Archive for June, 2007

I have been thinking for a while about going back to college to get my Masters in Business Administrator (MBA).

Top Schools

Many people recommend going to a top school. What people consider “top” seems to range from top 10 to top 25 to top 50. However in my case I think a top school is out of the question. The closest top 10 schools to me are in Boston (Harvard, MIT, BC) and New York (NYU) which are all about a 2 1/2 hour drive (in good traffic).

Most do not offer part time MBAs so I would have to leave my job for the 2 years I went back to school (which would also eliminate my employer paying for it), or if they do the schedule with my commute would be almost unworkable. Also the tuition for all these schools is very expensive and I would most likely leave with considerable student loan debt - I figure around $60k. And to be honest, I wasn’t the greatest student in my undergrad studies. I unfortunately slacked a lot there and have a very average GPA to show for it which may prevent me from being accepted to one of those schools.

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It seems that investment guru Warren Buffett is offering up lunch with himself for you and 7 of your closest pals. The lunch will be auctioned to benefit the Glide Foundation which works with the poor in San Fransisco.

“WARREN BUFFETT will host a lunch to benefit the Glide Foundation and its programs. The lunch will be up for bid on eBay beginning June 24, 2007 at 7:00 pm PT and close June 29, 2007 at 7:00 PT. Mr. Buffett will dine with the winning bidder and up to seven friends in New York on a mutually agreed upon date.”

Mr. Buffett is one of my favorite investor stories. He runs a business the way it should be run, has had incredible success with his investments, and seemingly shuns the greed that infects so many other CEOs today. It would be very interesting to pick his brain for an afternoon.

“All bidders must pre-qualify. Bidding starts at $25,000.”

Unfortunately its a little out of my price range for lunch!

Warren Buffet Lunch On Ebay

As some of you may know from my net worth updates, I currently hold about $15,000 in credit card debt. You may say “but you have a $166k net worth and enough money to pay them off, why would you keep them?”. Well because all that debt is on credit cards that have a 0% interest rate and no balance transfer fee, so I am earning money having it sit in the bank rather than pay it off.

My promo 0% period ends on my Citibank card at the start of August so I decided I should start looking at my various options. Inquiries to your credit report count against your credit score and stay there for one year, however inquiries made on the same day will not show up to other creditors. So it is in your best interest to apply for many credit cards on one day rather than spread them out through the year. At this point my Discover 0% ends in November as well, so I might as well start shopping around for someone to replace the $15,000 on both cards rather than wait till then.

Card Options

I figure I to replace these 2 cards without absolutely maxing out a line it will take 2 others (credit utilizations counts on your score as well). I’ve already used a lot of the more popular cards to do transfers on - Citi Platinum Select Card, AT&T Universal Platinum Card. The terms vary by bank but generally you can reapply 1 year after you’ve canceled your card and get the new card member incentives.

Sometimes it pays to look at your junk mail. I received an unsolicited credit card offer from US bank featuring my old college with a pretty nice offer - 0% balance transfer for 12 months, no balance transfer fee, and no annual fee. The trifecta I am always on the lookout for. The only setback is I’m not sure how stingy they are going to be with the credit line - but I will most likely take a chance on it.

Citibank consistently has the best deals for 0% transfers with no balance fee. Currently I have my eye on the Citibank Upromise card simply because, well, I haven’t had it before. It offers everything I am looking for - 0% balance transfer for 12 months, no balance transfer fee, and no annual fee.

Other Thoughts

Sure I could apply for a ton of other cards and have say $75,000 sitting in the bank rather than $15k, but that gets increasingly hard to manage the minimum payments and if you slip up just once the card issuers are waiting to slap you with the 20%+ non-promo apr on your balance. Right now $15k and 2 cards is about the sweet spot for me personally which nets me about $775 a year for not too much work.

Summer grill season is in full swing here in the Northeast. Time for burgers, steaks, chicken, and other meaty delights charbroiled to perfection.

I currently own a Fiesta Advantis 3000 Series grill. Its not the greatest grill in the world, but it has done the job quite well over the last 5 years or so I have owned it. Unfortunately mother nature has started taking a toll on it and there are some parts that need to be replaced. My drip vaporizer has nearly disinigrated as well as the burner itself which has left me with constant hot spots, flame ups, and safety concerns.

The parts have been very difficult to find. Neither my local Home Depot or Lowes carry them and I have found very little on the internet. I eventually called Fiesta directly and let me tell you they absolutely suck. I sat on hold for about 20 minutes before deciding to just leave a message for them to call me back. They did when I wasn’t home, so I called and left another message…. and another… and another. So its been 3 days now and they have not returned any of my calls. My guess is its going to be about $75-$100 for the parts I need.

Like most guys, I would love a stainless steel 60,000 BTU 4 burner with rotisserie and a built in TV (well maybe getting a little carried away there). I’ve always longed after a Weber but could never justify the cost ($400+), especially since I already had a working grill. Every end of the year though when they go on closeout sale I am tempted.

Not sure what to do at this point - try to stick it out with Fiesta customer service to repair the grill or just replace it.

