Archives for January 2011

Ignite Video: Tips For Buying A New Car

Posted on January 11, 2011 // 13 Comments

Here is a 5-minute, 20-slide talk from a 2007 Ignite conference in which John Gruhl shares his tips on buying a new car from a dealer. It’s gotten over 250,000 views on YouTube, and includes a lot of the same tips you may have heard before but in a slightly difference package.

Here are the major bullet points to recap:

  1. Obtain financing separately (I would add, or pay cash!)
  2. Set aside two full weekends for buying a car.
  3. Get competitive bids from several dealers.
  4. Walk away if the deal changes.
  5. Don’t buy any extras.
Filed Under: Frugal Living //

Poll: How Big Is Your Emergency Fund?

Posted on January 10, 2011 // 20 Comments

Below is a chart of the median duration of unemployment from July 1967 to December 2010, based on data supplied by the US Department of Labor. Things are bad out there, and remember, this is just the median!

According to this December 2010 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, out of the 9.4% unemployment rate, 44.3% of them are considered long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more). That means over 4% of the total US workforce – 6.4 million people – has been unemployed for over 6 months.

Which leads to the poll question of the week. How prepared are you for an extended period without a paycheck? In this case, by emergency fund I am talking about a cash (or similar) cushion that is accessible, not lines of credit.

How Big Is Your Emergency Fund?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...
If you don’t see the poll above, you may be viewing the RSS feed and should click and visit the actual blog website.
Filed Under: Career, Frugal Living, Insurance // Tagged:

What Is Your Portfolio’s Current Asset Allocation?

Posted on January 7, 2011 // 11 Comments

If you haven’t been keeping close track of it, your portfolio’s asset allocation may have shifted significantly over the past year. Your relative mix of assets like stocks, bonds, or real estate has a great impact on the volatility and expected future return of your portfolio.

Morningstar has a bunch of helpful tools for managing your investment portfolio, but many of them require a paid membership. However, one handy trick is that anyone can use many of these premium features for free at the T. Rowe Price website by signing up for a free account with nothing but an e-mail address.

Portfolio Manager
This tool lets you enter all your portfolio holdings, which it then stores for you and allows you to track it with automatically updated prices. You can either track all your future transactions as you go, or just input your updated holdings every few months like I do.

Portfolio X-Ray
Once you enter your holdings, simply look for the Portfolio X-Ray tab and you’ll have a complete breakdown of the true asset allocation of your overall portfolio. Does your “small cap” fund really own a bunch of mid-caps and large-cap funds? X-Ray will reveal your true exposure to stock style (i.e. Small/Mid/Large, Growth/Blend/Value), geographical regions (i.e. Japan, US) , stock sectors (i.e. Telecom, Energy), average expense ratio, and more.

If you’d rather have a quick peek without needing to register at all – but also without the ability to save your portfolio – try the Morningstar Instant X-Ray tool.

If you already have a target asset allocation in mind, now might be a good time to to rebalance your assets back towards that target. Rebalancing is a way to maintain the risk/reward balance that you have chosen for your investments, and also forces you to buy temporarily under-performing assets and sell over-performing assets (buy low, sell high). If you are looking for a bit more guidance, here are my favorite posts on investing.

Filed Under: Investing, Retirement, Tools & Calculators // Tagged:

TradeKing “New Year, New Broker” $50 Sign-up Bonus

Posted on January 7, 2011 // 4 Comments

Online discount broker TradeKing has brought back their on-again, off-again $50 sign-up bonus for new accounts. You must open with at least $2,500 and make one trade within 30 days. TradeKing offers $4.95 trades with no minimum balance requirement or inactivity fees. I’ve been happy with them, they are a good basic broker for ETFs and dollar-cost-averaging. Offer expires 1/31/11.

This can also be a good time to switch away from your current broker if you’re unhappy. If you transfer an account of $2,500 value or greater over to TradeKing, they will also refund up to $150 in account transfer fees charged by your old broker.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Deals & Offers, Investing //

Free PDF of Debt Free for Life by David Bach (1/5 Only)

Posted on January 5, 2011 // 5 Comments

Almost forgot, you can download a PDF copy of Debt Free for Life by David Bach over at direct download link (expired). If you’ve read his many other personal finance books like Automatic Millionaire, I don’t expect this to be radically different… but maybe he’ll surprise me. In any case, it’s free for today 1/5 only so download now and procrastinate about reading it later.

