Archive for July, 2007

I thought I would update you all on my progress for my latest credit card app-o-rama. I’m sure some of you are aghast at this, but I plan to simply take advantage of the “free money” from the credit card offers and not to rack up debt against them.

I applied for all these cards on July 20th and have had mixed results between the card providers. Some were very speedy where I still have not received anything back from others.

Here is the current status on the 0% card applications:

Problems With Specific Cards

I was denied the Discover More Card and received a letter in the mail stating it was due to “Credit history established on your account”. Thanks for the detailed explanation Discover. My guess is that it was because I already have another Discover card with a 0% offer out on it that they do not want to give me another card. I don’t really have any desire to call to find out if that is really the case.

I also applied for the Chase United Business Card as part of this process in order to get the 25,000 free miles they were offering upon approval. Unfortunately they have been a real pain. Chase called me to say they couldn’t find my business in any records, so I faxed them a copy of my business license. Apparently that was not good enough, as they called again and asked if I had any other documentation so I faxed them a copy of the 2006 business tax returns. The first call was ok, but the lady on the second was very rude about it. This was on Friday and I have not heard back from them yet.

Good Experiences With Others

The service at the Bank of America NEA WorldPoints was great. I talked with a very friendly CSR who waived the $30 balance transfer fee for me. One of the better credit card companies I have spoken to, and it was also the first card I received in the mail.

The others have just had automated phone systems for activation which is easy enough.

Final Thoughts

I was a little disappointed with the credit limits I received from Chase and Advanta. For Chase I’m not sure $4,000 is worth the $75 balance transfer fee and hassle of keeping up with it especially after the business card experience.

So far I have been given $55,900 in 0% credit from this process. Hopefully I will hear from Citi this week about the two outstanding card applications with them as well.

So you want to sell an old computer? Well there are a few things you need to know first to keep your personal information private. We keep a lot of things on the computer that could be used for identity theft… tax returns, quicken records, internet passwords, etc so its important to make sure whoever inherits your PC doesn’t hijack this information.

Deleting Files Doesn’t Work

The solution isn’t to simply go into Windows and delete the files. When you delete a file all it does is remove the reference from your system, the information is still available on your hard drive until the data is actually written over by other file. So if you’ve ever found you deleted a really important file by accident you probably can still recover it with software such as GetDataBack.

And even once its been partially written over, you still may be able to recover it with more in depth techniques that are beyond my skill level but are certainly doable by a determined thief.

So How Do I Really Erase My Drive?

To fully delete the files you need a secure erase utility. These programs write over every block of the hard drive (sometimes several times) to ensure that your data is unreadable. These utilities meet NSA standards for data integrity as well as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley so if we can sell the drive that had national secrets on it then it probably is safe for you as well.

There are countless programs out there that do this, ranging from hundreds of dollars to my price point - free. Here are some of the freeware and open source programs out there.

• Darik’s Boot and Nuke - This is a premade boot CD which I like (who has a floppy drive in their PC anymore?) which is very easy to use and open source. This is the program I use when I am looking to sell a drive
• Eraser - This freeware app works in Windows or you can create a boot disk with it. Has the best interface I’ve seen in Windows for a free program. Though its tough to delete all your Windows files if you are still in it, so if you want to completely erase the drive you’ll need to use the boot disk option.
• Secure Erase - Another freeware utility that is best used if you create a boot disk for it. There is a good writeup over at ZDnet on it.

Final Thoughts

With all the private and personal information we keep on our computers nowadays its important to make sure when you upgrade and get rid of that old hard drive you take some time to make sure your information is private. This is a pretty easy step to take if you use the right tools.

To introduce their new Halmark Saturdays greeting card line Walmart is offereing a free greeting card by mail. You get your choice of one of the following cards:

• Paper Doll
• Cat Head
• What Up Dog
• Monty

Just click on the link below, click the ‘free sample’ button, and put in your information.

FREE SAMPLE GREETING CARD

Cards That Make Our Boss Nervous

Our new Saturdays cards by Connections from Hallmark are quirky. Topical. Irreverent. The kind of funny that steps up to the line. Ripped from the gossip rags or the political talk shows. They’re even — sometimes — weird.

Now you have so many more ways to make someone laugh — on birthdays, special days, whenever. And not just a little chuckle. We’re talking milk-out-the-nose funny. (Don’t say you haven’t been warned.)

It’s your kind of comedy, and you’ll find it in the greeting card aisle at participating Wal-Mart stores.

I had previously talked about my desire to apply for a few 0% credit cards this month. Well, after reviewing some of our finances and balances I decided to expand my applications. So today I applied for 8 new credit cards.

