Archive for January, 2008
Either by coincidence or due to my subconscious, most of these links have to do with careers and jobs:
SVB at TheDigeratiLife explores the true costs of relocating. Most people move for jobs, but we moved for family first, and found jobs second. Not everyone can make such priorities work in real life, but with a combination of luck and hard work we were able to make it happen. I had written that our jobs had covered an increase in cost of living, but that was wrong. If you count in the higher cost of real estate, we would have definitely been better off financially by staying in Oregon.
Lily of TheHonestDollar isn’t sold on video resumes. I definitely don’t want to do that, text resumes are already hard enough. I like in-person interviews as they provide two-way communication.
Patrick at CashMoneyLife continues his series on applying for an MBA. Right now, all my friends seem to be either getting MBAs or law degrees. Did I miss a memo?
FiveCentNickel observes that beer prices are rising. I was just thinking today that grocery prices seem to be increasing a lot faster than the government inflation numbers that I read about. Even when buying less-processed items like herbs, vegetables, and raw meat for dinner, I was paying $15 for all the ingredients, which is almost as much as just going out to eat!
Mrs. Micah talks about becoming a Certified Financial Planner. I have done some superficial research into that career path. The thing is, I wouldn’t want to work on a commission basis when being in charge of other peoples’ financial well-being. However, it is very, very difficult to start out in this field as a fee-only planner. You have to respect those who go down that path - they could probably earn more money otherwise. I wouldn’t mind learning the material taught in the CFP courses, however.
Posted in General | No Comments »
Got your junk e-mail addresses ready? Unfortunately, no free razors to be found. First stop, free samples at Wal-mart. Currently available (refresh page as necessary):
- South Beach granola snacks
- Dove and Head and Shoulders shampoo
- Friskies dry cat food
- “Intimately Beckham” cologne/perfume
Also found in the Slickdeals Freebies area:
- Free 8-week membership to Bally fitness. (Be prepared to deal with the usual gym hard-sell.)
- Free Jamba Juice smoothie if you are a 24hour Fitness member.
- 5 free music downloads from Rhapsody (Are these any good?)
Posted in Bored Money, Frugal Living | No Comments »
CNN Money has a potentially useful piece on how to get a copy of important documents if you happen to lose them. Hopefully you won’t ever need this info, but here it is anyway…
Savings Bonds
Visit TreasuryDirect.gov or fill out Form 1048 (Claim for lost, stolen, or destroyed US Savings Bonds).
Old Stock and Bond Certificates
Most stock and corporate bond records are kept at one of three transfer agent firms: ComputerShare (781-575-2000), Wells Fargo Investments (866-243-0931) or American Stock Transfer & Trust (800-937-5449).
It may cost up to 3% of the stock or bond’s value to obtain a replacement.
Auto Titles
Visit your local DMV in person or online. Might cost $20-$30.
Tax Returns
You can actually order a copy of your old tax returns from any of the last 7 years from the IRS.gov for $39. Use Form 4506 (Request for a Copy of Tax Return).
If it’s within the last 3 years, you can also try requesting a “tax return transcript” or “tax account transcript” for free using Form 4506-T (Request for Transcript of Tax Return). It’s basically the same info in a different form, and there is a good chance it’ll be accepted by mortgage brokers or whoever needs it. Oh, and it arrives a lot faster than a photocopy of your actual return.
Posted in Frugal Living, General | No Comments »
Another startup website, WeddingWire, is offering a $5 gift card to Amazon.com for newlyweds and married folks who provide reviews of 5 wedding vendors. Thanks to reader Susie for the tip.
Although this may not be the most efficient use of time, I kind of like the idea of sharing feedback in this area. You’re usually talking about a large amount of money on a one-time event. Reviews would have definitely been welcome. In our case, we actually got food poisoning from one (rather expensive) hotel meal we had, we didn’t feel they handled it very well. On the flip side, our photographer was awesome and exceeded our expectations. Not a bad deal overall - One horrible night after the wedding, but a permanent set of beautiful pictures. 
Posted in Deals & Offers | 4 Comments »
Wow, here’s an interesting promotion from person-to-person lender LendingClub. They are currently offering a 5% cash bonus if you lend $5,000 or more by February 3, 2008 for both new and existing lenders on top of their $25/$50 sign-up bonus. Here are the details from their announcement:
You will qualify for the bonus by lending $5,000 or more to borrowers between December 14th, 2007 and February 3rd, 2008 (at 11:59PM Pacific time). Your bonus will be 5% of the amount you lend.
For example, if you lend $7,500 Lending Club will credit your Lending Club account with $7,500 * 5% or $375. Funds count as lent once a portfolio (or portfolios) is submitted during the aforementioned eligibility period. The loans do not have to be issued by February 3rd to qualify.
We will notify you of the amount of your bonus by the end of day, Friday, February 8th, 2008, and your account will be credited with your lending bonus by Friday, February 15th, 2008. No special sign-up or tracking is required ? we will run reports on the system to determine bonuses. Feel free to email us at lender.offer@lendingclub.com to ask about your bonus.
[…] Lenders can each earn a maximum payout of $20,000 (if they lend $400,000).
A 5% bonus definitely grabbed my interest again after making a few initial test loans. If you haven’t already, check out my LendingClub review to learn more about their setup for person-to-person lending.
At first I got all excited since banks are only paying 5% interest themselves, but then I remembered that LendingClub loans are spread out over 3 years, so it’s not like you are getting a 5% interest bonus each year (that would be sweet!). Instead, 5% spread out over 3 years is like adding roughly an additional 1.65% annual interest to the existing rate set by LendingClub. (Actually, since the 5% is given upfront, it would actually boost your returns even more.) But remember, these are unsecured loans similar to credit cards, and there is a risk of principal loss. Is that cushion worth putting in $5,000 in?
