CFP Course Notes #2: Common Examples of Negligence by Financial Advisors

March 14, 2024 By Jonathan Ping Leave a Comment
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In keeping with my goal of finishing one course per month from the University of Georgia Self-Paced CFP education program, I wrapped up the first course “Fundamentals of Financial Planning” in February (barely). Here were the topics covered (source):

  • The Personal Financial Planning Process
  • Economic Concepts and Consumer Protection Laws
  • Personal Financial Statements
  • Managing Cash Flow and Debt
  • Using the HP-12C Calculator
  • Using the HP-10bII Calculator
  • Educational Savings Techniques
  • Educational Aid and Funding Calculation
  • Regulation of Financial Planners
  • CFP Board Regulatory Requirements

I previously covered the official 7-Step Financial Planning Process in Notes #1, which was enlightening. I ended up spending the most time overall on the HP-12C calculator section, as it took several reps to learn and memorize how to use all of the specialized buttons for the financial calculator.

I personally didn’t learn much new in the Educational Savings and Aid sections, given my previous research as a parent and owner of multiple 529 plans. It did provide a good generic overview for those that haven’t gone down that rabbit hole.

In terms of new practical information, I again found it helpful when they showed me the perspective of practicing advisors. The course wisely warns potential CFPs of the most common mistakes that have resulted in negligence lawsuits…

  • Failure to address risk of disability.
  • Failure to address risk of property loss and attached liability.
  • Failure to timely process a client’s deposit check, resulting in the loss of potential investment gains.
  • Recommending unsuitable investments.
  • Recommending only those products which result in high fees to the planner.
  • Failure to adequately educate the client regarding investment risks, costs, and benefits.
  • Charging fees that were not first disclosed and agreed upon with the client.
  • Failure to monitor investments on the schedule agreed upon in the engagement letter.

In turn, these items can be flipped to create a checklist for the individual client:

  • Do you have adequate disability insurance?
  • Do you have adequate homeowners/rental/landlord insurance, car/boat/vehicle insurance, umbrella liability insurance?
  • After sending in money, did you follow-up to confirm that your funds were deposited and invested as promised?
  • Do you feel that you fully understand the investments made on your behalf? Do you understand why they are better than other alternatives?
  • Did you receive a clear list of all the fees charged?
  • Are you receiving updates that your investments being monitored as promised?

Photo by Reba Spike on Unsplash

Filed Under: Insurance, Investing
Last updated: March 14, 2024
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Taking a Self-Paced CFP Education Course For Fun and… Personal Knowledge

February 12, 2024 By Jonathan Ping 12 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

While pondering potential goals for the New Year, I ended up poking around Certified Financial Planner (CFP) Certification Education Programs. I have been toying with the idea of taking one of these courses off and on for years, which helps you fulfill the first two requirements of obtaining the CFP certification:

  • Education. Completion of CFP Board-approved coursework, and a bachelor’s degree in any discipline from an accredited college or university.
  • Exam. Pass the CFP® Exam, which is 6 hours long and consists of 170 multiple-choice questions covering a variety of topics.
  • Experience. Complete 6,000 hours of professional experience related to the financial planning process, or 4,000 hours of apprenticeship experience that meets additional requirements.
  • Ethics. Pass the Candidate Fitness and Standards Background Check.

I have no plans to pursue a career as a financial planner, as even helping my parents with their portfolio is stressful enough on it own. Accordingly, I don’t plan on completing the Experience requirement and thus won’t be able to obtain the actual CFP certification. So why bother spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time?

  • I do plan on managing my own portfolio and financial situation (and portfolio of my parents) for the next few decades and beyond.
  • I know that I enjoy financial topics in general and am curious to fill any knowledge gaps that I have.
  • I’m curious about what the CFP board thinks is important and “correct”.
  • Hopefully I will find some useful information to share with you readers.
  • Even at a robo-advisor-like annual management fee of 0.30%, a $1 million portfolio would still cost $3,000 in fees each year. For someone who has accumulated a significant portfolio, it doesn’t seem completely reckless to spend $3,000 learning this stuff instead.

I read some reviews and comparisons, and somehow ended up on the website for the University of Georgia Self-Paced Online CFP® Program. This wasn’t the most well-known program, or the oldest program, but it seemed like a decent CFP Board-registered program and covered all the required topics at a relatively affordable cost of $3,250 (+$750 for optional textbooks). There are six courses and a capstone course where you develop an actual financial plan:

  • Fundamentals of Financial Planning
  • Insurance Planning
  • Investment Planning
  • Income Tax Planning
  • Retirement Planning
  • Estate Planning
  • Developing the Financial Plan

I filled out the form for a “free Demo”, and shortly thereafter received an e-mail offer for $700 off the “sticker” price. This offer has since expired, but I share this story for those seriously interested as you might also decide to express interest and see if you get an offer. The course itself appears to be run by a third-party called Greene Consulting, which runs the CFP courses for five different universities including UGA. (Yes, I checked them all, and they all list the same prices.)

Get instant access! Test drive the platform and learn why thousands of people have selected this Online CFP® Certification Education Program over the competition.

Complete the form below and get instant access to our online platform. View sample courses and interactive content.

Note: I have no affiliation with this program besides being a paying customer. Oh yes, I forgot, I impulsively bought the program after receiving the discount offer. I had already “anchored” myself to paying the $3,250 and felt it was a good deal… I fell for the old infomercial trick! Still, if you compare prices for CFP courses (full core content, excluding textbooks), this was definitely the cheapest net price that I’ve found.

