Save The Environment and De-clutter Your Life By Reducing Junk Mail Trash

According to online statistics from sources such as the Center for a New American Dream (CNAD), a non profit organization based in Maryland whose stated mission is to protect the environment by helping Americans develop sustainable consumption habits – simply by eliminating the amount of junk mail you receive every day can significantly reduce the amount of energy and natural resources you consume, as well as greatly reduce the landfill space usage and carbon footprint that you leave behind. For example, according to numbers provided by CNAD, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and various sources, did you know that:

• The average American household receives unsolicited junk mail equivalent to 1.5 trees every year, which comes out to more than 100 million trees for all U.S. households combined – the equivalent of deforesting the U.S. Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.
• 5.4 million tons of bulk catalogs and other direct mailings wind up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream every year – paper products which take as much energy to manufacture as 660,000 SUV’s consume in a single year, and not even including the energy needed to print and transport them all.
• American consumers throw away 44% of bulk mail unopened, while recycling only 32% of all that bulk mail – spending the equivalent of 8 months per lifetime opening junk mail letters and packages.
• The process of manufacturing and recycling bulk paper parcels wastes more than 28 billion gallons of water every year.
• Taxpayers spend more than $370 million every year just to collect and dispose of all the paper based junk mail that doesn’t get recycled.

While I’m by no means a tree-hugging hippy, at some point the issue of junk mail just gets to become too much of a colossal waste of environmental resources, not to mention a tremendous mis-allocation of time and money that could be better spent elsewhere. It’s time for each of us to cut back on the number of postal junk mail that we receive. Together in aggregate, we can indeed make a huge positive difference in the world. Besides, reducing junk mail solicitations can also greatly help us streamline and declutter our already complicated lives. Assuring that you only receive letters that are important to you, it also helps to reduce the chances that vital pieces of mail get lost in the shuffle amongst all of those weekly circulars, bulk catalogs, and credit card envelopes cramming up your mailbox.

Protect Your Mailbox Privacy and Prevent Identity Theft By Being Pro-Active

Because the whole concept of direct marketing is such an incredibly incentivized and lucrative business proposition for the mass mailing companies, it’s nearly impossible to stop the junk mail stream completely. Everytime you sign up for a new credit card, subscribe to a magazine, purchase an item from a catalog, donate money to a charity, fill out a product warranty card, or buy a new car – you are potentially offering up your name and address to the direct marketers. Not only do these casual exchanges have the potential to lead to more junk mail down the road if you allow your personal address to be used in that way, they are also breeding cesspools for potential identity fraud and privacy violations. To stem the flow requires a multi-pronged attack that entails that you not only take pro-active actions, but also adopt preventative measures. Remember, contrary to popular belief, there is no actual legal right to automatically opt out of all junk mail, however we do have the right to be free of unwanted solicitations once we’ve properly and duly notified the junk mail spammer.

For starters, I recommend that you not waste money on programs out there that purportedly offer to help you remove your name from the junk mail offers and mailing lists, as you can easily do it yourself for free and with minimal effort. But if you wish to automate the opt out process and perpetually keep yourself off such lists, you may wish to try out junk mail prevention services like Tonic Mail Stopper (formerly called Green Dimes). However, note that even with the use of online programs that automate the process, like trying to get rid of roaches, there is just no easy way to permanently halt the unwelcome torrent of junk mail that surges into your mail box on a daily basis. The nearly unstoppable junk mail solicitations simply have an uncanny way of showing up even after you’ve seemingly snuffed them out at their source. Fortunately, there are strategies and tactful ways to combat the junk mail problem.

Steps To Fight Back and Reduce The Junk Mail That You Receive

1) Remove Your Name From the Direct Marketing Association’s Mailing List: Consumers receive the vast majority of their unsolicited junk mail from just three sources: the DMA (advertising letters, flyers, and brochures), the Abacus Catalog Alliance (retail store and online catalogs), and the major credit report bureaus (credit card applications and insurance offers). If you do nothing else, I highly recommend that you at least take the time to visit the Direct Marketing Association’s DMA Choice registration page, and get your name placed onto their do-not-mail list. DMA member merchants are required to update their mailing lists regularly and stop marketing to consumers that have opted out.

Getting onto the DMA do-no-mail list is one of the easiest things you can do to significantly reduce the junk mail that you receive. You will be able to remove your name and mailing address from the national mailing lists of a great number of direct marketing companies this way. While wiping your name and address from their roster is quick and easy, bear in mind that your online removal request is only valid for 3 years and you’ll have to re-register again after that time. There is absolutely no fee for online registration, but mail in submission requires a $1.00 check or money order processing charge.

• Register Names Of Deceased: The Direct Marketing Association also gives friends, relatives, and caregivers the ability to remove the names of deceased family members and other individuals from commercial marketing lists via the association’s Deceased Do Not Contact (DDNC) registrar (no verification fee). I haven’t tried myself, but I wonder if it’s possible for very-much alive consumers to intentionally placed themselves onto the list and pretend to have died to rid themselves of junk mail. It’s worth a shot I suppose although I haven’t really thought out the potential consequences of such a creative approach. If you’ve placed yourself onto the Deceased Do Not Contact list before, please share your results!

2) Remove Your Name From the Epsilon Abacus Cooperative Mailing List: Abacus, a division of Epsilon Data Services runs perhaps the largest database of mailing addresses out there for its members, mostly catalog and retail companies. Merchant members of the Abacus Cooperative contribute information about their customers and transactions  in exchange for information about other customers that may be interested in their products. As such, Abacus retains a pretty accurate database of consumer spending habits and personal contact information. Opting out is easy and signing up allows you to permanently halt the catalog mailers from the association’s members. Simply visit the Abacus Opt Out page and follow the appropriate instructions, or e-mail abacusoptout@epsilon.com with your full name and current address to request permanent removal.

3) Opt Out Of All Pre-Approved Credit Card Junk Mail: Visit OptOutPrescreen.com to stem the flow of pre-approved credit card solicitations clogging up your mail box. The website is the official Consumer Credit Reporting Industry homepage to accept and process requests from consumers to opt-in or opt-out of firm offers of credit or insurance. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the credit reporting companies of Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, and even little known Innovis are permitted to include your name and address on marketing lists used by credit card issuers, mortgage brokers, and insurers to make offers of credit or insurance that are not necessarily initiated by you. However, they must also abide by your wish to opt out and put an end to these credit card pre-approvals if that is your wish. Simply visit the OptOutPrescreen.com website to get your name deleted from their lists for a period of 5 years or longer. If you desire permanent removal, simply select the mail-in option (I highly recommend this). To submit your request, you will need to provide your full name, mailing address, birth date, and social security number. Unfortunately, this service is not currently available for businesses or companies.

4) Opt Out Of All Flyers, Brochures, and Coupon Packs: Some people like receiving weekly flyers and monthly coupon books filled with assorted promotional offers from local stores and companies. I on the other hand hate receiving them and regard them as junk mail. These types of bulk mail bundles generally involve envelopes containing a wide array of ads and coupons for locally based stores and services such as window replacement, carpet cleaning, air duct services, car washing, restaurants, and even promotional leaflets for various acai berry scams. I have yet to find any of these coupons useful.

Most of these coupon booklets are usually generically addressed to “current resident” or “current occupant” and sent out en masse with no personalization of any sort. They also frequently contain postcards with ads, often accompanied by pictures of missing children. In almost all cases, the name, phone number, and sometimes even the website address of the company that issued the junk mailer will be printed on the bulk mail package itself or on the accompanying card that contains your mailing address. Simply call or send a letter to the company directly to have your name and address taken off the bulk mailing list. For your reference, here are several of the biggest bulk coupon book marketing companies out there:

• Valassis, aka. Red Plum Coupons: Get yourself removed from Valassis or Red Plum’s coupon book mailing list by filling out and submitting an opt out request at the Valassis Consumer Support page, or by calling 1-888-241-6760. It takes about 5-6 weeks to process.
• Val Pak Savings Coupons: You can opt out of Val-Pak’s ubiquitous blue envelope packs by visiting the Cox Target Media mailing list removal request page. Be sure to input your address information exactly as it is printed on your ValPak envelope to ensure proper removal.

5) Ask Magazines and Charities Not To Sell Your Name Or Address: Tell magazines that you subscribe to and charities that you donate to the magic words – that you don’t want them to “sell, rent, share, or trade your name and address” with other businesses or charity organizations. 

6) Remove Yourself From Sweepstakes and Prize Drawings: The chances of ever winning are incredibly slim and not worth the hassle of having to deal with future junk mail solicitations. Besides, the main purpose of these contests and reward promotions is for companies to compile mailing lists of prospective customers, not to award prizes. Always avoid participating in any such offers unless you have the option, based on contest rules, to completely opt out of being placed on a mailing list. To get yourself removed from the major sweepstakes and prevent your address from being passed on to other companies for the purpose of receiving future marketing offers, contact the following:

• Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes: Call: 1-800-645-9242 or e-mail privacychoices@pchmail.com
• Readers Digest Sweepstakes: Call 1-800-310-6261 or send a letter request to Reader’s Digest customer service at: Reader’s Digest, PO Box 50005, Prescott, AZ 86301-5005

7) Avoid Filling Out Product Warranty Or Buyer Registration Cards: Contrary to popular belief, those product warranty registration cards that come with the products you buy have less to do with warranty coverage than they have to do with allowing the company to update their mailing lists. A product warranty is effective the moment you purchase the product and is almost always valid whether or not you return the product warranty card (as long as you have a proper receipt). You may have noticed that many of these registration cards frequently ask for lifestyle and personal interest hobby type information, along with details about your household makeup, your income bracket, and other seemingly irrelevant data. This is to allow the company to better categorize you into the proper demographic list for future marketing solicitations, and has little to do with the underlying warranty.

8) Refuse To Accept Junk Mail By Returning To Sender: Here’s a tip to combat against other unsolicited junk mail offers not covered by the items listed above. When junk letters arrive in envelopes that specifically indicate “change service requested” or “address service requested”, it means that you can refuse to receive the letter and have it returned to the sender on demand. Simply write “Refused – Return To Sender” or “Return To Sender – Refused By Addressee” on the envelope and drop it unopened back into the outgoing mailbox to have it sent back to the sender. In most cases, this will cause the sender to remove the address from its bulk mailing list. Additionally for such letters or bulk mailers where there is indication on the face that return postage is guaranteed, you may also wish to write “Remove me from your mailing list immediately” on the face of the envelope to punctuate your point. Remember, all such returned letters to the sender must be unopened so be certain of the nature of the contents before rejecting them.

9) Beware Of The U.S. Postal Service’s Change of Address Cards: One of the biggest and sneakiest secret of all – is that the United States Postal Service is perhaps one of the biggest exploiters of your mailing information out there. The Post Office generates a very large amount of income from selling the mail forwarding database that it regularly updates. Every time you move and fill out one of those permanent change of address cards or mail forwarding forms at the Post Office, your new mailing address information is almost always immediately offered to prospective direct mail marketers for a price. I’ve tried contacting the post office to compel them to stop giving out my new addresses to companies – but it’s been a pretty futile gesture on my part.

One way to get around this is to submit a temporary change of address for a long period of time such as 6 months. Your new address information is not passed along to businesses for temporary moves, only permanent ones. If you are willing to manually contact all of the legitimate companies that you do business with or have accounts with to advise them of your new permanent address change, this is one way to prevent the Post Office from updating the junk mail marketers of your new location. Of course, make sure all of your friends, relatives, and bill collectors know of your new address.

For consumers who wish to forcibly stop the flood of sexually explicit mail to their residence, one way is to submit a USPS Form 1500 (Prohibitory Order Application), which notifies the senders to cease and desist their mailers to you. I have yet to hear of anyone using this powerful tool to stop an overly aggressive (but non-sexually based) bulk mailing company’s marketing attempts, but it certainly is another potential way to discourage junk mail companies from cluttering up your mailbox.

10) Opt For Electronic Statements, and Stop Receiving Paper Bills: It’s time for everyone to join the modern era and put an end to paper statements by banking online and accessing their monthly bills and statements via the Internet. Not only do paper statements generate an inordinate amount of trash and clutter, these paper based bills are yet another opportunity for businesses to send you more junk through the mail. Contact your banks, credit card issuers, insurance companies, and utility providers – and sign up for automatic debit payments and electronic billing as soon as possible. Along with the reduction in clutter and paper usage, you’ll also save a lot of money on stamps by going paperless.

Source URL: How To Stop Receiving Paper Junk Mail and Save Trees

Copyright Protected © 2009 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Unless you are a billionaire like Warren Buffett with an endless supply of cash to draw upon, chances are you’re operating under a monthly budget like the rest of us are. In most cases, the best way to keep your finances in order and save money for the long haul is to devise a sensible budget, track your monthly spending habits, and stick to your laid out plans without frequent deviations. The problem with offering suggestions about setting personal spending budgets is that there usually isn’t one way that works best for everyone. It’s a highly personal and customized affair due to the great differences in how we all each handle tasks and micro manage events in our lives.

I personally use a variety of online based financial tools to help me chart out my monthly net worth reports and personal balance sheets. They help to encourage me to make better financial decisions for myself and to continuously plan for the future. As a strong advocate of using streamlined software based tools that automate and aggregate one’s finances, I particularly recommend using programs like Quicken Online and Yodlee. Both budgeting programs are free and offer great convenience – automatically pulling income and expense data from your bank and credit card accounts into a single viewable source without requiring you to manually compile the data by hand.

