Archive for the 'Personal Finance' Category

It seems like a new free credit site is popping up every day now. Quizzle is yet another site, but unlike some other sites it offers a free credit score and report (Experian PLUS). It is also owned by Quicken Loans which may ease some of your concerns over giving your person information to an unknown company.

What It Provides

The site also gives you some information beyond just your report and score. It takes some information you provide as well as some from your credit report to determine your financial status. Below is a screenshot of the main screen once logged in:

As you can see, it also gives you an approximation of your home’s value (though I have no idea where they are getting this information from), the equity you have available from your mortgage, and grades on your estimated budget and your rainy day fund. I didn’t find any of these numbers particularly useful since I have no idea where this is coming from and prefer to do my own analysis.

The site does offer your exact credit score as well as a detailed credit report with everything in it, which is a plus. It does also give you a bit of analysis on ways to improve your score as well.

Overall Impressions

Overall, if you are looking to get both your credit report and credit score for free Quizzle is a place to check out. Unlike some of the other new sites out there they are not making their money off Advertising, but rather trying to upsell you a loan so you may get some junk mail or phone calls as a result of it (yet to be seen).

Quizzle.com

For those of you looking to stay on top of your credit report, there are a couple new startup companies that may help. Checking your credit report regularly for inaccuracies can help you make sure there are no surprises when you go looking for a loan, new credit card, or even a job.

I’m sure some of you will have privacy concerns over giving a startup all your financial information and social security number (and perhaps rightly so), but for those adventurous ones out there here are some new sites to try out:

Credit Karma

This is a new startup venture that gives you your Transunion credit score anytime you want it. On a scale of 150-950 its not what most people are used to seeing so it may confuse some. FICO reports on a scale of 300-850 so don’t get to exited if you have a higher score than usual.

Credit Karma also offers some statistics on where your credit score falls in the grand scheme of things, from very poor to very good with where your score falls in relation to the average joe. Their business model is to make money on advertising so all of this is free.

Credit.com

This is yet another new startup which gives you a look at your credit report. It doesn’t give you a FICO score or a look at all the information on your report, but rather just an overview of what is on it and an approximation of your score range.

It gives you letter grades in 5 areas - Payment History, Debt Usage, Credit Age, Account Mix, and Inquiries (which are all weighted differently). It also gives you the reason why you received the grade and ways to improve your report. It also has some important summary numbers from your report - credit card debt, total credit limits, total minimum payments, inquiry records, etc. This site also works off advertising as well as upselling other services, so the basic information is free.

Quizzle.com

Quizzle is a new site backed by Quicken loans. It gives you your actual Experian PLUS credit score and credit report. No estimations or summaries, the whole thing.

It also gives you some additional information about your home and mortgage status that I did not find particularly helpful. But if you are looking for a straight look at your report and score this is a good place to check out.

Annual Credit Report

While not a startup, I thought this was worth mentioning. This site allows you to get your government mandated free credit report once a year from all 3 credit reporting agencies (Experian, Transunion, and Equifax). It does not give you your credit score, but gives you everything on your report for free.

Some other sites require you to sign up for a trial service to get your “free” report which if you don’t cancel they will charge you for. This is the official one that everyone should be using once a year that does not make you sign up for anything.

A trick I use is I do not get all 3 reports at once. It allows you to get 1 report per year from each agency, so if you break it up over the course of the year you can check your report every 4 months by using a different agency each time.

Well last week I finally received the 1099 I was waiting for from Zecco. This weekend I was able to finish up my taxes and file them with the IRS. According to the IRS schedule I should get my refund direct deposited on March 7th.

Free Efiling

For the last 2 years I have used TaxAct to do my taxes which offers free federal E-Filing regardless of income. Both years I’ve checked the numbers against TurboTax as well and both have come out the same, and since TurboTax charges $14.95 to E-File I went the free route. TaxAct doesn’t have the best web interface, but it is certainly usable, and you can’t beat the price.

Unfortunately in my state (New York) there is no free option so I mailed those taxes in since it did not seem worth $12 to E-File versus $1 for the postage.

Tax Summary

My refund this year is pretty high - about $6000. It was our first full year in our home, my wife’s first year at her her job, and not a busy year for my side business. I hope to adjust these numbers this year so I don’t keep giving the government such a large interest free loan.