Thanks to readers Ryan, Andy, and Sri for reminders.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Free Credit Score Estimates From Transunion, Equifax, and Experian

Posted on January 5, 2011 // 4 Comments

It’s 2011, so why not a status check on your credit scores? In a previous post, I explained the relationships between credit reports vs. FICO credit scores vs. FAKO credit scores. Give it read if you haven’t already. You can obtain a free copy of your credit report from all three major credit bureaus once every 12 months from AnnualCreditReport.com, as mandated by the government.

As for credit scores, chances are you’ll have to pay up for a FICO Score. But even though I feel that such FAKO scores are only good as a credit score estimate, I’ll still take it if it’s free. Remember, there are three different credit reports out there for you, so there are also three FAKO credit scores you should track. It happens that there are websites that will either provide a free FAKO or a credit score range for all three credit bureaus with no credit card required. Pulling your own credit score doesn’t hurt your score either.

TransUnion-Based

CreditKarma.com is an ad-supported site that offers you a free FAKO as often as you like, called a Transrisk score, based on your Transunion credit report. The score range is the same as FICO, from 300-850. Brave souls!

You don’t get your credit report details, but you do get a few tips on what recent changes to your credit report have impacted your score. CreditKarma recently added two new free scores as well – the VantageScore and Auto Insurance Risk Score, both based on your TransUnion data. VantageScore is basically a challenge to FICO and has a completely different scoring range system, and the other one is used by auto insurers to “assess your riskiness and to assist in pricing your premiums”.

Equifax-Based

The Equifax Credit Score Card comes directly from Equifax and provides a free credit score range of Low (280-559), Below Average (560-659), Average (660-724), Above Average (725-759), and High (760-850). It’s called the Equifax Risk Score. FICO has a range of 300-850, and this range is 280-850 so you don’t really have to do any scaling.

It doesn’t provide any specific data from your Equifax credit report, but it does include a short summary of any negative factors that you may have on your report.

Experian-Based

Quizzle.com is a site owned by Quicken Loans that offers you a free FAKO score every six months, called a “CE Credit Score”, based on your Experian credit report. FICO has a range of 300-850, and this range is 350-850 so you don’t really have to do any scaling. They just seem to alter it just enough so FICO doesn’t sue them.

The site also provides access to the details of your Experian credit report, so this can be handy if you’ve already used up your freebie from government-mandated AnnualCreditReport.com.

One annoying part of the site is that they ask “required” questions about your home and mortgage that seem to imply that the answers are needed to access your credit score, but in fact are not. They just want the data to better target you for things like home equity loans or refinances (remember who runs the site).

FICO Score Estimator

Just for good measure, I filled out the FICO Score Estimator and got the following result:

If you really want your official FICO score, you can still get it with a free trial and immediately cancel with minimal hassle. Here are step-by-step instructions. The FICO is based on your Equifax report.

Note: Unless you’re going directly with a credit bureau (which already has your sensitive data), you’re going to have to give your personal information including Social Security Number to a third-party website. I am not a online security expert, so you’ll have to do your own due diligence as to whether you want to proceed. I have agreed to be the test monkey and have used all these sites, and am showing you real screenshots of my results above.

Filed Under: Credit Cards, Insurance // Tagged:

Credit Reports, Credit Scores, FICO, & FAKO Explained

Posted on January 5, 2011 // 3 Comments

This year, I’m trying to make my posts more modular so I can interlink them more easily. I’ve mentioned several of these bits and pieces about credit reports and credit scores before, but I wanted to put it all together at least once. Here goes:
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Credit Cards //

Fitness Resolution? Don’t Join A Gym Until February

Posted on January 4, 2011 // 17 Comments

New year, same old goals. 🙂 This January, don’t sign up for an expensive gym membership with a contract, or buy a $500+ treadmill that ends up collecting dust. Yes, these might really help you achieve a healthier body, but they could also be a huge waste of money. What people should really figure out first is if they really have the discipline and motivation to stick with any exercise program.

Before dropping any cash, try one of these free fitness programs first. You don’t have to finish, just follow it for all of January. Studies have shown that it takes at least 30 days to create new habits. If you can’t even run around your neighborhood three times a week for a month, why would you buy yourself a treadmill?

