Pragmatic Finance

I sat down to write a post about one of my favorite cards, the Chase Cash Plus Rewards Card. There’s a reason I didn’t provide a link on that phrase to apply for it which I’ll go into in a moment. In case you haven’t seen it, its one of the cards that gives 5% back at gas stations, grocery stores, and pharmacies. It also gives 1% back on all other purchases and mine came with a 0% apr on purchases for 12 months. You can request a check when you get to $50 earned so its better than the others that you have to use points for gift cards. I have received about $200 from them in the last year, well worth it.

I was getting things set up to write about it and I couldn’t find it on the Chase credit card website. Both the cash plus rewards and rewards plus cards are missing. After consulting with the oracle of finance, aka the fatwallet finance forum, I discovered that they are no longer issuing the card. Current members will get to keep their cards and rewards programs, at least for now. I would not be surprised if they converted the cards to some other program in the future. It was supposed to have expired a few weeks ago, but some people have still been able to apply for the card by calling the number on this scan and giving the code 2YL. It also gives a $100 bonus. So if you want to have this card it might be a good idea to apply now. It probably depends on what CSR you get as to whether or not they will accept it.

If you have the AT&T Universal Cash Rewards card you should have gotten at least one letters by now telling you that they are canceling their 5% card. They are keeping the AT&T Universal Rewards, which gives thank you points instead of cash. It appears they will allow you to convert it to the universal rewards version or a Citibank Dividend Platinum Select Card, which is similar to the At&t version, minus the phone related benefits. Better be sure to get your rewards out before they cancel it or you convert it.

These two instances seem very interesting to me. Chase appears to be leaving the 5% for everyday purchases game. I think if they were going to change the terms they would just make a new card and convert everyone to it. The Citibank/AT&T situation is peculiar. If they thought the cash program cost too much but the points version was ok, it seems like they would have gotten rid of the Dividend card too. If AT&T was trying to end their partnership of cards with Citibank, why just get rid of that one card. Maybe they just decided that the phone benefits and cash back was just too much and maybe its a coincidence that Chase is also ending their 5% cards, but it does make you wonder how long we will continue to have 5% cash back cards available.

Happy Memorial Day. I hope everyone enjoys the holiday and gets away from worrying about money and finance! I always use occasions like this for an excuse to read up on the event or holiday.

It was started as a memorial to those that had died in the Civil War and was later expanded after WWI to include all wars and military action. Many cities started their own memorial day after the Civil War such as Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia. It was officially recognized as a holiday in 1868, with Waterloo, New York getting the title of birthplace. Interestingly, many of the southern states continued to celebrate their own memorial day to remember the soldiers of the Confederacy who died.

OK, the history lesson is over. Last week I was in a book store while waiting on a movie to start and browsed through some books (which I didn’t buy…frugality…I knew I could tie some personal finance in here somehow..) about memorial day.

It was an interesting read. I read one story about the the song taps, the song played at military funerals. It said it was formed when a Union soldier found his son among the dead after a battle and wanted this song played at his funeral. His son had went to college in the South and apparently had joined the confederate army. Well, I was dissapointed to discover yesterday, while reading up on memorial day, that that story was really an urban legend and had no verifiable evidence. Oh, well, so much for the accuracy of books!

I will be spending time with some friends and family. If your feeling patriotic you can always listen to the Star Spangled Banner. Whatever you do, remember all those who have died or suffered in wars. Even if you don’t always agree with the reason they are fighting, many have made the ultimate sacrifice and their families will never be the same. Well, I’m out for the day. Enjoy the holiday.

Last year I decided to clean up and throw away a bunch of things I didn’t need anymore. I went through my room rounding stuff up and wondering why I ever purchased some of this crap. I proceeded to sell as much as I could on eBay. I sold a few things for friends and then began to sell some items I had purchased after seeing deals at FatWallet and Slickdeals. I sold more and more recently and apparently I qualified for being a PowerSeller. According to the email and website here are the great benefits to being a PowerSeller:

A powerSeller icon next to your user ID.