This self-paced program allows you up to 21 months to complete all of the courses. My plan is to complete one course per month starting this month (February), and so right now I’m only about halfway through the first course “Fundamentals of Financial Planning”. I did go ahead and purchase physical textbooks (I’m old-fashioned… and old), but I haven’t had to open them yet. They use the financial textbooks from Money Education, and I paid $750 through UGA for the complete set.

Note that many financial professionals decide to take an additional “exam cram course” with lots of practice questions that is solely focused on passing the CFP Exam. This adds roughly another $1,000 on top of the ~$925 to actually take the CFP Exam itself! I don’t know if all that extra cost will be worth being able to say “I passed the CFP Exam!” when I don’t need the CFP certification for career advancement purposes.

Filed Under: Estate Planning, Insurance, Investing, Retirement
Last updated: February 13, 2024
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Big List of Free Consumer Data Reports 2024: Check Your Credit, Banking, Rental History, Insurance, and Employment Data

January 18, 2024 By Jonathan Ping 22 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

magUpdated for 2024. Since these are available every 12 months, it is a good idea to check these near or around the same time each year. A lot of companies make their money by collecting and selling data – your personal data. It can be critical to know what they are telling prospective lenders, landlords, even employers about you. Under the FCRA and/or FACT Act, many consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) are now legally required to send you a free copy of your report every 12 months, as well as provide a way to dispute incorrect information.

Some have an online request form, but some are purposefully making it harder to check your reports by removing the online option. Don’t be afraid to call them if needed. You probably won’t want to bother checking all of them anyhow, but if you’ve experienced any sort of rejection or adverse action in these areas the cause might be found inside one of these databases. Keep in mind that you may not have a file with all of these places. Requesting a copy of your own consumer reports does not hurt your credit score.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been doing a much better job maintaining their own comprehensive list of CRAs (PDF version) recently, so I am editing down this list to include direct links to the overall categories along with the larger and more widely-used consumer reporting agencies.

Credit-Related

Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. The three major credit bureaus track your credit accounts, payment history, and other related information like bankrupts and liens. Free online credit reports now available weekly (the frequency was increased from annual to weekly during the COVID pandemic, but that change has been made permanent).

(Note: As part of a class action settlement, you may also request up to six additional free copies of your Equifax credit report directly from myEquifax during any 12-month period through December 2026.)

You can also now freeze your credit reports for free, but you must contact each bureau separately. For the contact info, please see Big List of Ways To Protect Your Identity: Free Credit Monitoring, Free Credit Locks, and Free Credit Freezes

LexisNexis. One of the largest personal information databases that includes public records, real estate transaction and ownership data, lien, judgment, and bankruptcy records, professional license information, and historical addresses on file. Free copy, must mail in form.

CoreLogic Credco. One of the largest credit-related CRAs and often used by mortgage lenders, your CoreLogic Credco Consumer File can contain: previous homeownership and mortgage info, rental payment history, any reported delinquencies, and other debt obligations like child support. Free copy once every 12 months.

Banking-Related

Chexsystems. A consumer information database used by an estimated 80-90% of all banks to help determine the risk of opening new accounts. Think of it as the banks’ version of a credit bureau. If a person commits check fraud or overdraws their account, it will be listed here. In addition, the simple act of opening or closing a bank account may be recorded in their database. Having a negative ChexSystems record can leave you blacklisted from opening bank accounts at most major banks. Free copy once every 12 months. You can now request your report online.

Subprime-Related (Payday Lending)

Microbilt and subsidiary Payment Reporting Builds Credit (PRBC). Microbilt is a provider of credit data for the “approximately 110 million underserved and underbanked consumers in the United States.” Free copy once every 12 months.

Rental History

Realpage (LeasingDesk) Consumer Report. Provides tenant screening through their LeasingDesk product, including “the industry’s largest rental payment history database.”

CoreLogic SafeRent. SafeRent provides both tenant and employment screening data, including information regarding landlord tenant and criminal public court records. One free report every 12 months.

Experian RentBureau Rental History Report. “Every 24 hours, Experian RentBureau receives updated rental payment history data from property owners/managers, electronic rent payment services and collection companies and makes that information available immediately to the multifamily industry through our resident screening partners.”

TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions. SmartMove provides tenant credit, eviction, and background checks.

  • MySmartMove.com FAQ page
  • SmartMove will disclose the contents of a criminal and/or credit report retained by SmartMove to an individual who requests a copy of their report. To verify your identity and obtain a copy of your report(s) or dispute any information within that report, please contact customer service at 866-775-0961.

Auto and Property Insurance

C.L.U.E. Personal Property Report. A division of LexisNexis, CLUE stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, which collects information that is used to calculate your insurance premiums. This report provides a seven year history of losses associated with an individual and his/her personal property. Includes date of loss, loss type, and amount paid along with general information such as policy number, claim number and insurance company name. This also means you can find out about previous claims on the house you are currently renting or recently bought, even if they weren’t made by you.

C.L.U.E. Auto Report. This report provides a seven year history of automobile insurance losses associated with an individual. Includes date of loss, loss type, and amount paid along with general information such as policy number, claim number and insurance company name.