So far all of my existing loans with LendingClub are rated a safe A3-A4 (7.75 to 8.07%). Given that their minimum allowable credit score is 640, and their credit grades run all the way from A1, A2, A3 to G3, G4, G5, I would estimate that such people have credit scores well over 700 as well as other positive criteria like a reasonable debt-to-income ratio. Therefore, I would love so see my return increase to a 9.4 to 10.72% return on high-quality loans. With $5,000 available to spread across 200 loans ($25 each), that would also smooth out the default risk from a few bad loans.
As mentioned above, if you aren’t a lender yet, first grab your $25/$50 bonus by being referred by an existing member. Here is my referral link. You get $25 if you become a lender with any opening amount, but $50 if you open with an initial deposit of $1,000 or more. (Prosper Lending also has a $25 bonus.)
Lending $5,000 for 3 years is a lot of money, but this is the best person-to-person lending deal I’ve found. Hmm… very tempting!
Posted in Deals & Offers, Investing | 19 Comments »
Even if you don’t do resolutions per se, I think most of us still have areas of improvement that we want to work on for 2008. The problem is that is it so easy to keep putting off taking action to reach our goals. Given that I think little steps are the best way to solve big problems, here is a little action checklist that may be handy (complete with handy checkboxes if you want to print it out). How about at least one per day?
Reduce or Remove A Monthly Expenditure
- Objective: Got a gym membership but haven’t gone in months? Yard man coming too often? Got some Netflix DVDs that have been sitting on your desk for weeks? Cable bill too high?
- Action Required: Pinpoint a monthly expense that you don’t need anymore (or as often), and make the phone call to cancel. Stop putting it off.
Raise Your 401k/403b Contribution by 1%
Lower Your Interest Rate on Credit Card Debt
- Objective: If you’re paying any sort of interest on credit card debt, it’s worth a call to see if they’ll lower it. Interest rates have been dropping again, and the banks are as competitive as ever for your money.
- Action Required: Call up your highest rate credit issuer, and ask for a lower rate. Quote a few of the better offers you’ve been getting in the mail. If you have good credit and are serious about paying it off, it may be best to switch to a card with a 0% intro rate on balance transfers for 12 months.
Start an Automatic Transfer To Online Savings Account
- Objective: If you’re not saving as much as you’d like manually, try using psychology to your advantage and make it automatic instead. You can always move the money back later if it doesn’t work out.
- Action Required: If you don’t have an high-yield savings account paying at least 4% interest, pick one and open it right away. Then log in and schedule an automatic and recurring transfer into it of $100 or whatever every month. Use multiple accounts for different goals.
Set A Short-Term Goal
- Objective: Forget “save for retirement’ or other vague goals. Setting specific, attainable short-term goals really helps keep me on track. One of my goals is to cook dinner at home one more day each week.
- Action Required: Think about what would make you feel really good to have accomplished 1-3 months from now, write it down, and tell your significant other or close friend about it. Set a specific end date.
My short-term attainable goal for this week: By Sunday 1/6, I will have at least re-allocated my investment portfolio to the proper stock/bond ratio and US/International ratios that I explored previously. It should only take part of an evening, as I’ve already chosen them.
Posted in Frugal Living, Investing | 7 Comments »
| |
| Retirement Portfolio |
| Fund |
$ |
% |
| FSTMX - Total Stock Market (~Large) |
$24,006 |
23% |
| DISFX - S&P 500 Index Fund (Large) |
$7,437 |
7% |
| VIVAX - Vanguard Value Index (Lg Value) |
$13,782 |
13% |
| DODGX - Dodge & Cox (Lg Value) |
$13,782 |
5% |
| VISVX - V. Small-Cap Value Index |
$12,725 |
12% |
| VGSIX - V. REIT Index |
$7,637 |
7% |
| VTRIX - V. International Value |
$8,851 |
13% |
| VEIEX - V. Emerging Markets Stock Index |
$10,622 |
10% |
| VFICX - V. Int-Term Investment-Grade Bond |
$8,037 |
8% |
| PTRAX - PIMCO Total Return (Interm. Bond) |
$2,393 |
2% |
| Cash (to be invested) |
$3,000 |
3% |
| Total |
$105,323 |
|
Recent Transactions
In the last quarter of the year, we ended up putting in the maximum $15,500 salary deferral in both of our 401k/403b’s. I had already put in $12,500 already in my Solo 401k, so I sent in a last-minute check for $3,000. For my wife’s 401k, it was done in big salary deferrals in October, November, and December. We were lucky that the company allows almost 100% salary deferrals.
Summary and Performance
My last portfolio update was back in September, but I figured with the end of 2007 it was definitely time for an update. It was a late decision to go ahead and contribute a lot to our tax-deferred accounts and taking away a bit from our cash hoard, so I was more concerned with getting them in on time than what I was actually investing in. Lots of changes to come soon, so I’m just posting a snapshot of what we have for now.
I did go back and track the cash inflows, and calculated our time-weighted rate of return, which ended up being 2.49% annualized for 2007. For a very rough comparison, the S&P 500 via Vanguard 500 (VFINX) returned 6.13% YTD. Part of this low performance was just due to timing, as the latter half of 2007 was a lot worse than the 1st half, and that was when we invested a lot more money. (Remember, this is the exact performance of our money, not just the averaged returns of all the funds we hold.) In 2006, our portfolio return was calculated at 24.9%. How did you do in 2007?
Posted in Investing, Retirement | 23 Comments »