But at the same time, I understand that there are lots of people out there who prefer to lay out their budgets and plans the old fashioned way. Those who shun online automation and prefer to do their budgeting by hand may want to try out some of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet based budgeting tools below. Many have found that by having to manually enter transactions into their checkbooks and budget programs every week, that they tend to more careful in monitoring their spending habits. To credit financial guru Dave Ramsey’s spoken philosophy involving cash versus credit card spending, it simply hurts more when you have to write out your expenses by hand as opposed to having the spending transactions automatically populated into a computer program. For some people, this forces them to think long and harder about certain spending choices during the budget building process.

Test Try Each Free Budget Software Out To Find The Best Personal Fit

Over the years, I’ve attempted to come up with the best way to budget, but I don’t think there is any single one tool or popular method that works for everyone completely. But while I realize that everyone has their own unique way of doing things, I’ve decided to provide a list below of some of the best free online budgeting tools (in my opinion) to help get you started. All of the software tools listed below are available off the Internet free of cost (or available for a free test trial) to help just about anyone set up a working budget for his or her home, or small business. I recommend tinkering with each one for a few minutes to get some ideas on on how you can make it your own. Many of the account aggregation and online budgeting programs reviewed are customizable to your individual needs and I’m confident you’ll find something that works for you.

As the whole notion behind budgeting and smart financial planning is to cut costs and save money, it seems sort of counter-intuitive to go out and spend a lot of money on expensive accounting or budgeting software. While premium software packages like Microsoft Money, Quicken, and QuickBooks are highly recommended accounting and budgeting solutions for those who can afford them, there are plenty of free alternatives available for those with modest budgeting needs. Those with simpler needs can easily establish monthly and yearly budgets for their business or home by turning to free budget software programs online to chart their finances and track their net worth changes. At the very least, utilizing budgeting software tools may help to encourage you to take a more pro-active approach to personal financial planning.

In terms of the ones I’ve selected as recommended programs, just so you are aware, I’m highly partial to online software tools that are not only great for budgeting purposes, but are also cleanly designed and pretty on the eye in terms of graphics and website layout. Feel free to provide some suggestions and recommendations of your own!

List Of Popular Free Online Budgeting Software Programs and Excel Spreadsheet Templates (Not ranked in any particular order)

1) Quicken Online (Free) – I absolutely love Quicken products as they always seem to nicely meld form with function. Quicken Online in particular is a free, web based budgeting tool run by popular software maker Intuit that helps users chart their net worth progress and spending habits. With Quicken Online, users get access to a one stop source for all of their account aggregation needs. By having their bank account balances and credit card transactions automatically pulled into the Quicken online system, users can chart their financial progression over time and plan out monthly budgets with the aid of Quicken-fied charts and graphs.

2) Mvelopes Personal (Free Trial) – Taking financial guru Dave Ramsey’s cash envelope system to heart, the Mvelopes system provides users an online envelope budget management solution. By dividing your income into online envelope spending accounts for expenses like groceries, entertainment, and bills, you can budget for the future by setting money aside in advance and increase the money you save. The Mvelopes Personal tool is not free, but they do offer a free trial offer to give you a chance to kick the tires a bit before driving it off the lot.

3) YNAB – You Need A Budget (Free Trial) – YNAB, aka the You Need A Budget spreadsheet program, is a popular budgeting tool for those struggling to get out of debt and attain financial peace. The downloadable YNAB spreadsheet software offer is not free, but does offer a 60 days free refundable deal if you decide to return after the test trial. Aside from getting a host of powerful budgeting tools, you’ll also get additional bonus spreadsheets to help you get acquainted with using a debt snowball, a mortgage analyzer, and even a handy car maintenance scheduler.

4) Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free) - Yodlee offers the best account aggregation technology available in the market today. With its well honed account consolidator service, users are able to automatically sort their account transactions into specific categories to meet their budget planning needs. Currently the company has major partnerships with numerous corporate banks, brokerages, and credit institutions like Fidelity, HSBC, Mint, Scottrade, and Capital One. This one is a must have and must use. Highly recommended.

5) Pear Budget (Free) – Calling itself easier to use than Quicken or Microsoft Money, Pear Budget’s a popular and highly touted intuitive budgeting and expense tracking tool (with over 100,000 claimed downloads). Pear Budget’s original free program is still available for download in Excel spreadsheet format, but those desiring a more “pretty-fied” version may want to try out the new web-based version, which offers a free introductory 30 day trial period but then costs $3 a month (still very affordable however).

6) SimpleD Budget (Free) – SimpleD is a simple, open source budgeting software designed for personal household financial management. The free downloadable program allows users to plan out personal budgets and track expenses by allocating income into specific spending categories. The application is quite customizable and allows for the use of multiple currencies and language types.

7) AceMoney Lite (Free) - This is the freeware version of a more premium personal finance manager. It’s equipped with all of the fancier features of its bigger sibling except multiple accounts management. AceMoney Lite supports all of the basic features needed to help any beginner to personal finance get started with financial budgeting, expense accounting, and investment tracking. AceMoney Lite even offers a special eBay feature to help small businesses manage their eBay auction transactions.

8) Mint (Free) – Mint is a very popular and rapidly growing online money management tool. This minty fresh online service uses well-established Yodlee account consolidation technology to power its account aggregation feature, but pairs it with a variety of free online budgeting tools. If you’re looking for a very beautiful online interface with easy to understand charts and graphics for your budget planning needs, Mint should be one of your top picks. However, as the service runs off of affiliate advertising income, be prepared to receive a fair share of product pitches on occasion.

9) Buxfer (Free) – Offering a beautiful online budgeting interface, Buxfer’s an online personal finance software you should take a look at. Buxfer offers the usual account aggregation functions and free budgeting tools for users, but even throws in useful features like group shared expense tracking for friends or roommates that share bills. The basic version is free but you’ll need to upgrade your membership to get unlimited account access to other more enhanced features. But even then, we’re only talking about $1 to $3 a month for the extra budgeting perks.

10) BudgetTracker (Free) – The free limited version of Budget Tracker allows for basic budget tracking, bill payment, and transaction recordation tied to calendar dates. However, more enhanced account data import and export functions and stock chart access does require the user to upgrade to a paid $2.95 per month subscription version. Still, it’s a fairly cheap, and feature-rich way to budget.

11) BudgetPulse (Free) – Developed with simplicity in mind, BudgetPulse touts its user friendliness and comprehensiveness in providing budgeting value for its customers. Best of all, the web based budget tracking software is indeed free. The company is also uniquely fanatical about privacy and user data security (big pluses), indicating on its website that for security reasons, the company has no  intention of ever linking directly to user banking accounts or credit cards.

12) My Spending Plan (Free) – MySpendingPlan’s currently a free online budgeting software for users who need help managing their budgets and reaching their financial savings goals. The online site can be used to plan out entire household budgets or just for specific tasks like weddings or home improvement projects. The free tool allows you to create shopping lists, set up bill payment dates, and create savings goals. The site even offers an interesting predictive Auto-Assign Budget technology to help recommend ongoing budgets based on past and present spending habits, matching them with your income limits.

13) Expensr (Free) - Acquired by MoneyStrands not too long ago, Expensr is currently a free online personal finance application, still operating in beta mode it seems. Resembling somewhat of a Quicken and Microsoft Money lite of sorts, it looks to be a fairly basic but useful tool for those with simple finances and budgeting needs. The service is free so worth at least a quick peak.

14) Money Trackin’ (Free) – Yes the domain name’s missing a letter “g” at the end, but that’s to make it sound hip I guess. Money Trackin’s a free online webapp that allows you to track all of your expenses and income sources automatically, thus allowing you to have a clear view of your financial situation at all times. Along with the usual household budgeting tools, the free site also offers functions to help track shared expenses and provides accounting tools for small business needs.

15) Buddi (Free) – On its website, the developers of Buddi references the program as a personal finance and budgeting program aimed at those who have little to no financial background – perfect for beginners. Simplicity with basic functionality’s the name of the game here. While offering nothing too fancy, it does offer the essentials of budgeting, account tracking, and financial progress report generation. As an open source budgeting software tool, Buddi will run on any machine with Java installed. The software is indeed absolutely free but does welcome donations and contributions from happy customers.

16) GnuCash (Free) – Compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, GnuCash is a deceptively complete personal finance tool for ordinary consumers and small businesses alike. This freely available budgeting and accounting tool offers users a very powerful and flexible software-based platform to track bank accounts, stocks, income sources, and expenses. GnuCash is indeed free to use and offers much of the same professional accounting features you would expect from premium paid personal finance packages – such as balanced double entry notations and accurate financial reports. The free budgeting software program’s regularly updated and maintained so the program’s bound to continuously improve over time.

17) PLCash (Free) – Honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of home made budgeting tools, but PLCash is a very well put together budgeting program. Plus it’s also completely free and routinely updated and maintained. PLCash offers the basics of what you would need in any budget tracking tool – the ability to manage multiple accounts, juggle balances, allow for the importing and exporting of financial data to other programs like Quicken, with even extra bonus features like the ability to print checks in a variety of ways. As a Java based program, this free budget software tool is compatible with almost all computer operating systems.

18) Microsoft Office Accounting 2009 (Free Trial) – This free software download is provided courtesy of Microsoft, so we can expect a pretty well put together budgeting software program. This rather extensive small business accounting package may be a bit much for ordinary household consumers looking for a free/cheap budgeting software tool, but the free 60 day trial offer is worth a test run at the very least. Keep in mind though, it’s not cheap.

19) Microsoft Office Online (Windows) – Excel Budget Templates (Free) – If you prefer to run your personal budget projections by hand and track your expense estimations and actuals manually, Microsoft provides a wealth of freely available Excel spreadsheets and Word based tables for your budget downloading pleasure. Many of the freely available templates are compatible for running complete household budgets and even for specific budget plans for special events like weddings. Did I mention that they’re all free?

20) Microsoft Office Mactopia (Mac) Budget Templates (Free) – For the Apple Mac fans out there, there are also free Excel spreadsheet budget templates for you as well, however your pickings via the Mactopia site are significantly slimmer compared to the wider variety available to Windows users. Thus it’s time to ditch the Apple and switch to the PC. Just kidding.

Search Online For More Free Budgeting Software Options To Download

Visit Download.com and SourceForge.net for even more assorted free downloadable home and small business budgeting tools. In particular, I recommend checking out the ones that have garnered the most positive approval from users and editors – usually denoted with exceptionally high review rankings and star ratings.

Source URL: Free Budgeting Software and The Best Online Planning Tools

Copyright Protected © 2009 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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The editors at CNN Money recently examined and reviewed several of the top online personal finance tools – and ultimately decided to award its highest honors to four winners – Mint, Yodlee MoneyCenter, Wesabe, and Quicken Online. In the editorial review, all four personal financial management websites were highly regarded and praised for their innovative money management features that offered Internet consumers an introductory and accessible way to manage their saving, spending, and retirement portfolio online, all for free.

However, of the four highly regarded and mentioned personal finance sites, Quicken Online perhaps has the most impressive historical lineage, having been created and spun off as an online web app by Intuit, the same financial software maker that brought us the popular desktop money management tool Quicken, and ubiquitous tax preparation program Turbo Tax. While Quicken Online has been around for some time, it wasn’t until recently that the financial tool was finally available online for free (previously, Quicken Online cost $2.99 per month after the end of the initial free trial period). While Intuit’s bread and butter has historically been its comprehensive suite of Quicken desktop programs, it’s clear the era of Internet based financial web tools is at hand. With the slow demise of print media as well as the end of newspapers, it seems the former stalwart money management tool has been forced to go online to match the emergence of new free competing tools. With the emergence of competing companies offering similar web-based money management tools for free, it’s no wonder Quicken Online appears to be signaling a shift away from the paid desktop software model, and towards an ad-driven or subscription based online service.

Why Use Quicken Online’s Free Service? Simple – Proven Brand Name And Guarantee Of Future Support and Upgrades

Perhaps one of the top reasons to go with Quicken Online for your money management needs is because of the Quicken brand name and the future anticipated cross compatibility with other Quicken products as well as with other Intuit programs like Turbo Tax. While Quicken Online’s current plug and play compatibility with the entire software lineup of Intuit is still rudimentary, it stands to reason that as time goes by, it is a positive feature that will most definitely be offered sometime in the near future.

As interoperability rapidly advances at the speed of the Net, I eagerly anticipate the day I will be able to automatically populate my Intuit Quicken Online account with detailed tax data and deduction information from my Intuit Turbo Tax online account to better assist me with improving my all around financial planning. In fact, while complete cross compatibility among the desktop versions of Quicken and the web based Quicken Online is still being developed, shortcut features are already available for Intuit’s online customers via password interoperability. Currently, if you are a Turbo Tax or any other online Intuit product customer, you can bypass the usual Quicken Online sign up process by logging in with your existing TurboTax ID and password for immediate access. The benefit of using Intuit’s online products is the convenient ability to access all its services with just one account identity. Certainly when it comes to having to create new passwords and login names, the fewer the better.

In the area of troubleshooting and web assistance, Quicken Online’s customer support has received high marks and lofty commendations by online commentators such as CNN Money for providing “solid customer support” to its users. As a proven brand leader in the world of personal financial products, the Quicken brand offers consumers such as myself a proven degree of quality, account security, customer service reliability, and reasonable expectation of continued technical support. These days, many new online upstarts seem to come and go, going bust as quickly as they jumped onto the scene, leaving existing customers hanging with a tool that will no longer enjoy future development support. However, it’s almost a given that established and historically entrenched companies like Quicken are inevitably going to stay around for the long haul, transitioning their existing and established products onto the new medium (the Internet) rather than have to develop a new unproven product from the ground up.