A-PLUS Loss History Reports, subsidiary of Verisk. ISO stands for Insurance Services Office, A-PLUS stands for Automated Property Loss Underwriting System. Auto and property loss claim history.

Utilities

National Consumer Telecom and Utilities Exchange. NCTUE tracks when people don’t pay their phone, cable, or utility bills. One free report every 12 months.

Retail

The Retail Equation. Tracks product return and exchange abuse at retail merchants.

Medical History

MIB (previously known as Medical Information Bureau). Run by 470 insurance companies with a “primary mission of detecting and deterring fraud that may occur in the course of obtaining life, health, disability income, critical illness, and long-term care insurance.” They record information of “underwriting significance” like medical conditions or hazardous activities. If you have not applied for individually underwritten life, health, or disability income insurance during the preceding seven year period, then you probably don’t have a record.

Milliman IntelliScript. Tracks your prescription drug purchase history. “Milliman IntelliScript will have prescription information about you only if you authorized the release of your medical records to an insurance company and that company requested that we gather a report on you.”

Employment History

The following companies all offer background screening services for employers. Most will not have any information about you unless you authorized a potential employer to run a background check on you (probably during the application process). Some will not provide you information unless there was adverse action. Otherwise, you can get one free copy every 12 months.

The Work Number (division of Equifax). They also keep historical income records.

Backgroundchecks.com

Checkr

Filed Under: Banking, Insurance, Real Estate Tagged With:
Last updated: January 18, 2024
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

The Scary Clause in Fixed Index Annuity Contracts

August 17, 2023 By Jonathan Ping 9 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Allan Roth takes a closer look at the role of fixed index annuities as part of an “efficient” portfolio, and as usual makes some great observations. The first thing about fixed index annuities is that no two are the same – the insurance companies don’t want to create a standardized product where they have to compete with each other on price. There are surrender charges, confusing indexes, caps, spreads, market value adjustments, participation rates, just to name a few. Even in the analyzed article, they had to use a theoretical FIA product that nobody can actually purchase. (Comparability is what makes MYGAs and SPIAs different than other annuities.)

The second thing about fixed index annuities is that within nearly every contract, the insurance company can significantly change the crediting rules after purchase.

From Annuity.org:

The growth of indexed annuities aligns with the performance of a particular stock index, such as the S&P 500. Interest rate caps denote the maximum amount of interest an annuity can earn — regardless of the change in the index. Insurance companies have the right to adjust these caps every year.

From Roth’s article:

Every FIA contract I’ve reviewed has the unilateral right of the insurance company to change the terms of the contract, such as lowering that 12% cap. Pfau agreed that insurance companies have that right. I asked Pfau how low those caps could go, and he responded, “As low as 1-2%.” I’ve seen 0.25%, meaning the contract owner would get between 0% and 0.25% annually. This right of the insurance company to slash returns was not mentioned in Pfau’s paper.

Here’s some fine print I just pulled off the internet for the first FIA product I could find:

The rates are guaranteed for the length of the crediting period. They are declared at issue and at the end of the crediting period. The minimum monthly cap for the monthly sum with cap crediting method is 0.50%. The minimum annual cap for the annual point-to-point with cap crediting method is 0.25%. The maximum annual spread for the annual point-to-point with spread crediting method is 12%. The minimum participation rate for the annual point-to-point with a participation rate and the 2-year MY point-to-point with a participation rate crediting methods is 5.0%. The minimum interest rate is 0.10%.

Note that the rates are only guaranteed for “the length of the crediting period” (one year is common, but can be up to 5-7 years). As of this writing, the current “annual point-to-point with cap” is 6.5% for the S&P 500 index. But in the next crediting period, they could lower it down to 0.25%. The current “annual point-to-point w/ participation rate” for the PIMCO Tactical Balanced ER Index+ is 120%. But in the next crediting period, the terms reveal they could lower it all the way down to 5%.

FIAs don’t offer easy comparison shopping that encourage consumer-friendly pricing, the index it tracks never includes dividends (that I’ve ever seen), and the insurance company keeps the power to change the return calculations after purchase. Hard pass.

Filed Under: Insurance
Last updated: August 18, 2023
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

FDIC Insurance: Don’t Waste This Valuable Insurance

March 12, 2023 By Jonathan Ping 8 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

The big financial news over the weekend was the failure of both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. They failed, the FDIC took over and fulfilled its duties, and then the uninsured business owners convinced the Fed to backstop everything (aka “bail them out”).

As a simple individual investor trying to keep his family assets safe, my first takeaway was simply that you can’t expect to see a bank failure coming. Silicon Valley Bank was the cool kid for a long time. Here’s a chart from Avios of its stock price vs. an index tracking bank stocks overall:

Most of Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits were from start-up businesses, but individual households had accounts with them as well. I don’t mean to pick on DepositAccounts, but they are a respected site and they gave Silicon Valley Bank a Health Grade of A:

How is the average investor supposed to do any better? This is why I don’t care about health grades for banks from anyone. I don’t need to examine their investment portfolio, underwriting standards, or stock price. As a depositor, either they have FDIC insurance, or they don’t.

Big name banks can fail even if their assets are greater than their deposits. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are now the second and third largest bank failures ever (even inflation-adjusted), and only behind to Washington Mutual during the financial crisis. From WSJ:

I wonder how the list will look in a year?

As an individual, there is no reason to exceed the FDIC insurance limits.. FDIC insurance provides great peace of mind. Don’t waste it.

