While I would like to believe that the majority of the people in this country are actively planning and saving for their retirement years, unfortunately the numbers tell a different story.

Whether you find yourself in the group that has a solid plan in place for your retirement years or the group that is scratching their head wondering why you need to save anything when you have Social Security – or maybe somewhere in between – NewRetirement.com is a site dedicated to helping you find the information you need to plan for a secure retirement.

There are two key areas of the site that will likely be the area that you spend the most time – Retirement Planning Information and Retirement Calculator.

Retirement Planning Information
The Retirement Planning Information section contains a long list of topics that will be relevant to many people that are attempting to get a grasp on their retirement.

The type of information that you will find in this area includes information on reverse mortgages, annuities, debt consolidation, retirement risks, and more. The information appears to be well-balanced overall and provides both the pros and cons of certain retirement strategies. However, there are some topics that could use a little more discussion on the negative side such as annuities – which are rarely the best option for many people.

There is plenty of information to keep you busy reading for quite some time.

Retirement Calculator
One of the prominent features that you will see as you first visit the site is the free retirement calculator that is offered.

The calculator is intended to give you an idea of how long your money will last in retirement.

It only takes a few minutes to enter the required data, although it might take a little longer depending on how familiar you are with your current savings and income expectations.

There is a handy graph that will update as you enter your information that displays how long your retirement funds will last.

The type of information that you will be asked to enter includes your birth date and expected retirement age, current income and expenses, estimated retirement income, assets and debts.

For your current retirement assets, the calculator uses an assumption that your assets will grow at a rate of 5% per year – including the value of your house – from now through your retirement. There is much debate on whether you should use the value of your home in your retirement planning and it might be too aggressive to assume your property will appreciate at a rate of 5% every year.

Once you enter all of the information, you will see the updated graph as well as a handful of suggestions on additional steps that you can take to secure your retirement.

While completing the calculator for my own planning, I used very little in terms of estimated retirement income as there is no guarantee that social security will provide anything and the likelihood of having a pension are very slim. Therefore the calculator indicated that the retirement expenses were far too high for my retirement income – as my retirement plan relies solely on my savings.

The calculator can be a very handy tool if you do not currently have a clear picture of your retirement or if you would like to examine how various changes can impact the security of your retirement years.

Areas For Improvement
As beneficial as the Retirement Planning Information and the Retirement Calculator can be in your retirement planning, the Answers and Retirement News sections are lacking real substance.

The idea behind Answers – where you can ask a question for your peers and experts to answer – is quite solid, but it falls short due to a lack of participation. There are quite a few questions without any answers at all and many sections haven’t had any interaction for months. The lack of activity is a little disappointing and will likely result in many people passing right by – which it seems is what most people have been doing.

The Retirement News section provides a variety of news sources that display relevant information. However, with the wealth of knowledge that is available on the news feeds it seems like NewRetirement is just scratching the surface.

My NewRetirement
The site offers the ability for you to create an account, which will be required if you plan to participate in the Answers or would like to save your retirement calculation data.

Given the earlier comments about the Answers section, it appears the only real benefit of creating an account is to save your results from the retirement calculator. Considering how streamlined it is to enter the calculator data, you might prefer to opt against creating an account – as I have done.

NewRetirement Blogs
Tucked away at the very bottom of the page is a link to the NewRetirement blog. While the blog appears to still be very new – it only contains eight posts – it would be nice to see this displayed in a more prominent location throughout the site.

The blog would appear to be a better solution than the Answers section, as reader participation might be higher within a blog as there is a given topic to direct the conversation.

Closing Thoughts
There are a few areas of the site that can use some attention and it would be nice to see a concerted effort to get the community more involved and active. And even though it is free to sign up for a NewRetirement account, it would be nice to see a little more value provided to account holders.

Overall NewRetirement.com appears to have a good deal of information that can help even the seasoned pro learn a little more about their retirement plan. In addition, the retirement calculator is fun to play with and can help you understand whether you are on the right path or if you need to ramp up your efforts.

Head on over to NewRetirement.com to see if your future is secure.

Disclaimer
This post has been a paid review and contains my thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of the site or service in question. With the intent of providing information that is valuable to my readers, if you object to this post please let me know.

