Money Blue Book

I think Google’s GrandCentral slogan should be straight out of the Lord of the Rings – One Number to rule them all, One Number to find them, One Number to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Well I guess everything except for the darkness part.

If you’ve been trying to find a way to organize multiple phone numbers or just want an extra free number from a particular area code, then you might want to take a look at what GrandCentral has to offer. When you sign up for a free GrandCentral account, you are provided a free custom phone number that is not tied to a particular cell phone plan or location. The idea is that you use this one phone number as your primary phone number even when you switch jobs or move.

When someone calls you on the number you created through GrandCentral, the incoming call is routed to any one of your phones. The call can even be set to go directly to voicemail, where messages are saved for as long as you want.

Use It As a Separate Business Number

I’m currently running a home business and I use my GrandCentral phone number as my business line. For my purposes it’s a lot easier and more cost efficient than buying another phone or paying for an expanded phone plan. Business calls are sent to my GrandCentral number but it can still ring my regular cell phone. The caller ID setting will let me know that it is a business call and I can obviously handle the call in the appropriate business fashion. I like how GrandCentral offers many customizable functions. If you don’t want to handle certain calls, you can set it so that those calls are automatically send to voicemail.

Neat GrandCentral Functions

Some of the cool and interesting features that your GrandCentral phone number account includes:

1. The ability to re-route different Caller ID’s to different sources. If you want business calls re-routed differently, you can have it forwarded to a landline for example. If you want personal calls sent to your cell phone, you can do that too.
2. A voice mail box that will save your messages forever. This is handy because many regular phone carriers usually delete messages after a certain amount of time has passed.
3. An online WebCall button that you can put on your website and have phone calls routed to your personal phone line.
4. The ability to listen in and interrupt a voicemail as it is being recorded by the caller.
5. A call recording function that allows you to save your actual phone conversations.

You Have to Receive A Grand Central Invite Email to Join

GrandCentral currently still remains in beta test mode. Everything works fine but you can only join if you receive a Grand Central invitation link from a current user. I wish I could give GrandCentral invitations out but there are too many people that would want one and not enough invitations to go around. My suggestion is to buy one from eBay. You can easily get one for less than a dollar.

Well yesterday, NetBank greeted its online customers with a jaw dropping notice on its website announcing that the federal government had shut it down because the bank had finally collapsed due to the weight of significant losses from loan defaults. With that, NetBank became the latest victim to keel over due to the subprime mess, with too many subprime credit borrowers defaulting on their mortgage loans.

When I read the news my heart stopped its beat for a second as I realized that I owned a NetBank account. I had written a previous entry about how I had opened a NetBank checking and savings account with a few small initial deposits to take advantage of the bank’s reward promotion. But then I remembered a few more facts. First, I had already fulfilled the terms of the promotion and had already transferred my funds out of my NetBank account, thus leaving the account with zero funds. Secondly, even if NetBank went out of business, all of its deposits were federally insured up to $100,000 for each customer. Either way, I had nothing to worry about. Whew!

Even When Banks Like NetBank Go Out of Business Your Money Is Protected and Safe

Unless you have more than $100,000 combined deposited, your funds are safe even if the deposit bank shuts down. U.S. Banks like NetBank are federally insured by the U.S. Government run Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which currently guarantees checking, saving, and certificate of deposit accounts in member banks up to $100,000 per depositor.

In this case, NetBank’s deposits have been assumed by ING Bank. Thus if you were a former NetBank deposit customer, you have officially become a customer of ING Direct. If you have total accounts under $100,000 your money is completely safe and now resides with ING Bank. If you’re one of the rich guys or rich gals and have more than $100,000, you become a creditor to NetBank’s receivership for the portion above $100,000. As a creditor you will lay claim to NetBank’s remaining assets after the FDIC has sold off as much of NetBank’s remaining assets as possible.

When banks close, it’s natural to panic and worry, but this is one area that the federal government actually does a good job. If the bank is FDIC insured, your money is thankfully safe.

Since we’re on the subject, keep in mind that while FDIC protects deposits made in banks, money in investment brokerage accounts in the form of stocks, bonds, and money market funds are not covered.