Got anywhere close to $250,000 in a single bank account? Know that the FDIC insurance coverage limit applies per depositor, per insured depository institution for each account ownership category. You may actually achieve more than $250,000 of total coverage at a single bank, depending on how you have titled your accounts. Here are the official online calculators:

NCUA Electronic Share Insurance Calculator (ESIC)
FDIC Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator (EDIE)

Filed Under: Banking, Insurance
Last updated: March 13, 2023
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

Health Care Sharing Ministries: Understanding the Risks and Bankruptcy Examples

March 2, 2023 By Jonathan Ping 2 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Back in 2020, I wrote a post Do Not Buy List: Healthcare Sharing Ministry As Health Insurance Alternative. Although they may present a lower-cost option that even aligns with your faith, they can also contain hidden and unpredictable risks. Since then, membership has grown but many have also found themselves stuck with large and unexpected unpaid bills.

Sharity Ministries, also formerly known as Trinity HealthShare, went into bankruptcy in 2021 and left their 40,000+ members with over $300 million in unpaid healthcare claims. A 2022 lawsuit by the State of California alleged that Sharity Ministries paid out as little as 16 cents of every dollar it took in.

Medical Cost Sharing Inc. of Missouri was shut down by the FBI and Dept. of Justice in early 2023 after allegedly taking in millions in premiums but only paying out an estimated 3.5% of premiums collected.

Liberty Health Share, which has over 220,000 members, has been involved in multi-million dollar settlements with its vendors (which records show were owned by relatives or prior business partners of the CEOs) and is the subject of a new investigative article by Propublica: A Christian Health Nonprofit Saddled Thousands With Debt as It Built a Family Empire Including a Pot Farm, a Bank and an Airline.

The failure of federal and state agencies to move decisively against the Beers family has left Liberty HealthShare members struggling with millions of dollars in medical debt. Many have joined a class-action lawsuit accusing the nonprofit of fraud.

One of the main issues is that they purposefully operate in a gray area where they make all the rules. Anyone can claim to pay 100% of “eligible” expenses, as long as they get to define “eligible”. The “non-profit” executives can also pay other businesses affiliated with themselves, which in turn do make plenty of profit.

Despite abundant evidence of fraud, much of it detailed in court records and law enforcement files obtained by ProPublica, members of the Beers family have flourished in the health care industry and have never been prevented from running a nonprofit. Instead, the family’s long and lucrative history illustrates how health care sharing ministries thrive in a regulatory no man’s land where state insurance commissioners are barred from investigating, federal agencies turn a blind eye and law enforcement settles for paltry civil settlements.

With minimal regulatory oversight, things can go bad without anyone noticing:

There is no national data showing how much health care sharing ministries spend on members’ medical bills. However, as scrutiny of sharing ministries increased in recent years, some states have begun to require financial disclosure. Data published by the Massachusetts’ insurance board shows that Liberty spent about 56 cents of every dollar it took in from members in that state on medical expenses in 2019 and 2020, a figure that would be scandalous if it were an insurance company. The federal government requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 cents of every dollar on direct care.

While they may claim to be non-profit charities, these entities are all businesses in the end. They must balance revenue and expenses, deal with the overall economy, deal with internal and external fraud. The numbers have to add up, while low premiums conflict with generous claims payouts. Charities fail. Businesses fail. Can you predict which one?

Given that a single medical diagnosis could add up to $100,000 or $200,000 or more in total bills, the failure of a health care sharing ministry could basically mean the bankruptcy of most families. Even worse, they may place a household in the position to avoid or skip important treatment. The entire reason we have car, home, and life insurance is to prevent financial disaster from a single incident.

Things can go well for a long time. Bernie Madoff’s clients were quite happy with his services… until they weren’t. Warren Buffett summarizes with this quote:

Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero.

I share the stories above that have occurred just over the past few years, and while I’m hopeful that there will be no future examples, I’m also realistic that the list will likely continue to grow. Be careful out there. It’s not worth risking a zero for me.

Filed Under: Insurance
Last updated: March 3, 2023
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

The Best Health Savings Accounts (HSA) Providers: Fidelity and Lively/Schwab

November 29, 2022 By Jonathan Ping 26 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Updated for 2022. It’s open enrollment season, and there is better than a 50/50 chance that you will enroll in a high-deductible health plan. That means that you are also eligible to contribute to a Health Savings Account (HSA), which has triple-tax-free benefits: tax-deductible contributions, tax-free earnings growth, and tax-free withdrawals when used for qualified medical expenses (image source). This makes them better than even Traditional and Roth IRAs (image source).

Are you an HSA spender or HSA investor? As a spender, you contribute to the HSA, grab the tax-deduction, and then treat it like a piggy bank and spend it down whenever you have a qualified healthcare expense. You don’t have that annoying “use-it-or-lose-it” feature of Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), and most offer FDIC insurance on your cash.

As an investor, you are trying to maximize the tax benefits of HSAs by contributing as much as possible, investing in growth assets like stocks, and then avoiding withdrawals until retirement. If you have the financial means, you would max out the contribution limits ($3,850 for individual and $7,300 for family coverage in 2022, slightly more if age 55+) and then pay for your healthcare expenses out-of-pocket instead of withdrawing from the HSA. You should keep a “forever” digital PDF copy of all your healthcare expenses. Technically, you can still withdraw the amounts of all those expenses tax-free at any time in the future, even decades later.