Since I have not yet met a person that does not appreciate winning free stuff, I have to bring your attention to a Blog Anniversary Contest that is being put on by FiveCentNickel.

You’ll notice that I have a link to Nickel in my *Mo’ Money* section as I think his blog is one of the premier personal finance blogs, along with My New Choice of course. In the event you are not familiar with Nickel, I would encourage you to start with his welcome page that highlights some of his finer posts.

Head to Head
Back in March, Free Money Finance ran a March Madness tournament and it was not a big surprise to see that the championship round came down to FiveCentNickel and Raising4Boys. Oh yeah, did I mention that Raising4Boys is actually another site that Nickel runs along with his wife.

During that tournament, I had the opportunity (or maybe I should say misfortune) to be matched up against one of Nickel’s most popular posts of all time. Needless to say, I came out on the losing side of that matchup although I felt I held my own as I only lost by 2 votes. Here were the two posts:

Teaching Your Children How To Save vs Dave Ramsey is Bad at Math

Where is the booby prize?
Okay, so you’re probably wondering where the booby prize comes into play in all of this discussion about FiveCentNickel. As I mentioned earlier, Nickel is running a contest to celebrate his 2-year blogging anniversary. There are some great prizes up for grabs in this contest, including: 2GB iPod Nano, 1GB iPod Shuffle and a 5GB USB drive.

To keep things interesting, Nickel is also including a booby prize where one *lucky* winner will receive a box of bricks shipped to their door! In all of the contests that I have seen, I have to admit that I haven’t seen anything quite that original or humorous.

Be sure to stop by Nickel’s site and tell him that MyNewChoice sent you!

As the month of April comes to a close, I’d like to take a moment to give recognition and thanks to the sponsors and advertisers here at My New Choice.

Your assistance helps keep this site running and I just want to try and repay the favor with an additional shout-out for each of you.

Featured Sites
The following sites have been featured here for the entire month of April and I have to thank each of them for their generosity.

As a special thanks, I would like to make mention that H&R Block (IRS Forms) went a little above and beyond by offering my readers a free copy of TaxCut Premium.

• Debt Consolidation and Credit
• IRS Forms
• Compare Credit Cards
• Consolidate Debt

There are still two text-only link positions available on my site so be sure to sign-up now. As a bonus, you can take advantage of $100 in FREE links to cover the cost of your text link.

Recent Additions
In the last week or so, there have been two new additions to the sponsors and advertisers and I’d like to thank them as well. One addition was IRA Rollover and the other advertiser has stepped up to the plate with a banner advertisement for The Thrifty Scot.

Thank you to all of you for your help and I sincerely hope that this shout-out provides you a little more value. If anyone would like to explore becoming a site sponsor or advertiser, please feel free to contact me to discuss advertising opportunities.

One of the first posts that I made here at My New Choice was about the importance of payment history on your credit score.

As a great follow-up to that post, you might enjoy a post from Kelly Cho on what you can do to improve your FICO score.

Some of the highlights that you will find in Kelly’s post:

• What is a FICO Score?
• Breakdown of your FICO Score
• Tips on how to improve your FICO Score

Overall, I think Kelly has some really great tips that can help you out if you are trying to improve your credit score. However, there is one tip that I don’t really agree with and it is related to payment history.

While the tip is technically correct that it is best to avoid payments on old items that are about to drop off your credit report in order to avoid the debt becoming current again, I just have a personal issue with not paying a debt that you rightfully owe.

In my opinion, while paying an old debt will have a negative impact on your credit score I think it is your obligation to pay back any debt that is accurate. This is often times a hot item of debate but personally speaking, I just feel an obligation to pay any legitimate debts regardless of the potential negative effects.

Kelly, thanks for the great post on FICO Scores and I hope to see more posts with a personal finance flavor from you in the future!

Just as I discovered the error and began to look for a fix, I received an email from Sun over at The Sun’s Financial Diary alerting me of the error and also taking the time to provide a suggested fix for the problem.

The fact that Sun took the time out to notify me of this problem and suggest a fix deserves some recognition. In the event that you are not familar with Sun, you might want to start by reading his post titled A Couple of Things You May Not Know About Me. Take some time to explore The Sun’s Financial Diary and I am sure you will be coming back for more!

Sun, I appreciate you taking a few moments to help me out!