Yodlee is a terrific online account consolidator and aggregator tool. But whenever I try to explain to some people the many benefits of using a service like Yodlee to aggregate their bank, credit card, and reward account information into one easy to access source, I encounter the skeptics. The skeptics are quite the interesting techno-phobic bunch. They generally fear losing control of their accounts and fear putting all of their account login and password information into one basket. The skeptics fear account aggregation technology because they worry that it will somehow make their lives more complicated and they worry that it will allow hackers and identity thieves easier access to their private accounts. Well I’m here to put those worries to rest. Account aggregation tools like Yodlee will make your life much easier and will help to make your other accounts more secure.

How Does Yodlee Keep My Account Information Secure?

Yodlee has indicated that their service operates under a very secure network infrastructure that combines sophisticated intrusion detection methods with firewall and physical protections. Yodlee has partnered with many large and established companies such as Citibank, Fidelity, Bank of America, and Wachovia. I think we can be assured that Yodlee has passed the initial basic credibility test of ensuring customer privacy and confidential information.

However, although Yodlee will do its part to ensure that your account login and password information is completely secure, it is your own duty to make certain that you keep your master Yodlee login and password information in a secure location and hacker safe.

I know many people have a habit of using one common login and password combination for all of their financial accounts. If you do that, then I highly recommend, in fact I insist, that you make a vastly unique login and password sequence for your Yodlee or Yodlee powered account. Because your Yodlee account saves and consolidates all of your other financial account password information into one source, it is essential that you be certain that your Yodlee password is the most secure and unique of all.

From One Source It Is Easier To Keep Track Of All Balances and Transactions

By aggregating and consolidating your accounts into one viewable source, it makes it easier for you to detect fraudulent or unauthorized activity involving any of them. I personally have several credit cards that I almost never use, but I still keep them around. Since identity theft is a growing problem these days, it’s important to keep track of what goes on in all of your accounts, even dormant ones. Consolidation allows this to happen with relative ease.

What If Hackers Manage to Get a Hold Of My Yodlee Password Information?

Of course, many people are rightfully afraid that this leads to one point of access for potential thieves. If somehow Yodlee is hacked, they get all your information instead of just one bank or credit card account. This is true, but I see persistent monitoring as the solution to preventing identity theft and account break ins. I monitor my Yodlee powered account through Fidelity Full View at least once a day. If there’s something fishy, I can pick up on it before the danger escalates.

Don’t live in fear of placing your confidential information in the hands of technology. The system is not 100% foolproof but it works quite well. Regular and active monitoring of your aggregated accounts will help you organize your finances better and teach you to be more savvy about tracking your financial activity.

Over the years, I’ve accumulated an assortment of bank accounts and investment brokerages that store my money, and a wide array of credit cards that handle my transactions. I also have this money saving habit of signing up for every frequent flyer, hotel, and shopping reward portal options available to me. With so many accounts, I found it cumbersome and difficult to keep track of all of my account login and password variations.

Thankfully, someone had the ingenuity and brilliance to create a tool to manage this mess. To organizing my finances and accounts, my preferred tool is Yodlee (very cool name). It’s a popular online account aggregation tool that allows users to combine all of their bank, investment, loans, bills, and even reward accounts in one place. You give them all of your logins and passwords to your financial accounts, and it logs into all the sites for you. It lists all of your assets and liabilities, and computes your net worth. In the end you have a real-time view of all your balances and recent transactions, all neatly on one page. Yodlee offers its aggregation service through its own website, but I found their original version to be rather ugly and disorganized. Ironically, you’re better off using a Yodlee powered version through another company.

Fidelity Investment Full View

You can access Yodlee’s technology through its clients and partners. I currently receive my Yodlee powered account aggregation service through Fidelity Investments’ Full View and I find it convenient since most of my investments also reside with Fidelity. The service is excellent, allowing me to see all of my account balances in one place, everything from my Sallie Mae student loans, to my Citibank accounts, to my accrued Northwest Airlines and TripRewards program balances.

The variations of Yodlee’s program all operate essentially the same, whether it be: Fidelity’s FullView, Bank of America’s My Portfolio, Wachovia’s OneStop, or HSBC’s EasyView. Regardless of whichever version of Yodlee you use, there’s no denying that it’s an indispensable real time tool. There are alternatives, but with Yodlee, you are not only getting a well built free service, but also a tool that is available anywhere online. Hop to it!