You can pick your own HSA provider, and some are much worse than others! Morningstar has updated their 2022 Health Savings Account landscape report (e-mail required). After reading through the entire thing, my take is that you really only need to consider the two best HSA plans: Fidelity HSA and Lively HSA.

Similar to IRAs, you don’t need to use the default provider that your employer recommends. As long as you are covered by an HSA-eligible health plan on the first of the month, you can open an account with any provider. From the Lively site:

My health insurance or employer is offering an HSA. Do I need to go with the option they provide?

No. Because an HSA is an individual account, you are free to choose whichever HSA provider you want to work with (e.g., Lively).

Source: “Publication 969 (2018), Health Savings Accounts and Other Tax-Favored Health Plans.”

In addition, you can transfer the balance in an existing HSA to another HSA provider at any time, even if no longer covered by an HSA-eligible health plan.

Fidelity and Lively HSA for spenders. Both have the least fees and a safe place for your cash. Others HSAs have maintenance fees, minimum balance requirements, and more “annoyance” fees.

  • No minimum balances.
  • No maintenance fees.
  • No paper statement fees.
  • No account closing fee.
  • FDIC-insured cash balances.

Fidelity offers the best potential interest rate on cash via the Fidelity® Government Cash Reserves money market fund (FDRXX) as a core position, which currently pays more than their FDIC cash sweep option. Note that this money market fund is very conservative but is not FDIC-insured.

Fidelity and Lively HSA for investors. Both feature a low-cost way to invest your contributions for long-term growth:

  • No minimum balance required in spending account in order to invest.
  • Offers access to all core asset classes.
  • Offers free self-directed access to ETFs, individual stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
  • Offers “guided portfolios” for automated investing.

Fidelity quietly offers the institutional shares of their Fidelity Freedom Index “target date” mutual fund line-up with a very low expense ratio of ~0.08%. It’s a bit confusing as you must choose the self-directed “Fidelity HSA” option to access this auto-pilot fund. The self-directed option has no annual fee and also includes access to ETFs, individual stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Be aware that the Fidelity HSA sign-up page may try to steer you towards the different “Fidelity Go HSA” for guided investing, but that robo-advisor charges an annual advisory fee of 0.35% per year for balances of $25,000 and above (no advisory fee while your balance is under $25,000).

Lively also has similar “guided portfolio” robo-advisor option that charges a 0.50% annual advisory fee. Morningstar dinged Lively for this, but Lively also offers a self-directed brokerage window with Schwab. That means you can invest in any ETF with zero commissions at Schwab including building your own DIY portfolio using index ETFs, mutual funds, individuals stocks, or individual bonds. (Previously TD Ameritrade, but Schwab bought TD Ameritrade.) The Schwab brokerage option has no annual fee with a $3,000 minimum balance, otherwise if you are under $3,000 it costs $24 a year. If you already have your own financial advisor connected to Schwab, you can allow them to manage your HSA as well.

A simple Vanguard ETF portfolio might be 50% US Stocks (VTI), 30% International Stocks (VXUS), 20% US Bonds (BND). The total weighted expense ratio of such a portfolio would be less than 0.05% annually and fully customizable for the DIY investor. Both accounts can cost basically nothing above the expense ratio of the cheapest ETFs you can find – you really can’t ask for more than that!

Fidelity and Lively have the least amount of extra and/or hidden fees:

How do Fidelity and Lively make money then? Your employer has to pay a fee to HSA providers. It’s still much cheaper for them than your old full-price health insurance premium, of course.

Bottom line. Both Fidelity HSA and Lively HSA are excellent options for your Health Savings Account funds. If you want auto-pilot investing, the cheapest option is the Fidelity Freedom Index Institutional shares. Alternatively, Lively is an independent HSA provider with a modern feel and a good history of customer-friendly fee practices and service. DIY investors can use the Lively/Schwab brokerage window to invest in a mix of Vanguard or other index ETFs.

(Disclosures: I am not an affiliate of Fidelity, although I would if they had such a program. I am an affiliate of Lively and may receive a commission if you open an account through my link. Thanks for your support of this site.)

Filed Under: Insurance, Investing, Retirement
Last updated: November 29, 2022
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

The “No Risk” Portfolio: Stock Upside Exposure with 100% Money Back Guarantee

September 7, 2022 By Jonathan Ping 5 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Everyone loves a 100% money-back guarantee. A popular option on insurance policies is the “Return of Premium” rider. Let’s say you buy a $1,000,000 term life insurance for 30 years at $1,000 a year. At the end of 30 years, if you’re still alive, the insurance policy will no longer pay you the $1,000,000 if you die, but it will return all the premium you paid ($30,000). In your mind, you could think of it as “no risk” because you’ll get your $30,000 back no matter what!

Similarly, a very popular option on income annuities is the “Return of Principal” rider. Let’s say you pay $100,000 upfront in exchange for them paying you $7,000 in annual income for the rest of your life. What about the unlikely but possible chance that you die early in the first few years? A “return of principal” rider will guarantee that your survivors will at least get that $100,000 back. In your mind, you could think of it as “no risk” because you’ll get $100,000 back no matter what!