Quicken Online Can Aggregate and Track All Of Your Bank, Credit Card, and Stock Broker Accounts From One Location

Quicken Online’s primary feature is to allow you to track your various online financial accounts without having to manually log into each one to check your balances or transactions. As someone who has probably well over 50 bank checking accounts, high yield savings accounts, credit cards, and multiple online discount brokers, having to go around logging into each account one by one can be quite a nightmarish and arduous task. With a money management and account aggregation tool like Quicken Online, you can track your bank accounts, credit cards, investments, PayPal logins, student loans, and mortgage loans from one place. After inputting all of your various account login and password information into Quicken Online’s secure and 128-bit encrypted system, the website will automatically pull and scrape the desired financial data from all of your accounts into one easy to view webpage for you to analyze with the benefit of fancy charts and graphs for budgeting and planning purposes. The data is refreshed and re-pulled every night, providing Quicken customers a continuously updated way to calculate net worth and track their financial progress.

Track and Chart Your Bank and Credit Card Transactions To Help You Budget

By pulling and consolidating all of your spending data from your bank checking and credit card accounts, Quicken Online can help you chart your ongoing expenditures and assist you in managing your money better. Quicken Online allows you to view your account invoices, transaction details, and account balances from one online source with the functionality to create charts and graphs that quickly analyze your spending and basic investing habits. On its main account page, Quicken Online calculates your cash flow and tracks whether you are living within your means on its aptly named webpage – Am I Living Within My Means? Users can also set monthly target budgets using the My Budget tab for categories they want to track and improve on.

While the system takes a little bit of additional manual tweaking to get it perfect, once the Quicken Online system has pulled all relevant financial data from your numerous accounts, it automatically sorts your various expenditures into purchase and expense categories such as groceries, dining, or utilities – complete with computer generated pie charts and graphs for visual inspection and analysis. While the Quicken Online automatic category sorting tool is compatible with over 5,000 financial institutions from banks, brokerages, to credit card issuers, it also offers you the ability to create your own custom tags, and the ability to add or rename your own categories as you see fit. Along with the category customization features, Quicken Online also takes a page from Terminator’s Skynet computer (without the whole evil aspect) as it learns and adapts to the category corrections and edits that you make as well as those made by other fellow online users. The automatic learning system is touted by Quicken Online as one that improves with experience and enhances with use over time.

For the personal finance novice or beginner, the entire concept of account aggregation may seem intimidating, but Quicken Online truly simplifies and automates the process for newbies and experts alike. In fact, Quicken Online was probably designed with personal finance beginners in mind as most of the sophisticated and more complex features found in the desktop software are not available in the free online version. While the desktop versions of Quicken are much more comprehensive and effective as all-in-one inclusive money management and investment programs, Quicken Online’s more of an entry-level account aggregation tool designed to help people manage their basic bills and live within their means via daily account snapshots without having to be too versed in personal finance lingo.

Useful Quicken Online Mobile Features, Bill Reminders, and Payment Alerts

As a one-stop account aggregation tool, Quicken Online also provides its users the ability set up online email reminders and wireless telephone text message alerts for billing due dates and other financial reminders. Those who are always on the go and addicted to the crack berries (Blackberry or hand held personal data phone devices) will greatly benefit from the free Quicken Beam service, which allows users to view their Quicken Online account information on their wireless cellphones, Apple iPhones, or other PDA devices. Simply access your Quicken Online account summary on your smartphone or handheld device by visiting – m.quicken.com or texting BAL to 636363 to instantly view your combined online balances and transactions.

Differences Between Free Quicken Online (Basic) Vs. Paid Desktop Quicken (More Features)

While Quicken Online is a great foray into the online personal money management realm by software maker Intuit, it’s currently lacking most of the more comprehensive accounting, investing, and tax planning tools that the desktop versions of Quicken provide. As it currently stands, free Quicken Online’s more for mainstream run-of-the-mill consumers who want a basic budgeting and account snapshot gadget with little need for more complex financial planning tools. Quicken Online’s best suited for your average paycheck to paycheck consumer who wants to learn how to improve his or her finances without having to dive too deeply into financial geek speak.

Intuit’s lineup of paid Quicken programs for desktop users on the other hand is well suited for those who desire the complex financial tools needed to help budget their expenditures and track their investments with actual tax planning analysis. Those running their own small businesses from home or those wanting to handle more complex accounting tasks like rental property income tracking will definitely find the paid desktop versions of Quicken to be much more substantive and appropriate for their needs than the user friendly but feature-lacking Quicken Online version. As Quicken Online does not support detailed investment tracking nor does it currently export financial data to Quicken desktop versions or integrate with TurboTax, users accustomed to the comprehensiveness of Quicken desktop may find Quicken Online to be somewhat insufficient to meet their growing needs. Of course, as Quicken Online continues to compete with Mint, Wesabe, and Yodlee, and as mainstream customers become more and more comfortable with online banking and used to the idea of sharing confidential financial information over the Internet, it’s inevitable that the premium Quicken features will be added to the online version sometime in the future, perhaps in paid subscription form.

For small business owners and those with a significant number of investments, Quicken Online is not a complete personal finance solution at the present time – at least not yet. Currently it doesn’t offer any sort of substantive investment tracking, and its reporting functions are much more limited and rudimentary than what existing Quicken Deluxe or Quicken Premier users may be accustomed to. While it remains what the future holds for the comprehensive Quicken desktop programs, at the present time the paid desktop Quicken programs currently provide the best fit for consumers desiring the most out of their financial planning tools and the best value for small business owners who want a complete business accounting platform.

Quicken 2009 Desktop Promotional Coupon Codes For $20 Off Savings

While compared to the previous Quicken 2008 version, there are few substantive changes, Quicken 2009 has slightly re-tooled its program navigational features, improved its bill payment reminders, and improved some of its help functions.

As always, the Quicken desktop version comes in different packages with the free Quicken Online version being the most basic and bare bones. The Quicken 2009 Deluxe version provides excellent financial tracking features with goal setting, investment tracking, and Turbo Tax data sharing. The 2009 Quicken Premier version is very popular and provides all of the features of Quicken Deluxe but with many more tools and charting features for analyzing your investments in greater detail. The Quicken Home Business and Quicken Rental Property Manager programs obviously appeal more to those engaged in those types of enterprises.

Those that want to buy or upgrade to Quicken 2009 desktop at the follow promotional rates may wish to consider using the following limited time Quicken coupon codes:

• Quicken Deluxe 2009 ($59.99 $39.99)
• Quicken Premier 2009 ($89.99 $69.99)
• Quicken Home & Business 2009 ($99.99 $79.99)
• Quicken Home and Inventory Manager ($29.99 $23.99)
• Quicken Rental Property Manager ($149.99 $129.99)
• Quicken Mac ($49.99 $33.99)
• Quicken Medical Expense Manager ($69.99 $44.79)
• Quicken Online (FREE)

Source URL: Free Quicken Online Review and Quicken 2009 Discount Coupon Codes

Copyright Protected © 2009 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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I don’t think it’s an over-emphasis to stress that proper money management is a very critical component of responsible living. Other than how you handle your family, friends, personal relationships, or perhaps religious views, how you manage your money probably has the greatest effect on the quality of your daily life. The abundance or the lack thereof of money can determine whether you live an existence of paycheck to paycheck living or determine whether you are able to live a life of complete financial freedom. It can also determine the type of home you can afford and the type of neighborhoods you can afford to move into. With its powerful trickle down effects, the way you handle your money also has far reaching influence on family relationships as well, affecting how your children are raised and possibly even determining their futures. Knowing how to calculate your current financial net worth and knowing how to track it on a regular basis will help you make better saving and investment decisions for yourself and your family. At the very least, it will force you to actively interact and stay abreast of your financial affairs, and stay knowledgeable and motivated about where you are on the road of life.

Calculate Your Personal Net Worth On A Periodic, But Continuous Basis

Your financial net worth is basically a snapshot of your current financial health at a moment in time expressed by a dollar denominated amount. In the world of personal finance, your personal net worth is akin to what corporations and accountants refer to as the balance sheet. Contrast that with something like a cash flow statement, neither your financial net worth statement nor your personal balance sheet contain numerical data like your salary or how much money you are spending on grocery expenses every month. However, such information is indirectly represented by changes in the net worth figures.

Net worth is simply the numerical figure you get when you take all of your assets, and minus all of your liabilities. Assets can be defined as everything you own that has value and can be expressed in terms of price or current market value. Liabilities can be defined as everything that you owe, including debt and payment obligations to another.

To calculate your net worth and determine the status of your current financial condition, you’ll need to add up all of your debt and liabilities into a single numerical number, and then subtract that from the total combined value of all the assets and financial accounts you possess.

1) Assets (Add Up All Of Your Cash Savings, Investments, and Fixed Assets) – The asset category is made up of the total amount you have in your bank accounts like checking and savings, the fund balances stored in your investment brokerage accounts, and the total value of your fixed assets which encompasses the fair market value of properties like real estate and vehicles. In general, your assets are made up of all your personal possessions and financial accounts that can be converted into monetary form in the event of a total liquidation sell off. It’s the total amount of money you could get if you pulled all of your money out of savings and sold off everything including your house and real estate properties for cash. To help you add them up, here is a basic breakdown guide:

• Step 1: Add up the value of your liquid assets (cash and bank accounts). Liquid current assets include cash, bank account deposits, checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, Treasury Bills or T-Bills, and also the cash value of certain life insurance plans. These types of assets generally have the same value as cash as they are readily usable as cash or can be readily converted into usable cash form in a very short period of time. For example, the funds you have saved up in your online savings bank or stashed in your high interest savings account are both considered liquid assets as they are easily converted into usable cash form with a quick trip to the bank or ATM. Also, certain life insurance plans such as whole life and universal life insurance policies are regarded as liquid assets as well due to their convertible cash value, unlike term life insurance policies which have no cash value. Remember, we’re talking about the cash value of your life insurance policy, not the amount that would be paid out if you were to collect on the policy.
• Step 2: Add up the value of your investment assets (stocks and bonds). Investment assets tend to be less convertible into cash upon demand but nevertheless still make up your total asset count as they can be converted into cash within a reasonable period of time. Investment assets include certificate of deposits (CDs), stocks and bonds, mutual funds, and retirement accounts (401K, IRA, Roth IRA).
• Step 3: Add up the value of your fixed assets and personal possessions (real estate and vehicle). Fixed assets include the fair market value of the houses, condominium properties, and vehicles that you own. They also cover the market value of any other significant possessions including valuable artwork, expensive jewelry, or priceless household furniture. The actual decision of incorporating fixed assets into one’s financial net worth calculation is somewhat controversial as opponents argue that such assets are not appraised consistently and are not easily sold upon demand. Detractors to using the fair market value of real estate for example argue that incorporating home values frequently offer up an unrealistic and skewed valuation of true net worth. Particularly during a major real estate slump, homes are not always easily marketable and sold. Supporters obviously argue that incorporating home values into net worth calculations is important because home equity (the difference between the current market value of your home and the current balance of your mortgage) indeed has value as it can be converted into cash upon an earnest home sale and borrowed against during a time of need. For many, the fair market value of their primary residence comprises the bulk of their positive net worth and thus it would seem incomplete to not incorporate it into net worth calculation somehow. While I personally only add real estate and vehicle value into my calculation of net worth, disregarding the market values of other personal possessions like clothing and home electronics, I think the key is just to be consistent in what you include and what you leave out. It’s also particularly important to be very realistic when assessing fair market value, especially when it comes to home pricing. It’s probably best to under-estimate than to over-estimate the value of such fixed assets. You definitely do not want to give yourself the inaccurate illusion of being house rich with no other significant liquid assets to speak of. You’d only be fooling yourself.

2) Liabilities (Add Up All Of Your Personal Liabilities and Debt). Liabilities include any money that you owe from loans, or debt obligations you may have including credit card balances, car loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, lease obligations, student loans, personal debt obligations, and court mandated alimony or child support payments. Liabilities, whether current short term debt obligations like credit card debt, or long term liabilities like home mortgages and auto loans, must be added up and subtracted from the total asset number to come up with the complete net worth figure.

After you have added up the value of your total assets, take that number and subtract away the total value of all your liabilities to come up with your calculated total net worth. This will be the current snapshot status of your financial net worth number at this point in time. Whether you incorporate certain assets and liabilities into the calculation or leave certain factors out like personal possessions is not important. How you go about the details of tracking your financial networth is up to you – just be consistent from month to month. The ability to track your financial progress in a uniform way on a periodic basis is the most important factor.

Track Your Net Worth Using Online Account Aggregation Tools and Net Worth Calculators

For those not certain on how to go about tracking their financial net worth from month to month, I recommend using an online tool like NetworthIQ. While NetworthIQ’s progress charts are quite ugly (for the lack of a better word), the site’s a pretty popular choice among personal finance bloggers and those who want a simple networth tracking tool that is easy and a no-brainer to use. Just go create a NetworthIQ account and start posting monthly net worth asset and liability updates to get started. To keep actual tabs on the many bank, credit, and investment accounts you have in your financial portfolio, I suggest using an online tool like Yodlee. Yodlee is an online account aggregator service that powers the online account consolidation tools of popular financial institutions like Fidelity Investments (Full View), Bank of America (My Portfolio), and HSBC (Easy View). I personally use Yodlee powered tools through my brokerage at Fidelity and my bank account at Bank of America to help me track all of my account balances from one easy to view location.

