Archive for March, 2005
Wednesday, March 30th, 2005
Even more bad news. What a week! After hearing some rumors, I just read an e-mail from FreeTrade saying that they will be shutting down and transferring my account to Ameritrade IZone on April 29th. Goodbye, free trades. Dangit! I’ve only made one trade, and I’ve only had my account open for a couple of months. I should have seen the writing on the wall, as IZone was newly introduced about 6 months ago, and had many of the same features as FreeTrade. At least I have 30 days notice to make some last minute trades.
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Posted in Investing | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, March 29th, 2005
More bad news. BusinessWeek reports that the IRS is starting to scrutinize the massive amounts of money (and therefore potential taxes) that people are making on eBay. I knew that this would happen some day, with the explosion of eBay and the ability of anyone to buy something cheap (like toast) and resell it at a profit. I think it’s a matter of time before eBay must report sales figures directly to the IRS. I’ve easily sold over $10,000 of stuff on eBay.
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Posted in Frugal Living | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, March 29th, 2005
Yay. My credit card was already stolen last month, and now I come home to see that my personal information, including Social Security number, name, date of birth, and address was leaked by my school via a stolen laptop. Why is all this information, which supposedly spanned three decades, sitting in an unattended laptop?? Seriously, people!
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Posted in Credit Cards | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 28th, 2005
Bank of America is currently running a promotion where you can get $100 for opening any one of their checking accounts. Each state has their own different account types, but there is usually always one that’s free with direct deposit, or free with a ~$1,000 minimum balance. BofA is a huge behemoth now, but I still use them as my primary checking account due to them having branches and ATMs everywhere. I’ve really not had any problems with them at all, and their online bill pay is great. I’ve had one overdraft due to them not making my funds available, but they credited me back the fee. I wish I could have gotten the $100 too, but oh well.
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Posted in Deals & Offers | 11 Comments »
Sunday, March 27th, 2005
If there anything to be learned from the headlines today, it’s that now is the time to decide what kind of medical treatment you want, as there may be a time when you won’t be able to decide for yourself. And that’s exactly what it is. Your decision. Not your spouse’s, not your parents’, not W’s. Wills and estate planning are something that everyone know that they should do, but an Advance Directive can be even more important.
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Posted in General | No Comments »
Sunday, March 27th, 2005
If there anything to be learned from the headlines today, it’s that now is the time to decide what kind of medical treatment you want, as there may be a time when you won’t be able to decide for yourself. And that’s exactly what it is. Your decision. Not your spouse’s, not your parents’, not W’s. Wills and estate planning are something that everyone know that they should do, but an Advance Directive can be even more important.
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Posted in General | No Comments »
Sunday, March 27th, 2005
After my post/rant about how Americans don’t get enough vacation and the fact that I hadn’t done anything memorable since January, I just returned from a two day “mini-vacation”, which unfortunately seems to be the most popular way for people to take a break these days, especially on those sacred three day weekends. Well, I already missed President’s Day weekend, so I skipped out of work a couple hours early on Friday and we just set off to a nice, nearby coastal town for a couple nights.
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Posted in Frugal Living | No Comments »
Thursday, March 24th, 2005
Fidelity Investor’s Weekly is a weekly personal finance online newsletter, much like what is available on CNN Money or MSN MoneyCentral. It’s supposed to be for Fidelity members (I am one) but it looks publicly accessible to me! Although many of the articles have a Fidelity slant – you won’t find them recommending a Vanguard fund for sure – there are some good articles from time to time, such as this one: Ten Myths of IRA Investing.
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Posted in Retirement | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005
Ever notice that very few cashiers ever check to see if the signature on your receipts really matches the signature on the back of your credit card? At the grocery store I go to, you just take out your card, swipe it yourself, and put it away. They don’t even look at the name! They just hand you the receipt and you sign it. I mean, you could just sign it “Zeus”. And this guy did!
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Posted in Credit Cards | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005
I closed my accounts with both Ameritrade and E-Trade recently, as I was moving all my stock trading to FreeTrade.com. When I cancelled my E-Trade account, there was a long hold time, and then the person who cancelled my account was rather rude – they said “Ok, it’s cancelled” and basically just hung up on me. In contrast, when cancelling my account with Ameritrade, the person actually asked me why (E-Trade didn’t even ask). I told them I was going to move to FreeTrade instead, and they said that the could either close my account as wished, or I could “freeze” the account. What’s that?
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Posted in Investing | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005
Today ING Direct and VirtualBank announced that they are raising the rate on their online savings accounts from 2.60% to 2.80%*. ING was a surprise to me, as I thought that they would become the CitiBank of online banks – i.e. they don’t have to offer the best rates, because of their strong “brand” image of stability and advertising. They are certainly spending a lot on advertising, I just got an ad for it on my TiVo. VirtualBank and ING are definitely egging each other, to our benefit!
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Posted in Deals & Offers | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 21st, 2005
Ugh. What a long Monday. Worked on Saturday too. And it’s not just me. the average middle income family now works four months more in total hours than they did in 1979. Some 80% of men and 62% of women work more than 40 hours a week, and almost 40% of Americans now work more than 50 hours a week.*
According to this website, the French have an average of 25 paid vacation days a year, while the Germans get 30 days. Even the Japanese get 18 days. The U.S.? An average of 12 days. Me? 10 days. Bummer. I love how they call it “two weeks”. To me, two weeks = 14 days!
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Posted in General | 9 Comments »
