Posted: September 26th, 2009 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Reviews, Saving | Tags: Banking, ING, Review, Saving | 1 Comment »
Looking for a free $25 bonus referral for ING Direct Electric Orange Online Checking? Skip below. For those unfamiliar with ING’s Electric Orange Online Checking, read on.
Electric Orange is the online checking account version of it’s popular Orange Savings account. Just like Orange savings, Electric Orange (EO) has one of the easiest to use web sites in the banking business, offers competitive rates and offers $25 free when you sign up with a referral. Electric Orange accounts are like siblings to Orange Savings accounts, so money transfers are instantaneous between the two. You can pay bills direct from your EO account too, free of charge.
Here are the details:
Electric Orange Checking Rates
| Account Balance |
Interest Rate |
APY |
Effective Date |
| $0 – $49,999.99 |
0.24% |
0.25% |
09/09/2009 |
| $50,000.00 – $99,999.99 |
1.48% |
1.50% |
09/09/2009 |
| $100,000.00 or more |
1.53% |
1.55% |
09/09/2009 |
Benefits:
- Your FDIC-insured Deposits Earn Interest (see above)
- Free MasterCard® Debit Card for all purchases
- Free Online Bill Pay
- Free access at over 35,000 ATMs through the Allpoint™ network
- Free postage – they mail your paper checks for you
- P2P Payments – Show friends how cool you are. Securely email them money. It’s Fast and free.
EO accounts also offer overdraft protection, here’s how that works:
When you sign up for an EO account, you select the amount of over draft protection you’d like. That amount becomes a line of credit that gets used in the event of an over draft on the account. You pay interest every day your account remains over its limit, but if you’re like most people and only experience a shortfall in between a bill payment posting and your pay check being deposited, paying interest for a day or two is going to be a lot cheaper than the $25-35 flat fee most brick and mortar banks charge.
Check out the web site for more details or if you’re ready to open an account, you can use one of these referrals below and get a $25 bonus if you open the account with an initial deposit of at least $250 – that’s a 10% return on your money!
Electric Orange Checking referral
Electric Orange Checking referral
Electric Orange Checking referral
Electric Orange Checking referral
Electric Orange Checking referral
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Posted: July 27th, 2009 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Debt, Reviews, Saving, spending | Tags: calculators, Debt, Review, Saving Money, spending | No Comments »
Here’s an excellent resource for various calculators of interest, debt, payments and more. It’s called What’s The Cost?
What’s The Cost has financial calculators for:
- Determining the true cost of a loan (monthly cost, and total + interest)
- Determining the true cost of a mortgage (monthly cost, and total + interest)
- Find out the effect of a rate change (increase or decrease)
- Determining how much you’ll have in savings with a given plan (monthly contribution, yearly increase, interest rate, length of time, etc..)
- Determining how long it will take to pay off your credit card debt.
- How much you’ll make by Stoozing (making free money from 0% credit cards)
- How much your smoking habit costs you.
- How much your drinking habit costs you.
- Interest:
- Effective annual interest rate – This is the interest rate taking compound interest into account.
- Annual interest rate compounded monthly – This is the nominal interest rate, from which the effective rate is calculated when compounded monthly.
- Annual interest rate compounded daily – This is the nominal interest rate, from which the effective rate is calculated when compounded daily.
There’s also a bunch of other info on getting out of debt, snowballing and some fun stuff too. Check them out.
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Posted: March 5th, 2009 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Reviews, spending | Tags: Book Swim, Review | 6 Comments »
I’ve seen ads for Book Swim, and frankly, I’ve always thought it was a pretty dumb idea. Then I thought about it a little more, and I’ve decide there is one scenario where it would be beneficial…
The whole idea behind Book Swim is that it is an online book rental club that advertises itself as Netflix® for books. The idea is simple. You create an account, request a book or two and they arrive in the mail within a couple of days for you to read at your leisure and you never have to pay late fees.
The frugal side of me thinks, “Hello… ever heard of a Library?” but alas, my library doesn’t often have new releases I want. I am content to wait until I can get the books I want through inter-library exchange, but I’m the first to admit that while I enjoy reading, I am not the kind who needs a new book every 3 days. I’m happy to get lost on the Internet for the time it takes to get a new book. My frugal side is just stronger than my book loving side.
They offer 4 plans:
Light Reader
This level costs $19.98 per month and lets you have up to 3 books at any given time for as long as you’d like.
Casual Reader
The casual reader costs $24.97 and lets you have 5 book out at a time.
Avid Reader
This level allows 7 books at a time and costs $29.96 per month.
Devout Reader
The big daddy level gets you 11 books out at any time for $39.94 per month.
YIKES!