Despite the disagreements on what ought to be and what ought not to be included into the calculation of net worth, don’t let that discourage you from attempting to track your own financial progress using your own preferred method. Questions such as whether married couples should keep their finances separate or combined for net worth calculation, and controversial issues arising from the inclusion of home equity or the value of one’s small business (like a blog business) into net worth calculation should not dissuade you from learning to track your personal financial progression. While I personally would include the total joint account balances for married couples into net worth, and personally would not include the market valuation of my home business into net worth calculation, to each his own. The key is just to be consistent so you can evaluate and chart your own personal financial growth from month to month. The goal is to give yourself the confidence and motivation to make the right changes and course corrections in your financial walk to help you achieve your long term financial goals.

Compare Your Net Worth To Others In Similar Situations

Net worth valuations may also vary greatly depending on the make up of one’s assets and liabilities. In general, assets comprised solely of liquid accounts and investments such as cash, bank account funds, and stock market investments tend to paint a more standardized and accurate picture of financial net worth. It’s when you get into vehicle and real estate valuations that the calculation of net worth gets a bit personalized and inconsistent for comparison purposes. Home valuation in particular is a tricky art and is not always entirely accurate and is highly dependent on who’s doing the appraising and the standard being used. Furthermore, just because a home is appraised at a certain price does not necessarily mean it can be sold at that high price. In a tough housing market, home buyers frequently demand closing prices well below supposed fair market value. Keep that in mind as you compare your own financial net worth with that of others. Remember that net worth calculations and standards are not always uniformly applied from person to person, and that net worth is highly relative. For example, a net worth of $100,000 for someone living in an expensive area like northern California or downtown New York City may not be as big of a deal as it would be for someone living in a cheaper state like Nebraska or West Virginia.

Other than using Net Worth IQ to track your financial net worth progression, you might also be interested in using the tool to run searches for the publicly available net worth profiles of others. For the sneaky voyeur in all of us, it’s an interesting way to view the financial health of those in similarly situated categories like age, income, occupation, education, country, and state. If you are dying to know – here’s my own publicly available Networth Profile.

Another good net worth comparison source is CNN’s Millionaires In The Making site where CNN regularly profiles singles and couples, documenting their individual stories to become a millionaire. The Millionaires In The Making site not only provides lots of great anecdotal financial planning tips, but it also provides the actual net worth breakdowns of all the individuals and families profiled. You might also want to try out CNN Money’s Net Worth Calculator tool, which ranks you according to how you stack up based on age and income. I’m not sure how accurate the tool really is and suspect the methodology is a bit off. However, it’s still an interesting comparison tool at your disposal. Just use it with a grain of salt.

Source URL: How To Calculate and Track Your Net Worth

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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While in the long run, investing in the stock market is the best way to earn high growth returns, sometimes the market conditions and wild price swings are too much to handle for some conservative short term investors. Especially for those you looking to preserve your capital and build up emergency fund savings within a short time frame, you may be more comfortable investing your money in a predictable interest bearing asset, like a high yield savings account or a CD. While I frequently solicit the use of safe investments for specialized purposes, I’m still an active bank interest rate chaser at heart – a person who constantly seeks out the best ways to maximize money and earn the most interest bang for one’s buck. This desire to delicately balance protection against risk but at the same time still earn the highest interest rate is how I stumbled upon the use of CDs and CD ladders.

What Is A Certificate Of Deposit (CD) and How Do I Buy It?

A certificate of deposit, or a CD as it’s most commonly called, is an interest bearing fixed time asset offered to consumers and businesses by banks and credit unions. When you buy a CD through a bank, you transfer money into the CD savings account for a fixed amount of time and agree not to withdraw the amount until the time period matures or expires. Upon maturation, you are free to pull your money out along with the accrued interest and decide whether you want to roll it over into another CD or walk away.

The available time periods for CD’s vary from bank to bank, but usually they are offered for periods of 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and so forth, up to as long as 5 years. However, some banks are extremely flexible and offer CD’s for time periods as short as 1 month. While many banks require a minimum deposit to buy a fixed interest rate CD, some major banks have done away with minimum deposits, and customers are now free to buy a CD for as little as $5 (seems kind of silly to do that though). However, keep in mind that the best CD rates tend to be reserved for CD deposits that have very high minimums – called jumbo CDs, which usually require minimum balances in excess of $100,000.

Buying a CD is pretty straight forward – you can buy them commission-free from most banks and credit unions. For starters, you may want to check out your local credit unions or community banks for the best CD rates. Oftentimes, locally run institutions and online banks tend to offer higher rates for their CDs than more established brick and mortar brand name banks like Citibank, Bank of America, or JP Morgan Chase. Those who prefer online banking may want to consider buying their CDs through popular online banks like ING Direct. ING has been around for a while and has made setting up CD ladders incredibly easy. With just a few keystrokes, an ING Direct CD ladder can be set up simply by selecting the monetary amounts and time periods desired.

Deciding when to purchase and which time period to pursue requires a bit more planning. While market prices and interest rates can never be fully timed with any real precision, there are still generally applicable rules of thumb when pursuing a CD purchasing strategy. If it’s your determination that bank interest rates are very high and appears to be overinflated (prepped to drop in the near future), then it’s in your best interest to purchase a CD through your bank and lock in that high interest rate today for as long as possible. On the flip side, if it’s your current estimation that interest rates are rather low and undervalued (prepped to rise in the near future), you’ll want to be more cautious in locking up your money for extended periods of time. You don’t want to lock up your money in a multi-year CD for something like 3.5% annual percentage yield (APY) and later have to watch helplessly as interest rates soar to 4.5%, and not be able to pursue the higher rates until the CD matures.

Why Buy Or Invest Money In A CD? Why Not Just Keep My Money In A High Yield Savings Account?

As we all know, banks make money by taking our bank deposits and loaning the money out to other consumers and businesses for profit. In return, the bank offers checking and savings account holders an interest rate as compensation for allowing the bank to use their money as loans for other people. Banks love the concept of CDs because it allows them to maintain a more stable and higher balance of cash on hand to loan to others. In return for your agreement not to touch the CD money for the agreed upon period of time, the bank is willing to provide you a higher interest rate for your CD deposit than that offered to traditional checking and savings account deposits. The higher interest rate is to compensate you for the loss of liquidity, which pertains to your ability to utilize your monetary assets as you wish.

In general, the longer you agree not to touch the CD deposit, the higher the rate of return the bank will offer you. Thus, the interest rate offered by your bank for a 5 year CD will almost definitely be much higher than that for a mere 3 month CD deposit. This is the reason why savvy savers, who are not in immediate need of cash, should not merely keep all of their money stashed away in checking or savings accounts. In almost all cases, CDs offer APY interest rates that are frequently 1 to 2 percentage points higher than the best best high yield savings accounts. For example, currently as of the date of this writing – ING Direct is offering 3.00% APY for their popular high interest Orange savings account (a very good savings rate at this time). However in comparison – their 6 month CDs currently have yields of 3.50% APY, their 12 month CD’s have yields of 4.00% APY, and their 24 month CD’s have high interest yields of 4.25%. CDs simply blow savings accounts away in the interest rate department.

Choosing between interest rate and loss of liquidity (length of duration) is the most important decision when purchasing CD’s. The more liquidity and control of your money you agree to give up, the higher the interest rate you get back in return. In the banking world, checking accounts are the most liquid of accounts as there are usually little restrictions placed on them by banks. But as a result, checking accounts routinely earn the lowest interest income, if any at all for the account holder. Lower on the liquidity scale are high yield savings accounts, which offer more attractive interest rates for deposits. However, savings accounts are constrained by the monthly 6 ACH transfer limitation. At the lowest rung of the liquidity scale are CD’s which generally offer the most attractive interest rates compared to the other two. However, they are frequently the most constrained as the funds must remain off limits until they mature.

The biggest drawback of CDs is the penalty fee you must fork over if you commit an early withdraw. Once you buy a particular CD for a fixed time period, if you withdraw the money or cash out for any reason including a personal financial emergency, you will incur a significant financial penalty – which will likely wipe out any interest income accrued, as well as cut into the principle used to fund the CD in some cases. Because there are rarely exceptions for waiving the withdrawal penalty, you must make sure you are fully comfortable and committed with having that amount of money locked up in a CD account for the agreed upon period of time before making the plunge.

Building A CD Ladder Is A Good Way To Maximize Your APY Interest Rate and Minimize Liquidity Worries

A CD ladder is simply an investment strategy used to manage CD’s that maximizes liquidity and the rate of return, while minimizing the risk and the drawbacks of locking up your investment money for an extended period of time. Laddering CDs require the account holder to initially purchase multiple CD’s with different intervals so that they ultimately mature at fixed regular intervals. By staggering multiple CD investments so that each individual CD matures at set intervals, this gives the deposit holder additional liquidity and control of the otherwise frozen money so that he or she can take advantage of rising interest rates, and still be able to chase the highest rates possible. Similar to dollar cost averaging for stock investments, CD ladders are great investment vehicles for those who want the flexibility to pursue better opportunities as they arise, but still want to maintain a predictable cash flow.

Below are two examples of how you may want to create your CD ladder system. As each individual CD investment matures you should seriously consider reinvesting in a new CD account with a term that’s equal to the longest term CD. Purchasing multiple certificate of deposits with different maturity dates enables you to take advantage of higher interest rates normally associated with longer term CDs while still ensuring frequent access to large portions of your money. By staggering your CD investments across several rungs of this CD ladder, you generally can increase the potential earnings of your CD portfolio, but still maintain some semblance of liquidity and control of your money along with the security of knowing that your money will become fully available within a relatively short time frame. Of course, should you decide to, you can always make the decision to halt the CD laddering process at the end of each individual cycle and eventually free up all of your money:

CD Ladder Example 1 – Money Is Freed Up Every 6 Months

This set up is suited for individuals comfortable with having their money locked up for 6 months or longer and looking to earn a higher rate of return in exchange. Let’s say you wanted to create a CD ladder system that frees up money every 6 months. Here is how you may want to set it up. This arrangement requires an initial one time start up CD funding of $4,000 and will last for 2 years. As always, you are free to play around with the numbers to suit your purpose and savings goals, but this should give you a general idea as to the mathematics behind CD laddering:

• Put $1,000 in a 6 month CD
• Put $1,000 in a 12 month CD
• Put $1,000 in a 18 month CD
• Put $1,000 in a 24 month CD

After you have established a CD ladder with 6 month, 12 month, 18 month and 24 month terms, when the first 6 month CD matures, you would invest the funds in a new 24 month CD. Similarly with the passage of time, when the next 12 month CD matures, you would invest the funds of that particular CD in another new 24 month CD, and continue the process for the 18 month and 24 month CDs as each subsequent CD expires. At the end of two years you’ll have four individual 24 month CDs with a new $1,000 CD maturing every six months.

CD Ladder Example 2 – Money Is Freed Up Every 3 Months

This set up is more suited for individuals with greater liquidity concerns. If you’re worried about locking up your money for periods of 6 months or more, 3 months may be more appropriate for you. Let’s say you wanted to create a CD ladder system that frees up money every 3 months. Here is how you may want to set it up. This arrangement requires an initial one time start up CD funding of $4,000 and will last for 2 years:

• Put $500 in a 3 month CD
• Put $500 in a 6 month CD
• Put $500 in a 9 month CD
• Put $500 in a 12 month CD
• Put $500 in a 15 month CD
• Put $500 in a 18 month CD
• Put $500 in a 21 month CD
• Put $500 in a 24 month CD

After you have you have established a CD ladder with 3 month, 6 month, 9 month and 12 month terms, 15 month, 18 month, 21 month and 24 month terms, when the first 3 month CD matures, you would invest the funds in a new 24 month CD. Similarly with the passage of time, when the next 6 month CD matures, you would invest the funds of that particular CD in another new 24 month CD, and continue the process down the line as each subsequent CD expires. At the end of two years you’ll have eight individual 24 month CDs with a new $500 CD maturing every 3 months, plus interest.

I know it seems quite complicated, but it really is not. By staggering your CDs through this CD ladder system, you’ll be able to ensure you always have money freeing up every fixed interval period, whether it’s every 3 months, 6 months, or even as short as a matter of a month depending on how you set it up. This allows you to use your CD deposits for emergency fund purposes if you ever need it and may even help promote a healthy and active savings habit, allowing you to meet your financial goals.

Source URL: How To Build A CD Ladder and Get The Highest Interest Rate

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Ever since I reached my financial independence milestone and declared freedom from my parents, I’ve thrived in the openness of my own free will, taking fairly decent care of myself. It’s been so long since I’ve had to live under my parents’ shadow and watchful eagle eyes, so having to do so now, even for a few weeks has been rather difficult. I’m not the same little boy who used to depend on my parents’ guidance and tutelage when I lived with them, so living with them now is taking some getting used to. Since we’ve lived so physically apart for numerous years due to the sheer oceanic distances that separate our jobs, I always feel like I need to get to know them again for the first time and get accustomed to their quirky living habits every time I see them. Even for the purposes of a relatively brief couple of weeks stay, I always find I learn something new about them that I didn’t notice before (perhaps it’s because I get to view them through a refreshed set of perspectives).

What Is Compulsive Hoarding and Why Does It Lead To Excess Clutter and Household Planning Inefficiency?

Having lived with my parents for a week now during my little visit, I’ve noticed something very interesting, but rather troubling – they exhibit the traits and qualities of obsessive compulsive hoarders, particularly my mom. This made me re-examine another member of my family – my brother. Only a few weeks ago I had helped my brother move into his new apartment and remarked on the piles of useless trash and excess clutter in his home. The signs and telltale indicators were all too readily apparent, I just hadn’t noticed them before. Apparently, habitual hoarding is a trait that runs in the family.

