A: I know what you mean about the nutty nomenclature. How about DeepGreen Bank, Bank CaroLine, UmbrellaBank.com and WingspanBank.com? To clever Netizens, cool names stand out. But when your own $10,000 is on the line, you don’t want to wonder if the bankers are kids in T shirts.

I suppose we’ll get used to this, T shirts or no. Net banks often (though not always) pay higher savings rates than their land-bound competitors do. For the record, nBank belongs to the First National Bank of Commerce, in Commerce, Ga., and Nexity to Nexity Financial Corp., in Birmingham, Ala.

You’ll be OK as long as your CD is federally insured. There are two ways to check this. Insured banks are all listed at fdic.gov (although some subsidiaries aren’t listed separately, nBank among them). At bankrate.com there’s a “high five” page, showing at least five banks that pay top CD interest rates. All are covered by the FDIC. Bankrate also rates institutions for safety and soundness, based on the data in their own financial reports.

Q: I’m thinking of using a 529 plan to save for college. Will it detract from the amount of financial aid my child can get? A. Dawson, Berkeley, Calif.

A: I love the 529 college-savings plans, run by the states. You invest tax-deferred, in a mix of stocks and bonds. Any earnings withdrawn from the plan are taxed in your child’s bracket, not yours. The money can be used at any accredited U.S. college. If you don’t like your own state’s plan, you can join one in another state.

Surprisingly, money saved in a 529 may take little or nothing away from the financial aid your child gets–in the first year, at least.

The schools treat 529s as belonging to the parent, assuming they were opened in the parent’s name, says 529 expert Joseph Hurley of Bonadio & Co. in Pittsford, N.Y. When the schools evaluate the resources the family has, they count no more than 5.6 percent of any parental assets. By contrast, if the account were in the student’s name, the schools would count 35 percent. A 529 isn’t counted at all for many families earning less than $50,000 and filing 1040A or 1040EZ tax forms. Some states also pretend it’s not there when awarding state scholarships.

But–any earnings withdrawn from the plan are treated as the child’s income and will show up on next year’s aid application. How much that affects the award will depend on the amount of income the child has. A suggestion from Hurley: reserve most of the 529 money for use in the child’s final year.

For pots of information about 529s, plus evaluations of the various state plans, visit Hurley’s Web site, savingforcollege.com.

Q: I’m retired, and trying to decide how to allocate my assets between stocks and bonds. I’m wondering about my pension. Can I treat that as a fixed asset, like a bond? If so, that would dramatically raise the amount of money I could safely put into stocks. Charles Thompson, St. Joseph, Ill.

A: You’re thinking along the right lines. If your company pays you a guaranteed $65,000 a year, and your life expectancy is 21 years, that’s like having $700,000 in bonds at 7 percent, says planner Jeff Feldman of Rochester, N.Y. (His calculations assume you spend all the money during your lifetime.) Social Security payments are bondlike assets, too. Retirees lucky enough to have both can afford to put more money into stocks.

But what if you die early? Your wife’s Social Security payment may drop; the income from your pension may decline or vanish, depending on which payout you chose. Her savings would then be overexposed to the risk of stocks. So you might not want to be quite as aggressive as the math would suggest.

Q: Can we file a legal complaint with Social Security about misused funds? Our daughter, who lived with us, passed away, leaving a 9-year-old son. She wasn’t married to the father, who deserted the baby at birth and even claimed it wasn’t his. Over our objections, he has both the child and the Social Security checks that the child gets on our daughter’s account. But he’s using the money for his own welfare, not the child’s. This should be stopped. Name Withheld

A: Your daughter got mixed up with a beaut. He’s required to use the money in his son’s best interest, starting with food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Anything left over should be saved in the child’s own account. To start an investigation, call Social Security’s fraud hot line at 800-269-0271.

In the meantime, keep up good relations so you won’t lose access to your grandson. And if he needs shoes, buy them.

Correction:

Send questions, with your phone number, to Jane Bryant Quinn, NEWSWEEK Focus: On Your Money, 251 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y., 10019, or jbq@NEWSWEEK.com. Letters are answered only in the column.