Archives for December 2009

Bargaining Chips: Broadband Internet for $19.99/Month

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

‘Tis the season for some haggling with your internet service provider! Let them know you have other options, and you should be able to get a lower bill for at least a few months that can add up to some big savings. Below are some new customer offers – you might not get them to match completely, but anything is good in my book. (Also handy for those that recently moved – try using the name of another household member – or just want to start up new service.)

ComcastOffers
$19.99 per month for 6 months, with free wireless modem and $100 cash back

Broadband National
Click on “promotions” in the upper right corner for several offers including:

AT&T – $19.99/month for 6 months, free modem/router, and $100 cash back

Charter

Cox High-Speed Internet
$19.99/mo. for 3 months, free modem, free self-install kit.

Oh, and don’t forget to check out some of the haggling tips in this DirecTV haggle post.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Tolerable Loss = Half of Equity Allocation Percentage?

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

There a regular poster on the Bogleheads forum called Adrian Nenu who always posts the following, which is said to have origins with author Larry Swedroe.

Tolerable Loss x 2 = Equity Allocation < 50%

I don’t know if I agree with the last part that says that your equity position should always be less than 50%. However, the first part seems to offer a good rule of thumb when it comes to investing in a target date retirement fund.

Let’s say you have the Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 Fund (VFIFX) and it currently contains 90% stocks. Using this rule of thumb would mean that a possible one-year loss for such a fund is 45%. You should ask yourself – can you handle a 45% drop in the value of your retirement assets, even if you have 40 years before you need it? The good thing about living through 2008/2009 is that you probably have a better idea of the truth. If you’re going to run for cover in cash, only to buy back in later (like now) when prices are 50% higher, then that’s something to avoid.

One thing that I recommend to my more conservative friends who still want a simple investment is to simply buy a different “date”. For example, if you could purchase the Vanguard 2025 Fund (VTHRX) which has 75% in stocks. Who cares if the label is 2025. Meanwhile, I encourage them to continue to learn more about investing so that the can understand the risks trade-offs better and adjust their tolerances accordingly (up or down).

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Bonus Extended to Dec. 18th

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

For those that missed out, I just got an e-mail that the CollegeAdvantage 529 $25/$50 referral offer deadline has been extended to December 18th, 2009.

Deadline for Refer a Friend program is extended to December 18, 2009! Earn $50 for you and $25 for your friends and family!
You now have a few more days to earn a $50 referral bonus for your CollegeAdvantage account. You can earn a referral bonus when your friends and family open a CollegeAdvantage direct account by December 18, 2009. And they’ll earn $25 just for opening the account! All they need is your CollegeAdvantage referral number (which is your account number) and they can easily enroll online at www.collegeadvantage.com to receive the bonus. New accounts must be opened by December 18, 2009 in order to receive the referral bonus.

Under this promotion, college savers can get $25 for signing up (w/ my review), $50 for referring others, and $25 for starting up automatic deposits. Altogether, a couple could earn $150 free for their kid’s education this way. If you need it, my CollegeAdvantage referral code is 2439350.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


GoDaddy New Domain Registration $0.99

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Been thinking about that perfect website idea? GoDaddy.com is offering a 1-year domain name registration for only 99 cents with coupon code BUYCOM99. This is valid for new domain registrations and transfers from other registars only, and not renewals of domains already at GoDaddy.

Register or transfer any available .COM, .US, .MOBI, .BIZ, .NET, .ORG, .CA, .CO.UK and .IN domain for just $0.99!*
Applies to the first year only of new or transfer registrations. This offer may not be used for renewals, bulk registrations, premium domains or Sunrise/Landrush domain registrations. Limited to one order per customer, expiring after 7,500 redemptions or on December 29, 2009 (whichever comes first).

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


How Does Your Target Retirement Fund’s Glide Path Compare?

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Inside this recent Morningstar article about the pros and cons of Fidelity’s Freedom Funds was an interesting chart that incorporated data from all of the target-date retirement funds. These funds were getting really popular as a set-and-forget type of investment, until many people found found out in 2009 that their risk tolerance didn’t necessarily mesh with the what the investment company thought it would be.

A fund’s “glide path” is how they shift their asset allocation to be more conservative as time goes on and they near the retirement target date. A very general way to measure this is to take the percentage of the fund invested in equities (stocks).

As you can see, there can be a significant variation between the industry maximums and minimums for each year. Fidelity’s fund tend to be near the average, perhaps a tiny bit below most of the time. I looked at Vanguard’s funds, and they are also very close to the average. TRP’s glide path is almost always above the average, but not by more than 5-10%.

You can see the specific glide path chart of other funds with a Morningstar Premium membership (see below). However, you can always use the free Instant X-Ray tool with the ticker symbols from your own series of funds and plot it yourself. How does yours compare?

This is just one component of what you should be looking at when choosing between fund choices, with other examples being cost (expense ratio?), equity breakdown (international exposure?), and bond breakdown (quality?). Of course, some of us are just stuck with one choice in our 401k/403b plans.

