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How to Change Banks

Eric — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:12:47 +0000

I have recently read a study that demonstrates that the average person is willing to put up with bad fees, horrible customer service, and a bad experience at their bank because it is simply too inconvenient to move. I am apparently an anomaly, as I am in the process right now and I don’t think it is all that bad.

As I said last week, I am preparing to move my primary banking from ING Direct to Charles Schwab Bank. I have nothing bad to say about ING, but the benefit of check writing and no ATM fees is a big draw. I also have my brokerage and credit card accounts at Schwab, so it will be easier to have everything under one roof where I have only had exceptional customer service.

When you are moving banks, the key is to understand your cash flow and slowly bring everything to the new bank. If you use direct deposit, automatic payments, and online bill pay, you will surely forget about something and pay an overdraft fee or have a payment returned if you try to hit the switch all at once.

To ensure I don’t make a mistake, I am moving slowly. Step one, which I am on now, is to move my income into the new account. This is not going to be all at once, as I still plan to pay bills at ING for a couple of months while I move things over. I have my work direct deposit set to put $100 into the new account on payday. Assuming it works, I will move 50% the next month so I can start moving my bills to my new bank, but I want money at ING in case an unexpected bill comes in there.

Over the next few pay periods, I will slowly move all of my income and expenses into Schwab, leaving an emergency cushion of about one month’s rent, the highest bill I have, in ING Direct. I already have the new account on Mint.com, so I am tracking income and expenses from both banks.

I do not plan to keep my ING accounts open indefinitely. While I feel some emotional attachment to ING as I signed up at a pivotal time in my life where I really began to take control of my financial situation, it is not logical to maintain an account just to keep it open. Unlike credit cards, closing a bank account has no impact on your credit score. As long as all of my income and expenses are moved and the account has had no activity for a few months, I will move everything to Schwab.

Charles Schwab Bank, like ING Direct, is primarily an online bank. Schwab has one branch in Reno, Nevada, but otherwise operates by mail and internet only. I plan to keep my US Bank account open, as I have for about ten years, as a backup.

Have you ever moved banks? Please share any tips you have in the comments so we can all learn from each other’s experiences.

How to Change Banks is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Track Your Investments with Plantly

Eric — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:48:12 +0000

I have been invited to the private beta of Plantly, a new investment advising site. The site has an interesting concept. You simply input the amount you want to invest, the time horizon, and your risk tolerance.

From there, you are given a list of mutual funds to invest to meet your objectives with

I think it makes things a bit oversimplified, but the idea is very good. If you invest in diversified mutual funds and ETFs, you will statistically be up in the long run. It is always hard to know exactly what to do with your money, and Plantly has the potential to be a great way to pick your investments.

If you decide to invest based on the advice of this site, be sure to read the prospectus for the fund and understand the fee structure and how the fund determines its investments. You can sign up for a beta invite on the homepage. Let me know what you think in the comments.

P.S. Thanks to Budgeting the Fun Stuff for including me in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.

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Get Free Music Online

Eric — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:53:57 +0000

Over the years, the way we listen to music has changed dramatically. I remember my first Sony Walkman cassette tape player. I used to rock out to the Ninja Turtles soundtrack and Michael Jackson’s album Bad. While my tastes have evolved little, my method for listening to music has. (If you can’t pick up on sarcasm on the internet: that was sarcasm.)

My first CD was the Top Gun soundtrack. I still listen to the song “Danger Zone” when I am on a plane taking off. It makes me feel like a BAMF. I rarely buy CDs anymore. I just pre-ordered the new Linkin Park album, but for the most part, I have gone digital.

I got my first MP3 player in high school. It held a whopping 32mb, or about 5 songs. I learned about the incredible potential of music that does not skip when on a bike or running. I changed my five songs regularly, but it was not until I got my first iPod in college that my music collection began to expand.

In my college days, I used questionably legal methods to amass a collection of nearly 40gb of songs. My tens of thousands of songs could play for weeks without repeating once. I have still never listened to a big number of them. I keep my 60gb iPod full of songs.

Now, we are in a new age. There are two great online resources that I use for listening to music. These work on smart phones as well, but I use the PC based version. Those sites are Pandora and Grooveshark.