Create your own 100% Money Back Guarantee Portfolio. Insurance companies already sell complicated equity-indexed annuities that extend a form of this “no principal loss” to investing. But why not apply it to DIY investing? You may already see the flaw in the “no risk” terminology, but if you still like the psychological benefit of knowing you’ll have at least the same number of dollar bills come back to you after 10 years, read on to create your own “no risk” investment portfolio. Allan Roth writes about this in the AARP article Stock Market Investing for the Faint of Heart.

Let’s say you have $100,000. Right now, I see a 10-year FDIC-insured CD paying 3.60% APY (non-callable!) available from Vanguard. Using the Zero Risk Investment calculator from DepositAccounts, I know that I could put $70,210.56 into that CD today, and at the end of 10 years, I will be able to withdraw $100,000 no matter what. That means, I can take the remaining $29,789.44 today and buy stocks. Even if those stocks implode and lose every single penny of value, I will still have $100,000 at the end of 10 years. 100% Money Back Guarantee!

From that perspective, whatever you get from stocks is upside. This chart shows how much of the stock return I would still be exposed to. If stocks alone returned 8% annually, the overall portfolio would still go up about 5% annually, and my total at the end of 10 years would be $164,313.17.

If this level of safety sounds good to you, look more closely. That’s basically a 30% stocks/70% bank CD portfolio, and bank CDs are very similar to high-quality bonds. This is also why I prefer investing in US Treasury bonds and bank CDs for the bond part of my portfolio, I like having a portion of my portfolio that I don’t have to worry about at all. You could also use Treasury STRIPS (zero-coupon bonds) to guarantee a certain future payout.

What if you had a little more faith and just wanted a money back guarantee against the possibility of a 50% stock market loss after 10 years? That would allow you even more stock market exposure at roughly 45% stocks and 55% bank CDs:

This is an interesting alternative viewpoint for deciding your stock/bonds ratio. Personally, I think having even a 50% decline over a full 10-year span is very unlikely, but having a 50% decline over a 1 or 2 years span is very likely. That sharp decline (and all the real-world events causing that decline) is what makes people panic. If you have more faith in the resiliency of stocks, you can own more stocks. Only want to protect from a 10% loss after a 10-year span? Then you could hold 80% stocks to guarantee your money back in that scenario. If, on the other hand, you believe that stock returns are just a random walk with a greater dispersion in results over longer periods (including the possibility of the S&P 500 ending at 1,000 or less in 10 years), then you might want to own a lot less stocks.

Insurance companies are happy to sell you “return of premium” and “return of principal” riders (they are not free, they have a cost that either reduces your payout received or increases your premium cost) because know they can invest your money in the meantime and pocket the returns. If interest rates are high, that means inflation is likely high as well, and the buying power of your $100,000 is shrinking over time. So really, you are still exposed to risk: inflation risk.

More investment education can help us better tolerate stock market volatility, but we also need to be honest about our human tendencies. If using this “100% money back guarantee” structure helps you maintain a certain level of exposure to the stock market, then that can be a good thing. The fanciest investment strategy will fail if you can’t stay invested during the inevitable downturns.

Filed Under: Banking, Insurance, Investing, Retirement
Last updated: December 1, 2022
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

Savings I Bonds May 2022 Inflation Update: 9.62% Interest Rate!

May 3, 2022 By Jonathan Ping 45 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

May 2022 rate confirmed at 9.62%. Official press release. The variable inflation-indexed rate for I bonds bought from May 1, 2022 through October 31, 2022 will indeed be 9.62% as predicted. Every single I bond will earn this rate eventually for 6 months, depending on the initial purchase month. The fixed rate (real yield) is also 0% as predicted. Still a good deal.

See you again in mid-October for the next early prediction for November 2022.

Original post 4/12/22:

Inflation (and thus I Bonds) 🚀🚀🚀! Savings I Bonds are a unique, low-risk investment backed by the US Treasury that pay out a variable interest rate linked to inflation. With a holding period from 12 months to 30 years, you could own them as an alternative to bank certificates of deposit (they are liquid after 12 months) or bonds in your portfolio.

New inflation numbers were just announced at BLS.gov, which allows us to make an early prediction of the May 2022 savings bond rates a couple of weeks before the official announcement on the 1st. This also allows the opportunity to know exactly what a April 2022 savings bond purchase will yield over the next 12 months, instead of just 6 months. You can then compare this against a May 2022 purchase.

New inflation rate prediction. September 2021 CPI-U was 274.310. March 2022 CPI-U was 287.504, for a semi-annual increase of 4.81%. Using the official formula, the variable component of interest rate for the next 6 month cycle will be 9.62%. You add the fixed and variable rates to get the total interest rate. The fixed rate hasn’t been above 0.50% in over a decade, but if you have an older savings bond, your fixed rate may be up to 3.60%.

Tips on purchase and redemption. You can’t redeem until after 12 months of ownership, and any redemptions within 5 years incur an interest penalty of the last 3 months of interest. A simple “trick” with I-Bonds is that if you buy at the end of the month, you’ll still get all the interest for the entire month – same as if you bought it in the beginning of the month. It’s best to give yourself a few business days of buffer time. If you miss the cutoff, your effective purchase date will be bumped into the next month.

Buying in April 2022. If you buy before the end of April, the fixed rate portion of I-Bonds will be 0%. You will be guaranteed a total interest rate of 0.00 + 7.12 = 7.12% for the next 6 months. For the 6 months after that, the total rate will be 0.00 + 9.62 = 9.62%.

