June 11th, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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For my few loyal readers, you have likely noticed a lack of post here recently. Life has been crazy since the beginning of the year. Here is my rundown of reasons/excuses for not posting:
- We bought a new house in November, so we’ve been trying to get settled in.
- We still had to sell our old house, and to get it ready for sale we had to do some repairs and painting. Managing the contractors we hired to do the work and dealing with other maintenance on the old house took a good chunk of time, especially since the old house is about 30 miles away from the new one.
- We elected to sell FSBO using a flat-fee MLS listing service. While we don’t feel we missed much by not using a traditional agent, this did involve some extra work. The $5,000+ we saved in commission by not using a traditional agent to list the home was definitely worth the extra work we had to put it and I’d definitely do it again.
- As alluded to in my last point, we did sell the old house, which did take some time and aggrevation in negotiating repairs and such, plus checking up on the buyers’ agent periodically to make sure they were doing what they needed to complete the transaction.
- We just refinanced the mortgage on the new house. We originally did a 30-year fixed, and with the equity from the sale of the old house and the significantly lower rate we were able to refinance into a great deal on a 15-year fixed with a minimally higher payment.
So all of this along with the demands of a full-time job, family with three small kids, and maintaining a house with a yard just a bit larger than an acre have left little room for posting.
April 15th, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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As state and local governments struggle to keep up with their reckless spending in this economic downturn, more and more cities are installing red light camera to fine motorists and help bridge the revenue gap in their budgets. It seems like these things are everywhere now, which makes me love this story of how a couple in Florida fought the city over one of these tickets and won. How did they do it? By confirming that the cycle for the yellow light had been set too short according to county guidelines. The husband simply went out the the light where the ticket was issued with a stopwatch and timed the yellow light cycle to find in 15 instances the average cycle for the yellow was 3.8 seconds compared to 4.5 seconds required by law. He was able to get the county to concede the cycle was too short and the ticket was dismissed. How widespread is the issue? This fellow checked a total of 65 intersections in the area and found only 7 lights that meet the requirement.
Not specifically personal finance related, but I thought it was an interesting story to pass along.
April 14th, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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If you are a Bank of America customer, you can get free admission to select museums on certain dates by showing your Bank of America credit or debit card and a photo ID. The eligible dates for 2009 are currently the first full weekend of each month through September, although their website says that more 2009 dates are to come. Full details on the program can be found on their Museums on Us(R) website.
April 13th, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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If you are looking to make a quick $25, one of the easiest ways to do it is by opening an ING Direct account as a new customer using one of our referral links. You can earn the referral bonus for the Orange Savings Account, the Orange Business Savings Account, or the Electric Orange Checking Account (limit one bonus per customer, not per account). All three are great products earning competitive interest rates with minimal if any fees.
ING Direct is one of the oldest online banks with a website unsurpassed for usability and an interest rate several times higher than the national average. If you are a new customer, simply use one of the referral links below and open your account with a deposit of at least $250. You will get a bonus of $25 credited to your account (there’s your 10% return) and one of my kids (the referrals are from their accounts) will get $10-$20 for referring you.
Orange Savings Account – Links expire 5/7/2010
Electric Orange Checking Account – Links expire 5/7/2010
Business Orange Savings Account – Links expire 4/29/2010
If you see a message at the top of the ING signup page saying the link is invalid or expired, it means it has probably already been used. Just use one of the other links to complete the signup. Thanks!
Rules of the game: Bonuses are only paid for accounts that are opened with an initial deposit of at least $250. Initial deposit does not include bonus. The $25 bonus is available only for new accounts with a new Customer as primary owner. Only one bonus will be provided per household. Bonus starts earning interest upon account opening, but is unavailable for withdrawal for 30 days.
April 9th, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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The $200 Chase Business Checking Bonus is back again. As I’ve posted about and taken advantage of before, you can get a $200 bonus for opening a Chase Business Checking account. To take advantage of the offer you will need an opening deposit of $5,000 (previous offers were $500) and a printable coupon. The coupon expires May 15 2010, but Chase often takes the links down before the coupon expiration so you should print out your coupon now. It’s worth noting there is no requirement you keep $5,000 in the account, only that your opening deposit be at least that amount, so you could withdraw the money shortly after opening the account to avoid tieing up your money.