List of the 20 most popular target date funds:

* AllianceBernstein Retirement Strategies Target-Date Fund Series
* American Century LIVESTRONG Target-Date Fund Series
* American Funds Target Date Retirement Target-Date Fund Series
* DWS LifeCompass Target-Date Fund Series
* Fidelity Advisor Freedom Target-Date Fund Series
* Fidelity Freedom Target-Date Fund Series
* ING Solution Target-Date Fund Series
* John Hancock Lifecycle Target-Date Fund Series
* JPMorgan SmartRetirement Target-Date Fund Series
* MassMutual Select Destination Rtmt Target-Date Fund Series
* MFS Lifetime Target-Date Fund Series
* Oppenheimer Transition Target-Date Fund Series
* Principal LifeTime Series Target-Date Fund Series
* Putnam RetirementReady Target-Date Fund Series
* Schwab Target Target-Date Fund Series
* TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Target-Date Fund Series
* T. Rowe Price Retirement Target-Date Fund Series
* Vanguard Target Retirement Target-Date Fund Series
* Vantagepoint Milestone Target-Date Fund Series
* Wells Fargo Advantage DJ Target-Date Fund Series

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Gogo Inflight Free WiFi Coupon Codes

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

With the holiday flying season underway and me flying out today as well, and wanted to see if I could try out some internet at 30,000 feet. Gogo Inflight Internet is now offering WiFi internet on select Air Canada, Airtran, American, Delta, United, and Virgin America flights. See here for participating aircraft.

Here are some promotional codes that will provide you with one free session of GoGo. They are good once per account. However, supposedly you can sign up with any name and any e-mail address with no confirmation system (no credit card needed either with the code), it seems like they are pretty much offering unlimited free internet until these expire. I hope I can get it to work! Via FlyerTalk.

Expire 12/31/2009
DELTATRYGOGO
AIRTRANTRYGOGO
AATRYGOGO

Expire 1/7/2010
2287548427snk
2472564126dvu
2285632980tlk

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


MicroPlace: Buy a $20 Gift Certificate, Get $20 Free

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Here’s a good last-minute gift idea for socially conscious friends – a $20 gift certificate to MicroPlace, which provides loans to low-income entrepreneurs. They have a B1G1 holiday promotion where if you buy a $20 GC, you get another $20 to send to the person of your choice for free (could be you if you wanted). Ends December 31st.

The cool thing about this gift is that you’re not just giving $20 to some charity “in their name” that they’ll never see. They get to help out a poor borrower, then then when the loan matures they get $20 + any interest! Your friend can then spend it however they wish (thus making it better than some Best Buy gift card), or reinvest in another microcredit fund. Thus the whole “gifts that keeps on giving” slogan. And you get $40 for spending $20!

Give a Gift that Keeps on Giving
Give a unique and special gift this holiday season. It is a gift of connection, a gift of hope, and a gift that believes that poor people can use their ingenuity and hard work to break out of the cycle of poverty.

Your gift can help fund loans to poor people who could start a business, save, and work their way out of poverty. And when you purchase a gift certificate of $20 or more on MicroPlace, we’ll give you a free gift certificate of $20 to send to someone else on your shopping list!

I now have over $2,000 invested at MicroPlace and also $2,000 invested at LendingClub (P2P Lending).

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Box.net Free Fax Review: 100 Free Outgoing Fax Pages/Month

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

File-sharing and online collaboration site Box.net also has a handy feature that other similar services don’t have – 100 pages of free outgoing faxes per month via eFax. Their free Lite plan includes 1 GB of online storage with a per-file size limit of 25 MB. Simply upload the file you wish to fax (PDF files work well), right-click, and select “Send with eFax.” If you don’t see that option, click on “Add Applications” and find eFax.

There are no ads, and if you need a cover sheet you’ll have to include that in the .PDF file you upload. The fax is sent immediately after you initiate it, and it was received by my fax machine without errors and with good print quality (for a fax). You do get a confirmation e-mail from eFax that it was sent successfully. Not bad at all for free!

As a reminder, you can also sign up for a free fax number to receive incoming faxes at eFax or K7.net and have it sent to your e-mail. Together, I would imagine these services can cover most casual fax usage (assuming you have a scanner to convert things to PDF format).

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


FaxZero Review: Limited, But Still Free Fax Sending

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

In testing out my Ooma, I used the free fax website FaxZero.com to send a fax over to myself. I thought I’d share a quick review.

  • The free service has certain restrictions. You must have it converted to Word/PDF format, up to 2 faxes a day, and a maximum of 3 pages (6 pages total a day).
  • There is an ad on the provided cover page, but thankfully it is just a simple FaxZero ad and not some random company. Here is a scan of what it looks like.
  • You must provide a working e-mail address, as you need to click on a confirmation links sent via e-mail to send your fax. Some users report increased spam, so be careful which e-mail you use.
  • The fax is not sent immediately. It says it might take anywhere from 5-30 minutes depending on how busy they are. It took about 5 minutes for me for my fax to ring.
  • The fax did come through successfully, and the quality was acceptable.
  • You do get a confirmation e-mail with the subject “Your fax to XXX has been sent successfully”.

