Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Bank of America is offering its customers free museum admissions on the first weekend of the month throughout the year through their Museums on Us program. The program currently covers 70 museums in 18 states: Georgia, New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Michigan, Maine, Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, Washington, Connecticut, [...]
Lazy Man and Money took on the big job of hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance #150 this week. It had a 115 articles that he put together in a span of 16 hours. Yes, that’s how much time these carnivals can require, if you sign up as a host! [...]
Here’s another round of my notes from yesterday’s Finovate demos. Since each company only got 5 minutes to show their stuff, my notes are short as well. I got to meet many of the companies afterward to get more detail.
Expensr - I thought this might steal Best of Show. It’s a personal finance management tool like Mint, but with a strong focus on widgets. The idea is that you can customize everything to your liking, which is one of the things that came up a month ago at a blogger meet-up they sponsored. They also [...]
Since 2001, we’ve had to do without the one-year treasury bill. The government was enjoying a nice surplus, so the need to raise money through the sale of treasury bills was not a high priority. As you know, times have changed. The surplus is gone, and we’re faced with a staggering budget deficit, and one [...]
I’m finally learning how to do all the cool social networking stuff on the internet! Ever since I graduated from college (7 years ago), I haven’t really kept up to date beyond emailing.
Recently I’ve been on a roll, first I learned to text message on my Sprint Centro with the SERO plan and now [...]
Were you in class the day they handed out the financial tip sheet? You know, the one that covered how to buy insurance, invest your money, pay off your student loans, manage your credit cards, and budget out your new salary? I think most of us missed that day so here’s another copy you can [...]
Oh, young mind, how we envy you! The world is your oyster, and who doesn’t like oysters? Here you are, venturing out into the world. Freedom, independence, adventure are all just around the corner! Mom’s not there to do the laundry anymore, but who cares! Nobody will yell at you [...]
Another month has gone by already which means it's time to do a quick financial checkup.
Lets start with the markets. It seems that the markets have stabilized and even on an uptrend. I'm not sure how long this is going to last, but I'm not too worried as most of my money is in long [...]
Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
If you do, then what’s the reason for you to budget?
I don’t and I don’t know whether that’s a problem for me or not.
There were several years in the 90s when I wrote every penny I spent in notebooks, not to better plan how to spend my money next [...]
The high-tech industry is mostly for younger people — it can be highly stressful since it requires that you be on your toes, learning new technologies so that you can escape the undesirable label of being a tech “dinosaur”.
But during my career as a software engineer, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a [...]
Buxfer - Demo had numerous technical difficulties… website was down. Maybe we’ll see their demo later in the day.
Guardian Analytics - FraudMAP product watches for suspicious activity banking activity. Banks can use this tool to monitor login times, login IPs and other information and get alerted to possible fraud.
Jwaala - Thus far it is the star of the show in my opinion. MoneyTracker is a personal finance management system, much like Mint, Geezeo, Expensr, or Wesabe. Widgets are similar to iGoogle o NetVibes. Has a great natural language search so you ask questions like, “Show me [...]
Here are some updates from the first batch of demos at Finovate.
Authentium - Safe Central makes keystroke loggers or screenshot grabbers “blind.” Runs on top of Firefox. Prevents man in the middle and phishing.
Credit Karma - Free credit score tracking using their proprietary scoring system. Cons are that you need to give up your social security number. This seems to not be a problem, because 86% of people who try to join complete the registration. Credit pulls are “soft pulls” - a very good thing. Credit Karma gives you percentile vs. general population. Makes [...]
Today, I’m gong to attempt to live blog from Finovate Start-up. I’ve got my pink Asus Eee in tow.
Here are some things to expect:
Many Typos - I haven’t gotten used to this keyboard yet.
Short Notes - Each company has just five minutes to demo its product. Since I grew up on MTV this shouldn’t be a problem – as long as there are hair bands, pyrotechnics, and Tawny dancing on the hood of a car.
Me Fallen Asleep - I had to get up at 5:30 this morning for 7:00AM registration. It seems that they’ve stressed [...]
There’s a basic formula for determining when you can retire: when the withdrawals on your retirement nest egg will cover your expenses. Simple right? But what if your company wanted you to make a retirement decision, and gave you two weeks to decide?
Unfortunately, that’s a situation that we’re currently facing. Our company announced a [...]
This advice is a guest post from a money smart mom.
Having a baby is one of the most precious times in your life. It can also be one of the scariest. Even though your baby is such a small person he or she can make a huge dent in your bank account. What can you do [...]
Patrick, of Cash Money Life fame, has tagged me to give my best financial move in college. This “organically growing” meme was started by plonkee. The first part was posted yesterday.
Best Financial Move In College #2: Learning an “exotic” foreign language.
If you read this blog, you probably know that I’m a Russophile. I [...]
Since the beginning of MDJ, I have talked about the Smith Manoeuvre. For those of you just joining us, The Smith Manoeuvre is a wealth strategy that utilizes a home equity loan to invest in income producing assets. The result is a tax deductible loan and portfolio that increases as you pay down your mortgage.
There [...]
As a nation, we’re experiencing a return to frugality. So how are you economizing?
As the economy slides downwards, behavioral trends are also shifting as people are making the necessary adjustments to the new financial realities they face. As certain economic realities begin to dawn upon most of us and we start feeling the [...]
If you’ve been paying any attention to the news in recent weeks, you’ve probably heard some of the stories of food shortages and limits being placed on how much food can be purchased. For example, Costco and Sam’s Club in many areas are limiting rice sales.
Even more shocking are articles like this one in the [...]
Our budget buster? Restaurants. We eat out a lot for the convenience, great food, and because we really aren’t very good cooks. We also hate to grocery shop. Enough excuses already. If you dine out, it’s always good to save money. We have used some of the following tips lately to reign in the spending [...]
Patrick, of Cash Money Life fame, has tagged me to give my best financial move in college. This “organically growing” meme was started by plonkee. This will be a two-parter because I didn’t want a post that looked like a short novel…
I have what might be an “unallowed” answer, so I’ll give [...]
Welcome to the 150th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. It amazes me to see the 150 number there. I had grand notions of tying all 115 accepted submissions into a good story. However, with the Comcast outage in my area yesterday, I scrambled today to get all the submissions in the form that you see below. Though I wasn’t always working at full speed, it took 16 hours to read the articles, write the blurb that you see below, and add my comments after most of them. If it took me 16 hours [...]
Why do we spend miserable Monday mornings at our jobs when we don’t even know if we’ll be alive the following Monday?
I recently got an email from my parents about a guy I knew in my college years who just died in an accident. I can still remember the last time I saw him. He [...]
I was doing my regular web money reading and came across an interesting article on MSN Money Central about marriage infidelity. No, not that kind of infidelity, I'm talking about financial infidelity.
What is financial infidelity?
This is where one spouse in the relationship overspends without the other spouse knowing. I can see this being a major [...]
Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Best Gas Credit Cards to Save You Money at the Pump Money Smart Life suggested use credit cards to save money when filling up your car. Some of them are also covered in my previous post. With gas price near $4/gallon, a 3% rebate isn’t too small to let [...]
