Everyone who sent me their Form #2 in April for my Emigrant Direct Referral Bonus should have been paid. If not, please e-mail me. If you’re interested in Emigrant Direct’s 4.65% APY, why not get up to $20?
If you’ve still got money in ING Direct, they raised their rate to 4.25% APY.
I talk a lot about “hard” and “soft” credit pulls. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen these terms used by FICO officials, so it may be kind of confusing. Money geek slang, who knew? A credit check, also known as credit pull or credit inquiry, is (logically) when a third party wants to examine at your credit history.
A “soft” pull is one that does not affect your credit score. You can get 1,000 of these and it won’t matter as they are not visible to other people checking your credit. These are often done without your knowledge as long as they have a “permissible purpose by law”, and may include:
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What should I do with extra time this summer?
1) Get an internship that will look better on my resume and help get a real 9-5 job. Make decent money.
2) Continue working to grow my freelance business, and perhaps try some new ideas out as well. Make as much money as I work hard enough or smart enough to make.
I realize there are a million shades of grey I’m leaving out, but I think the real question is do I really want to work for myself. Hmm. Maybe try both?
Here are two bank offers that are both worth at least $100 in free money, but do have some catches that will keep me from participating myself:
#1 - Bank of America Offer - $100 for opening a personal checking account, and another $100 for opening a business checking account.
Offer expires July 15, 2006… The $100 or $200 reward will be delivered by mail in the form of a gift check within 60 days of account opening.
After reading about how micro-cap stocks are a great way to improve your risk-adjusted return, I decided to read up more on BRSIX - Bridgeway Ultra-Small Company Market Fund. I thought Bridgeway was just another boutique mutual fund company, with sexy funds chasing hot sectors. Well, I was a bit right, but also found a lot more.
After reading some more , it appears Bridgeway Funds are known for their brutal honesty and their ethics. From this Statesman article, they were voted the most reputable company by financial advisors, even over Vanguard and Calvert. This is displayed by their code of ethics and the following (also from the article):
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The new Carnival of Investing page is up. I’m excited to be the new home of the Carnival, as I really think investing is the next frontier that I need to learn about since I don’t have any debt anymore and am increasing our net worth regularly each month. Gotta put that money to good use!
Thanks to Consumerism Commentary, Canadian Capitalist, and AllFinancialMatters for offering to host the next few weeks. I’m still looking for new hosts! You don’t have to have hosted before, but it may get you a date preference or something. It’s a great way to bring new and different readers to your blog.
These days you can buy insurance for anything. Your new digital camera. Your cell phone. Your rental car. Your newborn baby. This Slate article titled ‘Risky Business: Should you ever buy rental car insurance?‘ sums up my thoughts on insurance in general very well - you should only purchase insurance to protect you from something really significant.
Examples include the death of a spouse that you depend upon for income or care, your house burning down, and needing serious medical care. After that, what constitutes ’significant’ will be more of a personal decision. For some, $1,000 may be significant, while for others it may be a drop in the bucket.
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Emigrant Direct has raised their rates again. If you’re opening an account, don’t miss out on your up to $20 bonus through signing up with Emigrant Direct here!
My last post got me to thinking - How many companies match 401ks, and how much? My old employer matched 100% up to 6%, with full vesting in 5 years. Here is some 2006 data via a press release from a company called Aon Consulting:
This study also shows that 85 percent of organizations make contributions to employee 401(k), 403(b) and 457 plans to a certain level. In fact, 29 percent of companies offer a 100 percent match on employee contributions, while 7 percent provide a 75 percent match and 39 percent of employers match 50 percent of employee contributions. The level to which companies provide a match varies, based on employee contribution. More than 40 percent of organizations match employee contributions of 6 percent or more of pay, 16 percent match pay contributions between 5 percent and 6 percent, and 18 percent of companies match employee contributions between 4 percent and 5 percent of pay.
Several of you mentioned that I should increase my wife’s 401k contributions after her recent raise. Great advice, but alas, she had no 401k. We were a 401k-less family. I say were because it looks like soon her employer is giving her one! Details are a bit fuzzy, but it looks like she gets a 100% match up to 1.5%. Not going to win any employer-of-the-year awards, but hey it’s progress. I really hope the administrator is Vanguard or Fidelity, but I as long as the fees aren’t onerous and there are some index funds I’ll be happy.
$89 million dollars of employer matches were left on the table in 2003. I hope none of y’all out there are giving up your 401k matches. It’s the quintessential free money! Money gurus agree: Everyone should be contributing to max out the employer match even if you have credit card debt. Where else can you get an instant 50-100% return on your money (depending on your specific match)?
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Credit scores remain all the rage, but there are a lot of misconceptions out there. Four common ones are outlined in this MSN Money article titled ‘4 Credit-Scoring Myths‘. What’s the first myth? That closing credit cards will help your score.
No, no, no. For the umpteenth time: Closing accounts can never help your credit score, and may hurt it… It?s true that having too many open accounts can hurt your score. But once you?ve opened the accounts, you?ve done the damage. You can?t repair it by shutting the account, and you may actually make things worse… The credit score looks at the difference between your available credit and what you?re using. Shut down accounts, and your total available credit shrinks, making your balances loom larger, which typically hurts your score.
I’ve realized that I am in the minority when it comes to driving. I put on maybe 6,000 miles a year. Many people log over 20,000 miles on their car every year! If you are one of these road warriors, I just got e-mailed about the Citi Driver’s Edge Platinum Select MasterCard (Thanks JW). It looks great in multiple ways:
» You get rewards just for driving. You?ll earn $1 in Drive Rebates for every 100 miles you drive?up to $500 in Drive Rebates a year. Drive 20,000 miles a year? That’s $200 a year just for driving! To track miles and get rebates you just mail in your receipt whenever you get an oil change or other receipt.
» 6% cashback on gas for the first year. Obviously driving a lot = $$$ for gas. Assume you get 20 miles per gallon. Driving 20,000 miles, that’s 1,000 gallons. At $3 a gallon, that’s $3,000. Times 6%, that’s another $180 cashback on gas alone.
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Well, it’s actually only for $42, but that’s what eBates calls their rebate checks. eBates and other similar sites were discussed previously.
You can wring out the most cashback at each separate store by checking out EvReward first, but the thing with these programs is that since you always have to wait at least two months before getting your promised money, so you want to deal with a reputable site. Free money!
Catching up on e-mails, I see that that Jack Bogle, index fund pioneer and founder of Vanguard, has a blog now called the Bogle eBlog. It doesn’t look like it’s going to have many personal anecdotes, more like a ‘Recent News’ type of thing. Too bad. Thanks Jonathan for the tip.
This week’s Carnival of Investing is up at Mighty Bargain Hunter. The Carnival has been a bit neglected recently, as work demands has put the founder RetireAt30 on the sidelines. I asked him a while back if I could help him out, and after some intermittent discussion I got his permission to take it over. I’ve been waiting patiently for some public acknowledgment of this on the original Carnival page, but since we are running out of future hosts I can’t wait any longer.
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