Overall, I have no complaints about FaxZero since it was a free service that performed as promised. You can also try HelloFax.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Sending Faxes with Ooma Phone Service

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Today I tried to both send and receive faxes through my new Ooma VoIP phone system. I used a Brother MFC-7340 multi-function printer and my Ooma is connected via cable modem.

While fax is not officially supported, there is a section with several tips in the Ooma Support Knowledgebase, which I highlighted below. Short version: Connect your fax machine directly to the Hub, and dial *99 before your fax number. Both sending and receiving worked perfectly for me on the first try. I’m very impressed!

While the ooma system is not guaranteed for Fax transmissions, it often works successfully, provided you follow these simple instructions:

1. For the best results, make sure your Fax machine is connected to the back of the ooma Hub or Telo unit, not the ooma Scout. The fax machine should be plugged into the “PHONE” port of the ooma device. If you plan on using a phone handset with the ooma Hub or Telo, you can use a splitter to connect a phone handset and the fax machine to the ooma device.

2. Dial the prefix *99 before you dial an outgoing Fax call. Please note that you may need to insert a pause or two in the dialing sequence after entering the *99 prefix and before entering the Fax number.

If you are still unable to send or receive a Fax, try the following additional steps:

1. Disable “ECM” (i.e., “Error Correction Mode”) on your Fax machine.
2. Decrease the transmission or baud rate.
3. Reduce the number of pages that are sent per fax.
4. Decrease the desired image quality of the fax.
5. Discontinue any large file downloads (for receiving faxes) or uploads (for sending faxes).

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Best Current Prepaid Cell Phone Plans?

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

This is turning into telecom week. 🙂 A reader asked me what the best prepaid cellular plans are. (Maybe you quit Sprint without penalty and are looking for an alternative?) Here are the two plans that I would probably use, although depending the specific person another plan might work better due to coverage or usage patterns. Both have no contracts and no credit checks. Let me know if you know of something better.

T-Mobile Prepaid for Light Usage

You can buy a $100 card that last for an entire year with T-Mobile, which gives you 1,000 minutes. That’s just $0.10/minute. This gives you a basic cell phone for only a bit more than $8 per month. On a traditional postpaid plan, the taxes and fees alone are $5 per month! If you need more minutes, you can buy more but the best per-minute rate is at $100 refills (which resets your expiration another year as well).

T-Mobile coverage is pretty good is most urban areas, but I’d ask around first. Phones start at $20, although I think you can use any unlocked GSM phone.

StraightTalk by Tracphone for Moderate to High Usage

A relatively new product, StraightTalk offers you 1,000 minutes, 1,000 text messages and 30MB of data for only $30 per month. Everything expires after 30 days. The phone selection for this plan is pretty bad, so don’t expect anything with a touchscreen. However, this is a flexible package that offers a generous bucket of minutes, texts, and even casual web surfing for a great price. As compared with postpaid plans, a basic text plan is usually at least $5 per month, and again taxes are usually $5 a month alone. You can also upgrade to an “unlimited” plan for $45 per month.

StraightTalk uses Verizon’s cellular network, which is a plus. Phones start at $20, and I don’t think you can use other phones. There are some nicer ones that cost $100+. Phones and refills also available at Wal-Mart.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


Cancel Sprint CellPhone Contract Without Early Termination Fee

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

If you are under a Sprint cell phone contract and want to get out, check your statements with a billing date in December. PhoneNews.com is reporting the the following verbage from Sprint:

Regulatory Charge/Ts&Cs Changes
Effective 1/1/10, the Regulatory Charge will increase to $0.40/line. Visit Sprint Ts&Cs or sprint.com/taxesandfees for details; also effective 1/1/10, the Sprint Terms & Conditions (Ts&Cs) are changing. Please review them carefully at sprint.com or on request.

It would appear that the regulatory charge that Sprint is choosing to pass onto you is connected to the change in T&Cs. This is important because the law states that if a company makes a material change to the contract, then the consumer has the ability to exit the contract without an early termination fee (ETF) if they notify Sprint within 30 days of the notice.

You may terminate each line of Service materially affected without incurring an Early Termination Fee only if you: (a) call us within 30 days after the effective date of the change; and (b) specifically advise us that you wish to cancel Services because of a material change to the Agreement that we have made. If you do not cancel Service within 30 days of the change, an Early Termination Fee will apply if you terminate Services before the end of any applicable Term Commitment.

Since Sprint themselves state that this is a change in the Terms & Conditions, it should be possible to exit your contract without an ETF. They’ll probably make it difficult, and you might need to speak to a supervisor. I did this a few years ago with Verizon, and they canceled my number on the spot and I had to get a new one. But with the ease of number porting nowadays, you might be able to coordinate things so that you can keep your number after making sure you won’t be charged any penalties for canceling.

Added: As to whether this is a “material” change. The .20 increase is NOT some government fee that is passed straight to you. It is NOT required by law. Sprint could choose absorb it into their other costs, or only include it for new customers on new contracts, but they chose to increase it in this way. Think of it this way – 50 million customers times 20 cents per month = $10 million per month in additional revenue.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.