Money Blue Book

Updated and Verified List Of ING Direct Referral Links To Get Your Free $25

Some of the best high interest online banks are well known for offering generous free money promotions when it comes to new account sign ups. ING Direct online bank has always been one of the best when it comes to that. ING Direct referral links are frequently sought after by those who want to grab one of the free $25 bonuses for new ING Direct savings and Orange checking accounts. If you are looking for a referral link to earn some bonus sign up money, you’ve come to the right place. On this page you will find continuously updated and fresh ING referral codes.

ING Direct Customers Can Offer Their Friends $25 ING Direct Bonuses For New Account Sign Ups

For those of you who want to know how personal finance bloggers are always coming up with a seemingly endless supply of ING Direct referral links for sign-up bonuses, we get them online from our ING Direct bank accounts. Once you are a member and account holder, ING offers you the ability to create referral links that you can hand out to friends and family. You are supposed to email the referral links directly to someone you know, but what many bloggers do is email a whole bunch of them to themselves and manually extract the referral link codes off of each individual referral e-mail and post them together in one self service location. So that’s what I’ve done for you here.

All of the links below have been verified and will provide you instant $25 ING Direct sign up bonuses for new ING savings accounts. To receive the new account bonus, you must sign up through one of the active links below and deposit at least $250 into your newly created account. Remember, each $25 bonus referral link may only be used once. Once a link is used or if 30 days passes without activation, the link expires. Always check to see if the ING Direct link you are using is still active, however by default you can assume it is working. If your link is no longer valid, you will encounter an obvious red alert warning text at the top of the pop-up window page that opens up when you click on the link that says:

“We’re sorry, but the referral link within the email you received has expired and is no longer valid. We recommend that you contact the sender and ask them to re-send the referral email. Or click ‘Continue’ to proceed with the application process without the account opening bonus.“

If you see that, it just means someone else beat you to that particular referral link. No matter, just close that window out and select another active link. Be sure to get them while they are still hot and active. These links have a tendency to expire after a period of inactivity but I will attempt to update this ING Referral Link list regularly. If you are unable to find an active link, please leave a comment. By doing so, you will page my e-mail account and I’ll come running!

As an important reminder and request, please use the below links only if you intend to open a new ING Direct Account with a starting deposit of $250 or more. I want to reserve links for those really need one. If you’re not depositing at least $250, please utilize this ING Direct Sign Up Link instead.

Here Are The Active $25 ING Direct Referral Bonus Offers For New ING Orange Savings Accounts – Click to Apply:

1. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
2. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
3. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
4. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
5. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
6. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
7. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
8. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
9. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
10. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
11. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
12. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
13. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
14. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts
15. ING Direct $25 Referral Link For New Orange Savings Accounts

In the event the links have all expired or are all dead, and commenting has not successfully gotten my attention, you can try contacting me as well:

Back when I was in college, I knew absolutely nothing about filing my taxes. Yes, I was a college finance major at the time, but I don’t recall learning anything practical about taxes, deductions, or income withholding in any of my classes – at least not anything involving the actual process of filing one’s tax return. At the time I had a part time job working at a school computer lab making some extra money. Every week I received a pay check but I never paid it much attention. I barely knew what the numbers meant – wages and FICA, they were all the same to me – all I knew was that the government was taking a large chunk of my meager pay check every week, leaving me with only peanuts. Since I made so little at the time, only a few thousand dollars for two semesters of work, when it came time to file my taxes, I decided to try doing it myself. My parents weren’t much help since they were living overseas and had expressed their wish for me to become more financially independent and self reliant.

Sometimes You Make Mistakes in Life – And Taxes Are More Prone To Errors Than Anything Else

Despite knowing next to nothing about taxes, I still somehow managed to file my income tax by following the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) instructions, albeit in bumbling fashion. This was before I started using free tax preparation solutions or utilizing electronic do-it-yourself tax preparation programs like TurboTax or H&R Block’s Tax Cut (read my detailed TurboTax TaxCut review). Even though my income was low enough to file a simple 1040EZ with only one set of W-2’s, as a tax newbie, the first year’s filing experience still took hours and hours. The following year I had significant capital losses due to the dot-com stock market crash of 2001 so I had to file the regular Form 1040 return. The process took forever but somehow after many hours of filling in stock data, I successfully completed my tax filing (or so I thought at the time). Unbeknownst to me at the time, but I had forgotten to fill in my federal income tax withholding numbers for two straight years.

