Archives for March 2014

Costco: Procter & Gamble $33 Cash Card Promotion

Posted on March 12, 2014 // 11 Comments

costcopgCostco and Procter & Gamble have a mail-in rebate promotion for a $33 Costco Cash Card if you spend more than $100 pre-tax on any P&G products in March. Must purchase by 3/31/14 and postmark the rebate form by 5/1/14. You can apply for two rebates per household (for two $33 cash cards), but they must be on two separate $100+ receipts.

Stack the $33 rebate on top of the current coupon savings book valid 3/6/14-3/30/14, and you can get some significant savings by stocking up on items that you probably would buy eventually anyway. I have listed all of the participating brands below, and also added the coupons available during this period. I’m just going to print this blog post out as my shopping list. 😉

(Kind of makes you want to buy some shares of PG stock, eh? Well-known name brands and a 3%+ dividend yield!)

  • Charmin ($2 off toilet paper coupon)
  • Bounty ($2 off paper towels coupon)
  • Puffs
  • Tide
  • Gain
  • Dreft
  • Downy ($6 off scent booster? coupon)
  • Bounce ($1.80 off dryer sheets coupon)
  • Cheer
  • Cascade ($3 off dishwasher soap coupon)
  • Dawn
  • Joy
  • Febreze ($1.50 off coupon)
  • Swiffer
  • Mr. Clean ($2 off Magic Eraser coupon)
  • Gillette ($8.99 off blade/gel combo coupon)
  • Braun ($35 off shaver coupon)
  • Venus ($7.49 off blade/gel coupon)
  • Crest ($4 off coupon)
  • Glide
  • Oral-B ($20 off toothbrushes, $8 off heads)
  • Duracell ($3 off 9V batteries)
  • Secret
  • Pantene
  • Head & Shoulders
  • Fekkai
  • Olay
  • Tampax
  • Always
  • Metamucil
  • Prilosec OTC ($6 off coupon)
  • Pepto-Bismol
  • Vicks
  • Align
  • ClearBlue
  • Iams ($10 off dog food coupon)
Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Navy Federal Credit Union No Balance Transfer Fee Promotion 2014

Posted on March 12, 2014 // Leave a Comment

navyfedlogoNavyFed Credit Union has a limited-time promotion going on until Sunday, April 20th where if you do a balance transfer from an external financial institutions to your existing Navy Federal card, you’ll get a fixed 0% promo APR for 12 months with no balance transfer fee. It is unclear if this offer is targeted to specific e-mail recipients as it is not mentioned on the home page, but I’d definitely call in and ask if interested.

Membership eligibility for NavyFed is primarily restricted to military personnel including Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force – including retirees and family members – but also includes some civilian employees in the Department of Defense. Similar previous offers from NavyFed have used “existing” in their terms to suggest that new credit card applications are ineligible, but that wording does not appear on this offer.

There has never been a better time to consolidate your high rate balance to your Navy Federal Credit Card. You’ll save more, thanks to no balance transfer fees1 and a 0% fixed intro APR2 on balance transfers for 12 months. After that, a variable rate between 7.99% APR and 18% APR applies.1

This is a solid offer as it has been harder to find a no balance transfer fee 0% APR offer these days even though interest rates are still relatively low. However, you’ll note that Chase is not mentioned in their little balance transfer fee comparison chart as the Slate® from Chase is also currently available with a 0% introductory APR on both balance transfers and purchases for 15 months with $0 balance transfer fee and $0 annual fee. All you have to do is initiate your balance transfer within 60 days of opening the account.

Either way, both cards are good opportunities to lower the interest rate on your existing balances and accelerate any debt payoff plans.

Filed Under: Credit Cards, Deals & Offers //

AT&T Mobile Share Value Plan Discounts

Posted on March 10, 2014 // 7 Comments

AT&T Wireless has changed the pricing on their Mobile Share Value Plans, with unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 2 GB of shared data across all lines now costing $40 + $25 per line if you are off-contract. That’s means two lines with 2 GB of shared data would cost just $90 total (off-contract old phone or bring your own used phone), competing more closely with T-Mobile and Straight Talk. If you do sign a contract, the cost is $40 + $40 per line ($120 total for 2 lines) because you need to pay back the value of your subsidized new phone.

In addition, AT&T will let any customers who signed a contract on March 8th, 2014 or earlier get this pricing even if you are still in contract, provided you switch to a qualifying Mobile Share Value plan. This means that a 2-line plan formerly running $135 can now just be $90. The 2GB, 4GB, and 6GB data tiers all offer a promotional rate. If you upgrade to a new phone on contract in the future, the rate will go back to $40 per phone.

Bring on the price wars. Good news for the consumer! As always, see if you can stack an employee or student discount as well.