Doing these on the same day minimizes the other companies seeing all the hits on your credit report. It also makes the application process easy since you have all the information in front of you at one time.

Staying Organized

I keep a spreadsheet of what card I applied for, what the offer is, and make pdf screen prints of all the terms and conditions in case there is a problem later. Once I am approved (or denied) I put down the credit limit and balance transfers I have done. If possible, I put the credit card into Yodlee for easy tracking.

So below are the cards which I applied for.

Rewards

CardSelection also offers cash bonuses for applying for certain credit cards through them. i was able to get $95 back from them for the Citi Upromise Card, Advanta Platinum Rewards BusinessCard, and Discover More Card which makes some of the balance transfer fees a little easier to swallow.

So Far…

Unfortunately I was denied for the Discover Card. Not sure why, they are going to follow up with a letter. I was approved instantly online for the BankAltantic Rewards Card, BOA NEA WorldPoints, and Advanta Rewards BusinessCard. The others are under review and I will receive a response in the mail.

I will post more once I get some more answers back.

I took some time off yesterday to go with my wife to a Six Flags amusement park. I was able to find a coupon at Fatwallet that knocked $20 off the price of each ticket which was pretty nice and certainly made the day a little more affordable

However one of the newer policies there is that you are not allowed to bring any food or beverage into the park. Your only option is to get your hand stamped, walk 20-30 min (each way) back to your car and grab something. For lunch with a family this is almost a necessity - a slice of pizza and a soda is $9 there, nachos are $6, and a fried dough is $4. But what if its a hot day (like yesterday) and you need a drink 3-4 times over the course of your visit. Are you going to walk to your car to get a gulp of something? And of course nobody can have tap water anymore, you have to get bottled water for $3.

There is also an outdoor amphitheater here which has a lawn area you can sit on to watch the concerts. It used to be great to go hang out there, bring a cooler in and have a few beers or whatever while listening to whatever band is playing. However they recently banned coolers and now charge $7 for a domestic beer. I’m sure they will argue that the event is safer this way, but I still think its pretty much ruined the lawn experience there.

I’m sure its a huge moneymaker for these parks, and it didn’t seem to phase attendance there so its probably here to stay.

There is a recent study posted by CNN about college grads seeing higher starting salaries upon graduation. Some of the more in demand majors went up over 5% from this time last year which seems like quite a significant increase. Engineering continues to be a hot field representing most of the top paying jobs.

The top 10 paying majors with their average starting salaries are:

1). Chemical Engineering $59,361
2). Computer Engineering $56,201
3). Electrical Engineering $55,292
4). Mechanical Engineering $54,128
5). Computer Science $53,396
6). Civil Engineering $48,509
7). Economics $48,483
8). Management of Information Systems $47,648
9). Finance $47,239
10). Accounting $46,718

Full CNN Article

Here is an offer for a free 1 year subscription to the popular computer periodical PC Magazine.

This offer doesn’t require a credit card to sign up and they do not automatically renew your subscription at regular price once the free term is up. I’ve done quite a few of these offers and have had the magazine actually come around 85% of the time.

PC Magazine FREE Link

Since we got married this year my wife and I have struggled merging our finances together. As you may notice from my net worth statements its really just my finances and not my wife’s as well. One of my goals this month is to hopefully start changing this.

We’ve talked about finances and our financial goals, however we do have some different financial ideologies that has until this point made it easier to keep our money separate. She is not as aggressive a saver as I am, likes to spend more freely, and has more debt. She also is not as far along in her career as I am - though she actually makes more money she went back to school for 3 years to get her masters just graduating this past year racking up some decent loan debt along the way while I have been working continuously since 2002.

Right now we’ve just been each pitching in 1/2 of the shared monthly household bills, then each responsible for our own bills from whatever is left over. We realize this is not the best way to continue long term so have to sit down and make a change.

Read the rest of this entry »

My car is long overdue for new tires. I have been neglecting them for no good reason other than a desire not to spend the money on them. With my inspection due this month I figure its finally time to replace them since I doubt it would pass otherwise.

Since I’m not sure how much longer we are going to keep the vehicle I’m pretty much just looking for the cheapest tires out there.

TireRack

The king of internet tires. TireRack offers very low prices, a great web interface, and from what I’ve heard good service. I’m a huge internet shopping fan, and I love being able to price things out on a website rather than calling someplace.