You can open a free account where the service fee is waived if you do five debit card transactions per month or have an active business credit card (meaning there was a balance at some point in the statement period) linked to the account. To open the account you either need a business license or you have to be a licensed professional (attorney, accountant, etc.).
Be warned that you have to go in the branch for this and depending on the representative you work with this could take up to an hour as they probe you for information on your business and opportunities to sell other products. However, $200 is well worth an hour of my time.
April 7th, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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As our government continues to find new ways to squander taxpayer money, the federal government provided to the states funds for incentives for energy efficient home improvements. Here in Texas that has taken the form of the Texas Powerful Smart Appliance Rebate, which has thus far been a fiasco of Texas-sized proportions.
The program seems relatively simple: you get a rebate for replacing an old appliance with an energy efficient model, and an extra bonus if you recycle the old one. However, because funding is limited you have to reserve your rebate in advance through the state Comptroller’s office, first come first served. They opened the reservation website and phone lines this morning at 7am, and since frustrated Texans have spent hours struggling to get through the system to reserve their rebate before the funds run out. The published 877 number has been unreachable with callers getting busy signals of all sorts, and the website has timed out consistently leaving users to start over even if they get past the initial request page.
Myself, I tried since 7am this morning to get through on both the website and phone number, and after stepping away for an hour for a meeting and restarting I finally got through on the phone at 12:32pm, meaning I wasted about 4.5 hours trying to get through. I only got through because someone figured out that their was an unpublished alternate number at 877-581-1993, which was intended to be the rebate status line but was directing people into the rebate request queue. That line is still presenting callers with a message saying that the call can’t be answered at this time due to high call volume in most instances, but it is occasionally allowing you into the hold queue where you’ll wait about 5 minutes for a representative to process your reservation.
So if you are wanting to get in on this, remember:
- Funds are limited. If you don’t get this today, you probably won’t get it.
- Information on the program is at http://www.texaspowerfulsmart.org/. However, the rebate request website is at https://www.txrebates.com/. The published rebate reservation phone number is (877) 780-3039, and the unpublished number is (877) 581-1993.
- Be sure to get a confirmation number! Without it there is nothing to prove you made the reservation.
- You are limited to two rebates per household and one rebate in each appliance category, however you are allowed to request only one rebate during each call or web session.
As of 1:05pm Central, it is reported that 63% of rebate funds have been reserved and $8.1 million remains, so you need to hurry and get in.
March 31st, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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A few weeks ago I posted a rant about the stupidity of Bank of America and the monthly maintenance fee they charge on some MyAccess checking accounts. In my reasearch I found that although the MyAccess checking normally has an account maintenance fee if you don’t have a direct deposit, they were currently offering MyAccess checking with no maintenance fee or direct deposit requirement if you opened the account online. Unfortunately Bank of America would not apply those terms to our existing account, and said the only way we could get those terms was to open a new account.
I debated whether to bother with BofA anymore, but ultimately decided I liked the convenient branch access for ATMs and depositing small checks and dollar coins and opened the new account. I’m going in today to close the old account and transfer the funds to the new account.
Now for the bonus…BofA is currently offering a $75 bonus for opening a MyAccess checking account online using the promo code CH75OL1 and funding the account with $125. The full terms are listed on BofA’s website here. Based on the terms you have to be a new checking customer, although I signed up anyway to see if I would get the bonus (the old account had my wife as the primary account holder, so perhaps I’ll slip through). I’ll probably get refused, but since I was going to open the account anyway there is no harm in trying.
A couple of other helpful notes:
- You can fund the new accounts online using a credit card (the website says debit card but my Schwab Visa went through just fine) for up to $1,000 per account and earn reward points. I opened the checking and a savings and funded each for $1,000, resulting in a total of $2,000 charged to my card and $40 in cash back.