Let’s look at a worst-case scenario, where you hold for the minimum of one year and pay the 3-month interest penalty. If you theoretically buy on April 30th, 2022 and sell on April 1st, 2023, you’ll earn a ~6.51% annualized return for an 11-month holding period, for which the interest is also exempt from state income taxes. If you theoretically buy on April 30th, 2022 and sell on July 1, 2023, you’ll earn a ~7.17% annualized return for an 14-month holding period. Comparing with the best interest rates as of April 2022, you can see that this is much higher than a current top savings account rate or 12-month CD.

Buying in May 2022. If you buy in May 2022, you will get 9.62% plus a newly-set fixed rate for the first 6 months. The new fixed rate is officially unknown, but is loosely linked to the real yield of short-term TIPS, and is thus very, very, VERY likely to be 0%. Every six months after your purchase, your rate will adjust to your fixed rate (set at purchase) plus a variable rate based on inflation.

If you have an existing I-Bond, the rates reset every 6 months depending on your purchase month. Your bond rate = your specific fixed rate (based on purchase month, look it up here) + variable rate (total bond rate has a minimum floor of 0%). So if your fixed rate was 1%, you’ll be earning a 1.00 + 9.62 = 10.62% rate for six months.

Buy now or wait? Given that the current I bond rate is already much higher than the equivalent alternatives, I would personally buy in April to lock in the high rate for the longest possible time. Who knows what will happen on the next reset? I already purchased up to the limits first thing in January 2022. You are also getting a much better “deal” than with TIPS, as the fixed rate is currently negative with short-term TIPS.

Unique features. I have a separate post on reasons to own Series I Savings Bonds, including inflation protection, tax deferral, exemption from state income taxes, and educational tax benefits.

Over the years, I have accumulated a nice pile of I-Bonds and consider it part of the inflation-linked bond allocation inside my long-term investment portfolio. Right now, the inflation protection “insurance” is paying off with high yields and no principal risk.

Annual purchase limits. The annual purchase limit is now $10,000 in online I-bonds per Social Security Number. For a couple, that’s $20,000 per year. You can only buy online at TreasuryDirect.gov, after making sure you’re okay with their security protocols and user-friendliness. You can also buy an additional $5,000 in paper I bonds using your tax refund with IRS Form 8888. If you have children, you may be able to buy additional savings bonds by using a minor’s Social Security Number. TreasuryDirect also allows trust accounts to purchase savings bonds.

Note: Opening a TreasuryDirect account can sometimes be a hassle as they may ask for a medallion signature guarantee which requires a visit to a physical bank or credit union and snail mail. Don’t expect to be able to open an account in 5 minutes on your phone.

Bottom line. Savings I bonds are a unique, low-risk investment that are linked to inflation and only available to individual investors. Right now, they promise to pay out a higher fixed rate above inflation than TIPS. You can only purchase them online at TreasuryDirect.gov, with the exception of paper bonds via tax refund. For more background, see the rest of my posts on savings bonds.

[Image: 1950 Savings Bond poster from US Treasury – source]

Filed Under: Banking, Insurance, Retirement, Savings Bonds
Last updated: December 1, 2022
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

Mastercard Free ID Theft Protection and Credit Monitoring

April 28, 2022 By Jonathan Ping 9 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Update April 2022: Just a quick update that this has been a useful, additional free identity theft protection service. Today, I electronically signed some “power of attorney”-type papers through Docusign and they had me answer some identity verification questions like “which address have you been associated with?” that pulled from my credit reports and driver’s license data. Immediately, I got the following alert from Mastercard Identity Protection that even included the exact questions asked:

Previously, this service has also alerted me that my personal information like name/email have been found in data breaches from random websites like autoexpresscars.com and drivesure.com. These are all events that did not trigger any alerts from my other credit bureau-based monitoring services. Therefore, I feel signing up for this additional free service rounds them out. Services like Docusign are useful but open you up to potentially more severe cases of fraud.

Original post:

Data breaches are scary fact of life these days. If you have a Mastercard, did you know that they offer a Mastercard ID Theft Protection service to cardholders for free? If you activate it, Mastercard has paid on your behalf for a private-label identity theft protection service provided by Generali Global Assistance, Inc. (GGA). The same way that Safeway doesn’t actually make their generic version of Cheerios, Mastercard has outsourced this service. Thanks to reader Bill P for the tip.

Services are provided by Generali Global Assistance, Inc. (GGA), one of the largest providers of private-label identity protection services in the United States. GGA has handled thousands of identity-related cases and has protected millions of customers since it began offering the service in 2003. GGA’s in-house identity theft resolution specialists are certified identity theft risk management specialists – CITRMS® certification by the Institute of Consumer Financial Education (ICFE) and FCRA-certification (Fair Credit Reporting Act by the Consumer Data Industry Association).

You’ll receive an alert if there’s a change to your TransUnion credit report (e.g., new inquiries, new accounts, updated personal information by creditors). That’s nice, but I already get more comprehensive coverage from all three bureaus than this from my combination of Credit Sesame, Credit Karma, and FreeCreditScore.

The difference that caught my eye was their emphasis on full-service, human help if you do become a victim of identity theft. Emphasis mine:

This program is designed to help protect you from identity theft and provide full-service, hands-on assistance in the event of an incident. Studies have shown that the largest cost to victims of identity theft is lost time and stress associated with figuring out how to restore their identity, including replacing cards and documents while communicating with creditors to dispute fraudulent activity. In the event of an incident, we will assign you with a personal case manager to help you resolve issues, saving you countless hours and reducing the stress associated with identity theft.