It wasn’t until I started law school during the third year that I decided to review my old tax forms. During that time I was enrolled in my school’s low income taxpayer clinic where I was assigned to help low income clients fill out their tax returns and represent their interests before the IRS. In the process I became more educated about taxes. One day on a hunch, I decided to take a look at my old tax returns and was stunned at what I discovered. Apparently I had been filing my taxes incorrectly for the past two out of three years. The reason none of my returns had triggered an IRS audit or unpaid tax liability investigation was because I never owed any taxes in each of those years due to my low $3,200 annual income. However, I had completely neglected to include any information about federal income tax withholding on my submissions. After crunching a few numbers, I realized I was entitled to tax refunds of approximately $340 for each of those two past years, for a total of almost $700. Almost three years had past at that point, but there was still time to correct the tax overpayment mistakes and claim my tax refund – I could file a Form 1040X Amended Federal Income Tax Return.

Tax Mistakes And Erroneous Filings Should Be Amended Upon Discovery

The IRS has a complex system of computers that will detect most simple mathematical calculation mistakes that result only in a few dollars here and there. However, more significant mistakes like the underreporting of certain Form 1099 income sources or failing to report self employment income may come back to bite you in the butt if you don’t report them eventually. The IRS will impose stiff penalties and interest on taxpayers for such tax shortfall violations. I don’t recommend trying to duck the obligation or hoping the danger will pass. If you catch the tax mistake before the IRS does, you may be able to avoid and avert a substantial amount of IRS tax penalties. Yes you may need to pay some interest for making the mistake in the first place and not paying on time, but the consequences for not catching it until much later can be disastrous. IRS unpaid tax penalties are ridiculously harsh.

Keep in mind that not all tax filing mistakes have negative consequences. Oftentimes they are detrimental only because they deprive the taxpayer of legitimate refunds due to overpayment of tax, like in the situation I described above. Sometimes for example, the taxpayer overlooked a more beneficial tax filing status such as head of household but did not realize that until later. Remember, so long as you are not engaging in illegal tax evasion, there is nothing wrong with finding legal methods of reducing your tax liability to boost your take home refund.

The Process Of Filing A 1040X Amended Return To Correct A Past Tax Return Mistake

The current time limit for filing an amendment to correct a past tax return is generally 3 years. So long as you are within 3 years of the filing date of the erroneous tax return, you may file a Form 1040X to fix it and reap whatever tax benefits offered. Of course, if that means you have to pay more in taxes, that’s part of the trade off for getting it right. You may draw some unwanted attention and scrutiny of your past tax returns, but keep in mind, the IRS is likely to catch the mistake eventually so it’s usually best to keep your returns currently and historically accurate. You never want to live your life in perpetual and continuous fear of a full blown IRS audit.

However, for those who failed to pay all of the taxes owed during the past original years filed, your time limit to amend the mistake is shortened to 2 years. From the date that you finally paid the tax, you will have only 2 years to correct the mistake, instead of the usual 3. But if your 2 year deadline arrives later than the standard 3 year deadline, you are permitted to file your 1040X at the later date.

The instructions for filing 1040X are fairly straight forward. Currently, taxpayers who want to file their 1040X Amended Returns online are out of luck since the IRS is not presently accepting 1040X Forms electronically. I’m sure they will bumble their way around to setting that option up eventually but for right now, amended 1040X filers must mail and submit them in paper form. The form itself is rather self explanatory. It does require that you locate archived copies of your past tax returns so you can transfer the original information onto the claim form. You have to list the information you originally reported, and include what your corrected numbers are. Finally you have to state brief reasons why you are now making the corrections. In my case, the reasons were simply that I made a few tax preparation errors by not including tax withholding information.

When filing your 1040X, remember to submit and file a separate 1040X Form for each year you are amending, and don’t forget to sign each one. Also, be sure to write down the year of the tax return that you wish to amend at the top of the 1040X Form. This is such a common mistake to make. After all, you don’t want to end up having to submit yet another 1040X to amend your incorrectly filed 1040X do you?