For those not familiar with the concept or the terminology of hoarding, it’s the practice of collecting, retaining, and stockpiling material possessions and household supplies to great excess, and the refusal to relinquish them despite common-sensical reasons to do so. This type of personality trait seems to affect a lot of older people in my non-professional opinion based on my own personal observations, but then again, I’m not a health expert. But I wouldn’t be surprised if most people can readily cite their own aging parents or grandparents as active practitioners of hoarding. I wonder if it’s because older people tend to be more old fashioned or more set in their ways, making them less open and amicable to adopting new ways of organizing and de-cluttering their lives through technology.

While most of us probably hoard basic household items to some degree by stockpiling today to take advantage of bulk wholesale prices in anticipation of future need, what separates us from pathological hoarders is the great degree to which they often take things. Obsessive compulsive or pathological hoarders tend to stockpile items that have little to no utility, or they obsess about collecting boxes and bags of possibly useful items but simply don’t know when to stop.

My parents’ apartment has huge stacks of brown storage boxes everywhere. While some of the boxes contain priceless family photo albums, expensive jewelry, or various family keepsakes, the vast majority contain pretty useless junk. While helping them pack for the job relocation, I stumbled across many sealed boxes and bags filled with old newspaper clippings, unused department store paper shopping bags, plastic twisty ties, huge containers of rubber bands,  and enough office supply pens, pencils, construction paper, paper clips, and erasers to stock an Office Depot. The tremendous number of boxes are not neatly tucked away in storage closets, but rather, occupy multiple bedrooms to the brim, spilling out completely into the living room, dining room, and partially blocking most hallways and some entrances. You can’t walk into their apartment without immediately noticing the huge stacks of boxes and newspapers everywhere. Some of the newspaper clippings and stacks date as far back as several years.

While I’ve pleaded with them to start throwing useless bags and boxes away that contain items with no foreseeable useful purpose, my parents refuse to budge, clinging onto the outdated notion that it would be terribly wasteful to throw away perfectly good supplies, while simultaneously extolling the virtues of saving, recycling, and not wasting money. Obsessive, old fashioned hoarders like my parents seem to find some irrational comfort or security in knowing that they have an endless supply of everything in the way of home office and home maintenance supplies should the need ever arrive. The problem with their faulty rationale is that as the supplies grow and the stockpiles of boxes and bags pile up, one inevitably starts to lose track of what one has in his or her inventory. My parents at this point have no idea what they have stored away in their massive stockpile of boxes, but yet, they continue to insist on drowning themselves in supplies and recyclables – useless junk in my opinion. After all, what’s the point of keeping around hundreds of pens, rubber bands, staples, and scraps of computer paper if you can’t even remember if you have them when you actually have a need? Despite the numerous boxes of department store and grocery shopping bags my mom already has and despite the fact fresh ones are very readily available from any retail location, she continues to collect them everyday, neatly folding them flat and storing them away, rationalizing by suggesting that they’ll come in handy someday.

Thankfully, in the area of personal finance and family accounting, my parents’ obsessive hoarding ways have not completely stifled their ability to manage their financial life properly. However, it has made it very difficult for them to keep track of their financial activities at times. Because of their old fashioned ways, my parents continue to retain paper copies of every conceivable document, receipt, and billing statement. My mom keeps huge filing cabinets filled to the absolute brim with almost every receipt and document she’s ever come into contact with. She simply will not throw anything away, believing that every major purchase receipt needs to be kept for future reference (just in case). She keeps all of her papers neatly archived, despite the fact I highly doubt she ever looks at them anymore. They simply become excess clutter, causing gridlock to what could be an otherwise streamlined and efficient existence.

How To De-Clutter Your Life and Streamline Your Personal Finance By Going Electronic and Digital

Embracing the paperless, digital, and electronic revolution is the key to living an efficient and orderly life in this day and age. It’s time to do away with paper documents, paper receipts, and old fashioned outdated ways of keeping important documents and tracking your finances. While some paper documents ought to be retained – such as birth certificates, passport documentation, and car titles, the vast majority of files and papers should be digitalized and electronically organized. Here are some of the best ways to clean up your household and arrange your financial life to make it more efficient and systemized.

1) Stop Buying Crap and Stop Hoarding Useless Junk – I’m not a big fan of collecting things that cannot be construed as art. For those of you who collect material articles like shoes and purses, I don’t get it. Will you really put those hundreds of purses, hand bags, basketball shoes, or hats to use, or will they end up at the bottom of some dresser drawer someday, lost and forgotten? At the very least, if you insist on shopping and buying lots of stuff, learn to adopt healthy habits to de-clutter your life. Here are some basic tips to help you keep your home, office, and sanity organized when it comes to material possessions:

• Stop Using the “I’ll Use It Someday” Excuse – Trust me, you’re not going to use it someday. More likely than not, you’ll eventually forget you have it in the first place and wind up buying it again. Unless it’s something that’s rapidly consumed in most households like toilet paper, napkins, and certain things like canned foods, there’s no sense hoarding or stockpiling. Don’t buy more than you’ll need at this very moment. Yes, there’s a slim chance you may need it a year from now, but chances are, your taste or needs may very well change during that period of time.
• Stop Holding Onto Nostalgia and the Past – Unless it’s something like photos, baby video tapes and DVD’s, or priceless family heirlooms, there’s no sense clutching onto useless clutter like old clothing or broken items you plan on fixing someday. I’m sure you have fond memories of that old wacky T-shirt or sweater from childhood, but unless you plan to wear them again sometime in the very near future, it’s definitely time to get rid of them. Learn to share the wealth by giving things away – it’ll make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside for having performed something altruistic and beneficial for society. For those of you with boxes and crates filled with old, but still wearable clothing in decent condition, try donating them to a charitable organization like the Salvation Army – you may be able to receive a charitable tax deduction for clothing donations. As for holding onto broken electronic gadgets like busted stereo systems hoping to fix them someday, like my mild hoarder of a brother is currently doing, learn to let them go as well. You’re not going to find time to fix it, and chances are it’s just taking up valuable space and pointlessly occupying your mind and thoughts in the meantime.
• Learn To Throw Things Away As You Buy New Ones – Some call it the “in out rule”, but basically, as you purchase new items, learn to throw away the old versions they replaced. If you buy a new pair of shoe to replace some old, worn out pair, feel free to keep a pair or two for dirty activities like painting or yard work, but please don’t keep every single old, worn out shoe you’ve ever owned. Throw them out or give them new life by donating them away.

2) Understand The Importance Of Going Paperless – Compared to electronic transactions and digital archiving, paper is a terribly inefficient and clutter-prone way to transact business and maintain an organized financial life. Paper products and paper documents have a way of adding up and compounding quickly. By their very nature, they are very heavy and sometimes difficult to keep categorized and stored in a way that is easy to access again. The goal is to get used to the idea that paper is the enemy. Ideally you want to go the way of a paperless office and keep all documents and accounts in electronic and digital form, accessible with a computer. These days, almost all online bank and credit card issuers offer the option to view billing statements online and the choice to opt out of paper bills and transactions through the mail.

If you have an important purchase receipt that you are retaining because you want to protect yourself in the event you need to return the product, by all means do so, but after the lapse of the return period, instead of keeping the receipt for all time, why not use your digital camera to snap a photo image to store away on your computer, or use a digital scanner to convert the paper receipt into an electronic PDF or JPEG image file? I use my scanner and digital camera all the time to keep digital copies of important documents like speeding tickets, paperwork for computer purchases, and certain old school papers and essays for future reference. I organize them into neatly labeled computer desktop folders under My Documents instead of keeping them piled into cumbersome brown boxes or filing cabinets. Currently, because I’ve converted most of my paper documents into computerized digital format, all of the remaining important paperwork I possess easily fit into a single standard size box container, enabling me to have an extremely clutter-free workspace.

3) Switch To Online Banking – If you are not yet banking online, it is time to do so. While concerns about recent online banks going bust and FDIC insurance coverage are legitimate, and worries about bank identity theft, and online scams are very real, they are manageable and easily mitigated with some common sense. I’ve been banking electronically since 1998 – and things likes ACH transfers, automatic debit payments, and online bill pays are all second nature to me now. Like all new technology and new methods, it takes some getting used to, but the learning curve is reasonable and not prohibitively steep.

Online banking allows you to access your money faster and monitor your personal finance with 24 hour precision and real time accuracy, instead of relying on old fashioned paper based checkbook balancing. If you don’t already have one, it’s time to open up an online checking and high yield savings account, and start getting the hang of online banking account management. If you have accounts with multiple banks, discount brokers, and credit cards, you may want to consider managing them with an online account aggregator service like Yodlee or Mint. I personally use Fidelity Full View, which is powered by Yodlee’s account consolidation service, to visually follow my financial account balances on a daily basis. Plus, it’s nice to know where you stand at all times and it’s great for budgeting purposes.

4) Start Using Credit Cards and Learn To Manage Them Responsibly - I’m a proponent of credit card usage. It’s certainly not for everyone, but I think it’s ultimately the best way to spend money and track expenses. Not only do credit cards offer all sorts of unique usage perks like extended credit card warranties, credit card protection against bankruptcy loss, free credit scores, and all types of free airline miles and cash back credit card rewards, all of your transactions are archived into your online account, sorted, and displayed into easy to understand purchase categories for practical management.

Instead of having to dig through piles and mounds of accumulated cash purchase receipts stuffed into folders, filing cabinets, or boxes, I rely heavily on my online credit card accounts to trace, track, and fine tune my purchase habits to fit my budget. Because I use my credit cards to buy almost everything (even for onetime $1 packs of gum), I can always calculate my usage for any given time frame and type of spending – like how much gas I spent this month, or how much I spent eating out at restaurants for example. Of course, I want to strongly emphasize a caveat – credit card usage is not very everyone and some people, due to their uncontrollable shopping habits and irresponsible use of credit, have no business even touching credit cards. However, for the vast majority of consumers, they’re invaluable and powerful tools to have.

5) Stop Using Cash If You Can Help It – Yes you heard me right – stop using cash and learn to use credit or debit cards responsibly from the start. Unless you’re admittedly irresponsible with credit, have a history of credit related troubles, or are simply too immature or financially ill informed to handle revolving debt, it may be time to wean yourself from a cash only lifestyle. For those of you who have had issues with unpaid credit card debt or have a knack for engaging in shopping trips gone wild, you might want to stick with cash only for now. For everyone else, please consider the benefits of credit usage and the downsides of cash. Cash is inherently dirty to handle as it’s often touched and handled by all sorts of people. There’s a reason why our moms always tell us not to put our fingers into our mouths after handling money – cash is incredibly filthy.

For those looking to streamline their finances and promote a clutter free household and office space, a credit card is immensely better at accomplishing that than compared to cash. Cash usage has a knack for creating massive amounts of loose change. Unless you can get in the habit of quickly exchanging those loose coins for consolidated and larger sums of money at free coin counting locations like Coinstar, you might wind up with loose coins all over the place – on kitchen counters, inside sofa cushions, and randomly stashed away in bedroom drawers and forgotten piggy banks – losing precious interest earning income in the process.

Meanwhile, credit cards are not only hygienically cleaner than cash, they are also inherently more streamlined and much more amicable to online and electronic expenditure tracking, resulting in no residual coinage trash like cash does. Not only can the wise use of credit cards help you improve important financial factors like your credit score, but the savvy use of card benefits such as balance transfer periods can also help you weather difficult but temporary financial emergencies without the need to seek out additional loans from banks or resort to something as potentially destructive as loan sharking payday loans. If you can handle the responsibility of using and managing card based payments, they are certainly the way to go in my opinion. Credit cards and bank cards are integral components of how I streamline my paperless life and how I effectively manage my personal finances.

Source URL: Streamline Your Finances and Make Your Life Easier By Not Hoarding

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Personally, I can barely recall the last time I actually went through the hassle of balancing my checkbook manually. The tedious bean counting practice of manually comparing my own personal account records with the recordation information provided by monthly bank statements is simply not something I’ve readily adopted over the years. The last time was probably in high school when my mom sought to teach me about basic account management by forcing me to watch her go through the motion of recording transactions neatly on the gridded transaction register that comes with each set of checks. But other than that first initial lesson, I don’t think I’ve ever done it in real practice. After all, I bank online almost exclusively, and other than the monthly rent checks I write, I seldom glance at my checkbooks anymore. In fact, I highly recommend readers do the same. We are entering the new technological age where efficiency, speed, and identity security are paramount concerns. Electronic banking and online bill pay offer the type of convenience and security benefits that paper checks and manual payment systems simply are unable to provide.

Write Personal Checks Sparingly To Minimize The Risks Of Becoming An Identity Theft Victim

If you asked me, checks are nothing but potential identity fraud cases waiting to happen. After all, you wouldn’t go about your daily life randomly handing out slips of paper with your complete personal identification and financial information scrawled on them would you? But that’s basically what you’re doing when you open up your checkbook and issue a personal check. Personally, I write very few checks nowadays, and here’s why. When you write a personal check at your local Safeway or CVS, or when you cut out a check to your local pizza delivery guy, you are opening up a tremendous security risk by leaving the check behind. On that check is your name, address, phone number, bank’s name and address, bank account number, bank routing number, and even your actual handwritten signature. Oftentimes, as is the case at most supermarkets and department stores, cashiers even request additional identification from you and write the information directly on the face of the check. This additional ID request can include sensitive information such as your driver’s license number, your social security number, and even your birth date.

While many banks eventually mail the used canceled check back to you, not all banks do. Some merely scan the checks and upload the displays onto your online account for you to see. It’s almost impossible to know how many sets of eyes have viewed the check and how many scans or copies were made. What’s exceedingly apparent is that anyone who sees the front of your personal check has sufficient information to open fraudulent bank and credit accounts in your name. One very unknown fact about checks is that anyone can take an account number and routing number off the bottom of a personal check and create new fake checks with them. The name displayed on the check doesn’t even have to match the actual customer name on the underlying bank account in question. Oftentimes, retailers and banks simply don’t check to see if the numbers on the check match up with the right names for that account.