Here are some posts from other personal finance sites I found interesting this week:

• Trent over at The Simple Dollar writes PRepaying On Your Home Loan Is Just A Conservative Investment. I agree wholeheartedly.
• Brett at The Frugal Law Student explains When To Go With The Brand Name and When To Go Generic. Not sure I agree with him about the sneakers after my Starbury purchase.
• Advanced Personal Finance has a post about “Outsourcing” His Lawn Work. I personally like the idea of laying down astroturf on the entire yard.
• Sun at The Sun’s Financial Diary talks about Pulling the Plug On Tbill Purchases. The rates for these have really plummeted lately and he has some nice charts illustrating this.

I’ve professed my love for Yodlee Moneycenter in the past. It allows me to give a quick check on all my finances that are supported by the website whenever I want.

My favorite free money application is now working with my favorite free brokerage - Zecco. Not sure exactly when it started working but I just noticed it today when I logged in. I had been bugging them in their forums for months now but Zecco kept changing their site, slowing down Yodlee’s progress.

Pretty happy now that I can track my stock account value here on my daily money checkup instead of having to log into the Zecco interface every time.

Zecco Free Trading

Yodlee Moneycenter

So I have been harping for the last 2 months in my net worth updates that I want to put some money in my ROTH IRA over at Vanguard. Well, I haven’t made it happen. I keep wanting to put a large sum in ($500, $1000) for some reason and expenses keep coming up that make me hold back.

It just seems to be a mental thing for me that I don’t want to manually move over $100 or something small. So I decided I would make it easier on myself and start direct depositing the money directly from my paycheck to my Vanguard account. Luckily I work at a company whose payroll services outsourcer makes it very easy to do this online (I can direct deposit to up to 9 different places, specifying amounts to each). So I went through the fairly simple process over at the Vanguard site and set it up.

I like direct depositing because then I never see the money in my bank account and try to justify doing something else with it. Also it keeps me on pace for maxing out my contributions each year instead of having to deposit a large sum. So if you are like me and have a psychological aversion to manually putting small amounts in your accounts that may be a solution.

CVS stores have Kashi Go Lean Crunch Cereal on sale this week for $1.99. There is a $2 printable coupon below that makes the cereal free.

Kashi Go Lean Crunch $2 Coupon

Just bought a box last night with this and it worked!

Since I was recently married I was anxious to see how much we would save combining our auto insurance policies. I had always heard you got a pretty significant discount but wasn’t really sure what to expect.

So I decided to give our Allstate agent a call and find out the deal:

My vehicle policy was $338.50 for 6 months, it is now $225.80.

My wifes vehicle policy was $330.00 for 6 months, it is now $259.60.

So we saved about $183 every 6 months by combining our policies. That is about a 30% discount! So much for a 15 minute call saving me only 10%.

Other Discounts

We also have our home owners insurance through the same company which gives us a multi-line discount. We also both have taken a defensive drivers course in the last 3 years which gives us a 10% reduction as well.

I know other companies will give you discounts for your affiliations. For example Geico gives you a discount if you are a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder (though the stock is so expensive it probably isn’t a good idea just to buy 1 share for the discount and not because you like the company). So it never hurts to look into those extra incentives.

Shopping Around

I’ll admit I’ve been lazy lately. I used to shop around every 6 months for cheaper insurance, but I haven’t really in the last 2 years. I’ve been very happy with the service I’ve received at Allstate. Ideally you should be shopping around at least once a year to see what other companies are offering.

I have been recently thinking while about going back to college to get my Masters in Business Administrator (MBA). I decided to start looking into the process of what it would take, how long, how much, and what to expect out of it.

Graduate Management Admission Test

Taking the Graduate Management Admission Test - or GMAT as its more commonly referred - seems to be the first step towards an MBA. Just about every school requires it and your score seems to play a decent role in your admission. Just like the SATs you can overcome a low score with good undergrad grades, solid work experience, and impressive references but it makes it much easier if you score well on the GMAT.

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After my recent marriage I decided to cancel my health insurance through my employer and go on my wifes plan. My plan is about $20 a pay period (every 2 weeks), and to change to the family plan so my wife would be on mine would increase it to $40 per pay period or around $80 a month. Her plan through her employer is at no cost to her. So even though my plan is slightly better we decided to switch.

Unfortunately I had to be off my plan within 30 days of my “life event” or else I would have to wait until open enrollment in November to cancel. So while the paperwork is still in the works for her insurance I had to relinquish mine, so I am currently without any. Her employer said I should be getting my card within the next week or 2, so I guess I will have to be extra cautious for the time being.

For those of you who don’t know, Craigslist is a classified website serving many cities across the U.S. The site is completely free to both purchase and sell items in your area with the exception of if you want to post a job ad. You can find everything there from a new apartment to a used toaster.

They opened up a section dedicated to my area about 2 years ago. and it took about 6 months for it to start getting a little popular and now its at the point where you can just about anything you are looking for. I imagine it has started putting a hurt on the local newspapers classified ads.

Sure if you are selling something your market is more limited than on EBay, but are you really going to ship that 8 year old couch to someone in California? I love it for finding stuff that I only will use a couple times a year so feel silly paying retail price for it - right now I’m scouring for a snowblower.

