Archive for the 'Tools & Calculators' Category
In my previous post on Calculating and Comparing Treasury Bill Returns, it was pointed out that my APY calculation was incorrect because the way T-Bills work, you can’t actually reinvest all the interest into the next T-Bill. That is true, but what you can do is set your T-Bill to fund and deposit via another interest-bearing account like ING Direct, Emigrant Direct, or HSBC Direct. This way, you can still invest in consecutive 28-day T-Bills, and anything not rolled over to the next T-Bill is still earning decent interest.
But, we still want to compare APYs! So, what was needed was a calculator that would take all this into account. So here it is:
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Posted in Tools & Calculators, Treasury Bills and Bonds | 16 Comments »
These days you usually get APY (annual percentage yield) from banks, but there are some times when you want the APR (annual percentage rate), which does not take into the compounding of interest as it is earned. For some reason I could not find an APY to APR calculator online, so… I made one myself. Here are the definitions that the calculator is based on:
APR = PeriodicRate x Periods in a Year
APY = (1 + PeriodicRate)^(Periods in a Year) - 1
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Posted in Banking, Tools & Calculators | 16 Comments »
Update: I made a new and improved version of this calculator.
Using the rate-chasing breakeven time formula posted previously, here is the easy-to-use JavaScript Calculator version to help you decide whether you should move your money and chase the higher rate.
Note that it uses APR. Only know APY? Then please see my APY to APR calculator first. If that’s too much trouble, note that if you use APYs for both rates your final answer will be very close anyways.
Calculator:
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Posted in Banking, Tools & Calculators | 13 Comments »
I whipped out my ancient how-to-make-a-website book, and made a simple but handy JavaScript calculator for calculating the equivalent bank CD rate for a given T-Bill or Savings Bond rate, as the interest from them are exempt from local and state taxes. This uses the rate conversion formula previously given. Remember, marginal means the tax rate at which your last earned dollar is taxed. Please try it out and let me know if something’s broken:
Calculator:
For example, at my 25% Fed and 9% State tax rates, the current 4.14% rate for a 4-week T-Bill is the equivalent of a 1-month bank CD earning 4.70% annualized.
Note: The above calculator does not assume that you will itemize deductions and deduct your state taxes from your federal taxes. Even if you do itemize, I would note that everyone gets the standard deduction, so it’s not necessarily fully deductible.
Useful Resources:
Recent T-Bill auction results
2006 Federal Tax Rates
State Income Tax Rates
Posted in Savings Bonds, Tools & Calculators, Treasury Bills and Bonds | 22 Comments »
If you apply to as many offers as I do, you can’t afford the ink to print all those Terms and Conditions out. But it is really critical to save the details of everything you apply for, in case you need to fight for your money later. Companies change offers or take down their offer websites all the time. The solution? A free PDF Printer Driver called PDFCreator. Once installed, just do File > Print like usual but choose ‘PDFCreator’ as your printer, and out comes a nice Adobe Acrobat PDF File! The time you printed it out is even included. Also great for saving online statements.
Example: The 0% APR Discover card offer here has no mention of a balance transfer fee in the Terms and Conditions. But now, I have a .PDF of the complete T and C’s saved on my hard disk if there is any dispute.
Posted in Tools & Calculators | 5 Comments »
As other bloggers have mentioned, USA Today is currently doing a six-week series on how to go on a “Financial Diet“. Nothing ground-breaking, but it’s a pretty good read with stories from real-life families and tips on how to reduce debt and save more. Last week (Week 2), the focus was How to Make (and stick to) a Budget, which is exactly what I’m trying to do right now.
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Posted in Tools & Calculators | 4 Comments »
Ok, after digging a little bit more about how to manually import my transactions from VirtualBank and Presidential Bank into Quicken 2005, I find out… I can’t. Not only that, the reason is just stupid greed in my opinion. Both Microsoft Money and Quicken 2005 use the OFX format for exchanging financial data, but Money still allows you to import data using the popular .pif format. Quicken? Not only does it not allow you to import data using the .pif at all, it evens cripples your software to not accept OFX files unless your bank pays them.
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Posted in Tools & Calculators | 9 Comments »
Ok, so after “reconciling” tons of transactions with Money 2005, I went ahead and purchased Quicken 2005 on the way home yesterday. I figure, the $60 is worth it in the long run if I can get my budget in order and improve on it, and I got MS Money cheap. I’m not giving up on Money just yet, I just want to find the best product for me.
First impressions? I only installed it last night, but downloading transactions for most banks has been smoother than with Money, everything balanced out right. However, some banks, like VirtualBank and Presidential Bank, don’t seem to export in Quicken’s new format. May the best personal finance software win.
Posted in Tools & Calculators | 3 Comments »
This is slightly off-topic, but I’m constantly annoyed that whenever you want to simply read a news story or use their “free” service, sites often make you register and provide your name, e-mail, address, etc. I mean, it’s obvious that the only reason to do that is to (1) get demographic information for advertisers and (2) to sell your e-mail and contact info to those advertisers. Please note that MyMoneyBlog does not record or share any e-mail addresses left in the comments. In fact, an e-mail address isn’t even required to post.
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Posted in Tools & Calculators | 4 Comments »
It’s really annoying when sites like The New York Times and CBS Marketwatch make you register before being allowed to enter their site and be presented with ads (and occassionally read some content).
Above are the slogans of BugMeNot.com, which stores and shares generic logins and passwords that everyone can use so you don’t have to endure any more junk mail than you already get. Check it out! Hopefully sites will get the hint and we won’t need it anymore. Also available as a Firefox extension.
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Posted in Tools & Calculators | No Comments »
In addition to the many good books out there, you can get a pretty decent grasp of the investing world just by surfing around a bit. Many big sites have in-depth mini-universities. There is a lot of overlap and the some of the advice is pretty generic, but I still use them as resources whenever a question pops up. Here are a few:
CNN Money 101
Kiplinger.com Basics: Tutorials
SmartMoney University (My overall favorite)
MSN Money Decision Center
Posted in Tools & Calculators | No Comments »
Wasn’t Die Hard a great movie? It’s even got a Christmas theme =). I can’t remember a single thing about the sequels though… Anyways! Diehards.org is a forum for people to discuss mutual funds, more specifically Vanguard mutual funds but not exclusively. The forum is a bit tedious to wade through, with tons of posts and little organization. However, the people there are very nice (even to newbies) and each have their own interesting spin on mutual funds and asset allocation strategies. Supposedly Mr. Bogle himself stops by occassionally. Here are some of the more interesting threads that I came across:
“The Intelligent Asset Allocator by Wm. Bernst” by 3515duck
“My Asset Allocation Plan” by Robin
“Newbie portfolio comments appreciated” by ramesh
“Single Target Retirement Fund in an IRA” by Arenal
Yippie Ky Yay…
Posted in Tools & Calculators | 1 Comment »
Now that I have a rough goal to achieve of $1,500,000, I need a way to chart my progress. My favorite tool for this is Yodlee OnCenter. It is a site that aggregates all of your logins and passwords for different accounts, such as bank accounts, brokerage, 401ks, loans, and credit cards. It even keeps up with all your frequent flyer miles and various other points. It can tally up all your assets, subtract all your liablities, and show you your net worth on a daily basis. Try it out, it’s well organized, free, and I use it every day!
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Posted in Tools & Calculators | 20 Comments »