This may help sales because people may feel more trusting that you will deliver the product because you are an experienced and frequent seller. On the other hand I remember the first time I used eBay. I don’t recall what I was purchasing but I do remember that I was hesitant to buy from one seller because he was a powerseller. I was thinking that he might sell alot of product and not ship it right away. I dunno if that was logical but it was what I was thinking at the time.

Free priority support via email webform

Is email support normally not free? I’ve never used it so have no idea how bad the customer service is for “regular” members.

Exclusive offerings on the PowerSeller Portal

This was actually somewhat interesting. They had auctions for groups or lots of items in the reseller marketplace. I assume this is from wholesalers. I guess this might be useful if you wanted to make it more of a business and you didn’t have any suppliers. I haven’t really studied how much profit margin could be made from the lots they had listed.

Access to the PowerSeller only discussion

You mean I get to join an elite, secret message board on the internet? Hah, well I looked it over a little bit. Doesn’t seem that much different than the other message boards on ebay that I have skimmed over in the past. Other than the topics obviously geared toward interests of sellers and people using ebay as a business.

Free PowerSeller Business card templates

If your business is primarily on eBay I’m not sure how useful this is but who knows.

I’m also supposed to get a kit according to the website. Maybe I can place this with the Emigrant Direct hat that lays in my closet and I have never wore.

Well, after looking over what this prestigious membership brought me I was a little underwhelmed. I guess the main thing is the icon next to your name to show others you sell over 1k a month. That could increase your sales by making potential customers feel more comfortable buying from you.

The funny thing is that I will be away most of the summer so I will most likely lose my powerseller status. I would have probably lost it anyway as I am getting a little tired of it and I don’t think I am making as much profit as I was last year when I began. The fees for paypal are a killer!

I have not only been trying to improve my finances, but also lose weight and get into better shape. I have had success in the finance area but not as much with the latter two. I have gotten into a good habit lately of working out several times a week. One of the most important aspects, in my opinion, is to get into a rythm of doing an activity as we tend to be creatures of habit. So hopefully I can keep this part up and not slack off. The other important thing is to improve my diet. I tend to eat alot of junk food when we have it around the house but I don’t really crave it when its not here.

I think I have a pretty good solution. I have decided to save money and weight by eliminating the purchase of junk food and soda. My belief about these situations is the best way, at least for me, is to go cold turkey. I have already purchased a water pitcher with a filter when I was at the drugstore. Now the difficult part I think will be to avoid buying junk food and soda from the grocery store. When I go there I almost always seem to get things I didn’t intend, even when I bring a list. If I can avoid buying that stuff while I’m there then I think I can do this. I almost completely gave up fast food near the beginning of this year. I didn’t think about it as a New Year’s resolution but I guess it kinda was in retrospect. I got cravings at the beginning and gave in a few times but now I rarely have them. That has not only saved me money but I think made my diet much more healthier.

It looks like Emigrant Direct has raised their interest rate to 4.65% apy. I guess they are just trying to stay competitive. This still leaves presidential the leader in interest rates with gmac and citibank not far behind.

I love getting things for free. Free Money Finance has a giveaway that appears to be going on daily. The winner receives the book Career Intensity. His review uses the phrase “a guide to proactively managing your career for maximum results” to describe it. He seems to have really enjoyed the book.

Amazingly, I won a copy this week. I had only tried a few times before I did. I hope to read it sometime this summer and write my own review of it. The contest he seems to have daily isn’t too difficult. You must post a comment to the daily giveaway thread and one comment is chosen at random. That person wins the book. You have to check back at the site to see if you won the next day and if you did you simply email him your shipping address. Pretty easy. If you don’t see one of the giveaway threads click on the category “Giveaway.” The posts have a much more detailed explanation of contest than I gave. You can’t beat free.

Let me just say that I only have experience with Capital One’s credit cards and not any of their other services. But my experience with their cards has made me weary of ever looking into using them for any other financial services. Last month I received a letter in the mail telling me they doubled the limit on my platinum card with them and I would be receiving an upgrade to their no hassel rewards card. Sounds great? Well, it would be if my original limit wasn’t only 300. And it has been that way for over two years since I opened it. I have called in the past to get it raised but have been told they don’t do customer credit limit increases.