Pandora is the best resource I have found to discover new music. Pandora lets you create custom radio stations based on songs you like. I have found dozens of new artists and songs from Pandora. If you reach a song you don’t like, you can just click skip. You can only skip up to five songs at a time, but it is rarely a problem for me, as the site picks great songs consistently.

Grooveshark is the next generation of music, in my opinion. On the site, you can find virtually any popular song and create a music library for free. The site is ad supported, which you can remove for $3 per month (or a handy user script). I am amazed by the ability to start and stop any song I can imagine for free instantly.

How do you listen to music? Do you buy from iTunes? Do you get old fashioned CDs? Are you one of the proud and true that still keeps a vinyl record collection? Are you web based? Is there a better site that I have not seen yet? Please share in the comments.

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RIP Wesabe [Personal Finance Arsenal]

Eric — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:08:53 +0000

Wesabe, a previously mentioned Mint.com alternative and member of the personal finance arsenal, has announced it will be closing its doors on July 31st. At that point, the community feature will remain but all finance tools and records will be purged.

I am deeply unhappy to have to announce that Wesabe will be discontinuing our Accounts tab, and all of the related personal finance tools we offer, as of July 31st, 2010. The Groups tab, which hosts discussions on personal finance topics, will remain online indefinitely. A FAQ about this shutdown is available.

You will be able to download all of your data from now until July 31st by visiting our export page. After that date, we will delete all data and all credentials we hold for security and privacy reasons. If you prefer, you may delete your membership immediately or at any time before July 31st.

I liked that Wesabe was the main player in the personal finance aggregator world that did not require you enter your bank’s user-name and password. However, you were required to manually download your bank data and upload it to Wesabe. I had an account for a short while, but closed it in favor of Mint due to the time consuming, multi-step process.

It was a great site for many people, and will be missed. If you have never tried a personal finance aggregator, my favorites are Mint and Thrive.

RIP Wesabe [Personal Finance Arsenal] is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Mint.com Adds New Goals Feature

Eric — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:39:51 +0000

Mint.com, my favorite tool in the personal finance arsenal, has eliminated the “financial fitness” tool and has replaced it with a new “goals” feature. It helps Mint in the ongoing battle of the personal finance websites. I have done an in depth examination of Mint.com vs. Thrive.

The new goal feature allows you to set a specific goal and helps you track your progress to reach that goal. There are about a dozen pre-defined goals, or you can make your own. To reach the list, click on the “goals” tab at the top. Click any image from this post to enlarge.

I decided I need to build a bigger emergency fund, as I am looking forward to a possible layoff. I clicked on the “save for an emergency” image to bring up the goal detail screen.

Mint already knows my average monthly spending, and it suggested that I save for three months of expenses. I can easily decrease my spending in the event I am without income, but I decided to round up from three months just to be safe.

I moved on to step 2 where I decided how long I wanted to contribute or how much I wanted to contribute. I clarified by goal of $4,000 and said I wanted to reach it by the end of the year. Mint gave me a suggested contribution based on those factors.

On the last step, I was able to tell Mint that I am already saving for emergencies in my ING Savings account. Mint took that into account and suggested I contribute $314 per month to reach my goal in December. You can always change the amount later, so I picked the higher amount and saved my goal.

Now, every time I look at the goal’s tab, I can see my progress. If you are behind, your bar will show up in red. If you are on track, it will show up in green. I went into the “View Details” tab to adjust my contribution to $400 per month ($200 per paycheck) and $4,000 total.

This is a very useful and user friendly feature. It is the first major interface change since Mint was acquired by Intuit. I hope they keep improving the product over time. My biggest annoyance today is the sporadic connection to my 401k and the non-working connection to my student loan servicer.

Overall, I still love Mint. You should seriously consider Mint or Thrive, or a similar service, to keep track of your finances.

Mint.com Adds New Goals Feature is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Karma Links (Yakezie and otherwise)

Eric — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:42:54 +0000

Everyone needs a little good Karma here and there. Here are some good links for some good blogs posts from Yakezie and otherwise.

Invest it Wisely is debating if a condo or house is a better first home.

Digging out from our Mess is trying to figure out how to talk to parents about their finances.

Single Guy Money wonders what he would do if he won the lottery.

