Archive for August, 2005
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
I’ve mentioned Couponing before in passing. For those that aren’t familiar with it, it’s like a cult of grocery shopping that can save you tons of money. Here’s a quick example:
1) Visit this DietCoke.com link and click on ‘Print Coupon’ to print out a coupon good for 75 cents off of a 2-liter of Diet Coke with Splenda.
2) Find a store in your area that “doubles” coupons. That is, if you use a coupon for 50 cents an item, then they will give you double that, or $1, off instead. Here is a resource that provides a decent list of chains in each state that do this. Some places may require a coupon from their weekly newspaper ad, or only do it on certain days of the week.
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Frugal Living | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
In addition to my seperate informational pages, I also put together this comparison chart with most of the critical points. For each bank name, I have linked the information page (for example: Emigrant Direct) that I made for it. The best value for each feature is bolded:
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Banking | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
Direct Link: http://www.presidential.com
Current APR: 4.75% APY
Interest Compounding: Compounded and credited on a monthly basis.
Minimum to open: $5,000
Minimum to avoid monthly service charge: $5,000
Other fees of note: None
Download formats available: .ofx/.qif/.csv files*
Number of external bank account links allowed: None
Routing Number: 255073345
Opening Bonuses: None
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Banking | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
Website: EmigrantDirect.com
Current APR: 5.05% APY
Interest Compounding: Compounded daily and credited monthly.
Minimum to open: $1
Minimum to avoid monthly service charge: None
Other fees of note: None
Download formats available: .ofx/.qfx/.csv files*
Number of external bank account links allowed: 4
Routing Number: 226070319
Opening Bonuses: $10-20
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Banking | 21 Comments »
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
Direct Link: http://www.virtualbank.com/bc_esav_virtual.asp
Current APR: 4.60% APY
Interest Compounding: Compounded daily and credited monthly.
Minimum to open: $100
Minimum to avoid monthly service charge: None.
Other fees of note: Close-out in first 90 days fee of $50.00 (No min, so just leave open for 90 days)
Download formats available: .ofx/.qif/.csv files2
Number of external bank account links allowed: 4
Routing Number: 067092200
Opening Bonuses: $20 referral bonus
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Banking | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
With all of these different online banks around, it’s hard to keep clear which banks do what when comparing with new banks or answering people’s questions. I don’t know how many times I’ve searched the bank websites for the same info that I just searched for a week ago. So I’ve decided to make an information post for each of the banks that offer a good savings rate and that I have an account with. First up, ING Direct.
Home Page: INGDirect.com
Current APR: 4.50% APY
Interest Compounding: Compounded and credited on a monthly basis.
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Banking | 49 Comments »
Tuesday, August 16th, 2005
ING Direct now pays 3.30% APY, up from 3.15%.
MyBankingDirect.com is another ‘ICanBeLikeING’ Direct bank that is offering a 3.75% APY rate. Nice, but they require $5,000 minimum to open. If you keep the $5,000 in there for 3 monhts, you also get a $25 bonus. Minimum balance and fee information information available here (tiers, etc.).
UFB Direct is currently paying 3.67% on their Jumbo Money Market Account ($50,000 min), and 3.60% APY on their no-minimum balance High Yield Money Market Savings. Open with $200 and get a $25 bonus. I am not opening an account at either of these last two banks, but it’s good to keep an eye out.
Posted in Banking | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, August 16th, 2005
I’ve been updating my list of the best 0% APR Balance Transfer offers about once a month as offers expire, but this month I actually came across a pretty good one - 0% APR interest for both purchases and balance transfers for 10 months with the Miles Card by Discover. No annual fee, and no balance transfer fees either. All the other Discover cards currently have balance transfer fees except for this one. I guess they’re pushing this card right now, so I’m not sure how long this will last.
On top of everything, you get 5,000 of their “Miles” after your first purchase. You get 1 Mile for each $1 in purchases otherwise. Airfare rewards start at $100 travel credit for 10,000 Miles. The nice thing is that you can actually get this bonus while also taking advantage of the balance transfer since both are at 0% APR for the 10 months.
