http://www.mymoneyblog.com Personal Finance and Investing Blog Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:19:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I promised to follow-up on the features of the Citi Forward card after getting mine, and am finally getting around to it. Read on to see how you can get a $100 gift card and also 3.45% cash back with this card at restaurants, Amazon.com, and more. Sign-Up ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/07/citi-forward-card-bonus-rewards-follow-up-5x-rewards-at-restaurants-and-amazoncom.html This might be completely obvious to others, and I'm probably opening myself to ridicule, but I only recently discovered it and find it awesome. If you have dog that like to chew things, many of those fancy plush squeak toys last about a day. But if ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/07/my-dogs-favorite-chew-toy-is-now-free.html You may have heard the term "three-legged stool", taken from the idea that a stool needs three legs to maintain balance. (Photographers use tripods, no duopods or quadrapods. Even a four-legged chair will likely wobble.) Old Three-Legged Stool of Retirement Traditionally, the components of the three-legged stool of retirement have ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/07/creating-your-own-three-legged-stool-of-retirement.html I saw this LA Times article San Francisco beefs up renter protections over at SavingFreak, and it nagged at me all day as both a recent renter and possible future landlord. Here's the quick summary. City Supervisor Chris Daly introduced legislation to add the following additional tenant "protections": Landlords cannot ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/07/your-take-rent-control-based-on-tenants-income.html The Accidental Slumlord A writer whose lives in Massachusetts buys a two-unit rental property in Pocatello, Idaho for $62,750 during the housing boom. Read what happens when he actually visits his house and deals with his tenants. OptionsHouse Brokerage - $2.95 Stock Trades Another new discount online brokerage with cheap trades, but ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/assorted-links-and-the-tuesday-10.html I am not a big fan of purchasing credit scores. I can understand why a lender would pay to get a calculation of your likelihood of defaulting on your loan, but if it's based on our data, why do we have to pay just to see it? ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/myfico-promotional-codes.html A regular reader Don sent me a post entitled Long Term Buy And Hold Is Still Bad Advice. Okay, fine, everyone and their mom has been telling me this recently. But I read it, and it was such a bad analysis that I had to rebut ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/a-bad-argument-of-why-buy-and-hold-is-bad-advice.html I saw that Vanguard has a new account called the VanguardAdvantage account. On the surface, it looks great. In addition to having full brokerage features (buy individual stocks, ETFs, options, and even brokered CDs), you also get full checkwriting abilities, ATM access, and online billpay. ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/vanguardadvantage-all-in-one-checking-account-at-vanguard.html Well, looks like I've squeezed all the free money out of another credit card offer. This time it is the Miles Card by Discover. It used to have a good 12-month no-fee 0% balance transfer offer, but has recently added a balance transfer fee. However, it ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/miles-card-by-discover-rewards-travel-credit-redemption-info.html Whenever I'm not traveling on the company dime, I usually run through a checklist to find the lowest price on hotel stays. Let's say you're like me and need to find a room in New York City for a few nights, checking in August 30th. I'd ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/5-step-guide-to-finding-the-lowest-rate-for-hotel-rooms.html In a recent Money magazine article about ETF Investing, there is a nice illustration of a simple and diversified portfolio made entirely of ETFs by author/money manager Rick Ferri: Put simply, ETFs are essentially mutual funds that trade like stocks. (Note the ticker symbols included above.) Hence ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/create-a-balanced-simple-portfolio-with-five-etfs.html As pointed out by reader Jason, another consideration when evaluating the cashflow potential for a rental property is whether you can deduct the mortgage interest on your taxes. To see what the rules are, I always like to start directly at the source, which meant a stroll ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/mortgage-interest-tax-deduction-on-rental-property.html Well, I just burned a few minutes and grabbed another $25 Amazon.com gift certificate from MyPoints. It's one of the few surviving "read e-mails for money" websites from the dot-com boom, and is a great example of Bored Money - ways to earn some money on the ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/mypoints-earn-points-for-reading-e-mails-visiting-websites.html It's Friday, which has become the day when Ally Bank announces new rates. I'm not sure why Ally Bank has become the poster boy for naughty banks giving us interest rates that are "too high", but they are. From this CNN Money article: Last month, the FDIC ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/ally-bank-vs-fdic-9-month-no-penalty-cd-215-apy.html CNN Money recently listed 5 new tools for homebuyers, one of which was InvestorLoft.com. At first glance, it looks like a Zillow for investment properties. I decided to run a quick search using their PropScout tool for an investment property in California for under $300,000. I ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/finding-an-investment-property-with-investorloft-and-propscout.html If you have a student loan debt balance that is close to or exceeds your annual income, this is for you. Income-Based Repayment (IBR) is a new way to lower your federal student loan payments starting July 1, 2009. It caps monthly payments and forgives remaining debt and interest ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/income-based-repayment-of-federal-student-loan-debt-starts-july-1st.html If you use Microsoft Money to manage your finances, you should know that Microsoft will no longer be selling MS Money after June 30th, 2009. From the Microsoft product page: With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/microsoft-money-discontinued-transfer-your-data-to-quicken.html While researching the benefit of swapping one of my 21 mpg cars for a 31 mpg Honda Fit, I came across a site called the MPG Illusion. The easiest way to illustrate their point is via a quick quiz. Pop Quiz The full quiz and explanation is here. But ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/the-miles-per-gallon-mpg-illusion-comparing-fuel-efficiency-is-tricky.html You've probably heard about the new "Cash for Clunkers" bill that is offering up to $4,500 towards the purchase of a new car. The idea is to stimulate demand for new cars as well as raise overall fuel efficiency by promoting the trade-in of "clunkers" for new ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/does-my-car-qualify-for-the-cash-for-clunkers-program.html Chase Bank is offering $100 Bonus coupons for opening a qualifying business checking account with at least $500. You must print out a unique coupon code and bring it in to a local branch. First link is good for the following states: IL, WI, MI, IN, NY, CT, NJ, ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/chase-business-checking-100-bonus-coupon-codes.html I recently received a review copy of Jean Chatzky's The Difference: How Anyone Can Prosper in Even The Toughest Times, where she attempts to understand why some people easily move from barely getting by into a life of comfort and/or wealth, while others get stuck or even fall backwards. ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/20-common-attributes-of-people-who-improved-their-financial-situation.html PNC Bank has a new online banking product called Virtual Wallet which combines multiple bank accounts and online money management tools into one site. Virtual Wallet is comprised of 3 accounts working together: • Your SPEND account is a non-interest-bearing checking account. • Your RESERVE account is an interest-bearing checking account ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/pnc-bank-virtual-wallet-75-new-account-bonus.html One of the things I like to read when I get the itch for some stock market opinion (which isn't very often) is John Hussman's weekly market commentary. Not that he's always right, and I don't own any of his mutual funds, but I like to hear ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/mortgage-rate-reset-timeline-another-wave-coming.html I finally got around to looking closer at Microplace, a site owned by eBay that tries to alleviate global poverty by offering investments that enable loans to hardworking poor people. I wrote about them previously in Earn a 5% Return and Help Fight Poverty Too? but never ended ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/microplace-review-investments-application-funding-methods-bonus.html Looks like Ally Bank dropped their rates over the weekend, about a week after my Ally Bank review. I don't think this means they are an undercapitalized bank though, as the rates are still much higher than the upcoming FDIC rate caps. More likely, they simply ... http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/06/ally-bank-9-month-no-penalty-cd-230-apy.html