Archive for September, 2006

First USA is now offering their United Mileage Plus Visa Signature Card with no annual fee for the 1st year. 25,000 United Frequent Flyer Miles once you make $250 in purchases, enough for a free cheap class round trip ticket.

APPLY HERE

Now that I am with Countrywide Mortgage Company there are 4 options for paying for my mortgage automatically.

PayPlan/12 allows your payment to be automatically deducted from your checking or savings account on any date you select during the month. You can also add an additional fixed amount to be applied as a principal balance reduction. The date you select will determine if you will incur a fee for this service. For example, if your payment is due on the first of each month with a 15 day grace period, this service is free for a draft date selected between the first and eleventh of the month. However, for a draft date selected between the twelfth and the sixteenth of the month, a $4.00 transaction fee will be assessed.

PayPlan/24 allows you to draft half of your payment amount twice prior to or within your grace period. There will be a total of 24 semi-monthly drafts in a twelve month period. With PayPlan/24 you pay nothing to enroll and a nominal fee of $2.00 for each semi-monthly transaction.

PayPlan/26 will automatically draft half of your payment amount every two weeks. There will be a total of 26 bi-weekly drafts in a twelve month period. After one year of participating in this plan, you will have made an equivalent of 13 payments. The additional funds that you paid are directly applied to the principal balance of your loan. With PayPlan/26 you pay nothing to enroll, and a nominal fee of $2.00 for each bi-weekly transaction.

PayPlan/52 drafts one fourth of your payment amount each week. After one year of participating in this plan, you will have made an equivalent of 13 payments. The additional funds that you paid are directly applied to the principal balance of your loan. With PayPlan/52, you pay nothing to enroll, and a nominal fee of $1.00 for each weekly transaction.

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For the first time ever my 401k broke the 30k mark. While it barely did, so it may be short lived, its a nice milestone. I’ve never really set a goal for where my 401k should be by X date, so maybe I should do so. I’d like to break 100k by the time I turn 30.

At my current savings rate that should be attainable if I get at least an 8% return on my money.

There is a link fest over at Frugal for Life on 25 Ways I Save Money. Below are my 25:

1.) Clip coupons.
2.) Cook at home instead of eating out the majority of the time.
3.) Wait for a great deal on most of my major purchases by checking Fatwallet, Slickdeals, etc.
4.) If the service engine light comes on in my car, take it to AutoZone and get the trouble code read for free before taking it to a mechanic (sometimes its something stupid like the gas cap is loose).
5.) Do 0% balance transfer app-o-ramas to earn money off interest.
6.) Fully fund my ROTH IRA and my 401k.
7.) Purchase gift cards to many stores at 20% off from Dealpass.
8.) Changed all bulbs in the house to CFL
9) Buy generic drugs and food over name brands.
10.) Do most home maintanance/improvement jobs myself to save on labor.
11.) Keep extra money in a high yield savings account instead of checking.
12.) Use the library for books instead of purchasing them (especially travel books).
13.) Keep track of purchases, spending, and savings in Yodlee.
14.) Run the washer on cold to save energy.
15.) Sell unneeded items on Ebay or Craigslist.
16.) Search on A9.com occassionally to get 1.57% off purchases at Amazon.
17.) Sign up for rewards programs whenever possible.
18.) Call the cable company so they to give me a better deal on cable/internet service.
19.) Turn off the pilot light on my gas fireplace when it isn’t going to be used for a while.
20.) Air dry clothes when possible.
21.) Switched home phone service to VOIP and cell phone to prepaid.
22.) Plant my own garden.
23.) Buy liquor in the caribbean where it is about 60% cheaper than in the US.
24.) Bake my own bread.
25.) Use cashback credit cards on purchases instead of cash / checks.

I often see people at Staples, Office Max, Best Buy, etc. buying a 6 foot USB printer cable for $30 with the printer they are purchasing there and can’t help but shake my head. You can get these cables shipped to your door for less than $2 each!

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Global Knowledge has an article up with a new study analyziing the 2006 compensation and hiring trends for employers. There are some interesting facts and assertions in the article.

It appears professionals may have more negotiating power with employers than they think. Fifty-five percent of hiring managers surveyed for this year’s Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectations (EDGE) Report said it was difficult to find qualified candidates 12 months ago; 81 percent said recruiting is equally or more challenging today. More than half of hiring managers who are having trouble recruiting cited a shortage of qualified professionals as the primary culprit. Nearly two-in-five hiring managers plan to increase starting salaries in the next year to attract new talent.

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E-Loan is now offering up to 5.50% APY on their online savings account. There is a $5000 min to open the account, but once it is open there is no minimums!

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The carnival of personal finance is up over at Canadian Capitalist, be sure to give it a read!

I am going to try to track my latest home improvement project - finishing my basement. Luckily when I moved in previous owner had already started the project by framing and dry walling the walls, so pretty much all I have to do is put in the ceiling and floors. I will be doing all the work myself with some help from friends and family so there will be no labor costs involved with the exception of installing the carpet.

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Bank of America is converting all their old MNBA money market accounts to new Cash Maximizer Money Market accounts. The APY is tiered based on how much you have in the account.

The rate is better than most of the other major banks if you have 10k in your account (5.11% APY) and more than just about any other online bank if you have 50k or more (5.37% APY).
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Here are some posts that really caught my eye this week:

The Sun’s Financial Diary helps us understand Morningstar’s star ratings.

Money Under 30 tells us How Much Should Be In Your 401k at 30?

Financial Freedumb writes a quick buying guide if you are in the Market For A Laptop Computer.

FMF wants to know What Would You Do With A Million Dollars? I didn’t imagine so many people would give so much to their churches / charity.

JPL has a peice about 5 Things He Wishes He Knew When He Was 20. I’m sure all of us feel similar thoughs when we look back on the decisions we made at that time.

Festival of Under 30 Finances, Vol I Issue 6 is up over at Molly’s Brother on a Budget. A lot of great articles from my fellow twentysomethings.

The first 850k logins to the Yahoo website who print the coupon will get a FREE Iced Coffee today, 9/22 only.

Log In And Print It Here.

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God I miss FreeTrade. But according to this article over at GigaOM my dream of a free online brokerage may be coming true once again. The site is called Zecco and is scheduled to go live in a few weeks.

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Since work is a little slow today I decided today would be “follow up on crap that hasn’t come in yet” day.

To organize my rebates I scan or save as a PDF all forms, UPCs, and receipts associated with a particular rebate. I then have a folder in My Documents named “Rebates” in which I create a subfolder in the format “YYYY-MM-DD Description” which I place all the scanned documents. So if I submitted a rebate for a Seagate hard drive today it would be “2006-09-20 Seagate Hard Drive”. Then when I receive the rebate I move it to another subfolder named “Received”. This makes it easy to track what is still outstanding and how long it has been.

I was using Rebates Helper for a while but found myself not keeping up with it. I guess I just prefer manually looking everything up.
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