I’m sure there’s more good stuff online, please share in the comments. To better health!

Filed Under: Simple Living //

100 Free Continental Airlines Miles For Cardholders

Posted on January 4, 2011 // 5 Comments

You can also get 100 free Continental Airlines miles by reading about how you can earn miles with a Continental Airlines-branded credit or debit card, and entering your OnePass number by Feb 28, 2011.

Registration is required. Bonus miles will be deposited into the primary Cardmember’s OnePass® account within 4-6 weeks after the end of the promotion. Offer valid for existing Continental Airlines/Chase Credit and Debit Cardmembers.

Continental Airlines OnePass Plus CardOne card they are promoting is the Continental Airlines OnePass Plus Card, which has improved their sign-up incentive to include a $50 statement credit, 30,000 free miles, and a pretty nice mix of perks for travelers including free checked bags for you and companions.

It’s actually a good time to apply for this card because Continental and United are merging in 2011, and the resulting airline will be called United. Since these Chase-affiliated cards usually only allow one sign-up bonus per lifetime, you might as well apply for the Continental now because it won’t be around anymore after a few more months.

Filed Under: Credit Cards, Deals & Offers //

150 American Airlines Miles For 2-Minute Video

Posted on January 4, 2011 // 4 Comments

You can grab a quick 150 American Airlines AAdvantage miles by visiting this website and watching a quick video about a new $150 Bose bluetooth headset. Earn another 250 miles if you stop by a Bose store and do a live demo. Every miles counts, and this is also useful for delaying expiration of miles.

*Offer of 150 miles with online video valid 1/3/11 through 1/17/11 while supplies last. Offer of 250 miles with Bose store demonstration valid 1/3/11 through 1/17/11 while supplies last.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

2010 Investment Returns by Asset Class

Posted on January 2, 2011 // Leave a Comment

Vanguard has the year-to-date returns up to 12/31/2010 for all of their mutual funds available right now, so I made a table with all of the funds and asset classes that I like to track for my records. These are almost all passively-managed funds, so they should track their respective indexes closely. 2010 ended up being a relatively good year for most investors, as nearly all the major stock and bond indexes ended up in positive territory. I’ve listed the mutual fund versions for simplicity, even though there is usually an ETF equivalent with similar returns.

Fund Ticker Asset Class 2010 Total Return
Stocks
VFINX S&P 500 14.91%
VTSMX US Total Market 17.09%
VISVX US Small Cap Value 24.82%
VGSIX US Real Estate (REIT) 28.30%
VFWIX International Total Market 11.69%
VGTSX International Total Market 11.12%
VFSVX International Small Cap 17.09%
VEIEX Emerging Markets 18.86%
Bonds
VFISX Short-Term Treasury 2.64%
VIPSX Inflation-Protected Bonds 6.17%
VBMFX Total Bond Market Index 6.42%

As a reminder that being this year’s best performing asset class is no guarantee of for future years, here’s the Callan Periodic Table of Investments that shows the relative performance of 8 major asset classes over the last 20 years. You can find the most recent one below (click to view PDF), which covers 1990 to 2009. (No update to include 2010 yet.) You can find previous versions here.

As you can see, the top performing asset classes is nearly impossible to predict, so holding multiple, low-correlation asset classes and rebalancing can be beneficial.

Filed Under: Investing, Treasury Bills and Bonds //

BP ThankYou Days Promo: $10 After 5th Gas Fill-up

Posted on January 1, 2011 // 22 Comments

BP has a promotion starting today called Thank You Days where you can get a $10 BP gift card after your 5th fill-up of 8 gallons or more. At $3 a gallon and assuming you stop at 8 gallons per fill-up, this will save you 25 cents per gallon. Not bad, considering you can still use your credit card and get rewards. I already get 5% cash back on gas with the PenFed Platinum Cashback Rewards card.

The program begins on 12/1/10 and ends on 3/1/11. All qualifying purchases must be completed between 12/1/10 and 3/1/11, or when Loyalty Card supplies are exhausted, whichever occurs first. […] $10 BP REWARD CARDS EXPIRE ON 9/6/11. Offer not valid in New Jersey. […] Limit three (3) $10 BP Reward Cards per person and/or email address per household.

You do have to track some things online. Thanks to reader Drew for the tip.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //
« Previous Page
Next Page »