More: AT&T website, Verge, Engadget

Filed Under: Budgeting, Deals & Offers //

Hotel Tonight App Promo Codes – Free $25 Credit

Posted on March 10, 2014 // 8 Comments

hoteltHotel Tonight is a well-reviewed smartphone app that specialized in last-minute hotel bookings. Currently, there are promo codes active that can get you free credit good for any hotel available on the app. The selection is pretty good in my brief experience. Found via xlilsp1keyx of FW. Paraphrasing:

  1. First, sign up online at this link. Be sure to add promo code JPING2 for $25 in credit (new customers only). This is my referral code, as are the rest of the $25 new-customer-only codes out there.
  2. Download the Hotel Tonight app (Apple or Android)
  3. Sign into the app and apply the following code FACEBOOK for another $25 in credit (valid for existing users). You should end up with $50 in total credit. (Update: According to the original Fatwallet forum post and your comments, the FACEBOOK code no longer works on existing accounts. Sorry about the quick expiration, they had a similar $25 code good for existing users in early February that lasted longer.)
  4. It worked for me (screenshot).

The credit expires one year after the promo code is applied. Please let me know if you know of any other codes that are active for existing customers. There are many other codes for a one-time $25 credit for new customers. These codes may stop working at any time, so I’d do it quickly.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

Posted on March 6, 2014 // 6 Comments

toughbookWhat makes children, or even adults, succeed? It’s commonly believed that cognitive skills, also known as intelligence, are a primary factor. Smart people are the successful ones, right? Tests like the SAT measure this stuff, skills like pattern recognition, reading comprehension, and math problems.

But in the book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough, the author discovers a lot of evidence that doesn’t support that theory. Instead, non-cognitive “character” skills like perseverance, curiosity, optimism, and self-control may be even more important.

Tough weaves together various research studies and experiments to make this argument. Here are just a couple of examples:

  • GED vs. High-school graduates. Passing the GED test means you are proficient in the same academic areas as an actual high-school graduate. Yet people with GEDs are consistently less likely to graduate college, have lower incomes, and are more likely to be in jail. Why? Perhaps beings a high-school graduate requires additional traits – the inclination to persist at a often-boring task, the willingness to delay gratification for a long-term goal, or the ability to adapt to different social environments.
  • KIPP charter schools. KIPP schools are charter middle and high schools that take in lower-income students by lottery (no test screening) and use intensive educational efforts with the ultimate goal of a 4-year college degree. The first few KIPP classes improved their standardized test scores in middle and high school significantly. Yet the actual college graduation rates were disappointing, with a curious pattern:

    The students who persisted in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically at KIPP. Instead, they seemed to be the ones who possessed certain other gifts, skills like optimism and resilience and social agility. They were the students who were able to recover from bad grades and resolve to do better next time; who could bounce back from unhappy breakups or fights with their parents; who could persuade professors to give them extra help after class; who could resist the urge to go out to the movies and instead stay home and study.

Further good news is that character skills appear to relatively malleable; you can learn to improve your level of grit and self-control. KIPP schools now provide their students with a “character report card” as well as traditional academic grades.

This book is a great read for parents and educators, but I would say that the conclusions extend to adults and even personal finance. We all need these skills to be good citizens. Being financially secure is simple on paper – spend less than you earn, invest the difference for the future, and keep it up every year. Hmmm… that sounds a lot like self-control, delayed gratification (and perhaps optimism 🙂 ), and persistence.

I would argue that these character skills are more important than what you could learn in any book about Roth IRAs or modern portfolio theory. The question is how do we teach adults these traits, or is it too late?

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Family //

Bogle on Predicting Future Long-Term Bond Returns

Posted on March 5, 2014 // 5 Comments

Jack Bogle is best known as the founder of Vanguard index funds, but he also dispenses great common sense advice about investing. I’ve written previously about his long-term stock return methodology including this prediction for stock returns for 2010-2020.

He also has a simple method to predicting future long-term bond returns, which is by simply taking the current bond yield. For example, the current yield of 10-year Treasuries is 2.7%, so roughly 3% is likely the future 10-year return.

This is explained further in this recent WSJ article (via Abnormal Returns). This chart shows it best:

wsjbond

Since 1926, he notes, the entry yield on the 10-year Treasury explains 92% of the annualized return an investor would have earned over the subsequent decade had he or she held the bond to maturity and reinvested the coupon payments at prevailing rates.

Similarly, the entry yield on the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond index (of investment-grade U.S. bonds) explains 90% of its 10-year returns for the years 1976 to 2012, says Tony Crescenzi, a portfolio manager and strategist at Pacific Investment Management Co.

The Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND) which tracks the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond index currently has an SEC yield of 2.2%, which doesn’t seem like a very exciting number to look forward to. While this shows that our expectations should be very modest, it’s still important to remember that we hold bonds as a counterbalance to stock price volatility. As long as we hold them together, the overall picture is much more tolerable.

