoney.com and search their name to make a claim. They can also call 855-375-CASH (2274)
Racine County
Murad Gengozian
Gail M Lloyd
Money Matters: Buying A Car
Buying a Car
Buying a car is like jumping into a lake. Without some planning and research into what you might encounter, you could be in too deep before you know it. But if you take the car buying process one step at a time and put some time into researching your purchase and your finances before you stop on the lot, our friends at www.practicalmoneyskills.com explain how the process is likely to go a lot more smoothly.
What Can You Afford?
Before you begin shopping for a car, it’s important to take a look at your budget and figure out how much you can afford to spend on a vehicle, without strapping yourself or cutting into your savings. If you don’t have a budget, click here for information about creating one. Can you afford $200 a month for your new vehicle? What about $300? That number will be the total amount that you can pay for the car itself and operating expenses, like gas and maintenance.
Operating expenses can be about one third to one half of the monthly cost of a new car. So take the amount you’ve decided you can spend on your car each month and multiply it by .66. That is the most you should consider spending on monthly payments for the vehicle to be able to afford operating expenses as well.
The Down Payment
You’re also going to need a big chunk of change for a down payment. How much? The bigger the better. To get a loan for a car, and often for a lease, you’ll probably need to make a down payment of around 10% of the total price of the vehicle. The larger your down payment, the smaller your monthly payment will be and the less you will pay in total for the car in the long run. But make sure you don’t cripple yourself or deplete your savings account with too large a down payment. Find a comfortable balance.
For help anticipating your auto loan payment or determining how much car you can afford, utilize our free financial calculators here.
FAQ Unclaimed Property: Where Do I Call With Questions on Unclaimed Property?
Some of the Numbers have changed as the Unclaimed Property Program is now being adminstered by the Department of Revenue. The Office of the State Treasurer is still responsible for promoting the program and is happy to answer any questions we can for you. However, at the request of the Department of Revenue, direct lines to claims processors were removed from our website and they asks you to call and general line. That number is:
(608) 264-4594
FAQ Edvest: Who Can Open An Edvest Account?
Wisconsin Saves Fun Tip: Getting You GAS, Week 2 GAS BUDDY!
The Wisconsin Office of the State Treasurer proudly teams up with WWBIC (Wisconsin’s Womens Business Initiative Corporation) for “Wisconsin Saves Fun Tip.”
The entire month of September, we are committed to GETTING YOU GAS FOR LESS! This week, it’s all about new technology that helps you save.
- Technology is making life easier and also helping you to save at the pump. There is a website that helps you save money when you fill up. Gas Buddy uses your location and provides local gas prices based on either lowest price or location for convenience. Never drive 20 minutes to save a few cents, but if there’s a price just down the street from your normal fill up location, take advantage of the savings. After all, many of us would complain if gas prices increased by a few cents, so why not use technology to save the same amount!
Money Matters: Handling the Unexpected
Handling the Unexpected
There’s nothing harder to plan for than unexpected events that impact your life and finances. Yet loss of a job, the death of a loved one, illness or other unexpected occurrences happen at one point or another in most of our lives. The key to successfully surviving these life-changing events from a financial perspective is to anticipate hard times. Shore up your financial situation before you are hit with an unexpected expense, so you will be covered in the event something happens. Our friends at www.practicalmoneyskills.com help you map out a plan.
The Importance of an Emergency Fund
Because we cannot predict when life will throw us an unexpected challenge, it is important for everyone to build and maintain an emergency fund with three to six months’ worth of living expenses. The key to building an emergency fund is to set money aside every month, no matter how small the amount. This Emergency Fund calculator can help you get started.
Financial experts recommend that, unlike retirement funds, emergency savings should be kept fairly liquid, in a savings account or a money market fund. Hopefully you will never need it. But if you do, you’ll be glad it’s there.
A New Financial Picture
Once the immediate financial matters are taken care of after an unexpected life event, it will be time to take stock of your new financial situation and create a plan for yourself moving forward. Whether you have faced job loss, divorce, illness or another event, you should create a new budget reflecting your situation. This is the first step toward financial security and rebuilding your emergency fund, which you may have tapped into to manage a financial crisis.