If you’ve been thinking about purchasing a Microsoft Zune but have just been too cheap to spend the money, you now have a chance to win a free Microsoft Zune courtesy of John Chow.

In order to enter the contest, John is simply asking for you to write a blog post about the contest and follow a few rules about linking back to his site. Given that my wife had mentioned she was interested in a Zune for her birthday, I figured that I would enter the contest to see if lady luck is on my side. It would be a great LBYM score to win a prize that my wife wants!

For those of you not familiar with John Chow, he runs a very successful blog with a focus on how to make money on the internet. While John has gotten away from talking about personal finance topics, he has been focusing on the idea of using the internet to make money so I encourage you to visit his site and explore.

When I started this blog, I was faced with a challenge of getting my name out there in front of people and trying to capture their attention with quality content.

One tool that has been invaluable in that process is participating in Blog Carnivals and one that I have recently begun to participate in is the Carnival of Debt Management hosted at Debt Consolidation News. While it is a relatively new carnival, it has been full of outstanding posts from many popular personal finance blogs.

Since I have enjoyed participating in this new carnival, it came as a pleasant surprise when I received a notice that Debt Consolidation News had submitted a request for me to review the site. As a notice to my readers, this post is a paid review of Debt Consolidation News.

Background Information
Debt Consolidation News provides news, tips and resources related to debt consolidation and debt management. The site has been active for a little bit less than a year, with the first post about the need to be careful with debt consolidation plans coming on June 3rd, 2006.

Given that the site is a resource for news, it is not surprising to see that many posts provide a link to more detailed articles. Unlike many news sites, Debt Consolidation News takes the time to add their own personal insight to the topic of the article rather than simply regurgitating the article content.

Providing Details
In recent months, I’ve noticed that the posts are providing an outstanding level of detail and often present both sides of various financial decisions leaving the reader to make their own conclusions. To get yourself a taste of what I mean, check out these recent posts:

• Debt Consolidation: Good or Bad Idea?
• How to Negotiate with Creditors to Avoid Bankruptcy
• Getting to Black: 100 Tips to Cut Small Business Overhead and Reach Profitability

Real Value in the Tips
As I mentioned earlier, I have started participating in the Carnival of Debt Management hosted here but some of the most valuable posts that I have found are in the Helpful Tips category.

While you will find numerous posts with tips that can help you manage your finances and get yourself out of debt, there are a few posts that I want to pay particular attention to because they provide so many great tips that you can implement immediately to change your situation.

• 101 Ways to Cut Your Daily Costs
• 50 Surefire Tips to Establish Financial Security
• 33 Surefire Tips to Financial Prosperity

Read through those posts and I am sure you will find a handful of things that you can start doing today that can save you money and start you on the road to improving your financial situation.

Not All Roses
As much as I enjoy the content and carnivals at Debt Consolidation News, there are some things that I would like to see done a little bit differently.

The first enhancement that I think would be a great addition would be to introduce the ability to search the site. As the site continues to grow, not having a search feature will make it more difficult to find some of the older posts that still hold a lot of value to new readers.

Another enhancement that I would like to see is a count of posts within each category and each month in the archive. As a reader, I find it to be nice when I know what to expect when clicking a link. If a category doesn’t list a count, I may be disappointed to only find one or two posts in that category. Although that is certainly not a concern on this site with the number of posts in each category.

One last change that I would like to see is the introduction of paging. Right now the site lists all the posts of a particular category or month on one page, which I think makes it a little more difficult to read. Having pages broken down with a smaller number of posts per page makes it easier to manage as a reader.

Final Thoughts
All in all, I am really happy that I have found this site and have become an active participant in the Carnival of Debt Management.

With a very clean design, it is easy on the eyes and the quality of content seems to be improving as the site matures.

As I leave you with the request to invest some of your own time in reading through Debt Consolidation News, I felt this quote from Talking Dollars: The 100 Most Famous Quotes about Finance was appropriate:

Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” – Warren Buffett

Disclaimer
This post has been a paid review and contains my thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of the site or service in question. With the intent of providing information that is valuable to my readers, if you object to this post please let me know.

The other night I had an opportunity to have an email conversation with Stephen regarding a question that I had about the ReviewMe (aff) service. As a result of our conversation, Stephen submitted a request for me to review MEGA Tech News. As a notice to my readers, this post is a paid review of MEGA Tech News via the ReviewMe service.