- If you are opening the checking you should consider opening the savings as well to take advantage of the Keep the Change program. The program itself is okay – your debit card purchases get rounded up to the next dollar with the extra amount being transferred from your savings to your checking, and BofA will normally match 5% of the KTC amount. However, in the first three months you earn a match of 100% of the transfer up to $250, and you can reach the $250 pretty easily paying bills online in $1.01 increments.
March 30th, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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As anyone who has or shops rewards credit cards lately knows, most of the offerings from the big monster mega-banks have been scaled back recently and the rewards programs aren’t nearly what they were a couple of years ago. Right now the best rewards card out there is the Charles Schwab Bank InvestFirst Visa, which pays a flat 2% back on purchases. The cash back is deposited automatically into your Schwab account every month (the Schwab brokerage account is fee-free if you have the card) regardless of how little or how much in rewards you earned.
Unfortunately our friend over at Hustler $$$ Blog has learned that Schwab will not be taking new applications on the card after the end of March, so if you want to get in on this card you need to do it now. They are no longer accepting online applications, so you will need to call 866-724-9223 and use priority code UAAS36. Remember they won’t take applications after March 31!
March 29th, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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Back in January, I posted about a coworker who had been a victim of identity theft. In summary, someone stole her ID and debit card and used them to cash stolen checks against her account. When the checks came back NSF, her account was debited for the stolen money. You can read the story in more detail here.
As a follow-up to the original post, I am happy to report that the thieft was caught, however the additional information on how this happened is rather scary. The suspect apparently would sneak into office buildings during business hours and steal IDs, debit cards, and checks from unattended offices. She saw the story on the arrest on the news and called Houston Police to inquire about the case, and received a call back a few days later saying they found the stolen ID and debit card in the suspect’s possession. Thankfully she has the comfort of knowing that her ID and debit card are no longer in the hands of a criminal, although it is pretty scary to think that the theft happened right here in our office.
The lessons here are pretty obvious, mainly to lock up valuables in your desk and to not hesitate to question people you don’t recognize in your offfice. Just another reminder to always be vigilant.
March 1st, 2010 by BillyOceansEleven
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One thing I hate is bank fees, which is why I’m particularly annoyed at Bank of America right now. My wife and I have a MyAccess checking account, which we opened online in 2004. We do most of our banking through an online bank, but keep this account for branch and ATM access (cash withdrawals, depositing miscellaneous checks and dollar coins, etc.). Because this isn’t our primary checking account, we choose not to have our direct deposit sent there and instead do an automated transfer for a nominal amount from another account to fake the direct deposit and avoid a $8.95 monthly maintenance fee.
Unfortunately for us, this isn’t foolproof. When we opened our monthly statement for February, we saw that we had been charged the $8.95 monthly maintenance fee. This was partially because we forgot to reset our automated transfer (our system makes us reset the transfer after so many months) and partially because the statement closed four days earlier than it did last month. We had another electronic transfer hit the account, but only after the statement for the month had closed.
Not ready to admit defeat, I call customer service to request a fee waiver. True to their usual level of no-service, the automated system said there was a long wait to speak to a rep and then uncerimoniously disconnected the call. So I then used the online chat to request the credit, and only after requesting a supervisor did I get the fee waived.
While I was waiting for the online customer service rep, I just happened to review what the fee structure was on my account if I were opening the account today. Guess what? If you open online, there is no monthly maintenance fee or direct deposit or minimum balance requirement. Armed with this I asked if I could have these terms applied to my current account I was told that was only for new accounts, and when I asked if I would have to close the old account and open a new account to avoid the monthly fee I was told that is what I would need to do. What a waste!
So here’s my dilemma: do I close this account (I am out of paper checks anyway, but I think 5+ years to use 50 checks is a decent run) and open a new Bank of America account to simply avoid the fee, or do I tell Bank of America to go screw and take my business elsewhere? I’ve been trying to simplify anyway, so I am thinking we should just use our credit union account for this type of stuff, but having so many BofA branches around is very convenient, especially when trying to spread around those dollar coin deposits. What to do?