My limit with them now is literally 10 to 15 times lower than the limit other companies give me. Their reward program is also subpar but that is not the worst part. They also don’t report your real credit limits. They only report your high balance. So, for example, let’s suppose your limit was $2000 and you charged about $400 per month with $500 the highest ever balance. Every month you would have 80% utilization(400/500) instead of 20%(400/2000). This will hurt your credit score. You can get around this by making large purchases near your limit or taking advantage of a no fee BT if your offered one. That would make the high balance appear as your “limit.” But that seems like a hassel unless you were already going to do this. And most won’t even realize they need to do this to avoid this credit score pitfall.

I could understand this for a card with no preset limit but not for their cards with limits. The sad thing is they probably do this to keep its customers with low credit scores. This makes their customers less attractive to other credit issuers. They will then receive worse offers and be more likely to just stay. A pretty sneaky way of keeping customers. I guess this makes good business sense for them as they seem to target people with little or bad credit or who are not informed about their policy. While this makes sense for the profits of Cap1, its not good for customers.

Why don’t I cancel the card? Well, it is one of my older cards so I don’t really want to get rid of it. That would lower the average age of my credit history and, therefore, credit score. Also, unless it has been changed, they have no fees for oversees transaction. These can range from 1 to 3% on other cards. I guess this is the one redeemable quality of the card as long as they keep it.

I saw this over at Savvy Saver. It appears that a professor from the University of Utah has made an introductory course in personal finance and posted it online. It has most of the things you would need to take a course such as a syllabus, homework, handouts, and class notes. I was looking at it earlier and it seems to be pretty well designed. I would check it out if you have the time. It sure beats paying money for a course.

Fidelity appears to still have this deal going on. New customers can open a brokerage account with them and receive a $100 bonus. I had a 529 account with them before I did this and it still considered me a ‘new’ customer for the deal. You need to register through this link and then open your account within 30 days and then fund it with $10,000. You must keep the account open for 6 months to keep your bonus but this isn’t a big deal because there are no account maintenance fees if you sign up for electronic statements. After you get the bonus you can take all your money out. There is also a bonus for United Miles. I have read of people able to get both bonuses so if you are interested in double dipping and have the necessary money for both promotions you might want to call them and see.

I did this about a month ago. Opening the account is pretty easy. Only thing annoying is that it takes about a week to establish a bank account to transfer money in. Once my account was funded I received an email within a day or two confirming I had qualified for the promotion and I received the bonus several days later. I think I got my bonus within 3 to 4 days. You can then take the money out if you want or keep it in if you want to use the account. You can set the default account to fcash or one of their municipal funds that is tax free. I think they are in 3% range right now. After my funds got into the account I bought FDRXX which is a no transaction fee cash reserves fund that is paying 4.63% apy at the time of this post. I left several dollars in as I always do with accounts that I don’t want closed but you should be able to pull it all out.

This account is great if you have their investment rewards card that gives 1.5% back into your account. If you wanted to use the account for investing they seem to have some good expense ratios on index funds but they have high minimums to avoid fees. You will probably want to go elsewhere for stock purchases unless you are funding it with some major dough.

There was a good article on CNN money about rising interest rates for student loans starting on July 1 and how this affects consolidation. If you have student loans and haven’t looked at consolidation now would be a good time. Last year the rules for them were changed so any stafford loans taken out after July 1 would be at a fixed rate of 6.8% instead of the current variable rate. Right now the variable rate for stafford loans is 4.7% but is expected to raise two percentage points according to the article. Any variable rate stafford loans are going to have much higher rates after June 30. This thread on fatwallet seems to be a pretty good resource detailing the changes to the loans laws. If your a student or just finishing and have loans I advise to read up on it and see what would benefit you most.

So far I only have stafford subsidized loans that are variable rate. I haven’t researched it thoroughly but it seems like I can consolidate them into a Direct Consolidation Loan right now and lock in the 4.7% rate.

