Archive for November, 2005
I don’t even play video games, but I am going to try and buy an Xbox 360 early on my way to the airport before my parents’ flight lands since it coincides with the official release date. I used to flip gadgets in college, so why not start doing it again? If they don’t have it when I stop by, I’m just going to give up, no camping out here. Some of the prices on eBay are mind-boggling.
And it isn’t even out yet! People are bidding on vapor-xboxes.
Posted in Entrepreneurial | 11 Comments »
Reader Dan pointed out an interesting (well, kind of) research article [pdf] that, amongst other things, explains how Treasury auctions work. As stated on the Treasury Direct site, you can buy T-Bills through either a competitive or non-competitive bid. On the surface, it would seem that you would want to put in a competitive bid to get the best price. But it’s a little fuzzier than that. If you put in a noncompetitive bid, you are just about guaranteed a bill to buy. Everyone else put in a bid for what they are willing to pay, but may not get it.
After reading the article, I put together a little example on how the bidding process works. As usual, please point out my blunders.
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Posted in Treasury Bills and Bonds | 4 Comments »
Treasury Bills are usually issued on the same day each week, making it easy to re-invest T-Bills at maturity. Someone brought up a good point - what if that day is a holiday? Reader Dan pointed out that the Treasury already thought of that, and adjusts the issue and/or maturity 1 day accordingly. For example, 4-week (28-day) T-Bills are usually issued and matured on Thursday, but next week Thursday 11/24 is Thanksgiving. So, the T-Bill issued on 10/27 is actually a 29-day T-Bill, maturing on Friday 11/25. Accordingly, there is a 27-day T-Bill scheduled for issue on that Friday too. They all match up, so at least that’s one less thing to worry about.
I’ve also added a new category devoted to Treasury Bills and Bonds and moved all related entries there.
Posted in Treasury Bills and Bonds | 3 Comments »
When I started out this blog, I thought I’d be talking a lot about how to value stocks, technical analysis, and so forth. It turns out so far I’ve just put all my retirement money on autopilot in low-cost Vanguard index funds. But once I buy my house I do plan to jump back into things, as I still believe investing in stocks will bring the best long term return.
If you do too, consider submitting your thoughts to 30 Days to Becoming a Better Investor from George of Fat Pitch Financials. I submitted my post on how to potentially ‘beat the market’ by taking advantage of current tax rules.
Posted in Investing | 1 Comment »
Black Friday is only a week from today, so it’s just about time spend spend spend on gifts. And while some frugal sites may suggest things like making things like a gift basket of cookies or handmade candles, my friends already think I’m cheap enough. I give them cookies and I’ll get coal shoved up somewhere.
But that doesn’t mean you have to overspend. In fact, my observation is quite the opposite. Last Christmas, one of my friends got me a portable DVD player. It must have cost at least $100 bucks. I’ve used it… once. I always just travel with my laptop, I can watch DVDs on it too, and it has a 500% larger screen. And I don’t even collect DVDs. Obviously, very little thought went into it, and they compensated with an expensive gift.
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Posted in Frugal Living | 9 Comments »
I just came across some tasty cards that are currently offering $100 gift cards for opening!
Citi Professional MasterCard - 10,000 Thank You Points after your first $250 in purchases, which is the same as a $100 gift card at various places like Gas Stations, Home Depot, Target, Gap, and more. For students you can get $100 in straight cash for college loans.
You also get 3 points per dollar (~3% back in gift cards) on restaurant, gas station, auto rentals, and certain office supply merchants. 3% cash back on restaurants is nice. Auto rentals and office supplies stores, not so much, but hey it’s there. They also add some other features like expense tracking and special phone reps. I wish I had this card when I was consulting and and travelling all the time. I miss my expense account 
Oh, and you don’t need to be a “Professional” to apply.
$100 Bonus + up to 100,000 miles/points from American Express
This is for the American Express Business Gold Rewards Card. You can get $100 + 5,000 miles just for applying and making a purchase, and a lot more points if you use the card more. More details on the bonus and card here. You can get $100 + 5,000 miles just for applying and making a purchase, and a lot more points if you use the card more. Remember, anyone can apply for a business credit card.
Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 40 Comments »
It turns out automatically reinvesting Treasury Bills upon maturity is pretty straightforward, according to this TreasuryDirect link. I must say, there is a lot of information on all those government sites, but they sure make it hard to find it!
For example, for 4-week T-Bills, they both mature and issue on Thursdays. But if you set your maturing T-Bills to pay out into a Certificate of Indebtedness (C of I), and your to-be-issued T-Bill to fund from the same C of I, then the maturing T-Bill will first pay out money into the account before the 2nd one takes it out. So (most of) your money will effectively be “reinvested” into another T-Bill.