I have two small piggy banks that sit atop my office desk at home. One is a coin bank in the shape of a dog, and the other is shaped like a light blue colored pig that I received as a free giveaway when I opened a new Citibank business checking account not too long ago. These two little guys are the gatekeepers to the spare change that I occasionally bring back in my pockets. Everytime I come home with loose coins, I usually drop them into my piggy banks. Since I use reward credit cards for the vast majority of my purchases, I don’t usually bring home too many bits of spare change. However, over a period of months and a year, even the occasional chipping in can turn a small stash into a tidy sum.

How To Handle Quarters, Dimes, Nickels, and Pennies

Before Coinstar came along with their green coin sorting kiosk machines, I had no convenient way of getting rid of my spare change, especially the nickels, dimes, and pennies. Quarters I could always keep around to use for coin operated laundry washers and dryers, snack vending machines, and leave a few in my car for parking meters and toll booths. But nickels and pennies are pretty much useless since their small denominational value require many more of them to be carried around to be worth anything. Initially I tried hauling my jar of pennies, nickels, and dimes to my local bank branch to have them exchanged for paper bills. However, the bank teller usually responded by handing me a few empty orange paper coin rolls, instructing me to roll the spare coins up myself before handing them over. The process was tedious and inconvenient, and eventually I gave that method up.

Coinstar Coin Counting Machines At Your Local Supermarket Are Free If You Redeem For Gift Cards Instead Of Cash

When Coinstar came along and started placing their coin sorting machines at various supermarket locations, I was delighted to finally have a hassle free way of getting rid of my useless spare change. All you had to do was pour your loose change into a metal sorting compartment and wait for the machine to sort through your deposit. After a few noisy minutes of coins rattling and falling into the hopper, your contribution would be automatically tallied up. A paper receipt would pop out, listing your total balance for you to redeem at the checkout register. The whole process was easy, effortless, and rather entertaining, in a Las Vegas casino slot machine sort of way. Like driving my vehicle through a car wash, watching the digital coin counter tick away the numbers up the money count was always amusing to me (but then I’m an easily amused person). In the spirit of slot machines, I’ve always thought the green Coin Star machines would be able to attract more customers if they’d only install more bells and whistles that would light up while the coins were being counted.

The biggest drawback of using Coinstar and the myriad of imitation coin sorting kiosk services has always been the service fee that the machines usually charged and deducted from your total tally. Prices vary among different services, but Coinstar charges a fee of exactly 8.9%. That’s a pretty cumbersome fee deterrent for those who need this sort of service.

The good part is that Coinstar now offers a better way to redeem your coins for free. To get hassle free coin counting, all you have to do now is select the gift card payment option instead of cash. The gift card option is available for a variety of popular retailers including Amazon.com (my favorite choice), iTunes, Starbucks, Circuit City, J.C. Penny, Linens and Things, Pier 1, Borders, AMC, Old Navy, and more. If you choose the gift card redemption method, Coin Star will waive the machine transaction charge and you’ll get the service for free.

Some Banks Now Have Free Coin Sorting Kiosks For Customers and Non Customers Alike To Use

One of the local banks in my area has been offering free coin machines for some time now. At Chevy Chase Bank, a regional bank with a heavy presence in the Washington DC metro area of Maryland and Virginia, they offer complimentary Change Express coin machines for customers and non customers alike to use. There is no fee to use the coin counters, but you’ll have to wait in line for a bank teller to redeem your money.

For those who live in New Jersey and the surrounding states, Commerce Bank (Commerce Bankcorp was recently acquired by TD Bank), also offers its own free coin machine called Penny Arcade, available to both customers and non customers. This nice perk seems like a growing trend among local banks and credit unions as more and more of them do away with the 3% or more coin machine fees of the past.

The last few weeks I participated in several editions of the Carnival of Personal Finance that I would like to mention here. I wish to thank the carnival hosts for organizing and compiling articles to share with readers. I know hosting the carnival is time consuming and I wish to give these personal finance bloggers some recognition:

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