Filed Under: Investing //

WiseBanyan: Free Automated Portfolio Management?

Posted on March 4, 2014 // 5 Comments

wblogoReady for another start-up? WiseBanyan wants to offer free online investment advisory services. That’s right, they will take your money, help you buy a portfolio of ETFs, manage dividends, rebalance, all that for free with no minimum balance (you’ll still pay the underlying ETF expense ratios). Sounds like Betterment minus their fees. WiseBanyan CEO Herbert Moore outlined his vision for the future in the Medium article You Will Be Investing For Free In 5 Years. Here’s my take:

Fund management fees are going to zero. The Vanguard Stock Market ETF (VTI) already holds over a basket of over 3,600 stocks and charges just 0.05%, or $5 a year for each $10,000 invested. Supposedly with short-term securities lending, ETF expense ratios could be zero or even negative (investors get paid).

Securities lending is complex, but for ETF sponsors it means being able to lend out the underlying securities of the ETF for a fee — iShares has a good description of it here. In fact, iShares is already able to offset much of its management fee with securities lending revenues?—?for example, iShares Small Cap US Equity ETF IWM has an expense ratio of 0.20% but earned 0.20% in securities lending in 2013, meaning that the effective fee was zero.

Vanguard’s head of retail Investments, Nick Blake, has also weighed in on this, saying that “In theory, we could pay investors to invest in us [as] stock lending can [create] a negative TER [total expense ratio] …There will always be a fixed cost in there, but if volume is big, the total expense ratio can come right down.”

Stock and ETF trading commissions are going to zero. Zecco offered a bunch of free trades several years ago before the financial crisis, but ended up back at $4.95 a trade. But sometime this year Robinhood.io is supposed to start up a lean online brokerage offering free trades. I agree that the marginal cost of a trade may be zero, but you have to first overcome sizeable fixed costs. This is why even super-lean brokers for active traders like Interactive Brokers still charge a base minimum of $20 month.

Management fees for a portfolio of stocks and ETFs… are going to zero. Surprise! This is where Wisebanyan comes in. They want to extend the online investment advisory business and use automation to make it free as well. It appears they will be using the “freemium” model where you can pay extra for added features:

WiseBanyan plans to introduce paid investing and client services to complement our free managed portfolios. Two examples include tax-loss harvesting and a product we’re tentatively calling “financial concierge.”

I’m always skeptical when something that requires a certain level of customer service tries to be completely free. Of course, I still signed up on their early access waitlist (use my link and supposedly I’ll move up in line just like with Robinhood). Is it really just a race to the bottom? Gotta remember to check back in 5 years.

Filed Under: Investing //

Buffett’s Simple Investment Advice to Wife After His Death

Posted on March 2, 2014 // 15 Comments

The 2013 Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) Annual Letter to Shareholders by Warren Buffett is now available to the public. Download here [pdf].

I’ve been haltingly working on making preparations for my family in case of my premature demise. I’ve done a number of things, but I’m still not sure if my wife can manage our investments when I’m gone. Should I try to teach her, even if she has little interest? Should I find an advisor? Should I hire him/her now, even though I am a control freak? Interestingly, Buffett addresses this issue partially in his letter.

First, Buffett repeats his advice that while he doesn’t believe in efficient markets, he does believe that non-professionals should invest their money in low-cost index funds.

My money, I should add, is where my mouth is: What I advise here is essentially identical to certain instructions I’ve laid out in my will. One bequest provides that cash will be delivered to a trustee for my wife’s benefit. (I have to use cash for individual bequests, because all of my Berkshire shares will be fully distributed to certain philanthropic organizations over the ten years following the closing of my estate.) My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s.) I believe the trust’s long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors – whether pension funds, institutions or individuals – who employ high-fee managers.

Of course, I’m sure the sum set aside would be enough even if kept 100% in cash. But index funds were still a surprise to me given how many smart money managers Buffett knows. At the minimum, I figured he’d leave a big ole’ pile of BRK shares (managed by some of those smart people that he already hired). But I forgot that Buffett has already committed his BRK shares to charity.

Buffett’s simple advice made me think about my plans again. I would also leave my wife a relatively simple index fund portfolio and a paid-off house. My casual advice given to her so far is that she can spend 2-3% of the total balance each year without worrying about the money running out. With the life insurance proceeds, that 2%-withdrawal value is a bit more than what we spend now, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

If she needs help, she can contact the Certified Financial Planner that Vanguard offers clients ($50k in assets gets you access to a discounted plan from a CFP). I figure that even the cookie-cutter portfolios that they may recommend won’t be too bad in the big picture. I know this is not a complete plan, but well, I also don’t want my wife going to a high-fee manager.

Filed Under: Family, Investing //
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