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Posted in Treasury Bills and Bonds | 17 Comments »
I just stumbled upon this article at Bankrate.com titled ‘How credit scores work‘. It seems a little old, but it’s new to me. The credit score powerhouse Fair Isaac (think FICO), is interviewed in the article, so that gives it some credibility. Here’s the skinny on what makes up your credit score, from most important to least:
35% - How you pay your bills (on time or not) - I don’t really have to worry about this one.
30% - Amount of money you owe and the amount of available credit - It’s not just how much debt you’re carrying, it’s how much of your available debt you’re taking advantage of. Another reason why it may not be a good idea to cancel unused credit cards.
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Posted in Credit Cards | 4 Comments »
Thanks to reader Brent who reminded me that the new Treasury Bill auction results are out today. The 4-week, 13-week, and 26-week are paying 3.997%, 4.004%, and 4.345% respectively. This bodes very well for the 4-week T-Bill ladder I am currently building. Last week I bought a $1,000 4-week T-Bill at 3.885%, this week I’m getting another one at 3.997%, which is the equivalent bank rate of 4.54% for my tax situation. I’m going to be setting up a 4-week auto-renewing ladder at TreasuryDirect once I have 4 of these bought. That way they’ll just cycle through each other, renewing automatically at maturity, and I won’t have a thing to do but watch the interest pile up (and faster than at Emigrent Direct). More later.
Posted in Treasury Bills and Bonds | 12 Comments »
Like I’ve mentioned, I’m a bit weary of personal finance/retirement books at the moment, and more in the business ideas mood. So when I came across this book I had to read it. Titled The eBay Millionare: Titanium PowerSeller Secrets for Building a Big Online Business, it profiles 25 of the biggest sellers on eBay. Titanium Powersellers are those than have more than $150,000 in gross sales each month (Example: GlacierBayDVD). Umm… I was a Silver Powerseller for about 3 months ($3k/mo)… As you can imagine, these guys are not just cleaning out their garages. They have 10,000 square foot warehouses, several employees, and multiple suppliers. But they virtually all started out with just one or two people and an idea.
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Posted in Book Reviews | 7 Comments »
Many people want a cell phone for occasional use but most prepaid plans, although the per-minute charges are low, make you recharge every 30 or 60 days otherwise you lose your service and/or your phone number. In the end, this means you’re often paying at least $10/month even if you don’t use the phone.
I just ran across these guys - STi Mobile, who piggy-back onto Sprint PCS’s network, like Virgin Mobile. The offer a flat rate of 10-12 cents per minute, and you only need to make 1 call every 60 days to keep your service. That means you only need to spend 5 cents a month to have a cell phone around! My parent use Virgin Mobile right now and waste a lot of minutes, I’m definitely telling them about this. I mean, just keep one of these charged in the car, it’s that cheap.
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Posted in Frugal Living | 22 Comments »
This week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction is up at FrugalForLife. Has anyone out there ever gotten one of those little red rings around a 2-liter bottle? I swear they just pay 1 family to walk around with that huge stuffed animal so we all think the ring toss is legit.
Update: Carnival of Personal Finance #22 is also up!
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
My parents do not know this blog exists. If they did, they’d probably yell at me for sharing all this financial information with the entire world. I mean, some guy in Estonia knows much I spent on groceries last month.
But, when talking to my mom today, somehow the conversation turned to school and money, etc. I ended up telling her that on the side I make almost $100 a month from interest from borrowing free money off credit cards. I expected her to call it risky and me stupid. Instead, she told me that she did almost the exact same thing - to finance my education. She would borrow money at 0% APR to pay off my tuition bills instead of having to pay interest to unsubsidized loans. She has pristine credit history and some huge credit lines! Anyways, I thought that was hilarious.
Posted in General | 9 Comments »
NetBank is currently offering a variety of bonuses for opening different types of accounts with them. The two that stand out are:
1) iPod 512mb Shuffle, for opening up either a Money Market account with a 3.36% introductory yield, or a 1 Year CD at 4.65% APY. Offer valid only for 1st-time customers, minimum opening deposit is $1,000 for each.
2) Up to $175 cash, for opening up a Checking, Money Market, and a 1-Year CD with them. Be sure to read and print out the fine print for both these offers. Several warnings, though.
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Posted in Deals & Offers | 6 Comments »
With all these higher interest rate opportunities like T-Bills ans SavingsBonds, I’ve been itching to apply for another of my favorite 0% balance transfer offers after recently paying off one of my current ones, but I’ve decided to wait at least another couple weeks. My reason? I figured since I just went from over 50% utilization of one credit card to zero, my credit score will jump up once all the credit bureaus hear about it. (Also supported by the FICO Score Estimator.) But since they only seem to get information once a month, they may not know about my good deeds yet. And I want the fattest credit limit I can get so I can maximize my earn interest off of borrowed free money.
So for now, I’ll have to be patient, and maybe find some more tasty credit offers.
Posted in Credit Cards | 8 Comments »
