Featured Community: Picketts Reserve-Fairfax, VA

Picketts Reserve
PIckett's Reserve HOA is located in a desired City of Fairfax neighborhood that is close to routes 50 & 236, the Vienna Metro area, shopping, and features a private environment with winding roads, rolling topography, walking trails, wooded open space & cul-de-sacs.

Pickett's Reserve has done a great job of utilizing all of the tools that Neighborhood Link provides.


Learn more and visit Pickett's Reserve HOA...

Neighborhood Link Attends RNNC In Dayton, Ohio

RNNC
This month Neighborhood Link was formally invited to attend and offer our ideas at the 2010 Regional Neighborhood Network Conference (RNNC) held Oct 7-9 in Dayton, OH.

The conference drew together hundreds of civic and neighborhood leaders from Columbus, Indianapolis, Memphis, Dayton and over twenty other cities.

The theme, Reinventing Neighborhoods, saluted the hard work neighborhood leaders contribute to communities while providing new and creative mechanisms to address some of the major concerns in neighborhoods today. Online networking and effective use of community websites is a critical part of any serious effort to improve communication and quality of life for the people living in our communities.

We were thrilled to attend, and encouraged to see the sacrifice and effort so many people are making on behalf of the communities in which they live! Neighborhood Link looks forward to RNNC 2011 to be held Sept 22-24 2011 in Cincinnati. See you there!

Tip: 2 Ways to Get More Out of Discussions

Forums
The discussion forums are the heart of many Neighborhood Link communities - we've come up with two tips you can use to maximize your experience.

1.
Receive an email alert when someone replies to your favorite discussion.
If you post a discussion topic, reply to a topic, or are simply interested in following a discussion, you can choose to be emailed when anyone replies. If you're logged in, there is a 'Subscribe to this thread' link on every topic page. Simply click that link and any future replies will prompt a notification to be sent to you via email. You can subscribe to an unlimited number of topics, and you can manage your email subscriptions from your profile page. (On your profile page click 'Edit' and then choose 'Click here to edit your email subscriptions')

2.
Easy ways to find your favorite topics.
When viewing the discussion area you'll see that discussion topics display a "Posted In" location and "Tags". This is great information, but you can also be use these links to browse other related topics. For example, a discussion topic might say 'Posted In: Marlborough Mesa, Mesa, AZ Tags: Safety, Crime' Clicking on the 'Marlborough Mesa, Mesa, AZ' will display other discussion topics posted in that area. Clicking on the word 'Safety' will display other discussion topics related to safety on a nationwide basis. Thus, it's a great way to discuss a topic with people outside your own community! When you start a topic, add your own tags so people interested in what you're discussing can easily find your topic.

Join the conversation! Browse some of our popular topics right now!

Tags:
Homeowner, Crime, Politics ,Board Meetings, Children, Environment

6 Steps To Create And Manage a Budget

Budgets
Learn how to create a budget in six easy steps to help you reach your financial goals.

Finances are always a top concern for anyone with bills to pay. Yet most of us can probably rattle off half of the Ben & Jerry ice cream flavors before we can give an accurate account of our financial situations.

A budget can help with this. Creating and maintaining a budget can seem overwhelming or restrictive at first. But developing a budget is your best bet for understanding your finances and reaching your goals. And with the variety of tools available these days, you can get your budget started in the time it would take you to eat that pint of Cherry Garcia.

Step 1: Set your financial goals.
Do you want to buy a house? Go back to school? Get out of debt? Whatever your goals may be, put them in writing and then display them where they’re easily visible to you. Seeing your goals every day can be a great motivational tool.

Read More About: 6 Steps To Create And Manage A Budget

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How To Save for College With A 529 Plan

College Savings
Saving for College with a 529 Plan

The cost for higher education continues to grow. On average, students pay $7,020 per year in tuition and fees for public in-state colleges ($11,528 for out-of-state). And if your child is attending a private four-year college? Expect to pay $26,273 per year. And these costs will continue to rise.

Between 2000 and 2010, tuition increased at an average annual rate of 4.9 percent beyond general inflation—more rapidly than in either of the previous two decades.

Luckily, a number of options exist for you and your child to save and pay for college. One savings vehicle that continues to grow in popularity is the 529 plan. Created in 1996 and named after Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code, a 529 plan is an education savings tool operated by a state or educational institution.

Read More About: Saving For College with a 529 Plan

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Tip: Create a Living History of Your HOA or Neighborhood

Create A Living History
Your free or premium website has the ability to display and then automatically archive your newsletters!

To add your first newsletter, click on the 'Our Info' section of your website. Click 'Post Your Newsletter' and you will be prompted to upload an existing newsletter from your hard drive (PDF, Doc, etc.) or use the online editor to create a newsletter from scratch with styled paragraphs, subtitles, lists and photos.
Your newsletter will then be displayed on the 'Our Info' page of your website.

The next time you create or upload a newsletter, the existing newsletter will be automatically archived and available to visitors by clicking the 'Previous Newsletters' link - You can archive an unlimited number of past newsletters. You can always remove a newsletter permanently from the archive if you choose, but many organizations have found the archive a useful way to chronicle the events of their group and create a living history.

Examples of how real organizations have implemented this feature:

Uploaded Existing Newsletter:
Cedar Grove Park HOA

Online Editor Created Newsletter:
Blendon Woods HOA

Simple Topical Newsletter:
Barristers Place HOA