I don’t really have this money earmarked for anything at this point. Probably pay off some various bills and invest the rest.

In a new move, prestigious Stanford University has decided not to charge tuition to students whose families earn less than $100k a year.

This move is largely because the university’s endowment fund is exploding and currently stands at $17.1 billion - a 22 percent increase from just last year. They have been getting some scrutiny for this and have decided to spend some of this money on lowering tuition for poorer families.

Not sure if more high profile universities with large endowment funds will be following suit, but it certainly will help some lower income families who have been unable to keep up with the sky rocking costs of tuition. At Stanford the cost of tuition has risen 63% over the last 10 years. That is 2x the rate inflation has risen prices over the same time period.

From the San Fransisco Chronicle:

In a radical change to its financial aid program, Stanford University will announce today that it will no longer charge tuition to students whose families earn less than $100,000 a year.

In addition, the university will waive room and board fees for students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year.

Full Article: Stanford Drops Tuition For Some Students

The Starwood Preferred Guest program will be updating some of its hotel categories on March 4, 2008. This includes moving quite a few hotels to higher categories so they require more starpoints to get a free night.

Some of you may know I am a frequent user of this program, and I have an Amex SPG credit card that I use for most purchases. However over the last couple years they have increased the hotel categories quite dramatically and this seems to be a continuing trend.

For a complete list of changes visit the link below:

Starwood Starpoints Category Updates

I am almost done with my taxes for 2007 and it looks like I will be getting a pretty hefty refund. Wasn’t quite my desire to give the government such a large 0% loan, but it was our first full year in a new home and my wife’s first year at her new job so we weren’t quite sure how things were going to shake out. Definitely going to have to make some adjustments for next year.

Unfortunately before I can put this refund to work I have to receive my 1099 from Zecco. They were granted an extension by the IRS and won’t be mailing out 1099’s until 2/18/08. It seems many other brokerage firms such as Fidelity and Vanguard did this as well because over the last few years CEF’s and some other companies re characterized income causing them to send out multiple revisions of their 1099s.

Guess I can’t fault them for that, but it is a bit annoying having to wait this extra time.

Less than a year after their last rate increase, the US Postal Service is one again raising the price of stamps. Beggining May 12, 2008 the first class rate will rise to 42 cents for a 1 oz letter. More details of the price increase can be found at the USPS website.

If you had purchased the forever stamp at 41 cents, it will still be good after this rate increase. Not sure why anyone would have bought anything other than this after it was released (other than collectors). I guess some people don’t like the look of them, but this just goes to show that its a smart investment rather than having to purchase 1 cents stamps.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

• Trent at The Simple Dollar gives us Nine Tactics for a Frugal Valentine’s Day.
• Wade at The Dollar Detour explores Excels Virtues Over Quicken / Money.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter complains about EBay’s Changes This Year. Mostly about how buyers will only be able to receive positive feedback.
• Dawn at Frugal For Life shows us some Even Better Ways to Spend Less.
• MyMoneyBlog has a piece up on Choosing Between a Fixed or Adjustable Rate Mortgage.

For those of you like me wondering when you can expect to receive your refund direct depot or check once you efile the IRS has a handy publication 2043 with this information.

The table below shows when your federal tax refund should be deposited in your bank account or your check mailed if you efiled and your refund was accepted within certain dates.

I decided to take some time to analyze my 401k performance over the last year. I’ve discussed my allocations before in my T. Rowe Price account, but just to recap:

• Equity Index Trust (PREIX) - 60%
• Amer Funds Europacific Growth (AEPGX) - 25%
• Equity Income Fund (PRFDX) - 10%
• Mid-Cap Growth Fund (RPMGX) - 5%

Overall Performance

Below is the chart showing the basic numbers for my 401k from Feb 1 2007 to Feb 1 2008.

Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I would take some time and come up with some financial goals for my family for 2008. The end of 2007 started a financial downturn that I haven’t quite pulled out of yet so I would like to set some highlights I would like to achieve this year that aren’t going to tie to market performance because I don’t know if I see that going back up any time soon.

