Archive for November, 2006
Saturday, November 18th, 2006
Sprinkled throughout my ramblings are various mentions of my wife, mostly in passing. Because of these, I may have given a skewed perception of her as some stereotypical one-dimensional woman that doesn’t like math or shops all day. That’s my fault. Let’s nip that in the bud, shall we? First, she doesn’t like to deal with money issues because she’s female. She doesn’t like dealing with money because, well, she just doesn’t. Obviously, I do. While growing up, my mother was an active money manager, teaching me about frugality and saving money for the future. Without her, I doubt this blog would even exist.
Now that I’ve made that clear, let’s add some dimension to this “wife” character. 
Sure, she fits some stereotypes. But don’t we all? And what’s wrong with that, anyways? Here are the facts:
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Posted in General | 17 Comments »
Friday, November 17th, 2006
I just got my first statement, and it looks like I have received all the free bonuses promised from the American Express Business Gold Card. I am going to put this $100 and $50 gift card towards holiday gifts For all the details, I have organized this and other free $100 bonuses into one central post.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 22 Comments »
Friday, November 17th, 2006
Thanks for taking a peek at my detailed journal of our personal path to early retirement. You can see exactly how far along I am with the chart on the top right (We are in our late 20s). Here I reveal my current net worth, and write daily about the big things that help guarantee I’ll reach my goals, and also the small things that will make those goals arrive earlier. Please consider subscribing if this interests you!
Posted in General | 4 Comments »
Friday, November 17th, 2006
One of the perks of this blog is that publishers send me free books to review (which I then give away). While that may be nice, I still wish I was a successful gadget-blogger. They get free electronics to review! Anyways, the whole point of this is that companies are perfectly willing to send out free stuff in order to generate “buzz” or word-of-mouth. It’s a powerful idea and potentially way cheaper than conventional means like television advertising.
Enter BzzAgent, which brings this concept to the public. Based on your profile and little surveys that you fill out, they will send you products that companies are interesting in giving out. You basically get a reviewer’s kit consisting of a free item, some coupons for your friends to buy that item, and some pamphlets about the item. You have no obligation to say anything nice or sell anything. You just openly admit that you got the item for free and give your honest opinion.
Things I’ve gotten from BzzAgent for free: (signed up in April 2005)
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Posted in Bored Money, General | 14 Comments »
Friday, November 17th, 2006
Many of us are so busy running around that we forget to take advantage of all the benefits that we are paying for. Or maybe it’s just me. On my health plan, I am covered for an eye exam and a certain allowance for contact lenses or glasses once every 12 months. This doesn’t mean one each calendar year (as I thought), it means I have to wait at least 12 months after my last eye exam in order to get another one. Stupid me, it’s been almost two years and I haven’t gone in once. I only wear contacts when playing sports, and I finally ran out last week. I’m going in for an exam today, but I basically missed out on a two year’s worth of contacts.
I’m sure there are people who pay for dental coverage and don’t get all their free cleanings either. Also, this may fit perfectly if you need to finish using up your Flexible Spending Account balances.
Posted in Frugal Living | 4 Comments »
Friday, November 17th, 2006
My list of free budgeting software has more than doubled since I first posted it, and I’ve discovered a lot of quality software that I need to explore further. Who knew there were so many free alternatives for those looking to manage their spending?
If instead you’re looking for more ideas on growing your money, the Carnival of Investing can provide a lot of great ideas. This week’s edition is at Journey to Financial Freedom. Any blogger can submit an article, and after participating you can host one yourself!
Posted in General | No Comments »
Friday, November 17th, 2006
This is just a friendly reminder that my free Thanksgiving Giveaway is going to end on Tuesday, so if you haven’t entered now is a good time. The response has been great, with over 400 entries so far! Since I underestimated the number of entrants, if more people guess the correct number than there are prizes, I will guarantee that everyone will still win a prize. So there’s no reason not to try!
Posted in General | No Comments »
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
So here I am, 4am in the morning, and trying to think of something interesting/inspiring/useful to say about money. So here it is. If you haven’t already, you should set yourself a 6-month financial goal. Maybe it’s “I will pay off my credit card with the biggest balance.” Or “I will put $1,000 into an emergency fund.” It should be something challenging yet attainable. Making a goal increases the probability of it happening increase 15.8 times at least.
List your 6-month goal in the comments below. Leave a contact e-mail (will not be shared), make the name anonymous. If you check in with the same e-mail at the 3-month mark (February 16th, 2006) with a status update and also at the end of 6 months (May 16th, 2006) you will get some sort of prize, no matter if you reach it or not. Everyone! (Prize value will be non-zero, but don’t expect an iPod or anything.) I want to see what percentage of people actually reach their goals.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Make your goal now!
Posted in Goals | 165 Comments »
Wednesday, November 15th, 2006
Another no-fees no-minimums online savings account has arrived. This time it’s E-Trade Bank with the Max-Rate Savings Account. After looking around, here are what I see as the pros and cons of this account as compared to other online banks.
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Posted in Banking | 22 Comments »
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006
The IRS allows first-time home buyers to take money out of IRAs before age 59½ without penalty. Although I don’t like the idea of taking money out of retirement accounts in order to pay for a house, I still would like to know what my options are. You know, just in case. Here’s a generalized summary of what I found.
What counts as a first-time home buyer? You may be surprised to know that it just means you haven’t owned a house in the previous two years. It has to be used to buy a person’s principal residence, but you could simply be a relative of that person and still qualify.
