Pragmatic Finance

This is a story that makes you shake your head. Matthew Shinnick tried to sell some bikes using Craigslist. His trip to Bank of America was not the usual trip I am accustomed to. It ended with him being handcuffed and arrested in the middle of the bank, taken to jail, and out 14k in legal fees. If you ever needed any more motivation to stop going inside and to just use the atm then this is it. Read the rest of this entry »

Tim at HelpYourMoney has a running series of interviews of personal finance bloggers. This past week he posted my interview. He is up to about 20 interviews now. They ask about 11 questions and all are interesting.

Citibank is still offering it’s Professional Card that includes a sign up bonus of 10k thank you points. This is the equivalent of $100 if you trade those points in for a gift card or student loan rebate. The card also gives back 3 thank you points (~3%) for auto rentals, restaurants, gas stations, and certain office supply stores. I am pretty sure I have gotten the extra thank you points from Office Depot so I know that one counts. It also gives 1 thank you point for all other purchases.

You simply need to make a purchase after receiving the card to get the bonus. Like most Citibank cards, there is a 0% interest balance transfer option available too. It lasts for 12 months from when you make the first transfer.

You don’t have to have a business or be a professional to apply. It has some business card features but it goes on your personal credit file and is listed in Citibank’s personal credit card section. It almost seems as if it is some hybrid of the two.

I wrote not too long ago about using fatwallet cashback when purchasing online to save money. There is also another site, ebates, that is very similar. They have discounts and different promotions if you click through their site to the site you are buying from. Sometimes it’s a percentage back while other times they have offers of a straight cash amount back.

When you sign up for ebates the also give you $5 free. It stays as pending until you make a purchase. If you sign up and put in the email address of the person who referred you they also get $5. But that isn’t necessary to get your bonus. If you would like to refer me you can use Jason at pragmaticfinance dot com.

I had checked the site out a long time ago but didn’t use it because fatwallet was giving much higher discounts on the stores I purchased from online. However, I am going to sign up for some Sharebuilder bonuses and remember reading about a $20 bonus if you apply through ebates. A simple search on their site for Sharebuilder brought it up.

Even if you don’t do that deal it’s still good for discounts and the signup bonus doesn’t hurt either.

I often feel as though I am being ripped off on auto insurance. Perhaps this is just due to my dislike of insurance. Unfortunately, it’s a necessity. My current plan is up for renewal very soon so this is a great opportunity to see if there is anything better out there.

Overall I have been pretty satisfied with State Farm. They have always been very helpful and had good service. I have had one accident that was my fault and it was taken care of with just a phone call. The only negative experience I have with them was several years ago. I called to see about canceling my life insurance policy I have with them. They told me that if I canceled it my auto insurance with them would go up. When I asked why they really didn’t explain it at all to me. It was quite annoying. Read the rest of this entry »

I love making money off credit card companies. I have been getting into a habit of opening up credit cards for sign up bonuses and 0% balance transfer offers haphazardly but there is one method to maximize your results. I have heard it referred to as an App-o-Rama or an application spree but the strategy is the same. Wait until you can maximize your credit score and then apply for all the cards you plan to….at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

Bank of American has a new promotion for their extra bases credit card. You can get a free iPod and an offical Major League Baseball Jersey. If you read the fine print it appears you have to make purchases or cash advances of $75 to get the jersey. Then you can make purchases or balance transfers of $2000 to get the iPod Nano. The balance transfer offer is 12 months at 0% interest but it has a 3% fee with no cap.

It seems the best way if I decide to apply for this is to get the card and make a purchase for $75. Pay that off and then do a balance transfer. If you did the minimum of $2000 that would be $60. So you would be getting a jersey, iPod, and 12 months of 0% interest balance transfer for $60.

I read an interesting article on MSN Money today about some weird stuff that hurts your credit. It talks about several things that can hurt your credit that I imagine most people don’t know about. There were a few points that I thought were worth repeating.

Some credit cards don’t report their limits. They mention the problems of Capital One here that I have discussed in the past. To summarize, when your real limit isn’t reported it can make it look like your using a lot more of your available credit than you really are. No preset spending limit cards such as those from American Express also have this problem.

Their advice about fighting it is pretty pointless as Capital One won’t change their methods unless they are forced to. Interestingly, they did mention one guy who is suing them. Hopefully others will too.