While I personally abhor writing checks, viewing the practice as not only archaic but outdated, there are still limited circumstances when I simply can’t get around it. Because I lease my current condo apartment from an ordinary pair of mom and pop landlords, they’re not properly equipped to handle credit card payments. As such, each month I’m obligated to mail a personal check out to them to cover my monthly rent. Sometimes, you have few alternatives and must write out checks, and that’s acceptable in limited circumstances like paying your rent, your mortgage, or paying your monthly credit card bill. But if some traveling salesman or pizza delivery guy comes to your door, don’t write him a check, because all you’re doing is giving him a potential tool (a blank check if you will) for trouble. Even if it’s the seemingly innocent girl scouts selling cookies at your door, I recommend paying by cash instead of paying by check so long as the sum is not too prohibitive. Avoid check payments if you can unless you’ve already established a history or measure of trust with the person or company.

Online Banking Is Truly A Much More Efficient Way To Balance Your Checkbook and Track Your Account Finances

The actual practice of balancing your checkbook is a method to verify and confirm that your own personal records accurately match your monthly bank statement transactions. The purpose is to catch mistakes and unauthorized transactions as they happen. While most bank transactions are processed and recorded accurately, sometimes mistakes occur. Usually, bank customers have anywhere from 30-60 days to bring the accounting error or unauthorized transaction details to the attention of their bank. Failure to notify the bank in time about any account discrepancies may result in forfeiture of the bank’s liability to pay you money to make up for the difference. That’s why it’s generally important to balance your checkbook, or reconcile your account balances as accountants like to put it. The best way to do that is to get in the habit of banking online, particularly with the aid of Internet banking aggregators. Online banking not only affords you accurate and real-time updates of your bank accounts on demand, it also provides a variety of account history information to help you budget your spending.

By giving you instant access to your account balances at all times, online banking  helps you plan accordingly. Failure to know how much money you have in your checking or savings account on a regular basis may lead you to blindly spend more money than you have, through ATM withdrawals, excess check writing, and debit card purchases, causing you to incur unnecessary bank fees and charges. Protecting yourself from overdraft and bounced check fees is a must when it comes to sound financial planning.

There are a variety of bounced check and insufficient fund fees that banks and merchants levy when there isn’t enough money in your bank account to cover your authorized checks. A single bounced check can easily cause $50 or more as not only the bank will charge you a $20-30 processing fee, but the merchant who received the paper check from you is likely to charge you an additional $20-30 merchant fee as well for passing a non sufficient fund check. Without knowledge and daily tracking of your checking account balance, insufficient fund and late payment fees can quickly add up and spiral out of control. For the overdraft prone, many banks currently offer overdraft protection to ensure that your checks never bounce and that all ATM and debit transactions still go through. While you’ll still have to pay the bank’s overdraft or bounced check fee, at least with overdraft protection you can avoid having to pay the merchant’s return check cost, and stay in good standing with the payee and the people you do business with.

Another service many banks now offer is the option for customers to link their checking accounts with a savings account. In the event the customer accidentally exceeds his or her available checking account balance, funds from the linked savings account will automatically be used to satisfy the shortfall. While there is usually a small transaction fee for this automatic coverage via the savings account, the charge (around $5-10) is often substantially less than having to pay a non sufficient fund charge to the bank and an additional bounced check fee to the merchant.

While some banks also allow checking accounts to be linked up to credit cards as a backup source of funds in the event of a cash shortfall, I don’t recommend this option. In the event of insufficient checking account funds, the overdraft becomes a cash advance on your credit card. Oftentimes the cash advance fee is levied immediately and cash advance interest charges start accruing immediately. The better option is to utilize the linked savings account alternative, mentioned above.

View Your Online Bank Accounts Daily and Mentally Keep Track Of Your Balances Throughout The Day As You Spend Money

When I speak of balancing my own checkbook, I’m not actually talking about sitting down with wads of purchase receipts and manually matching handwritten checkbook transactions to information found on my monthly bank statements. That would be much too unwieldy and time consuming of a regular task to undertake. In this day and age, between writing checks, swiping credit and debit cards, and using online bill pay, it’s simply too much work and too cumbersome to carry around a paper register and write down every single transaction. However, that doesn’t mean I am not tracking my finances and transactions at all times – I’m simply using a broad mental tracking method to keep tabs on my check, debit, and credit expenditures as opposed to using a manual recordation approach.

The whole point of keeping those accounts balanced is primary to catch those rare but pesky bank recordation mistakes and to ensure that you have even funds in your actively used checking accounts at all times to handle payment requests. For those who want to adopt the same mental tracking method that I use, it’s actually quite simple – all you have to do is get in the habit of viewing your online account balances on a regular basis. Ideally, you’ll want to check your bank account balances every single day. There’s nothing particularly obsessive or compulsive about that. After all for example, if you’re looking to lose weight or count your calories, you would want to step on that bathroom scale regularly to track your progress. In the same way, you want to know where your bank account balances stand at all times. You want to always have a mental figure for the day and make sure you spend well below that amount. If you are new to the practice of mental tracking, you may want to keep a small transaction log (like the ones used for checkbooks) on your person until you get the hang of it. But ultimately, the goal is to rely on mental tracking instead of wasting time and effort writing down every single day to day transaction.

Since all of my credit card, checking, CD, and online high yield savings accounts are linked together on the web and enabled to make automatic monthly debit payments without my continuous oversight, I always make sure I have sufficient funds in my checking account to satisfy all upcoming bill pays. For those who utilize automatic debit payments to handle recurring bills as I do, It’s important to establish a sufficient monetary cushion in your checking account to handle unexpected ATM withdraws and debit card uses to avoid having to pay insufficient fund charges or late fees.

Some banks like Bank of America offer special enrollment programs to help customers better track their spending by rounding up purchase amounts to the nearest dollar. With the Bank of America Keep The Change program, each time you use your Bank of America check card (essentially a debit card) to buy something, the purchase amount is rounded up to the nearest dollar denomination and the difference is automatically deposited into a linked savings account. Not does only does the program greatly promote savings, it makes it a lot easier to mentally keep track of daily purchase transactions as you don’t have to contend with adding up cents.

Using Credit Cards Is Actually A Smarter Way To Manage Your Money Than Using Checks or Debit Cards

The practice of using bank debit cards to manage money is a growing trend as society steadily moves away from cash and check transactions. However, the reality is that most people don’t manage their debit card spending very well and most don’t balance their debit transactions daily, either in written form or mentally, like I do. Personally I’m not a big fan of using debit cards. In my opinion, debit cards are simply check writing in glorified plastic form, minus some of the potential identity theft issues discussed earlier. While it’s substantially safer and more secure than writing paper checks, debit cards still come with the same problems inherent in check writing – payment amounts are withdrawn from your checking account immediately and thus you have to make sure you stay within your checking account limit at all times or face having to pay over the limit fees.

The better solution is to go with a payment mechanism that does not rely on immediate account debits – like credit cards. Due to grace periods inherent with credit cards, compared to debit and check payments, there is less worry when it comes to insufficient fund requirements and bounced payment requests. Credit cards also offer substantially stronger fraud protections against unauthorized transactions and charge mistakes. Oftentimes a quick phone call or an explanation letter is enough to get unauthorized credit card charges removed from your bill, and the best part is that you don’t lose any money while the billing dispute is going on.

Ideally, credit card usage usage is the way to go in an otherwise perfect world. In a perfect world, all cardholders would be responsible credit users with the self control to not spend wildly beyond their means, and would be able to always make sure they have enough money to pay off their credit card balances every month. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world we live in and not everyone is qualified to use credit cards as their primary method to pay for things.

Source URL: Stop Writing Checks and Start Banking Online To Avoid Identity Theft

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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High Yield Savings Accounts Offer Not Only Liquidity, But Rock Solid Financial Security and Reliable Growth As Well

While I have a diversified investment portfolio made up of high performing stocks, bonds, exchange traded funds, and mutual funds, I still try to put a sizable amount of what I own in cash form, invested in stable interest bearing savings accounts. The type of money I put in a savings account is money I can’t afford to risk or jeopardize, and the type of funds that I may need to call upon to weather difficult financial times or unexpected financial emergencies. While I personally use credit cards for emergency fund purposes at least in the short term, stable savings account funds make up the bulk of my long term emergency money strategy. I try to keep at least 6 months worth of liquid assets on hand at all times – money that can be quickly converted into usable cash to pay current bills and liabilities on a moment’s notice. You never know what type of sudden unemployment, cash flow, car trouble, or health problems might befall you that might necessitate the need to call upon such an emergency influx of readily available funds. I choose to invest my emergency fund money into savings and money market accounts because they not only provide a modest degree of interest growth that usually outpaces or at least keeps up with inflation, the invested funds are liquid and extremely well protected from loss. I plan to work certificate of deposits (CD’s) into my emergency fund planning approach in the future, but wish to save up more in my savings before dabbling with higher yielding, but less liquid assets like CD’s.

Some people call rate chasers – day traders of the banking world, but I think that’s a terrible analogy. Unlike day traders who trade on short term, violent swings in the stock market, we do not take actions that could even remotely be construed as gambling or high risk stakes. Interest rate chasers tend to be risk adverse, and are almost always play-it-safe type investors and emergency fund builders who seek safety and pursue predictable rates of return, rather than high flying, speculative investments.

Besides, bank accounts, whether checking, savings, or money market accounts are one of the most stable, reliable, and dependent sources of asset preservation. While most traditional banking institutions do not provide investment assets that will make one rich as their rates of return are generally lower than that offered by other investment options such as stocks, bonds, options, or foreign currency exchange, they do provide a very stable and predictable rate of return. Insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the potential risk of loss of assets stored in a banking account is virtually nil. The FDIC, an independent agency of the United States government utilizes the full faith and credit of the federal government to protect the assets of all insured banks. Most major savings and banking associations are FDIC insured, and as such most traditional accounts offered by the insured bank, including checking, savings, money market accounts, CD’s, and even IRA retirement accounts are protected from loss. Even if the bank fails, goes bankrupt, goes out of business, gets robbed, burns down, or succumbs to some market catastrophe like the mortgage meltdown or credit crisis, the money stored in a FDIC insured high yield savings account remains 100% safe, up to the coverage amount. For savings accounts, the legal coverage limit is $100,000. If you own substantial assets that exceed this basic coverage limit and want to be 100% safe, you may want to consider spreading your assets among difference asset categories or banks.

Register With The Top High Yield Savings Accounts And Manage Your Fund Transfers As Interest Rates Periodically Fluctuate

There are certain basic steps savvy rate chasers and high yield online bank arbitrage seekers (as I like to them sometimes) take to properly manage their pursuit of high interest savings rates:

1) Open High Yield Accounts With Online Banks That Consistently Offer the Highest APY Interest Rates For Savings Accounts

I currently own several savings and money market accounts with the top online banks that have consistently offered the best APY interest rates. Personally, I avoid savings accounts from major brick and mortar retail banks like Wachovia, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or even Citibank, since most rarely offer attractive interest rates as they don’t need to offer them to attract customers. Most of these big retail banks rely on convenience and physical location presence to attract clientele. On the other hand, online banking sites, blessed with lower operational and maintenance costs, are highly motivated and more willing to offer competitive interest rates for account holders.

Most of my recently opened high yield savings accounts are with generally well known online banking institution favorites like HSBC Direct, Countrywide’s Savings, WT Direct, E-trade Savings Bank, and Capital One Direct Savings. Oldies but goodies like ING Direct Savings (get an ING Direct Sign Up Bonus), and Emigrant Direct still remain alive and well as members of my complete savings account tracking roster. While the actual order in the interest rate sliding scale changes periodically, the mentioned banks tend to offer consistently high rates. After opening accounts, it’s simply a matter of tracking APY changes and shifting funds around accordingly.

It’s important as a rate chaser to have target bank accounts ready for quick transfers as interest rates change. Back in the old caveman days before the advent of the Internet, opening new savings accounts was cumbersome and limited to local brick and mortar branches, and phone banking was a pain. With the emergence of the Internet and the development of fully functional online banking websites, online funds can now be shifted around instantly with a few strategic key strokes. To manage your online accounts and prep them for transfers, all you have to do is register for online account access and set up linked ACH electronic access. To set up ACH transfer permissions, you’ll be required to submit information about the bank account that you want to link up – including the bank account number and the banking institution’s ABA routing number (you can ask your bank for this information). Frequently the online system will initiate two small denominational test deposits into your linked bank account, the amounts which you’ll have to verify to confirm that you are the actual owner.

2) Be Watchful Of New Bank Account Credit Report Check Penalties, and Electronic Bank Transfer Limits

If you’re like me, you try to maximize your money whenever possible. In my case, so long as the resulting effects don’t put myself in a potentially worse off financial position and the necessary actions to get me there aren’t too prohibitive, I try to go for the gold whenever possible. For those looking to open multiple bank accounts, one thing to keep in mind is the health of your credit score and credit report history. When a new savings or money market account is opened, some banks initiate a hard credit check. The resulting hard credit pull, as it is sometimes called, may result in a small credit score hit in the nature of a request by one seeking credit. Not all banks initiate a hard credit pull that will ding your precious FICO score for new savings account applications, but some do. Examples of online bank account applications that result in harmless soft credit pulls include – Capital One Direct Savings, Countrywide, Emigrant Direct, E-Trade Savings, FNBO, HSBC Savings, ING Direct savings, and Washington Mutual.