Stay at Home Mom CFO reminds us that we can get free money if we bought a lawn mower in the last decade or so.

The PF Ninja is ready to help you give up being cheap and start being frugal.

Elle at Couple Money helps track loans to friends using Excel.

Blogging buddy Well Heeled (who has an awesome blog that you should read) discusses when it is time to go to grad school.

Yakezie leader Financial Samurai discusses the merits of East Coast living.

Also, please visit Beating Broke, host of two recent Yakezie carnivals.

I would also like to share a website that reached out to me. Praxis Templatesis a new website that has free Microsoft Excel templates, which can also be imported into free programs Google Docs and Open Office, that help you manage your finances. I am still a fan of web based options, but these are well designed, free templates for those afraid of the Internets.

Karma Links (Yakezie and otherwise) is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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SocialSpark

Eric — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 03:22:51 +0000

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

This week I signed up for the paid blogging service SocialSpark. I plan to use the site to supplement my income from this site and my Israel blog. I was contacted by the company in February and finally got around to signing up this week.

So far, I am impressed with the site. It is affiliated with respectable bloggers and has a very strong Code of Ethics policy. It offers pay for post and affiliate marketing as a primary source of revenue for partnering blogs. This post is actually my first paid deal from the site!

If you have a blog, you can sign up for the site quickly and easily. Once you are accepted, you are given a list of offers based on your site’s traffic and content. If you qualify and accept an offer, you are given parameters and required links for the blog post. Once you write the post, you submit the URL and text of your post. After a quick review by the site’s staff, you are paid via PayPal.

I do not plan to use this service excessively or dilute my content. However, I am excited to have found a service that allows me to match up relevant advertising to supplement my regular content. If you have a blog of your own, you might be interested in signing up for SocialSpark.

SocialSpark is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Save Money on Bills with BillShrink

Eric — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:10:01 +0000

In all of my time blogging about saving money, I have never mentioned a great site that was recently featured by Lifehacker. BillShrink is a site that is dedicated to finding you the best deals on services you most likely already have.

BillShrink recently added a section for finding the best local deals on TV service. It also has extensive data for cell phone service, banking, credit cards, and local gas prices.

I just found out that I am overpaying for cable TV, though I have been debating pulling the plug for quite some time. The site can surely save you money when finding a new service. It might also inspire you to change. Let us know if you save any money from BillShrink in the comments.

Save Money on Bills with BillShrink is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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How to Read Premium News for Free Online

Eric — Mon, 10 May 2010 14:37:39 +0000

If you are a finance news buff like I am, you probably enjoy the Wall Street Journal. If you have ever spent time looking at articles on WSJ.com, however, you might have hit the subscriber wall more than once. This trick works on most news websites, but not all. The format of the URL may also be different on other websites.

I learned a sweet trick about getting through the subscription wall, and thought you might enjoy it. Just follow the steps below to see the entire article for free.

Copy the article URL (web address) from the address bar in your browser and paste it into a Google search. Click on search.
When the search results appear, look for the question mark after .html in the address you pasted into the Google search. Delete everything after .html including the question mark. Press search again.
Click on the result for the article you want to read from the Google results. That should take you to the full, unabridged article.

Why does this work? In order for Google to give the website search results, news sites allow the Google bots to crawl the entire contents of the article. If you click through within the website, you are given the truncated version with a subscription advertisement. If you come in from the search engine, which is given full results, you can read the entire article for free.

Enjoy!

How to Read Premium News for Free Online is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Some Great Posts from Some Great Sites

Eric — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:35:35 +0000

I was just browsing my friends in the Yakezei Challenge, and I wanted to share some great recent posts from some great blogs. I am proud to be a part of the Yakezei group, and I wish the best to every one of the wonderful members.

More Style Than Cash gives us seven signs that can tell if someone is frugal or greedy, a fine line that many of us walk.

The Car Negotiation Coach looks at payments impacting the deal you get when buying a car. Should you pay with cash, credit, or financing?

The Saved Quarter educates us about food stamps and how the program works, along with some misconceptions about the program.

The Dividend Monk gives us an analysis of Cincinnati Financial Corporation.

Smarter Spend gives an economic analysis on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Arizona immigration law changes.

Some Great Posts from Some Great Sites is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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