The best way to get around this is to charge up close to your limit through purchases that you already planned on doing or cashing some of those purchase checks. You can then pay it off before you get charged interest and get your high balance to report. You can also change cards to ones that do report.

The other interesting thing is that FICO scores you a little differently depending on what group you are classified in. They gave an example of a lady whose score decreased significantly because when her new card aged enough she was put into a higher credit group. The debt she had made her score drop since she was no longer one of the best of a bad group but instead near the bottom of the good group. If that’s a little confusing the article described it better. I have to say, though, that doesn’t sound very effective if the scoring system does work that way.

They also warn about the tendency for unpaid traffic tickets and library fines to be put on your credit report. Hmm, I wonder if there is a statue of limitations on these as I think I still an unpaid library late fee from high school…

MBNA cards have one of the most unique features available: the ability to pay off a credit card using another credit card. I’m sure many of you have paid bills using bill pay from your bank or used a credit card site to pull funds from your bank but this feature is a little different.

If you have an MBNA card you have the option to pay the bill online. If the card is considered one of their own cards and not one of the cobranded ones then you also have the ability to pay other bills with it.  The kicker here is that you can select other credit cards as bills.  Interestingly, their system considers the Fidelity cards to not be cobranded. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the 52nd edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction. Some great posts this week, although some of the more interesting ones I left out didn’t really correspond to debt reduction. Anyway, on with the show. First I’ll go over some of the ones that caught my eye this week.

Favorites

Debt Free looks at a comparison of How is a Budget Like a Diet? A unique analogy I hadn’t seen before.

My Financial Awareness discusses two different Methods of Paying off Credit Card Debt. Good analysis of the different ways to pay off your debt. Both saving the most interest and paying it off in a way that gives keeps you motivated have their own benefits.

Craig of Recovering Broke Guy discusses the passing of his father and how it is A painful reminder of the importance of a Total Money Makeover. Although painful, a major event like this is an opportunity to do some introspection.

And now with the others… Read the rest of this entry »

I seem to be behind the 8 ball on this one but I just recently found out that Amazon.com has a PI/2 or 1.57% discount offered. You must sign into your Amazon.com account and use the A9 search engine. The search box is located in the upper right corner.

After you search enough an icon should show up to the left of the Amazon.com one. It took me several days of searching a few times a day before it showed up. You don’t have to do searches of products from amazon either. Some of mine included thing such as “How much longer until you give me this stupid discount.”
I often buy books from them so this should help out in the future. 1.57% isn’t amazing but every little bit helps. I hear it goes away if you don’t use the search engine often so if ya have a big purchase to make might want to think about it a few days beforehand.

It seems TD Ameritrade has a new deal for 45 free days of trading.  This is similar to the last deal except without the bonus.  However, this one only requires $2,000 to open.  If you want to try out the market without risking a lot this might be a good offer.  While there is also a deal for $100 for putting in 25k that is probably not worth it unless you were already planning on investing that much.

Welcome to the 38th edition of the Carnival of Investing. I am your host, Pragmatic Finance and I will give you the run down on what went on in the investment blogosphere this past week.

I had to chuckle when My 1st Million at 33 said I beat you on this stock, Warren Buffet! Who Knew ConocoPhillips could generate so much excitement. And to balance out my emotions Consumerism Commentary let us know that The Market Goes Up When Congress is Out. Maybe some of the more creative out there can think up some ways to lesson the time Congress is in session so my IRA will go up. Read the rest of this entry »

Luckily I did not have any unexpected expenses this last month and was able to meet my goal of a 9k networth!  I was helped out with financial aid coming in too.  Now I get to watch as my 30% monthly gains turn into negative monthly gains due to tuition, rent, etc.

The biggest change was paying off most of my 0% balance transfer offers that were ending this month.  But don’t worry, I will be back to borrow five digit sums of money from credit card companies in another month.

I had been contemplating what to do with the money that I had in my TD Ameritrade account after receiving the $500 bonus. I decided to put 5k into cd’s and leave the rest to either invest in a mutual fund or purchase some stocks or etfs.

The goal for next month is to add 20k in balance transfer money once my new balances are updated on my accounts.  Hopefully Chase, Discover, etc will cooperate in giving me the approvals and lines to make this happen.