Another thing rate chasers have to watch out for as well is the federal savings account limit of 6 ACH transfers a month. However, unless you are shifting your savings around every few days, the 6 ACH transfer limit per account should not be too much of a limitation or restrictive hassle. Be mindful that the transfer limitation also applies to money market deposit accounts as well. For most comparative factors, savings and money market accounts have little differences except money markets usually provide slightly higher interest rates and sometimes offer check writing privileges. However, money markets usually have higher tiered minimum balance requirements, although that is not always the case.

3) Manage Your Portfolio Of Multiple Savings Accounts By Using An Account Aggregation Service

To keep an eagle eye on your bank balances and army of savings accounts, I recommend using an account aggregation service like Yodlee, or Mint.com. Yodlee in particular offers its banking account consolidation service through other financial providers as well, such as Bank of America. In my case, I utilize Yodlee through Fidelity’s Full View access, which allows me to link up all of my high yield savings accounts and money markets to Fidelity Investments, storing my account passwords securely so that I can easily view my regularly updated account balances from one location. To make actual transfers however, you’ll have to log into the desired bank account directly.

4) Periodically and Regularly Shift Your Bank Balances Around As Major Interest Rate Changes Are Issued By the Federal Reserve

One thing to note is that I’m not a rabid or fanatic rate chaser. While some hardcore rate chasers shift their money around as soon as interest rate offerings change the slightest, I prefer to my make shift once or twice a month at the very most – call me a mild rate chaser if you wish. Usually I only shift my balances around in pursuit of higher APY rates every two or three months on average. Thus I don’t go hog wild over every slightest budge in APY, although there are lots of super online rate chasers who do though. Just look at those crazies who post on Fatwallet forums – they go nuts over a single .01% change.

Frequently, I fashion my fund transfers from one savings account to another around major interest rate moves by the Federal Reserve when I know major changes are coming my way. Upcoming federal reserve meeting dates on the calendar greatly interest me because decisions by the Federal Reserve frequently have a correlative effect across the board on the interest rate offerings by major banks. Rate cuts by the Fed usually signal subsequent APY interest rate drops by banks in a matter of days. Similarly, raises in the Fed Funds rate usually signal potential banking interest rate increases. Thus I usually try to make my electronic fund transfers as major rate changes are made across the board in response to Fed interest rate moves. Usually there is a lag time of about 1-2 weeks before banks at large fully and collectively respond to Fed announcements. Keep that in mind as well, lest you shift or chase that higher APY interest offering prematurely.

Source URL: How To Chase High Interest Rates On Savings Accounts and Manage Them

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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For the last few days I’ve been a pretty sad fellow. Not only did I feel isolated and cut off from the real world without convenient home access to the Internet, I haven’t been able to properly update my personal finance blog, nor have I been able to check my email messages, or tend to the operations of any of my online passive income businesses. On a normal weekday I usually receive close to 50 emails a day from a variety of personal and business related sources. By the time my Internet service was finally restored, I was greatly backlogged and had major catching up to do.

I Never Realized How Much I Relied and Depended On Having Home Based Internet Access, Until It Was Suddenly Taken Away From Me

I used to feel this way about TV, but I now have a new love – my computer (and the Internet service it provides me). When my precious Internet is gone, I feel crippled. This is not the first time I’ve experienced an Internet outage due to loss of power, but it’s the first time I realized how much I depended on my broadband Internet service at home. In the past, whenever my cable Internet service was knocked out, I’d simply access my backup laptop’s wireless signal manager and search for one of my random neighbor’s unsecured wireless signal to piggy back off of. Oftentimes I would get lucky and find one subscribed to a different broadband Internet provider that still had active service. While the majority of the stray wireless signals were properly password protected, a few were left publicly accessible. However, as the importance of securing one’s wireless router from unwanted intrusion has picked up steam, I find that most signals today are properly secured and inaccessible to strangers like myself. Particularly in a condo complex such as mine that’s populated by mostly tech savvy young adults and families, finding an unsecured wireless signal to temporarily piggy back off of is proving more difficult nowadays.

Since I’ve been working from home for the last few months, I’m not able to access the web through an alternate location such as an office workspace. So for the last few days during the outage, I visited my local library to get my Internet fix and to keep tabs on my email messages the best I could. Due to usage limits of an hour per day on the computers at my public county library, I wasn’t able to fully respond to all messages during each sitting and frequently had to do the bare minimum when it came to managing my online finances and keeping track of all my wheelings and dealings. Since I’ve adopted the practice of going all electronic and paperless and have converted all my paper bills into e-billing and automatic debit payments, not having immediate home based access to the Internet puts me in an incredibly inconvenient position. It’s a hopeless and powerless feeling when you’re unable to properly manage and access important aspects of one’s personal and financial life in real time. Especially since I am currently managing a major balance transfer credit card arbitrage, not having online account access makes it difficult for me to keep tabs on monthly due dates and stay on top of my minimum payments. If I’m not careful with online due dates, I could easily unintentionally commit a tragic balance transfer mistake and ultimately face terrible repercussions. It’s been so long since I’ve performed paper or phone banking that I’m not even sure how it’s done anymore exactly or where to locate my backup paperwork. I’m simply so used to doing everything online these days.

We’ve Become An Extremely Technology and Internet Dependent Generation

The no-Internet experience left me amazed and somewhat alarmed at how much my life has grown so reliant on the availability of the Internet. While it’s only a single form of technology, it’s a mode of communication and source of information that I’ve become extremely dependent upon. It’s interesting how only about a decade ago, no one had even heard of Google, Yahoo, Mapquest, or CNN.com. Back in the Internet-less caveman days of the early 90’s, we relied on non electronic forms of communication and information gathering. Before the Internet, people relied on daily newspaper deliveries for their written news, people purchased hard compact discs for their music, paper maps were used to plot directions, and people actually obtained background information on a variety of common topics by turning to hardcover encyclopedias.

Today, people rely on CNN.com, NYTimes.com, Yahoo news, and even online blogs to get their daily news. People order songs individually from online vendors like iTunes. People use online websites like Mapquest or Google maps, or utilize handheld GPS devices to easily and automatically get directions to where they want to go. Nowadays, the old volumes of encyclopedias have become extinct as all forms of text and multimedia data have been compiled and stored onto easy to carry around storage disks, or have been uploaded onto online information repositories like Wikipedia. As a testament to its breadth, the Internet is even changing the way we order pizzas now. Today, the trend of ordering freshly made pizzas online in real time through vendors such as Papa John’s is growing rapidly. The Internet has essentially phased out the clutter generated by paper documents, menus, and voluminous booklets.

The Internet Is Replacing The Cell Phone and Cable TV As The Technology We Can Least Afford To Do Without

But with this great reliance comes the dangers as evidenced by how out of place I became as soon as this important technology was taken away from me. Today, with the Internet having enveloped and dominated our day to day lives, and high speed cable and DSL broadband having greatly expanded the media content we can now receive, we can barely function now without this important service. I know I can’t.

Without full Internet access for the last week or so, I became handicapped and only partially functional. In fact, I dare to say that not having access to the Internet was astronomically worse than not having my mobile phone or even not having a fully functional cable TV service. Both cellular phone and television service can be easily replaced and compensated by the power of the web. There are easy ways to make local, national, and even international phone calls for free using a computer and the Internet, and I can easily communicate with my friends and family through instant messaging or via social networks such as Facebook or Myspace. There are also plenty of free online shared videos on YouTube and daily updated news videos on the major news network websites that can replace the lack of TV service. But there is simply no duplicate or substitute for a non working Internet.

The Internet is so pervasive, it’s hard to know what life would be like if it ever disappeared. It’s a wonderful and powerful tool that has changed the way we interact, communicate, and live our lives, but at the same time it makes us very technologically dependent and vulnerable. We are more susceptible to critical financial and societal collapses from computer viral outbreaks or electrical infrastructure disruptions than ever before. Some say it has made us as a society more distant and anonymous to each other, but I disagree. I think it’s greatly improved our lives and has allowed us to reach out and touch others in a way not possible before. We can only hope that technology can continue to defy the elements of mother nature (thunderstorms) and adequately keep up with this never ending appetite for electronic convenience and digital information. Such electrical and service outages as I experienced this week mustn’t happen again. I just can’t bear to be without Internet access for too long. Things just don’t seem to run right or smoothly when I am offline for extended periods of time.

Source URL: Internet Service Is More Important To Me Than Phone or Cable TV

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Like most small business owners, I have my eyes on the prize with expectations based on the potential of future expansion. While my current small home business is still in the early growth stages and has not developed to the size where I needed to incorporate, I decided early on that now was a good time as any to start keeping my personal and business expenses separate by taking advantage of the expense tracking and management benefits afforded by business credit cards.

Whether you are a small business owner who works from your own home, or have your own dedicated virtual office setup, there may eventually come a time when you will need additional cash and credit infusion to pay for business expenses such as inventory, office supplies, or utility fees including wireless services. More than half of all small businesses currently use credit cards to pay for expenses, but less than half of the users utilize business credit cards. While most seem content on relying on their existing consumer cards, there are a number of key reasons why it’s better to use business credit cards under your company’s banner.

For those running a business as a sole proprietorship like myself, you may have already applied for an Employer Identification Number (EIN), sometimes referred to the Federal Tax ID. If so, you will need to enter it when applying for a business credit card. If you are a regular non-business consumer who wants to take advantage of the rewards and benefits that business cards have to offer, you can still apply by entering your personal name as the name of the business, thereby leaving the Federal Tax ID part on the card application blank. That’s generally permissible because individuals can always declare themselves to be a sole proprietorship business unto themselves.

Benefits And Advantages Of Using A Business Credit Card

Business credit cards provide a focused selection of business oriented tools to help business cardholders better manage their expense transactions and day to day employee operations. Many of their advantages are not available in ordinary consumer credit cards. Here are some of the important small business benefits that they offer:

1. Special Business Rewards – Business credit cards offer unique discounts and rewards for an array of business expenditures that range from office furniture and equipment, to airline travel, gas fill-ups, car rentals, and utilities such as wireless services. Many businesses also choose to carry multiple business cards – using low to 0 interest APR offers to carry 0 interest balances, while using reward oriented cards to earn airline miles or cash back of up to 5% on business related purchases.
2. High Credit Limit – Compared to their consumer card counterparts, most business credit cards tend to offer higher initial credit lines, an attractive benefit for growing businesses in need of access to lots of credit. The higher business credit limit is particularly attractive when coupled with 0% APR introductory purchases and 0% balance transfer offers. High credit limits and 0% APR credit card offers help businesses build start up venture capital to better grow and expand their enterprises.
3. Avoidance Of Asset and Expense Commingling – For solo proprietorships, commingling your personal and business expenses is not as big of an issue. But as your business expands, due to liability and taxation concerns, you may ultimately want to convert your business into a limited liability company (LLC) or corporation – operations that mandate the separation of your personal expenses from your business transactions. By using dedicated small business credit cards now sooner than later, you make it easier to complete the transition in the future.
4. Multiple Cards For Employees – One useful benefit of business credit cards is the ability to request multiple linked credit cards for your business employees. By adding employees as cardholders to your account, you enable the consolidation and tracking of your business transactions from one location. Most business credit cards also offer free expense accounting, with transactions broken down by each authorized employee’s card access account.
5. Itemization and Expense Tracking - The usage of business credit cards also offers the flexible and scalable ability to fix preset credit limits for each employee. Not only can you place credit usage limits for each employee cardholder working off your account, many card programs allow you to set limits on how much particular employees can spend in specific purchase categories. Business credit cards make it easier for small business owners by providing monthly and year end credit card statement summaries, with all transactions conveniently itemized and categorized. Rather than having to fumble around with a bulky envelope full of receipts, business credit cards make it easier for you to manage your cash flow and daily business transactions.
6. Opportunity To Build Business Credit - A small business credit card also offers your new business the opportunity to link your business tax ID to the account, enabling your business to build its own credit history. Maybe not now, but having a developed credit report and ready access to credit are key ingredients to growing your future business. One day, your business may very well require a capital infusion through credit loans to take it to the next level.

List Of The Best Business Credit Card Offers:

1) Citi Premier Pass-Elite Level – This card is the ultimate rewards card for earning free airline miles. If you are a frequent flyer you will greatly appreciate the miles earning potential it has. With the Citi PremierPass Elite, you earn 1 reward point for every 1 mile you fly, 2 points for every dollar spent at gas stations, supermarkets, drug stores, and transportation related businesses including parking, and 1 point for everything else. You can redeem the points for free plane tickets with no airline restrictions, no blackout dates, and no seating limitations. A $75 annual fee does apply but if you are a frequent business traveler, you will easily make it up in the form of free airline tickets. It is currently offering a $200 bonus gift card for new sign ups.

2) Citi AT&T Business Reward Card – This popular business credit card offer from Citi Card offers 5% reward back for eligible AT&T products and services purchased directly from AT&T. It also offers 3% back on purchases at gas stations, office supply stores, and on professional services. All other card purchases earn 1% back. ThankYou points earned can be redeemed for air travel, statement credit, gift cards, business merchandise, and more. The CitiBusiness network also provides numerous pretty sought after features and services – perks such as business-enhanced online account management privileges and special prescription drug discount benefits for cardmembers and their dependents. Currently, the Citi ATT business card is also touting an attractive 6 month promotional 0% interest rate for all purchases.

3) Discover Business Card – With this card, businesses can earn 5% cash back reward bonuses on office supplies, 2% on gas, and up to 1% on everything else. The card also offers a 12 month 0 APR balance transfer deal with a 3% balance transfer fee, capped at $75. Perks for small business owners include free employee cards with customizable spending limits and monthly reports, categorized online quarterly and annual statements, and free travel benefits. One of the best benefits of the Discover Business credit card is the ability to write and issue fee-free purchase checks. The unique purchase check function allows you to write checks to business suppliers who do not accept credit cards. Your purchase check interest rate will be the normal purchase APR on the card. Best of all, there is no transaction fee for this service, and there is no annual fee.