Traditional IRA Withdrawals
As a first-time home buyer, you can take out $10,000 from a Traditional IRA without the usual 10% early withdrawal penalty. It doesn’t matter if it is contributions or earnings. You’ll still have to pay any applicable income taxes, though.
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Posted in Real Estate, Retirement | 14 Comments »
Monday, November 13th, 2006
The American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Card is currently giving out 10,000 Starwood points for signing up and making any purchase. I just discovered while planning a trip that you can trade 9,500 of those points for a $100 Gift Card to Amazon.com, Gap, Nordstrom, Banana Republic, and a few others.
I’ve had this card for a few years as a rewards card, since you can also use the Starpoints efficiently for free hotel stays and airline miles (you can get 1.25 miles per dollar spent). Annual fee waived for the 1st year.
I’ve added this to my list of $100 bonuses for credit cards. Pay for your holiday shopping by milking the credit card companies, instead of having them milk you!
For more rewards, there is the American Express Starwood Business Card, which is also offering 10,000 free Starpoints.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 11 Comments »
Monday, November 13th, 2006
More than a month ago, I wrote a post about tracking your spending for a month. I tried to think of the best way to budget, but I don’t think there is anything that works for everyone.
Everyone knows about MS Money and Quicken, so instead I’ve decided to compile a resource of free budgeting tools so that people can try them out on their own. Try a few. Get some ideas. Make your own. The important thing is to find something that works for you.
Here they are in no particular order:
- Quicken Online - Recently became free of charge. Tracks your spending and categorizes it automatically.
- SimpleD - An “open source Windows application designed for personal or household financial management.” The screenshots actually look pretty slick.
- AceMoney Lite - Freeware version of an offline personal finance management program. It even downloads stock quotes from the internet. Thanks Ken.
- PearBudget - An Excel spreadsheet that has definitely had a lot of time put into it. It’s a bit busy, but I still like it.
- Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 - Seems targeted at business, so this may be overkill for home budgets. But amazingly it’s free!
- Yodlee MoneyCenter - Initially just an account aggregator, Yodlee now offers spending categories which can be used to help you budget. (Why I use Yodlee for account aggregation.)
- Mint.com - Based on Yodlee back-end, with different features.
- Stackbacks - The “Stackbacks Automated Budget System” is more of a budgeting setup guide than a tool, but hey, download the .pdf and read away.
- Buddi - An open-source personal finance and budgeting program, which will run on any machine with Java installed. Thanks Gerard.
- Budget On Web - Also more biz-oriented, it is a “free online system that integrates project management with contacts management and financial tools.” Free up to 5mb of storage, that is. But that sounds like plenty for personal needs.
- Mo.neytrack.in - A “free online webapp that allows you to track all your expenses and income.”
- Grisbi - Another offline open-source personal finance app.
- MySpendingPlan - A free online budgeting software system that works on the ?”envelope” system. (Somewhat dated overview here.)
- PHPFIN - An open-source personal finance management program. It seems like you have to install it on your own server?
- GnuCash - “Personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X.” Does OFX and QIF imports.
- Budget Master - A free personal budgeting program that offers charts and visual reports.
I haven’t had the chance to look through all of these, but if you go to SourceForge and search for “budget”, you get a variety of programs. Some look interesting and some haven’t been updated in a while.
Unnamed “Homegrown” Spreadsheets
Some of these I have on my computer, but I can’t remember where I got them from. Either it was downloaded somewhere where it was openly available, or someone e-mailed it to me and said it was okay to distribute. I do not take credit for any of them.
- Spreadsheet #1 - Very simple budgeting spreadsheet. Nothing fancy.
- Spreadsheet #2 - by a Neil Rothman - A bit more advanced with pull down menus and better layout.
- Spreadsheet #3 - Not sure who made this, but according to the file properties it was by “Anne, Edward & Frank Robinson”.
- Spreadsheet #4 - Another simplistic spreadsheet, author unknown.
- Spreadsheet #5 - Submitted by user Tony B. Instructions on use are included.
- Within Your Means - Via LeisureGuy, it looks like pretty polished.
This list is will be updated as I find more. If I missed anything or you have your own spreadsheet to share, leave a comment or shoot me a message with it attached.
Posted in Budgeting, Tools & Calculators | 54 Comments »
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
Another feedback from my readers using Bloglines is that entries keep popping up as unread. My apologies, that is definitely annoying. (I don’t use Bloglines myself.) It is mostly due to my obsessive need to re-edit my posts for spelling or grammatical errors.
In order to fix this, if you aren’t already, log into Bloglines and go to this feed. Now, on your top right there should be a tab called “edit subscription”. Click on it. Now where it says “Updated Items”, change the option from “Display As New” to “Ignore”. Thanks to Rebecca for the tip.
If you aren’t subscribed, check out my new subscription page.
Posted in General | 8 Comments »
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
A voyeuristic blow-by-blow after the jump…
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Posted in Goals, Retirement | 19 Comments »
Saturday, November 11th, 2006
I’ve written about those $15 checks that credit card issuers send you to try out their overpriced credit “protection” programs, so when I ran across this offer from Citibank for $100 in free gas rebate coupons for enrolling in a free 30-day trial, I was a bit suspicious.
I’ve gotten these before, but they were broken up into $10 rebates, one a month, and only valid if you stayed with the service. On top of that, they take months to fulfill, and if by the time they finally decide to stop stalling and process the rebate you’ve already cancelled, then oops! no money for you. In other words, it was a pain. Would this be similar?
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Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 17 Comments »