Continental CT95 205/65TR16 - $65.00 per tire

Kumho Solus KR21 - $61.00 per tire

Shipping was estimated at $38.72 for 4 tires, leaving the price at $298.72 for the Continentals and $282.72 for the Kumhos. The one downside to TireRack is I’m responsible to find a place to have them mounted & balanced as well as tire stems. This would be $22 per tire with the disposal of the old tires, so another $88 plus tax bringing the grand total to around $390 for the Continetals or $375 for the Komhos .

Local Auto / Tire Store

This is where I usually bring my car in for service. I trust the people working there and they are very close to my house if there are any problems.

Enterprise 205/65TR16 - $95 per tire

Unlike TireRack this price includes mounting, balancing, and valve stems but I would have to pay tax on the whole amount. So grand total would be $406. The downer is I’ve never heard of this tire brand before and I can’t really find much about it on the internet.

Tire Warehouse

This is a large chain with a local presence. They are located close to my house and offer a larger selection of tires than my regular local shop does.

Continental CT95 205/65TR16 - $99.95 per tire

Kumho 205/65TR16 - $89.95 per tire

Once again this includes everything, but I would have to pay tax on the full amount. The Continentals are $37 more expensive than TireRack at $427 but I would have the convenience of a local store. The Kuhmos would be $385, only $10 difference from TireRack.

Wholesale Club

We are a member of BJs Wholesale Club. I’ve heard that Costco has great prices on tires but unfortunately there are none in the area. I decided to give BJ’s a call to see what they offered but they did not have any tires in stock in the correct size.

Final Conclusion

In the end I decided on the Kumho’s since it was the cheapest option. I had heard good things previously about the CT95s, but I’m not really a big car guy and would rather spend the $50 elsewhere. In my opinion it was worth the extra $10 to go to the Tire Warehouse for the tires rather than going through TireRack plus I could get a same day appointment there.

So in the end I went with the cheapest tires from a local store

Since we are not half way through the year I thought I would do a 6 month checkup to see my progress so far in 2007.

Performance

My 401k is my strongest gain, increasing over 11k in the past 6 months. This is partly due to my paycheck contributions of which I contribute pretty close to the maximum allowed ($15,500 for 2007). Also my investments themselves increased 8.90% over this time period as well.

My other investments are a little deceiving because I moved some money around between accounts, and also added some. Overall the performance hasn’t been that great this year. I had a few loser stocks bringing down my portfolio which hopefully will turn around.

Just making minimum payments on my 0% credit cards and low interest student loan have taken a decent chunk out of them. Though I’m not really concerned with paying these off as I plan to transfer to another 0% credit card.

Overall my net worth increased 12% since January which I am obviously very happy with. I’m pretty sure I can’t continue at this pace but it would certainly be nice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy 4th of July. For our non-American readers its a holiday here in which we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain in 1776.

We are going to have some good free fun at the local park where they have entertainment and fireworks in the evening. Heres to a safe and happy holiday!

Taxable Accounts:

$9,553.64 - Liquid Savings - 5.05% APY HSBC Savings Account
$15,350.43 - Stocks - Misc. Direct Investments
$6,165.34 - Stocks - Ameritrade Izone
$3,199.64 - Stocks - Zecco
$2,605.46 - Bonds - TreasuryDirect

$36,874.51 TOTAL

Retirement Savings:

$16,831.13 - ROTH IRA - Vanguard
$1,617.89 - ROTH IRA - Scottrade
$47,312.67 - 401K - T. Rowe Price

$65,761.69 TOTAL

Debts

$3,262.25 - Student Loan - AES (3.625%)
$6,794.00 - Credit Card BT - Discover (0%)
$7,110.00 - Credit Card BT - Citi (0%)

$17,166.25 TOTAL

Housing / Automobiles

$268,232.46 - Mortgage - Countrywide
$339,900.00 - Approximate Home Value
$10,849.00 - Approximate Car Value - Edmunds.com

$82,319.47 - TOTAL (Approximate Equity)

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Mike over at Mikes Doc Blog wrote an interesting followup to my post Thinking About My M.B.A. (Part II - School Choices) in which he basically disagrees with my assessment of distance learning, specifically my thoughts on the University of Phoenix. I wrote a pretty long response there but I’m not sure if it was eaten by his spam filter so I thought I would take the time to respond over here as well.

The Degree Is Just As Good

I thought I would first start with Mike’s following arguments:

“In speaking with many HR professionals about a University of Phoenix degree, because I had similar reservations when I started my Master’s (now in my doctoral journey), the comments included:

• I don’t even read the school’s name
• University of Phoenix is a fine school
• I prefer distance learning, it shows me the dedication of the worker to work and study full time”

Read the rest of this entry »