Archives for December 2009

Bing Cashback: 20% Off Walmart.com & eBay.com

Posted on December 7, 2009 // 24 Comments

If you’ve been shopping online for a while, you’ve probably heard of cashback shopping “malls” or sites like eBates which offer you a bit of money (or miles or points) back on your purchases made through them. I could have sworn I wrote a post about this already, but anyway, the new kid on the block is Bing Shopping brought to you by Microsoft.

Here’s some of the fine print:

A waiting period (of up to 60 days) and $5 minimum applies to payouts. To earn your cashback, stores will provide us (Microsoft) non-personal info about your purchase, and you will need to provide us with personal information (like your email address above) to create a Bing cashback account. We may use this information to personalize your online experiences, and will treat all your information in keeping with the Microsoft privacy statement. cashback is available only for personal purchases made during your store visit directly from the Bing site. You cannot use coupons or discounts. See Bing cashback terms. Additional store terms may apply.

If you follow the rules, right now you can get some pretty sizeable cashback, including 20% off Walmart.com and 20% off eBay.com purchases*. These stores carry many items that can be hard to find at an additional discount. For example, Walmart sells Apple iPods and eBay sells gift certificates and physical gold.

Always look for an link that looks like this, with the Bing cashback coin:

For example, I just bought an Ooma Hub & Scout from Walmart for $229 minus 20% ($45.80) and also a $25 Walmart gift card, for a net price of about $158. Otherwise, the lowest I could find from various price comparison sites is the price at Amazon of $215, although in some states you may be able to avoid sales tax. After finishing checkout, I immediately received an e-mail saying that I’d get $45.80 after 60 days payable to my PayPal account.

* Visit bing.com/shopping and run a search for “sony”. Look for an ad about cashback from eBay (see above). Click and you should see this image at the top to confirm your 20% cashback:

Filed Under: Deals & Offers, Frugal Living //

From The “You Get What You Pay For” Department…

Posted on December 4, 2009 // 28 Comments

During my trip a few months ago to New York City, I picked up some “I Heart NY” t-shirts as souvenirs. After some haggling at one of the hundreds of tourist shops near Times Square (cheap enough so I felt like I didn’t have to take the subway to Chinatown), I happily packed up about 10 of them, brought them home, and doled them out to family and friends.

This is what they looked like after one washing:

See anything missing? Caveat Emptor!

Filed Under: Frugal Living, Funny //

Snail Mail a Holiday Card For Free w/ Google

Posted on December 3, 2009 // 4 Comments

Sure, email is great, but there’s something uniquely heartwarming about the kind of card that comes in the actual mail — especially for folks who don’t hear from us as often as they should, simply because they aren’t online.

So we’ve made it as easy to send snail-mail holiday cards as it is to send email. Simply fill out the form below and we’ll send one free holiday postcard on your behalf. Yes, through the mail and everything.

Courtesy of Google, via Gizmodo. Send a happy thought today! All the cards have a little Gmail logo hidden somewhere.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Fidelity Cuts 529 Plan Fees, Changes Age-Based Asset Allocations

Posted on December 3, 2009 // 10 Comments

On December 1st, Fidelity Investments made significant reductions to the management fees on the 529 college savings plans that they manage. From this AP article:

Fees on indexed plans will be cut in half, while fees on actively managed and advisor-sold plans will be cut by a third, the firm said. Fidelity manages plans sold in Arizona, California, Delaware, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The changes mean a family with $50,000 in an indexed portfolio might now pay $125 a year in fees, instead of $250, assuming the amount in the plan remained unchanged. […]

Fidelity, which is based in Boston, said total fees for its direct-sold indexed portfolios will now range from 0.25 percent to 0.35 percent of assets. Total fees for actively managed plans will now range from 0.59 percent to 1.04 percent of assets.

Here is a PDF of their current expense ratios for their active and passive investment options.

According to this WSJ article, they’ll also be changing up their age-based asset allocations a bit:

Fidelity also said it plans to increase the international equity exposure in both its direct- and advisor-sold plans’ age-based portfolios to 30% of the overall equity allocation from a current range of 0 to 20%, and plans to add an emerging-markets fund to its age-based portfolios.

Both changes will be phased in over the next 12 to 18 months.

The reason for this is hardly altruistic, as Fidelity is a privately-held for-profit company. They needed to do this in order to stay competitive. The only reason I have 529 fund at Fidelity is that I have had it connected to their 2% back credit card. I’m still happy with the change though, which follows their recent addition of index fund options back in August 2009.

Despite these improvements, I still plan on shifting everything eventually to my account at the Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan, which offers inflation-protected bonds (TIPS) at a very low expense which I think are a great “safe” option for saving up for college. (They also offer a variety of low-priced index options from Vanguard.) Fidelity has no such TIPS option.

Also, until December 15th (soon!), they are still running a promotion where you can get $25 for signing up, $50 for referring others, and $25 for starting up automatic deposits. (A couple could earn $150 free for their kid’s education this way.) If you need it, my CollegeAdvantage referral code is 2439350.

Filed Under: Family, Investing //

Monthly Net Worth & Goals Update – December 2009

Posted on December 2, 2009 // 17 Comments
Net Worth Chart 2009

Wow, December already…

Credit Card Debt
Up until now, I have taken money from credit cards at 0% APR and placed it into online savings accounts, bank CDs, or savings bonds that earn up to 4-5% interest (less recently), and keeping the difference as profit. However, given the current lack of good no fee 0% APR balance transfer offers , I am no longer playing this “game”. The balance that you do see is either before the end of the statement or during the grace period, where I’m also not paying any interest.