Here are some examples of great things that have happened to me on Craigslist:

• Purchased a barely used automatic swimming pool cleaner for $125. Retails in store for $550.
• Sold some computer monitors I was on the verge of just throwing out for $100.
• Posted an ad when I was selling my townhouse for sale by owner. Had multiple people come to my open house and say they saw it on Craigslist and one person from there put in a bid on it.

People have also done some really cool things with it like Housing Maps which takes the real estate for sale on Craigslist and puts it into a google map so you can look at only a particular desired area easily.

So if Craigslist is in your area and you haven’t checked it out yet, give it a shot! However as with everywhere on the internet, be vigilant of scams.

I have heard by way of Sun at Sun’s Financial Diary that Zecco has removed their $2500 account minimum to lure more investors.

This doesn’t seem to bode well for the company. I’ve posted my thoughts on them previously, and the consensus around seems to be that the interface is pretty terrible and confusing. If not for the free stock trades I doubt most people would stick around, and most likely some haven’t. I also haven’t really seen too much about them in the mainstream press, so perhaps they are struggling more than we know.

I still use them exclusively right now for stock trades outside my ROTH and 401k accounts. Despite the downfalls of their website, it is not enough to make me pay more for my trades. I actually don’t think its as bad as some other people have reviewed it, its pretty far from unusable and once you make a couple transactions and know how to do things it gets easier.

I’m hoping they can stay alive and don’t end up another FreeTrade.

Zecco Free Stock Trading

Web hosting company HostPC is currently offering a free hosting package to celebrate its move to Yareo. The account is somewhat limited in that it offers 100mb of disk space and 2gb of monthly transfer, no email service, and limited installtron.

HostPC is what I use here at The Finance Journey and I’ve been with them for 3 years or so now. They’ve had a few problems over that course of time, but nothing to make me leave them. For the price its hard to beat.

Free Hosting Offer

You will also need to purchase a domain name, for which I recommend 1and1. It is $5.99 per year and includes privacy guard which protects your personal information in the whois database (most sites charge in the range of $8 for this). You will also need an email service - I recommend Google for Domains which is free for up to 25 accounts.

Below are some details on the offer:

To celebrate this milestone, HostPC is pleased to be able to offer a number of free hosting accounts to users to experience what Yareo / HostPC can offer. These accounts are limited in size (100MB of disk space and 2GB of monthly bandwidth) but will be used to show users the stability and scalability of their websites at any time. Most of the features available in our full hosting accounts are offered in this free offer. Others that are not available, such as email can be arranged through Yahoo! email, Hotmail or Gmail. If you agree that HostPC is one of the BEST providers you’ve tried, upgrade at your convenience to a full featured account and enjoy all our services such as Email, unlimited domain hosting, SSH, Site Builders, all scripts within Installatron and more. We’re proud to be able to offer you a limited edition of Installatron (12 popular scripts) within our free hosting packages, at no cost - which also may be carried over to a paid account later.

Not sure how long its going to last!

Basketball sneakers have always been something particular to me. They are the hardest clothing article for me personally to buy because it is so hard to tell at a store if they are going to fit, only once you’ve been running on the court for an hour or 2 can you really tell and by that time it is too late to return them. In the past I only have bought Nike sneakers because they were “cool” and what felt the best of my feet. However it seems over the last few years the price has gone up ridiculously (or maybe I am just getting cheaper) and the quality of the shoes has deteriorated. I only play 1 or 2 times a week and the Nike Shox that I most recently purchased have worn down after only about 3 months of use and are slightly uncomfortable.

So a while ago I read about the Knicks Stephon Marbury launching a line of affordable sneakers at Steve and Barry’s retail stores. They claimed to be made from the same materials and with the same quality as the $120 Nike sneakers for only $15 and I have to say I was intrigued. I set out to the store to try on a pair for myself.

Starbury Line of Shoes.

Unfortunately Steve and Barry’s is not a high tech store. They do not offer online ordering nor will they special order you sneakers - whatever they get in on the trucks is what they get in. And they don’t know ahead of time what is coming in on the trucks (or so the employees say) nor will they reserve it for you if what you want comes in. There is only 1 store in my area, which if I had to guess has about 500 pairs of the various Starbury styles in stock. However 98% of these are size 9 and 10s. If you are that size you can find 20 pairs of whatever style you want in stock. Unfortunately I am a size 13, which is almost impossible to find there. I went back many times over the course of the last 6 months to try to get the ones I wanted - Starbury IIs high tops in black/white. I never was able to find them in stock.

Finally this week I returned to find they had my size actually in stock in high tops, though it wasn’t the color I wanted. I gave in and bought them. I tried them out for the first time last night in a game and they worked very well. They were just as comfortable as my Nikes and did not give my feet any problems. The real test will be how well they hold up in 6 months time.

I wish Steven and Barry’s would make the process easier to get what you want. The whole point of these shoes is so they are accessible to lower income families right? What lower income family is going to make 25 trips to the store to get the shoes they want in their size.