What is MEGA Tech News?
As you can probably guess by the name of the site, MEGA Tech News is a site focused on providing readers with a MEGA resource for technology related news items. While the site is only a few months old (the inaugural post was made back on December 11, 2006), it has already managed to provide readers with over 600 posts covering a variety of topics.

Given that I am in a technology profession, scanning the list of categories provides me with a number of interesting topics such as Software, Hardware, Internet and a personal favorite Automotive.

MEGA Deals.
Due to the nature of content here at My New Choice, the one category that really caught my attention was the Deals category.

As of right now, the Deals category does not contain quite as many news items as I was hoping to find but I do feel that it shows some signs of promise. As an example of the potential, there is one news item that detailed the chance to receive a free CoolIT RAM coolers courtesy of CoolIT Systems (free is always good) and one that provides details on an available discount on multiple copies of Windows Vista.

While not really a deal in the true sense, I enjoyed the warning on Best Buy’s bait and switch. As someone that has banned shopping at Best Buy (which is a story for another day), it did not surprise me to hear that they would try a tactic like the bait and switch.

As the site matures, I would expect there to be more Deals available and I will be keeping an eye on this category to see if this can become the resource that I think it has the potential to be one day.

Suggestions for MEGA Tech News.
When I first visited the site, I was searching for an *About* page to find out more about the story and people behind MEGA Tech News but could not find anything on the site. In my opinion, this type of information helps a visitor make more of a connection with a site and increases the likelihood of becoming a regular reader.

One other suggestion that I would make is to provide a *Contact* page. It appears that MEGA Tech News is more of a technology news aggregator rather than an initiator of news, so I would think a contact page would be beneficial to allow readers the opportunity to submit news items of interest. It is possible that MEGA Tech News is not looking for reader submissions but I would still see some value to offering a means of contacting the people behind the scenes.

Closing Thoughts.
Overall I like the information that is being provided and with the healthy selection of categories, it should not be too difficult to find news items that are of interest on a regular basis.

Subscribing to the full RSS feed provides an easy way to keep tabs on current news items and should alert me to any new deals when they become available. There are some areas of improvement that I think can enhance the reader’s experience and hopefully Stephen will take those into consideration.

Take a spin around MEGA Tech News and let me know what you think!


Disclaimer
This post has been a paid review and contains my thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of the site or service in question. With the intent of providing information that is valuable to my readers, if you object to this post please let me know.

First, I would like to thank Saman at Samanthon.com, Nick at Oubipaws.org and Stephen at StephenFung.net for linking to my post about discussing money with your kids. If anyone else has linked to me, drop me a note so I can be sure to share my appreciation.

Here is a list of posts that caught my attention this week:

• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity asks readers if they have 10 minutes to perform money moves that can change their life. Stop waiting and see which of these moves you can perform right now.
  
  
• Over at Consumerism Commentary, there is a nice real-life example of what to do with your bonus. I’ve done the same with my bonus and will be getting the next payout here in March.
  
  
• In an effort to inspire other bloggers, Stephen Fung shares his progress on the Dot Com Mogul checklist for February. Keep up the good work Stephen!
  
  
• John Chow continues to educate readers on how to make money from a blog. John continues to set the bar higher for the rest of us but continues to take the time to share with his community.
  
  
• While this is an older post, I thought the post from Free Money Finance regarding the idea of moving to save money and become a millionaire was outstanding. This is something my wife and I have discussed so I really enjoyed this post.

In an effort to try and duplicate some of the success John Chow has had with his Review My Blog promotion, I left a comment on a site earlier today mentioning that I would share the link love for a review of the site.

Save Money.
This first review comes from a site titled Save Money. There are some great posts on the site, with my favorites being things like the daily and monthly finance tracking.

It looks like Save Money is a site authored by a struggling college student that is looking for creative ways to save money. As such, I have to ask if they have tried to save $138 in ten minutes?

More Link Love.
While these sites have not explicity written a review of my blog, they have been kind enough to add a link to one of my posts or added my site to their blogroll. Thanks to all of these sites:

• MoreMerchant.com
• JohnChow.com
• AskDanMoran.com
• IJHedges.com

If I have missed anyone or you would like to write a review of my site, let me know about it and I will share the link love.