I spent the last weekend enjoying some time with my family. It felt pretty good to get away from worrying about finances, work, or school for several days. Sometimes we get so caught up in the details of our lives that we forget whats most important. I amazingly avoided using the internet for two days! I also decided to try out my new digital camera. Here’s a picture I took of the beach.

After Citibank raised their rates to 4.75%, it seems some other banks are doing the same. HSBC raised their rates the rate on their online savings account to 4.65% apy. I’m a little dissapointed. I thought if they did make a move it would be at least to 4.75% to match Amboy, GMAC, and now Citibank. I already moved most of my money out after their rate dropped from 4.8 to 4.5. I guess with this rate increase I will keep the rest in for awhile as I will lose more interest during a transfer.

Presidential raised the rate on their premier savings to 4.87% apy and their internet checking plus to 4.50%. I haven’t tried either of these because of the minimum balance and direct deposit requirements but these increases make them very attractive to those that have this combo.

After calculating my networth last week I was a little suprised by how much cash I had, mostly from 0% balance transfer offers. I decided to max out my Roth IRA for the year as I had plenty of non BT money to fund it.  The only choice was to decide if I should funds it in monthly intervals to take advantage of dollar cost averaging or just go with a lump sum. Well, I chose the latter, thinking that now would be a good time to invest as stocks got pounded at the end of last week. I guess you could say I was ‘buying the dip.’

My funds were invested by Tuesday and the Dow quickly lost over 300 points in the next 3 days. Ouch. My contributions for last and this year are in Vanguard’s Target Retirement Fund 2045 so its 90% stocks. Needless to say, in the last week I’ve lost some serious $$ there. I think I am going to read up on dollar cost averaging before next year comes along.

Citibank raised the interest rate on their esavings account to 4.75% apy. This was actually very surprising to me. I didn’t think they would be near the top for rates. If they continue to remain competitive this might be a good account to use because of the ease of transferring funds to a checking account. I have one of these accounts that I opened for more thank you points but I think I will keep my money with GMAC. Their money market account has the same interest rate and allows limited check writing. I will keep my eyes on Citibank, if for no other reason to see how competitive they keep their rates.

Ok, so I have been opening up alot of accounts in the last couple of months to get bonuses and try some online banks out. I recently applied for an E*trade money market account for a $50 bonus. It appears the deal is still ongoing until 05/31/06. Shockingly, I was denied for the account. I didn’t even know banks would reject you for a bank account. From the wording it sounded like they were saying it was denied by ChexSystems. I guess there is a limit to the number of accounts you can open in a certain time period. ChexSystems appears to be similar to a credit agency, only for banks. Like the credit agencies, they will send you a free copy of your ChexSystems report if you denied an account due to information on the report. I figured I would request my free copy if for no other reason to see what was on it.

Well, about a week later I received it. It was pretty bland, no where as interesting as a credit report. In fact, it really only listed the bank accounts I’ve opened in the last few years with the dates opened. I’m not sure if it was the number of accounts that I had opened recently or if it was due to the fact that I had opened a Netbank and GMAC account earlier that day.

Ok so several months ago I noticed a couple of charges on my Citibank checking account that I didn’t make. I sat there dumbfounded for a minute before I began to frantically search for my debit card which was no where to be found. It was pretty obvious the charges weren’t mine as I was only using the account to pay a bill per month to get points in their thank you program. In fact, I had don’t even remember carrying it in my wallet. One was a restaurant purchase for over $100. I’ve never spent that much at any restaurant and I’ve never even been to the one in question. Anyway, I didn’t notice until almost a month after the charge and then called them up. I figured I was out of luck because of the time lag. When I called I was quickly transfered to a very nice lady who sounded like she had done this before.

They closed the current card and sent me another one. They also credited me the full amount on the charges immediately pending an “investigation” into the charges. Well I recently got a letter from them saying they had credited my account after investigating the charges. Guess that was their way of saying they determined it was really stolen. I was actually surprised at how quickly everything was worked out. I was expecting to be liable for the first $50 as I had read that somewhere in the past but they completely credited me. I almost felt bad as I know I am not that profitable of a customer. Well, almost hah. Moral of the story? Well, you should be careful where you place your debit card because you never know who might decide to go use it.

