Britax will hold a car seats sale at Amazon.com from February 1 to 15 with selected items up to 20% off.
We bought our daughter a Britax Marathon Convertible when she was 5 months old and she used it until our second daughter was about the same age. After nearly four years, the seat is still [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
For sometime, E*Trade has been pretty good at holding the yield of their Complete Savings Account at 3.01% APY, becoming one of the bright spots when everybody else was in the cutting mood. But that finally came to an end, like all the good things.
E*Trade announced yesterday that effective Monday, February 2nd, the new rate [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Rate Updates: E*Trade Complete Savings 2.50% APY, EverBank Money Market 3.51% APY
Are you sick of navigating phone menus and hearing the recorded voice say, “Due to unexpectedly high call volumes your wait time is approximately 5 minutes”?
Well for some businesses there’s a new, simple way that you can ask them questions and advice online. The list of companies below are some examples of businesses that are communicating [...]
Credit card companies are looking for new ways to manage consumers’ risk of defaulting on balances. Apparently, they now plan to review cardholders’ spending patterns, including which merchants they frequent, to determine build their risk model.
Credit card issuers are no strangers to using behavioral analysis to shape much of their business. Trust me; I used [...]
This is just another example to show that there’s no such thing as free lunch, if you consider free stock trades from Zecco as *free lunch*. Since the launch in July 2006, Zecco, which stands for “Zero Commission Cost,” has been slowly drifting away from their initial belief that “there are independent investors out there [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Zecco To Adopt New Pricing Policy: $25K Minimum Required for Free Trades
What? March Madness? It’s only January! No - I’m talking about Free Money Finance’s March Madness round 1. My article, Spend Less than You Earn – the Wrong Way to Think, is battling it out – jump over to FMF and vote in the comments (just say “Game 12: Wrong” in the comments to vote [...]
How do you teach your children about money? Here are some great money lessons I want my kids to learn.
Since the birth of my son almost three years ago, I’ve realized a few things. The biggest and what should have been the most obvious lesson is that being a parent — especially a [...]
Do you know what Fibonacci rule is?
Basically, Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of numbers in which each successive number is equal to the sum of the two preceding numbers, such as 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . . The rule used to generated Fibonacci sequence is called Fibonacci rule, which can be [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Yesterday, when I was writing the post on shopping and credit score, I thought it would be nice to include the actual video in the entry so people who missed the program on TV can watch it while reading the post. The problem is on Good Morning America, there’s no code to link to the [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
How I Grabbed a Video From Good Morning America and Used It in my Post
The first month of 2009 is already almost in the books. Didn’t that seem to fly by? If there’s one thing I dislike about this time of year, it’s getting tax documents in the mail. Most of our documents have come in and before actually doing my taxes, I ran some estimates in a tax [...]
About the Author: Jeremy is a retirement planning specialist and founder of Generation X Finance and the guide to Financial Planning at About.com. To learn more, follow Jeremy on Twitter.
The $25 sign up bonus from Etrade is back!
This is one of the easiest Free Money Friday bonus offers and it usually shows up a few times during the year, but it doesn’t last long. This one expires 2/25/2009!
How to Get Your Sign up Bonus
The sign up is easy, it only took me about [...]
Filing a homeowner or auto insurance claim can be a frustrating experience. Many times you may not get the maximum amount you should for a claim because you’re scared, complacent, or confused about the filing process.
Today I’ll share with you some of what I learned as a former claims adjuster. The first piece of advice, if [...]
Today’s guest post if from is from Thrifty Homeowner. The blog documents the journey of a novice do-it-yourselfer who is always on the lookout for ways to save and to increase his home’s efficiency.
As the self-proclaimed Thrifty Homeowner, I’m always on the lookout for ways to save money when it comes anything involving my [...]
More Backup Software
Last week, I recommended a free online backup solution called Mozy Backup. Within the comments thread, Stephen Winters mentioned a free product by Microsoft called Windows Live Sync. Even though it doesn’t do an online backup per se, it basically synchronizes files from different computers. I’ve installed the program and it’s great if [...]
Over the last year I’ve shared a few ways to create a passive income. But what about creating passive savings? That is, ways to save money without much effort. That’s the idea behind eliminating the pull of dreaded “vampire power” from your household devices.
What Is “Vampire Power?”
The term “Vampire Power” refers to the energy required [...]
Do you have too much debt? How much house can you afford? You can evaluate your debt load by figuring out your debt to income ratio.
When I hunted for a mortgage several years ago, I was required to assess my debt to income ratio, which represents how much I owe on my credit [...]
On my trip to Boston a couple of weeks ago, I met up with a couple of my best friends from college. One is probably more into personal finance than me – but he’s just not the blogging type. He can dazzle with Excel and Quicken and probably could tell you exactly how [...]
What a difference a few months make. Last summer, we saw a tremendous rise in gas prices putting the average price per gallon in most areas over $4.00. This was a major shock to most people, and those who had long commutes saw their budgets thrown out the window as gas consumed most of their [...]
About the Author: Jeremy is a retirement planning specialist and founder of Generation X Finance and the guide to Financial Planning at About.com. To learn more, follow Jeremy on Twitter.
Poll: With Gas Prices Down Significantly Since Summer, Have Your Driving Habits Changed?
Yes, that sounds unbelievable (I thought only payment history, utilization ratio, credit length, etc, determine credit score), but it could actually happen.
Watch this video on Good Morning America yesterday first.
Kevin Johnson, who, at 29 years old, is the CEO of a PR firm in Atlanta and has an excellent FICO credit score of 764, has [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Where You Shop Could Hurt Your Credit Score and Credit Limits
When we bought our house five years ago, we replaced the refrigerator, the stove, and the dishwasher. The water heater and air conditioner were relatively new, so we left them as were. The only item that should have been replaced at that time but we didn’t was the furnace. From the outside, the furnace looked [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
The search continues for my new brokerage account. This week I opened a new account at TradeKing.
My TradeKing Review
I’ve written about TradeKing before, because they offered a great sign up bonus in the past. I didn’t get a chance to open an account then, but I figured now was a great time, since 2009 is [...]
I have written about person-to-person (or P2P) lending several times. The big players in the US are Prosper (currently not accepting new lender registrations) and Lending Club. I invested a bit of money in both of them. I was checking up on both of my accounts and noticed a startling fact: my current rates of [...]
Back in March 2008, Thicken My Wallet wrote a guest post “How Exposed is the Smith Manoeuvre to the Lipson Case?” Just recently, there was a verdict against the Lipson’s. The big question now is, how does it affect the Smith Manoeuvre?
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of Canada issued its decision in [...]
The following guest post is from Joy. Joy is a new mom living in a small community in California. She blogs about simple living, budgeting, balancing home and work, and finding joy at www.JustPlainJoy.blogspot.com. She recently completed her PhD in Education and works as a Volunteer Coordinator at a state university.
Are you a parent interested [...]
What does the latest economic stimulus package mean to you? There won’t be a 2009 economic stimulus check so if we won’t be getting money in the mail, how will we be impacted?
I’m not an economist so I won’t waste your time arguing the pros and cons of tax breaks vs. increased spending; I’ll leave that [...]