Sorry. That was my frugal self again. But seriously, even the cheapest level is $20 a month!? I’d be hard pressed to be able to rationalize this one. And what’s with those odd dollar amounts: $19.98, $24.97, $29.96 and $39.94 ?? It must be some kind of code, but I digress…
Still, I know there are people out there for whom reading is like breathing, and so it may be a viable service in the end. I suppose much of the benefit rests in how poor your local library system is and just how addicted to reading you truly are. If you can’t get anything newer than a Gutenberg bible or it’s all encyclopedia’s from the Eisenhower years, this is probably the service for you. I’ll stick to my local library though.
Just for kicks, I checked their BBB (Better Business Bureau) info for complaints. They have a rating of A- with 2 complaints, both marked resolved. It doesn’t look like they’re a scam or shady business venture, you just need to decide if they’re worth the price.
If you’re interested in trying them out, head on over to the BookSwim website.
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Posted: October 2nd, 2008 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Investing, Retirement, Reviews | Tags: Fraud, Opinion, Review, Scam | 20 Comments »
I recently received a sample issue of the Bottom Line Personal magazine. The tag line states: “Bottom Line makes you Healthier, Wealthier, Wiser… Happier too.”
With headlines touting such things as the “Millionaire’s secret to retiring richer faster”, my scam alarm was ringing loudly.
Secret # 1. How to Make More Money Than 90% of Investors – Even if You’re Lousy at Picking Stocks.
They give some silly example of an investor who lost 80% of his nest egg in the tech bubble bust of 2000. He then turned his remaining $33,000 into $7 million over the next 15 months.
Wow! Sounds great. How’d he do it?
By eliminating his loses, of course. We’d all be millionaires if we never lost money in the stock market, right?
Their example goes on to state that:
If you invest $5,000, and lose 20%, you’re down to $4,000 ($1,000 is 20% of $5,000).
Fair enough.
But for you to recover that loss you need to earn a 25$ return ($1,000 is 25% of $4,000).
OK, I’m with them so far.
The more you lose, the harder it is to get back. Recovery from a 50% loss requires a 100% gain, and recovery from a 75% loss requires a 300% gain.
Then how the hell did the investor profiled in the tech bubble example get back his 80% loss just from avoiding further losses?
The answer is he didn’t, it’s a load of bunk.
But the underlying methodology is sound: limit your losses in the stock market by using stop-loss orders.
Secret # 2. Make Your Grandchild a TAX-FREE Millionaire!
The claim:
“If your teenage child or grandchild is gainfully employed, he can contribute up to $4,000 a year to a Roth IRA. If the child puts $4,000 a year away between the ages of 16 and 21 and the Roth IRA earns 10% per year, the child will have $2,045,042 at the age of 65.”
Sounds great on the surface. But what’s the catch?
Inflation.
After those 49 years piling up in the Roth IRA, that $2,045,042 would be worth only $1,391,185 in today’s dollars, assuming a relatively benign 3% inflation rate. That and it took 49 years to get there, so while the headline makes it seem like it’s getting rich quick, it’s anything but.
Does this make it a scam, or mean it’s not worth doing? No, of course not. It’s the point of an IRA or 401(k) in the first place. It’s also the basis of David Bach’s Automatic Millionaire. Just don’t confuse automatic with instant.
Secret # 3. How to Pay Off Your 30-Year Mortgage in Just 23 Years.
No secret here – it’s called a Biweekly mortgage payment. The only catch is to make sure your lender doesn’t charge a fee for the program or any pre-payment penalties.
Secret #4. Lower Your Tax Bracket.
The claim:
In one easy step, lower your rate to as low as 15%!
This one is so vague I can’t be sure what the “secret” is they’re selling. It could be creating your own business as some form of tax shelter. Maybe it’s legal, maybe it’s not. There are legal ways of doing this. For example, you could invest in tax-free municipal bonds or max out your pre-tax retirement accounts to lower your taxable income.
Secret #5. How to Boost Your Tax Refund.
The claim:
You can boost your tax refund even if you take the standard deduction!
Yeah, I can over-pay the government every pay period by claiming 0 dependants. Whoopdy-do! No thanks, I’d rather owe the government $10 at the end of the year. Then I know I’m keeping most of my money.
So are these really scams?
I think scam is probably too harsh a word. I haven’t actually seen a full issue, but this “free copy” mailer certainly makes it seem like they are trying to make a buck (or take a few of yours) selling information that’s relatively easy to find on the Internet or through other sources. In short, there’s nothing secret about any of it.
Still, it just looks “scammy.” It feels like something targeting gullible retirees. In fact, looking at reader testimonial page shows 6 people – all over the age of 60.
Bottom line on the Bottom Line Magazine: Read some personal finance magazines or blogs and save your money.
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