Ok, so I’m running out of bank and credit card offers to sign up for. I had been avoiding this one for awhile because of all the hassle involved. Anyway, Netbank is offering bonuses for opening up several of their accounts. Note that if you change the last two numbers of the link above you get different promotions but the one I linked to seems to be the best. Heres the details.

$75 for opening up a checking account and maintaining a $500 balance for one month.

$75 for opening up a money market account and maintaining a $1000 balance for one month.

$25 Visa gift card for opening up a CD with a minimum of $1000 and 12 months.

The 1 year cd is paying 5.25% so that may or may not be worth the trouble. The netconnect silver money market is 3.52% and 0.75% for the free netvalue checking. There are several fees that make this deal somewhat troublesome. There is a $25 fee for closing the accounts within 6 months, $7.50 after that. You must maintain a minimum balance of $500 in order to avoid a $5 fee on the money market account and there is a $5 dormant account fee after 12 months of no activity. If there is no activity in your checking account for 3 months you get a $5 per month fee. If you’re still reading this then you must really enjoy doing these deals. Sooo heres the plan:

1) Open the mm with $1000, the checking with $500, and a 1yr $1000 cd.

2) Qualify for the higher interest rate netconnect silver mm. Basically you have to satisfy two of several requirements. Getting a debit card and opening the cd seem to be the easiest. You could also link the checking to mm for overdraft protection if you don’t want the cd.

3) After one month the bonuses should post so I will draw the money market down to $500.01 and the checking $0.

4) Transfer in a small amount of money and immediately use bill pay during months 3 and 6 to avoid the inactivity fees.

5) Wait 6 months and close the two accounts. After 12 months close the cd.

I think that should cover it. If you don’t mind the hassle this is a nice deal, especially if you’ve exhausted the other bank deals out there. I opened it last week and my accounts are funded this week. The site seems pretty good. It shows your interest accrued so far like ing and even has what appears to be a yodlee like function where you can add other bank accounts, credit cards, etc. Its too bad they aren’t competitive with interest rates and have so many fees or I would consider actually using this account. Oh well.

As expected the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate to 5% today, up from 4.75. What everyone was really watching for was an indication if there was going to be more raises in the future. And of course they were cryptic in their future plans. My guess is Bernanke will continue to raise rates until the economy begins to slow but who knows. It will be interesting to see if any of the online savings accounts increase their interest rates in the next month. I’m hoping GMAC will continue to peg their money market account to the fed rate, as it is 4.75% apy currently.

Well, I figured it was about time to check my credit report. Everyone is able to get a copy of their credit report once every 12 months free from each credit agency at AnnualCreditReport. I decided to stagger mine so that I could check one out every 4 months, so I will pull one in January, May, and then September. You don’t get a FICO or credit score but it does give you a chance to make sure nothing is wrong with it.

Anyway, I pulled mine this weekend and everything seemed to be good except one minor detail. One of my accounts had a minus sign or dash in front of the account number. I dunno if thats just the way American Express reports or if its a mistake. Other than that everything about that account is fine so its not causing any harm. I’m tempted to pull another report just to see if the other agencies have that dash as well. I guess since its not harming anything so I shouldn’t be worried. At any rate, if anyone knows if this is standard for amex leave a comment. I will probably call them this week.

I guess its time to the first recording of my net worth. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any payments or money floating so it should be pretty accurate.

Well, at least its not negative Before you become alarmed at the credit card debt note that it falls into two categories: current charges which will be paid back by the due date and 0% interest balance transfers. I shouldn’t pay any interest on them. I decided to exclude miscellaneous assets as most of what I own I would only sell to replace it, for example a laptop.

I am a little suprised by how much cash I had, even if it is borrowed. After I take advantage of a few more deals I hope to max out this years Roth IRA contribution.