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Deals & Offers | No Comments »
Monday, August 15th, 2005
My MS Money files went caput with my dead harddrive, but I managed to at least get July’s expenses done. Here are our results in our target areas:
We went under on Dining and way over on Groceries since we BBQ’ed all July 4th weekend when my sister came to visit, and the total includes the purchase of a grill. Our Utilities went under budget as our electric bill was really low this month due to our lack of air conditioning. Overall, we barely scraped under our budget total of $800 for these target areas.
Posted in Budgeting | 7 Comments »
Sunday, August 14th, 2005
I’m not the type of person to obsessively check stock quotes throughout the day, but I think I’d like to start documenting my stock performance periodically. I last did this two months ago for my MyMoneyBlog Play Money portfolio (tracked at OpenPortfolios), in my post MMBPM beats the S&P 500! (*by pure luck). Since then, I haven’t made any trades, although I have been doing more and more reading into ETFs. I’m really considering selling all my stocks and rebuilding my portfolio with ETFs instead, but I don’t think I’m ready yet. Anyways, here’s my current snapshot:
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Investing | 2 Comments »
Saturday, August 13th, 2005
Now that it’s well past midway of 2005, it’s a good time to check up on your healthcare Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), if you use them. If you do use them, you are probably aware that most FSAs make you forfeit any of the unused balance at the end of the year. We usually don’t have too many health-related expenses, so we only put in $500 this year. My wife ended up getting some dental work done, so it looks like we won’t have to worry about losing any of it. Nickel of FiveCentNickel writes how he hates the annoying “use-it-or-lose-it” aspect of these accounts in a recent post. This also reminded me, did you know that there is a flipside to this?
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Taxes | 5 Comments »
Saturday, August 13th, 2005
…is the sound my hard drive made yesterday. Well, more of a clicking, but either way I think it’s dead. Warranty expired too. I’m glad I still have my laptop. At least I backed up everything recently. Should I get a new hard drive, or a whole new computer? They are so cheap these days, you can get a new Dell computer with a 17″ flat panel LCD for under $500. But my Pentium 3 seems just fine for everything I do, I don’t know what I need an extra 2,000 MHz for. I guess it helps out people who like to play video games, but those LCDs are calling out to me…
Posted in General | 6 Comments »
Thursday, August 11th, 2005
[Update: This review still applies, but the rates are a bit old. Currently rates for this account can be found here. As of 4/3/06, it is 4.62% APY.]
Now that Presidential Bank has raised their Premier Savings Account rate even higher to 3.87% APY*, I thought I’d post a brief review of the account since I have one. I previously posted a review of the Presidential Bank Internet Plus Checking Account.
Pros:
Great Rate! They have consistently good rates, now beating ING Direct by 0.72%. I’ve found their customer service to be very satifactory. The interface is fine by me, although I’m a “Does it work like I want it to?” kind of guy, and don’t need too many bells and whistles.
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Banking | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, August 10th, 2005
I got my trade confirmation from ShareBuilder that my buy order for EEM went through on Tuesday, as part of my plan to make $1,000+ out of their $50 bonus. I got .5318 shares of EEM for $46. So I paid the equivalent of $86.50 a share?? Nowhere in the 5-day range of EEM on Yahoo does it show it going up to $86.50 a share. Hmm…
I investigate further. I see I still have $4 cash in my account. What about the $4 trade? I think this is what happened: They actually only bought $42 worth of stock, and took the $4 out of the $46 I said I wanted to “invest”. How funky. I wish they made that clearer. So that means I got the share at $78.98 a share, something within Tuesday’s range.
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Deals & Offers | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, August 10th, 2005
Very nice. Up from 3.75% APY. See their site for more info. Their Internet Plus Checking is now at 3.75% APY. I’m going to write a quick write-up about the pros and cons of the Premier Savings account for the curious.
Posted in Banking | 1 Comment »
