I had to mention Michael Jackson. Flexo will explain why. It is one of those watershed pop-culture moments, whether you like him or not. I am a fan of Elvis, and 32 years after his death people are still mooney about him. I liked Thriller – who didn’t. He was around even before that, with [...]
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Book Winners
As mentioned, there are 2 copies of The Seven Rules of Wall Street to giveaway. Of the 600+ entries (between comments and twitter followers), the two lucky winners are:
BBQ
Jared
Congrats guys, I will contact you shortly!
Weekend Reading
One Year Ago today, I answered a reader question about not having a will and where assets would go. [...]
This is a guest post from Kevin, who writes about how to get out of debt, stay out of debt, and build wealth at No Debt Plan.
When my wife and I purchased our first home a few years ago we needed a lawn mower for our small yard. I ended up buying an electric lawnmower [...]
Try these money saving tips, rules and formulas to motivate yourself into saving more!
Image from ScionDriver.
I recently caught an ABC News video which featured a fellow whom I’ve seen participating actively in the financial blogosphere. Rob Bennett is a personal finance enthusiast and writer who was interviewed by ABC News’ Money Matters. [...]
Well, I finally pulled the trigger to open an Ally Bank Online Savings Account and a 9-month No Penalty CD Account, after mulling the idea for weeks but only watching the rates slipping further and further. Had I opened the account when I first discussed Ally Bank’s products at the beginning of the month, I [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
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It may sound like a Saturday Night Live skit, but an organization is asking for your help with balancing the budget. Next10 has a fairly easy to understand simulator that lets you do just that. You have a choice about 4 or 5 questions in much of the areas that impact the government’s [...]
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Even though the contest ended Monday morning, I’m a little behind in getting all of the entries gathered. There was a lot of interest so it’s taking some time to make sure all the valid entries get accounted for.
Later this weekend I’ll be contacting the winners directly. If your winning entry was from the newsletter [...]
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.
Great news for those of you with student loans! On July 1, the interest rates on Stafford loans and PLUS loans will drop to an all time low!
Here’s what the new rates will look like:
This is great news for those of you who missed consolidating 5 years ago when you could get a rate as low as 2.77%. (We locked ours in at 3% with Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority (UHEAA) and used it for our house, which is much cheaper than any mortgage.)
You can consolidate at Federal Direct Loan Consolidation to lock in the rate, but the rates are only good if you got your loans before July 1, 2006. There are lots of other exceptions, too, so read the fine print.
In addition, on July 1, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act law will cap student loans at 15% of adjusted gross income. Loans are dropped completely with 10 years of public service.
Written by Madison
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The summer can be a great time to start a side business because life tends to be a little more laid back. People are going on vacation and taking time off to hang out with their kids so your day job may be a little more relaxed. Plus there’s nothing on TV to distract you at night : [...]
For the average income in Canada, the maximum RRSP contribution amount of $21,000 (for 2009) is more than what most employed workers are allowed to contribute. To put this in perspective, in order to qualify for the $21,000 contribution limit, an employee would need an income of around $117,000, well above the average Canadian salary.
However, [...]
Did you know it is possible to overdose your washing machine with detergent? Yeah, me neither. I guess I always understood on some level that overloading household appliances with cleaning solutions was bad, but Consumer Reports has provided actual proof, and apparently detergent makers aren’t much help.
A post at the Consumer report blog explains how [...]
I had the pleasure of being a guest at Mr. Credit Card’s radio show today. Mr. Credit Card runs the Ask Mr. Credit Card site and is someone I’ve been interacting with online for a long time now. So I’m glad I’ve finally gotten the chance to actually speak with him!
My Interview With [...]
Interview With Mr. Credit Card On Personal Finance and Silicon Valley
I have been getting free credit report for years. Before there was the law that entitles every consumer a free report from each credit agency every 12 months, I requested my reports directly from Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion for free. Then after the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) became law, I started to use AnnualCreditReport.com [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
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I’m heartbroken. Microsoft is pulling the plug on the Microsoft Money product. I’ve been a diehard user for more than a decade! That’s thousands of transactions and details from almost every financial move I’ve ever made.
Microsoft Money Plus Home and Business is the center of my Financial Organization detailing almost 200 accounts in multiple files for all my family members and our business.
They didn’t give much notice on the end of the product. The last day to purchase Microsoft Money Plus is June 30, 2009. All purchased Money Plus products must be activated prior to Jan. 31, 2011.
However, even if you already have a version installed, like I do, you may need to act quickly. The online services expire two years after initial activation or Jan. 31, 2011, whichever is earlier.
I checked, and my copy will expire on December 22, 2009, which means I only have six months left. I am purchasing another copy so that I will have service until the end date in January 2011. I’m glad I checked right away since the purchase deadline is Tuesday!
