Archives for July 2013

Apple App Store: 5 Top Paid Apps & Games For Free

Posted on July 8, 2013 // Leave a Comment

Apple is celebrating the 5th anniversary of Apple’s App Store by making 5 top apps and 5 top games free for a limited time. Some other developers have also made their apps free as well. here is the official iTunes page, and below are some direct download links as well. I’m not sure if they will rotate these out. I went ahead and downloaded a few now to try out later.

Apps

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Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Capital One 360 Financial Independence Day Promo 2013

Posted on July 2, 2013 // 5 Comments

Update – This promotion is now EXPIRED

Capital One Consumer Bank has their annual Financial Independence Day promotion which boosts the usual bonus for their Consumer Bank Savings and 360 Checking accounts. (Artist formerly known as ING Direct.) Offers good until Wednesday, July 3rd 11:59PM ET.

Consumer Bank Savings $76 Bonus

  • Open a no-fee 360 Savings account between July 1st and 3rd ($500 minimum deposit) and snag $76.
  • This has to be your first Consumer Bank Savings account (includes Orange Savings Account).
  • The bonus starts earning interest on day 1, but you can’t take it out for at least 30 days.
  • 0.75% variable Annual Percentage Yield (APY) effective 6/30/2013.
  • For more, check out my Capital One 360 Savings Account Review.

Consumer Bank Checking $100 Bonus

  • Open a fee-free 360 Checking account between July 1st and 3rd (with a deposit of $500 or more) and grab $100.
  • This has to be your first Consumer Bank Checking account.
  • Make a total of 5 purchases (either signature of PIN-based) using your 360 Checking Debit Card, make 5 CheckMate deposits or any combination of the two within 45 days. Your $100 bonus will be automatically deposited into your account on day 50.
  • Variable APYs effective 6/30/2013: 0.20% Balances under $50,000 / 0.80% Balances between $50,000 and $99,999 / 0.85% $100,000+.
Filed Under: Banking, Deals & Offers //

$30,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Experiment Update – July 2013

Posted on July 1, 2013 // 2 Comments

Here’s the July 2013 update for my Beat the Market Experiment, a series of three portfolios started on November 1st, 2012:

  1. $10,000 Passive Benchmark Portfolio that would serve as both a performance benchmark and an real-world, low-cost portfolio that would be easy to replicate and maintain for DIY investors.
  2. $10,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Speculative Portfolio that would simply represent the attempts of an “average guy” who is not a financial professional and gets his news from mainstream sources to get the best overall returns possible.
  3. $10,000 P2P Consumer Lending Speculative Portfolio – Split evenly between LendingClub and Prosper, this portfolio is designed to test out the alternative investment class of person-to-person loans. The goal is again to beat the benchmark by setting a target return of 8-10% net of defaults.
1307_btmsummary

Summary. Values are as of July 1, 2013. 8 months into this experiment, the passive benchmark portfolio remains the leader despite a slight drop this month. The speculative portfolio has definitely been more volatile and is back to lagging again. As for the P2P portfolio, it is starting to look like LendingClub may perform better than Prosper. Prosper simply has more late loans in the pipeline, although I’m still hopeful for solid overall returns.

$10,000 Benchmark Portfolio. I put $10,000 into index funds at TD Ameritrade due to their 100 commission-free ETF program that includes free trades on the most popular low-cost, index ETFs from Vanguard and iShares. The portfolio was based loosely on a David Swensen model portfolio. Screenshot, click to enlarge:

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Filed Under: Investing, Monthly Updates //
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