Their package of services includes: identity theft affidavit assistance and submission, creditor notification, dispute and follow-up, 3-bureau fraud alert placement, inform police/legal authorities, placement of credit freeze and opt-out services provided by certified identity theft resolution specialists.

These could be hollow claims, but hopefully they are truly helpful in taking care of these things on your behalf. If you have a Mastercard, it may be another worthwhile service to add to your defenses.

Filed Under: Credit Cards, Deals & Offers, Insurance
Last updated: April 28, 2022
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

Charlie Munger: A Double Layer of Risk Protection

October 26, 2021 By Jonathan Ping Leave a Comment
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

My current commute/workout/kid taxi listening is old Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings after finding them in podcast format. (I know, out of all the choices available, somehow I find these the most stimulating?!) Here is a educational excerpt from the 2008 BRK meeting (transcript and video available at CNBC) where Charlie Munger is discussing how Berkshire works to avoid low-probability problems that could destroy the company now and in the future.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. You can see how risk averse Berkshire is. In the first place, we try and behave in a way so that no rational person is going to worry about our credit.

And after we’ve done that, and done it for many years, we also behave in a way that, if the world suddenly didn’t like our credit, we wouldn’t even notice it for months, because we have such liquidity and are so unlikely to be — unable to be — pressured by anybody.

That double layering of protection against risk is like breathing around Berkshire. It’s just part of the culture.

[…]

We do not want to be dependent on anybody or anything else. And yet we want to keep doing things.

So, we’ve found a way to do it — we think we found a way — to do that. It may give up some of the — well, obviously gives up earning higher returns 99 percent of the time, and maybe 99.9 percent of the time.

Obviously, we could have run Berkshire with more leverage over the years than we have. But we wouldn’t have slept as well, and we wouldn’t feel comfortable — we’d have a lot of people in this room that have almost all their net worth in Berkshire, including me — and we wouldn’t feel comfortable running a business that way.

Why do it? I mean, it doesn’t — it just doesn’t make any sense to us to be exposed to ruin and disgrace and embarrassment and — for something that’s not that meaningful.

If we can earn a decent return on capital, you know, what’s an extra percentage point? It just isn’t that important.

Takeaways. The parallels for personal finance seem pretty straightforward:

  • Maintain an excellent credit reputation (score). Having a good credit score will help you borrow for a house, buy a car, lower your insurance premiums in many cases, and finance larger projects and transactions. However, that credit line may still disappear quickly in a crisis.
  • Maintain adequate liquidity separate from any credit lines. Imagine that you lose your job and can’t find a new one for six months. Can your household survive without major disruption? What if at the same time, your stocks also got a 50% haircut and everyone else is suffering as well? Do you have cash or liquid assets to tide you over?
  • Accept that this level of safety means you won’t earn the highest returns. You’ll do fine, but you may not do as well as someone else who bet it all (or more than all using leverage) what happened to be the right thing during the good times. That’s okay, because you won’t be exposed to ruin.
Filed Under: Insurance, Investing
Last updated: October 26, 2021
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

State Farm Homeowner Policyholders: Free Ting Electrical Fire Sensor + $1,000 Repair Credit

September 6, 2021 By Jonathan Ping 8 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

If you have State Farm homeowner’s insurance, check to see if you are eligible for a free Ting smart sensor that monitors your home’s electrical wiring for faults that can lead to fires. Three years of Ting service is included, which includes a $1,000 credit toward the cost of a licensed electrician to find and fix hazards found by Ting. Their press release states that electrical fires make up approximately 13% of all home fires.

Some of these preventive detections included sensing clear arcing signals isolated to a chandelier in master bathroom, identifying a missing neutral connection in a sub-panel, and detecting arcing signals consistent with water interaction with electrical system.

Qualified customers who enroll will receive:

– Free Ting sensor with mobile app access
– Pay no annual service fees for three years (fees paid by State Farm)
– Receive $1,000 credit toward remediation of electrical fire hazards (provided by Whisker Labs)

What happens after the 3rd year? Before the end of the 3rd year, State Farm will notify you if the program will be extended as-is, changed, or discontinued. No payment information is requested at the time of enrollment, and you can cancel at any time. There is no obligation to continue the service.

Do all hazards identified by Ting require a licensed electrician for mitigation? In many cases, remediation of the hazard simply means stopping the use of an offending device, such as a heating blanket, sump pump, lamp, or pet feeder (all of these are real examples, among many more). In other cases, a hazard requires professional remediation.

Hat tip to DoC, as I did not receive en e-mail regarding this even though I am eligible and have since gotten and installed my free sensor.

Currently available in the following states:

Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kentucky
Maine
Massachusetts
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nevada
New Hampshire
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
Washington, DC
West Virginia

My experience. Enrollment was quick and easy, and the sensor arrived from Ting within a few days. Installation was also quick and easy; just install the app and everything is done via Bluetooth and WiFi within a couple of minutes. Right now, it is is “learning mode” and analyzing my home’s electrical wiring. It will be reassuring to know that there is no obvious electrical fire hazard lurking in my (old) home.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers, Insurance
Last updated: September 6, 2021
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

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