To find your expiration date, look under the help menu in Money Plus, and select About MS Money. The expiration date appears by the serial number.
If your product is already activated, you don’t have to quit using the product when it expires, however, online services will no longer be available. That means that online quotes won’t work anymore. Neither will direct online banking and bill pay. Microsoft says that Money will “still process bank statements imported from your bank’s Web site (if available), and quotes can be manually updated.”
I ran a version without online quotes when my old version expired two years ago. After 3 weeks, I was more than annoyed. It would take hours to update my portfolio. I won’t do that again. If you are tempted, don’t forget that support will also end. So if you encounter a problem, don’t expect it to be fixed.
I’m a big fan of the usenet group. Lots of users have very helpful information, including information on the discontinuation from the unofficial microsoft.public.money FAQ.
Switching to a new product will be the next step. Here are some of the products that people have mentioned that I’ll consider over the next year.
Quicken. Quicken, which used to be the main competitor for Money, is already offering a discount for Microsoft Money users and created a FAQ on discontinuation, but they don’t anticipate having a complete solution for a few months. I’ll wait until I see that people are having success transferring all their data; I would hate to lose years of information. (Suggested by a reader, Ross, via Facebook.)
Other Personal Finance Applications. In addition, I’ve heard of multiple personal finance applications mentioned by others in the usenet group that I’ll plan to explore. They include GnuCash, Moneydance, and AceMoney. If you’ve used any of these, I’d love to hear about it!
Online Products. In addition, I’ll see if some of the online products will be able to play a role, like Mint (suggested by reader, Nitin, via Twitter), Quicken Online, and the recently reviewed You Need a Budget. However, these applications probably aren’t robust enough yet to manage a complete financial picture, including business and tax data.
I made sure to purchase my next version of MS Money by the June 30 deadline so that I’ll have service until January 2011. That should give me enough time to wait and see how successful people are in migrating gigantic files. In the mean time, I’ll just wait and see how it goes.
If you use Microsoft Money… what are your plans?
Written by Madison
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One of the things that you can – quite selfishly – enjoy about writing a blog is that it serves as an online diary for your own thoughts, hopes, opinions and ideas over time. When I started writing this blog two years ago (June 29, 2007, to be exact) I had no idea that [...]
Post from: brip blap.
Budgets are like diets. You have to find the right kind to suit your personality. If you tell me that I have to eat 1/4 cup of cottage cheese, half a grapefruit and two sticks of celery for breakfast, I’m going to want bacon and eggs. If you tell me I only [...]
The July 1, 2009 edition of Bottom Line Personal, one of my favorite publications, included an excellent column on car maintenance tips. Columnist Eric Peters, author of Automotive Atrocities! The Cars We Love to Hate, shares his tips for maintaining cars and extending their useful life. As the owner of a 19 year-old vehicle, I [...]
A few days ago, I discussed how my credit card account got closed when Advanta decided to pull the plug on their credit card division. The irony here is that the Advanta card was once considered one of the best credit cards for the buck, as per Forbes. So naturally, like one of the [...]
It looks like I made a big mistake about two months ago when I moved all my money from Dollar Savings Direct to IGoBanking.
I have left IGoBanking a long time ago, but moved back in April after seeing their actually increased the rate of their savings account from 1.85% APY to 2.12% APY, the highest [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
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[Below is a guest post from my wife. I had tried to get her to write this story for more than two years now. I imagine it was very difficult for her to write. The title is mine, which I thought was a little more catchy than "A history of growing up [...]
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I occasionally get questions from readers and try to answer each one to the best of my ability, but there are some questions that get asked more than others. For these types of questions I like to turn it into a post so that it can help even more people.
One of the questions I get [...]
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.
Reader Question: I Don’t Have Much Savings So Can I Use Unused Credit as an Emergency Fund?
Being healthy isn’t just a matter of feeling good and living longer, it can have a big impact on your wallet as well. I’ve made some poor decisions about my health over the last few years and it ended up costing me a big chunk of change and time off work.
I was lucky compared to [...]
An interesting financial exercise is to calculate how long your savings would last if you were to lose your job or other main sources of income. Basically, how much of an emergency fund (cash or line of credit) would you need? In this “worst case scenario”, proper planning needs to be in place to be [...]
You have probably been asked some variation of this question before, but I still find it interesting to hear the different responses. Over time I have found things I used to think highly of are now much less relevant in my life, and are not things I would risk life and limb to save. Actually, [...]
Some thoughts of a newly married man who’d like to dispel some illusions about the frugal wedding. Tim Parker from Elementary Finance weighs in on what it takes to get hitched.
A Cool Wedding Invitation!
Some weeks ago, I got married. While we planned our wedding, my then fiancee did the bulk of the work while [...]