1.) Better Merge Our Finances
Since getting married last year, my wife and I still haven’t fully merged our finances. Part laziness, complexity and fear has kept us from doing so. I have been working so far this year on fixing this but it is still not done yet. It probably will take a few more months to get everything fully integrated.

2.) Pay Down 20% Of Our Non-Mortgage Debt
This is a pretty ambitious goal but I think we can do it. After the wedding and home purchase though we have quite a few assets our debt has been steadily increasing. I would like to get this completely eliminated within 3 years, and 20% will be a great start. Most of this debt is at 0% or other reasonable rates so that is why I am not overly worried about paying it all off before all else.

3.) Fund at least $4,000 in our ROTH IRA’s
I have to admit, before purchasing our new home I was doing a lot better with the ROTH savings. I slacked in 2007 and even in 2008 $4,000 is less than I would like to commit but seems like realistically possible. That however means savings of about $333/mo which has not happened in January so we are already behind.

4.) Earn $5,000 In Income From Side Businesses
2007 was also a bad year for side income. My friend and I have a business but we were both too busy most of the year to do much with it and our profit suffered immensely. I would like to increase my side business income to $5,000 which includes that business and other side ventures I pursue.

5.) Put 15% Of Our Income Into 401ks
I have been doing this for quite a few years now, however my wife has not. So I would like to get both of us to save this much in our 401k accounts this year.

I will try to make these goals part of my monthly net worth updates from now on in order to track them.

Taxable Accounts:

$7,478.24 - Liquid Savings - 3.25% APY HSBC Savings Account
$15,256.17 - Savings - 4.75% APY Countrywide Savings Accounts
$14,757.64 - Stocks - Misc. Direct Investments
$5,804.49 - Stocks - Ameritrade Izone
$2,645.91 - Stocks - Zecco
$2,658.54 - Bonds - TreasuryDirect

$48,600.99 TOTAL

Retirement Savings:

$16,689.18 - ROTH IRA - Vanguard
$1,046.96 - ROTH IRA - Scottrade
$52,605.87 - 401K - T. Rowe Price

$70,342.01 TOTAL

Debts

$2,968.00 - Student Loan - AES (3.625%)
$4,138.00 - Credit Card BT - Chase(0%)
$17,462.28 - Credit Card BT - BOA NEA (0%)
$7,200.18 - Credit Card BT - Juniper (0%)
$4,778.73 - Credit Card BT - Bank Atlantic (0%)

$20,000.00 - Credit Card BT - Upgromise (0%)

$56,547.19 TOTAL

Housing / Automobiles

$265,010.25 - Mortgage - Countrywide
$339,900.00 - Approximate Home Value
$9,216.00 - Approximate Car Value - Edmunds.com

$84,105.75 - TOTAL (Approximate Equity)

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems Countrywide has lowered the APY on their SavingsLink account from 5.00% down to 4.75% for balances of 10k+ (3% for under). With this there are just a handful of banks offering over 5% now.

While disappointing it is to be expected. They still have a very competitive rate compared to the other savings accounts out there so I will be sticking with them for the time being.

Countrywide SavingsLink

Well, after signing up it seems the recent rate decreases have finally hit the Charles Schwab Investor Checking account. This week they dropped their interest rate from 4.0% to 3.21% like just about every other bank out there.

I still think its a pretty good deal for a checking account. ING Direct is only over this rate if you have a $50k+ balance, otherwise it is 2.50%. Presidental pays 3.50% on balances up to $25k, but requires a $1000 minimum to avoid fees.

No ATM fees anywhere, free checks, and no minimums also add quite a bit of value.

I have been watching the recent downward trend of mortgage rates recently in hopes of refinancing my home at a lower rate. This week after the federal reserve cut interest rates and the stock market plummeted rates hit lows not seen in years. However as of yesterday most of the rates have risen quite dramatically:

Penfed
30 year fixed jumped from 5.5% to 5.875%
15 year fixed jumped from 4.625% to 5.125%

MadRate
30 year fixed jumped from 5.125% to 5.625%

MTG Capital
30 year fixed jumped from 5.125% to 5.75%

With the recent tax rebate announcement and the stock market seemingly stabilizing I’m not sure we are going to see rates hit that low again for a while. Unfortunately it seems I may have missed rock bottom to refinance, at least for now.