4) Advanta Business World Master Card – This card allows you to earn 1% back on all purchases with an additional 50% worth of extra bonus point rewards every year. In regards to the credit card rewards earned, there are no earnings cap, no travel redemption restrictions, or any sneaky blackout dates. There is also no preset spending limit or annual fee.

5) Advanta Net 90 Platinum Business Card – Advanta presents consumers and small business owners with the opportunity to enjoy continuous and recurring 90 days worth of 0% interest free purchases. This is not an introductory offer, but a permanent grace period feature that allows you to pay no interest for 3 months after any card purchase. This reward credit card also earns 1% back with a generous credit limit and no annual fee.

6) Advanta Platinum Business Card Unlimited Rewards – Advanta Bank has emerged as a leader of the small business credit card market. This particular Advanta card offers both an introductory 15 month, 0% APR offer for balance transfers, as well as the ability to earn 1% rebate rewards, redeemable for cash, travel, and merchandise, with no annual fee. The plastic credit cards provided can also be uniquely personalized with your company’s name on the top of the card.

7) Advanta Customizable Platinum Business Card With Unlimited Rewards – This custom credit card offer provides the same 15 month, 0% balance transfer offer as the regular Advanta Business Unlimited Card, along with the ability to earn unlimited 1% purchase rebates. However, not only can you customize the card with your company’s name, you can also customize the card design to display your small business or company’s logo or trademark colors.

8) Advanta Kiva Business Card – With this joint public interest Advanta-Kiva offer for small business owners and entrepreneurs, as you earn purchase rewards for yourself, the card issuer matches your redeemed rewards in the form of loan grants for people in developing countries. Cardholders get a 5% statement credit on the first $1,200 each year for Kiva grants, charitable donations, and other eligible purchases. The card also provides an unbeatable 15 month, 0% balance transfer offer, with no annual fee.

Source URL: The Best Business Credit Card Offers For Your Small Business

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Your Payments May Be On Autopilot, But Don’t Lose Track Of Recurring Charges

The convenience of automatic paperless bill pay is not without its hazards and pitfalls as I soon learned. Automatic bill pay is extremely easy to set up but it can be tricky to maintain. I’ll tell you why. Yes, you no longer have to deal with tracking credit card due dates and bothering with the hassle of licking stamps and remembering to mail off payment checks, but you have to contend with the danger of being lured into a false sense of security and lax oversight. Despite its automated nature, mistakes do happen. If you don’t keep an eye on your account activity periodically, you may still find yourself being penalized with non sufficient fund fees or interest charges due to overdrafts in your linked checking account or overdue bill statements.

Once automatic payments have been activated, keep in mind that they will continue nonstop like clockwork until you stop them. In the event you need to temporarily halt an automatic bill payment from going through, the first thing you need to do is call the company to put an end to the order prior to the execution date. The next step is to ensure that you still have sufficient funds in your linked checking account to satisfy the bill amount in the event the payment still goes through. The unintended payment can ultimately be reversed, but usually there is a slight lag time before prior authorized automation can be halted.

Now when you set up automatic debit payments for the first time, and especially for credit cards in particular, it may take up to 1-2 months for the automatic payments to kick in. Remember to continue making regular payments until you receive confirmation that automation has begun (usually a notation on your online account or a paper confirmation sent to you). I made that mistake the first time I started and ended up missing my payment due date. Luckily Citibank was kind enough to drop the finance charges due to my good past payment history.

Be Selective Of Which Charges and Bill Payments You Decide To Automate

The best bills and charges to automate are those that occur monthly at around the same time and involve a fixed amount. Such fixed amounts present less opportunity for contention, and are thus less error prone. Examples of fixed expense bills include monthly health and auto insurance premiums, monthly gym fees, cable TV, satellite TV, and internet service. Mistakes such as double billing do occasionally occur with fixed charges, although they are usually rare.

The bills that I don’t particularly advise automating are those that fluctuate drastically or may contain charges that you ought to verify first before paying, such as credit cards and cell phone charges. My own credit card statement balances fluctuate wildly. Sometimes a statement may be $200 and the next month it’ll spike up to $900 depending on usage. I recommend holding off on automatic debit payments for your credit cards until you get the hang of monitoring your account regularly online and get accustomed to regulating your available bank account balance to satisfy incoming charges.

Personally, I automate everything, including payments for variable monthly expenses such as credit card bills and cell phone charges. In my case, I always make sure I keep an abundant amount in my checking account to pay for all monthly recurring charges with extra room for the unexpected. I also make a concerted effort to keep tabs on fluctuating bills by reviewing them immediately when the statements become available online. Usually my credit card accounts in particular will send me an email reminder when the statements are ready for viewing. Thus, although you can conveniently set your account payables to autopilot, you still shouldn’t fall asleep completely at the wheel.

Source URL: The Perils and Pitfalls Of Switching To Automatic Bill Payment

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Rent A Shared Office For Meeting Room Or Virtual Office Needs

More established small businesses might be able to look into renting a shared or serviced office space through a workplace solution company like Regus. These business office rental locations are usually fully furnished with desks, meeting rooms, functional kitchens, and business amenities like secretarial service and a professional front desk to handle clients, mail delivery, and customized call answering. They provide a professional working environment without the long term commitment. I would know – I’m currently working a contract project at such a location.

Rental offices are a good alternative for small but growing businesses looking to expand but don’t want to deal with the hassle of property ownership or long term commercial leases. However, many small business owners run things from their own homes. For them, there are virtual office solutions available:

1) Telephone Service

Sharing business phone calls with your personal home line isn’t a good idea, especially if you get a lot of incoming business calls. Dialing out is fine, but for incoming business calls how does one line handle voicemail greetings for both personal and business calls? You can always get another landline or cellphone number, but that can get awfully expensive, especially if it is underused.

Since I don’t have a separate landline at home, I currently use my cell phone plan in conjunction with eBay’s GrandCentral free phone service to re-route business phone calls to my personal cell phone number. The service provides customers a free separate number that can be given out as a business line, and have calls automatically forwarded to your personal line.

Since exceeding monthly cell phone plan minutes may be a problem, another solution is to sign up for an established Voice Over IP (VoIP) phone service like Skype. For $3 a month, along with an extra charge for a personal SkypeIn phone number to handle business calls, you can receive unlimited incoming calls from a cell or a landline. SkypeIn calls are handled through the online Skype interface and calls can be picked up anywhere you have internet access.

2) Fax Service

Although it’s ancient technology, it is still widely used, surprisingly. If you fax frequently, I’d recommend just going ahead and buying a cheap fax machine. But if you only need to receive faxes on occasion and rarely send them, you can try going with eFax Free, which will give you a free non-local fax number to accept incoming faxes through e-mail.

If you want to send faxes for free and don’t mind having cover page ads automatically attached to your outgoing fax messages, then you can always go with FaxZero. However, you will only be allowed to fax 2 document sets per day, with a maximum of 3 pages each.

3) Mailboxes That Offer A Professional Mailing Address

Personally I use my home as my business address, but if you want some privacy or if you expect to receive a lot of packages, you may want to get a larger standalone postal box. The U.S. Postal Service and most major private postal carriers like UPS and Fedex offer free pickup and the option to conveniently pay and print your postal stamp labels at home.

You can get a separate standalone P.O. Box through the U.S. Postal Service, but your mailing address will contain the “PO BOX” tag followed by your personal box number. If you want to get a more professional sounding mailing address that contains an actual street address, you may want to go with a private mailbox at a place like the UPS Store. Prices vary but private UPS box prices are usually about $200 a year (compared to less than $100 for a standard PO Box). However, unlike a standard PO Box, a private mailbox through UPS is 24 hour accessible.

4) Business E-Mail Addresses

Free e-mail addresses are simple to find – just check out Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail. However, if you want to sound professional and want to be taken seriously, you probably will need to get an e-mail address that contains your business name. There are plenty of email hosting options out there depending on your needs. For example, with DreamHost, you can get unlimited e-mail addresses and email forwarding for a pretty good $5.95 a month.

Source URL: Cheap and Affordable Ways To Create A Virtual Office For Your Small Home Business

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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If you don’t know how to access all of your bank and credit card accounts online, now is a good time to start learning how to. There are so many benefits to going fully electronic. Storing and accessing your account information online gives you instant and accurate data at your finger tips without having to wait for them to arrive through snail mail. The information you can get online is always more accurate and precise, as they are frequently updated on the spot as transactions occur.

By going paperless you can also reduce clutter. Before I went electronic, my postal mailbox was always being jammed with bills, statements, and all sorts of financial junk mail. My desk frequently had stacks of papers that just seemed to grow higher and higher. Going digital helped to cut down on the chances of losing something important in the mail or accidentally misplacing it somewhere at home or at the office. However, embracing paperless storage does require a reasonable amount of trust and faith in the reliability of technology.

I Organize My Paperless Financial Accounts Using An Online Aggregation Service

For all of my credit cards, bank statements, utility bills, and miscellaneous payment obligations, I no longer receive any of them through the regular mail service, but instead access all of them exclusively through the internet. Online e-mail based reminders alert me whenever I need to make payments or when there is something that requires my attention. Since I check my personal e-mail fanatically, the e-mail alerts are essentially real time reminders.

I use Yodlee’s Fidelity Full View to consolidate all of my financial information including my bank accounts, credit cards, investment portfolio, and frequent user reward accounts. It’s also an invaluable online way to organize, view, and keep tabs on all of my important transactions.

I Use a Digital Scanner and Digital Camera To Make a Photocopy Of Important Paper Documents

For important paper documents that I’m not able to receive in its original digital form, I like to either use a digital scanner or a digital camera to photo record them into electronic format. Examples of such important paper documents include speeding tickets, identification cards, pay stubs, or sales receipts that I want to retain because I’m currently disputing a transaction for example. Rather than keeping these documents in binders or in huge piles, I keep them all neatly filed away in well labeled directories on my computer hard drive. They are there whenever I need them at a moment’s notice and pulling them up is a piece of cake. As a precaution, I back up the files occasionally onto a separate external hard drive or burn them onto a compact disc for safe keeping.

Other Considerations Like Passwords, Security, and Encryption

By going fully digital, it’s important to have a way to keep track of your important passwords and ensure that your information is always fully secure. I have many passwords, but I organize them all onto one of my secret Yahoo email accounts using the Yahoo Notepad function. I’m sure I might catch some heat from those who feel storing such important information on one’s e-mail account is asking for trouble, but frankly, if my information is not fully secure with a mega company like Yahoo, would it really be any more secure with any other service?

We give out so much password information to various companies out there but at some point we need to trust that they will do their job to protect our confidential information. Most financial institutions fully encrypt their online website accounts so that shouldn’t be an issue either. I have faith that technology will continue to improve and get even better over time. I also take additional precautions by not using one password for all of my accounts. All of my passwords vary greatly from each other.

Source URL: Get Organized and More Efficient By Going Paperless

Copyright Protected © 2007 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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A few nights ago I received a sudden flurry of phone calls and e-mails from family members with sad news. My ailing grandfather, who had been bedridden in the hospital for more than a year due to a stroke, suddenly took a turn for the worse and was nearing his end. As the oldest grandson, I had a familial duty to be there. But since my grandfather lived overseas, getting to him at a moment’s notice wasn’t going to be easy. Things started to get hectic immediately as I began to make plans to fly overseas to join my parents at my grandfather’s side as soon as possible. I wish I had anticipated earlier and made better preparation for the unexpected.

Here is how you can stay ready and avoid the chaos that follows an emergency situation:

Keep Important Documentation Up To Date And At the Ready

If you have family in another country, including Canada and Mexico, make sure your passport is valid and ready for travel at all times.

In my case, I had one major problem. My U.S. passport had only one more month before it expired. Since most countries require that your passport be valid at least 6 months beyond the date of your trip, I would not be able to travel internationally unless I got it renewed as soon as possible.

Luckily the U.S. Department of State, which processes all passport renewal applications, has a special expedited process for such emergency life and death matters. Normally the renewal process can take more than 10 weeks, but by paying an extra fee and providing documentation of the emergency, I could shorten the application process to just a few days. Potentially big problem solved.

Make Sure Your Bank Account Is Prepared To Handle Emergency Expenditures

It’s important to make sure you have emergency funds in case something unexpected happens, whether it involves losing your job or a family situation. Always make sure you have access to back up money.

Because I wasn’t prepared for the family emergency and was caught completely off guard, I did not have an adequate balance sitting in my checking or savings account to handle major emergency spending. I had big expenditures coming, including almost $200 for expedited passport processing and $1200 for a last minute international plane ticket.

Fortunately, I could access my investment brokerage and shuffle some needed cash back into my bank accounts.

Automate Your Monthly Expenses And Have Less Things To Worry About

During emergency situations, it’s hard to deal with the urgent situation while still balancing your monthly bill obligations. I find it much easier to set up automatic billing and debit payment for all of my regular recurring expenses such as electricity, gas, and credit card bills. When something unexpected happens, those are just a few less things to have to worry about. Since the vast majority of my bills are viewable online and registered for online or automatic payments, I can still conveniently make bill payments even if I’m not physically in the country.

Source URL: Life Comes At You Fast – Be Organized and Financially Prepared

Copyright Protected © 2007 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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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.

Source URL: Password and Security Concerns Regarding Usage of Yodlee

Copyright Protected © 2007 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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