To develop a budget, write down your current expenses, indicating whether each expense is a necessity or a luxury. Pulling out recent credit card bills and bank statements can help with this process. Next, estimate your monthly income, including only income that you are certain you will receive. Then compare your income to expenses. If your expenses are higher, you will need to trim your expenses until your income is higher than your expenditures.
You can learn much more about budgeting and utilize our free budgeting worksheet here
FAQ Edvest: How Can I Track Edvest Performance?
Edvest performance for the 22 investment options is available online. Go to Investment Performance.
Wisconsin Saves Fun Tip: GETTING YOU GAS, Week 1
The Wisconsin Office of the State Treasurer proudly teams up with WWBIC (Wisconsin’s Womens Business Initiative Corporation) for “Wisconsin Saves Fun Tip.”
The entire month of September, we are committed to GETTING YOU GAS FOR LESS! This week, it’s all about HOW you pay for it.
When you purchase gas this month, the right form of payment may make all the difference! Several credit cards are offering great rebates, but most are only good through the end of September. Chase Freedom and Discover Card are both offering 5% cash back while deals beyond September include American Express’ Blue Cash Preferred and Bank Americard that offer 3%. With the average gallon of gas in Wisconsin up to $3.48, every penny counts! Just remember… if you don’t normally purchase gas on credit, be sure to set aside the cash each week for the bill at the end of the month – it doesn’t become fun money!
Treasurer’s Top 5: Racine County
This week, we travel to Racine County. Here’s a look at the Top 5 people and businesses there with unclaimed assets. Do you see anyone on this list you know? If so, have check out www.wismissingmoney.com and search their name to make a claim. They can also call 855-375-CASH (2274)
Racine County
Murad Gengozian
Gail M Lloyd
Lance Clausen
Nancy Madsen
Ganton Technologies Incorporated
Money Matters: Employer Provided Benefits
Employer Provided Benefits
As we honor those who work hard on this Labor Day, we feel it’s an appropriate time to remind to make sure you’re maximizing your employee benefits. Our friends at www.practicalmoneyskills.com tell you how!
Most employers offer a host of company-sponsored benefits. Often, the combined value of these coverages is worth a third or more of your base pay. That’s too much money to leave on the table. And some employee benefits have valuable tax advantages you can’t afford to ignore.
If your employer provides a 401(k) plan or Health Care and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and you’re not participating, you could be missing out on hundreds – or thousands – of dollars in tax savings each year. That’s money that goes right into your pocket instead of Uncle Sam’s.
Here you’ll find the ins and outs of employee benefits and everything you need to maximize your job and all it has to offer.
Labor Day 2014: A Message From Treasurer Schuller
Many view Labor Day weekend as another long weekend for grilling out, boating and certainly preparing for Back-to-School. But at the Wisconsin Office of the State Treasurer, we want you to understand it means a great deal more to us. We honor all the hard working people here in Wisconsin every day, but certainly on this day of national tribute to Wisconsin workers….. American workers.
Below, I leave you with some great information from the U.S. Department of Labor Day. I wish you a safe Labor Day weekend and of course thank you for your hard work each and every day.
Sincerely,
Kurt Schuller, Wisconsin State Treasurer
//
$(document).ready(function($){
$(‘.megamenu’).megaMenuCompleteSet({
menu_speed_show : 300, // Time (in milliseconds) to show a drop down
menu_speed_hide : 200, // Time (in milliseconds) to hide a drop down
menu_speed_delay : 200, // Time (in milliseconds) before showing a drop down
menu_effect : ‘open_close_fade’, // Drop down effect, choose between ‘hover_fade’, ‘hover_slide’, ‘open_close_fade’ etc.
menu_click_outside : 1, // Clicks outside the drop down close it (1 = true, 0 = false)
menu_show_onload : 0, // Drop down to show on page load (type the number of the drop down, 0 for none)
menu_responsive:1 // 1 = Responsive, 0 = Not responsive
});
});
// ]]>// // //
Labor Day: What it Means
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From these, a movement developed to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
Founder of Labor Day
 |
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
A Nationwide Holiday
 |
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
Check out these related stories
- DOL’s Historian on the History of Labor Day
- Labor Daze — Pride, Chaos and Kegs on Labor’s First ‘Day’
- Rosie: By Any Other Name — The Riveting True Story of the Labor Icon
<!–
–>
Wisconsin State Treasury 
You must be logged in to post a comment.