Retirement and Brokerage accounts
Mrs. MMB and I have both maxed out our 401k salary deferrals for 2009. We have also started to invest in regular taxable accounts by investing $30,000 that was previously being held as cash. I’ll outline the trade activity in an upcoming portfolio update.

Our total retirement portfolio is now $231,368 or on an estimated after-tax basis, $191,475. At a theoretical 4% withdrawal rate, this would provide $638 per month in after-tax retirement income, which brings me to 26% of my long-term goal of $2,500 per month.

We are also getting ready for a Traditional-to-Roth conversion once the income limits are removed in 2010. We’ll need to gather up some information in order to see how much tax we owe on any gains. More details on this to come.

Cash Savings and Emergency Funds
We keep a year’s worth of expenses in our emergency fund. Potential large expenses include $10,000 for home improvement projects (minor roof repair and solar water heating), as well as $15,000-$20,000 on a new car to replace our 1995 Nissan. Hope it can last us 15 years as well!

Home Value
I am no longer using any internet home valuation tools to track home value. Some people have suggested using my tax assessed value, but I also think that is too high. I simply picked what I felt is a conservative number based on recent comparables, $480,000, and keep it for at least 6 months if not a year. (Currently on month 3 out of 6.) For the most part I am concerned about mortgage payoff, which I still plan to accomplish in 20 years at most.

You can view previous net worth updates here.

Filed Under: Goals, Investing, Real Estate, Retirement //

David Swensen’s Updated Model Asset Allocation

Posted on December 2, 2009 // 7 Comments

If you don’t know the name David Swensen, he is an investment manager who is best know for managing Yale Universities huge endowment. What makes him interesting is that even though he does invest in some hedge funds and private equity, he doesn’t believe that the common investor should try to emulate this. An excerpt from a recent interview in the Yale Alumni Magazine sums it up:

That’s why the most sensible approach is to come up with specific asset allocation targets that you can implement with low-cost, passively managed index funds and rebalance regularly. You’ll end up beating the overwhelming majority of participants in the financial markets.

In his 2005 book Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment, he proposed a model asset allocation using what he believes are the 6 “core asset classes” that an individual investor should own:

Unconventional Success Model Portfolio Breakdown

Asset Allocation For 70% Stocks/30% Bonds (with ETF examples)
30% Domestic Equity (VTI, IYY)
15% Foreign Developed Equity (EFA, VEA)
5% Emerging Markets (VWO, EEM)
20% Real Estate (VNQ, ICF)
15% U.S. Treasury Bonds (SHY, IEF)
15% Inflation-Protected Securities (TIP, IPE)

But in the Yale interview, he proposes a slight change that reduced real estate exposure in exchange for increased emerging markets holdings:

Today, Swensen says, economic conditions might call for a modest revision. He now recommends that investors have 15 percent of their assets in real estate investment trusts, and raise their investment in emerging-market stock funds to 10 percent.

This interview was printed in March/April 2009, so I’m not sure if you could call this performance chasing or not. I don’t follow his model asset allocation exactly anyway – I think the best idea is to read his excellent book and find out his reasoning for holding each asset class. The exact weightings you can hash out later. It definitely added another dimension to my investing views.

Filed Under: Investing //

Ask The Readers: Favorite Personal Finance Apps for iPhone & iPod Touch?

Posted on December 1, 2009 // 37 Comments

No, I didn’t get an iPhone. But I did get an iPod Touch over Thanksgiving weekend. (Hurray for Amazon matching Apple Store Black Friday prices!) I know, I know, as a financial blogger I’m supposed to shun such trendy toys, but it was a gift! My parents got one for my sister as well as themselves, and I am assigned to teach them how to use it when I visit in December.

(I’m excited because my HTC TouchPro2 with my $30 Sprint SERO can be hacked to share it’s 3G connection as a WiFi Router, so I can get my iTouch online anywhere I have cell coverage. Nearly an iPhone!)

Another perk is that now I can review all those personal finance apps out there. I know there are a lot of budgeting apps, the Mint.com app, and various ones for banks and brokerage companies.

What are your favorite apps? Which ones were worth the money, and which ones weren’t? Which free and non-free apps would you like me to review? Share in the comments below.

Filed Under: Budgeting, Tools & Calculators //

What is the FDIC Transaction Account Guarantee Program?

Posted on December 1, 2009 // 11 Comments

You may have gotten a notice from your bank recently stating something like “Effective January 1, 2010 Your Bank will no longer be participating in the FDIC Transaction Account Guarantee Program.” Citibank is opting out, along with over 1,000 other banks (complete list).

What is the Transaction Account Guarantee (TAG) Program? In response to the financial crisis, the program basically allowed participating banks with all noninterest-bearing transaction accounts – like many checking accounts that earned no interest – to have unlimited coverage by the FDIC. It was part of the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, and was designed to help calm the fears of depositors with lots of money in possibly shaky banks.

Now that some banks are feeling better about themselves, they decided that they’d rather save the money and not participate in the extension through June 30, 2010. According to Bloomberg, the cost of participation will increase to a range of 15 cents to 25 cents annually for every $100 of covered deposits, up from 10 cents currently.

But for most people this shouldn’t be a concern, as you’ll just revert back to the standard $250,000 per depositor covered by FDIC, currently set to last until December 31, 2013. I would hope if you had over $250,000 in cash, it wouldn’t be sitting in a non-interest bearing account!

Filed Under: Banking //
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