And yes, the kids enjoyed it very much.

Weekend Readings

• 10 Things to Tell a Graduating High School Senior
• Save Your Money By Paying Yourself Last
• Planning To Declare Financial Independence
• The Pros and Cons of Joining a Local Food Co-op
• Wealth Creation: Is it a Myth?
• Common Q & A about Financial Coaching
• Mortgage Pre-Approval When Buying a House
• 12 Tasks for Your Mid Year Financial Checkup
• One Simple Way To Get Started Investing in Stocks
• The Fascinating World Behind Credit Cards And Fraud Detection
• Credit Card Rates and Usury: Where is the Line?
• Negotiation Tips For Beginners – A Real Life Example Of How I Saved $150 With Just A Few Questions

Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary

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Weekend Linkage – July 5, 2009

To get the bonus, you will need to register with the bank first. Information needed for the registration include last name, last 4 digits of checking account number, Zip code, and email address. Once the registration is done, you will get a confirmation with what to do next:

Remember, to receive your $25, simply pay 2 bills within 30 days with Online Banking.

I just registered myself and will pay 2 bills very soon (I have been using BofA online bill pay for a long time). Let see when the bonus will come.

Don’t have a BofA checking account? Then this is your lucky day. If you take advantage of this special offer to open checking account with $250 minimum, you can get another $75 bonus. With the $25 offer above, you can get as much as $100.

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Bank of America $25 Bonus for Using Online Bill Pay

optionsXpress, one of the brokers that I have an account with and have talked about a few time in the past, is currently offering 12-month 0% APR balance transfer for its optionsXpress Platinum Visa Card. Even though the card also charges 3% balance transfer fee, but the fee is caped at $75 ($5 minimum), which is good if you want to transfer a large amount.

The card has no annual membership fee and it basically rewards cardholders 1% for shopping with the card. Rewards are given as optionsXpress points (1 optionsXpress point for every dollar spent) and once you accumulate 1,500 points, you can redeem them for $15 that will credited to your optionsXpress account. Therefore, you must have an optionsXpress brokerage account in order to receive the rewards points. If you don’t have an optionsXpress investment account, then all your points will be forfeited. In addition, points will expire after 24 months if not redeemed.

While optionsXpress Visa is a good card for balance transfer if you want to move balances from high-rate cards to this card, it seems that it isn’t an attractive choice if you want to invest your rewards. If investing credit card cash back rewards is what you are thinking about, then there are better options out there.

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optionsXpress Platinum Visa Card Offers 12-month 0% Balance Transfer

When I opened Ally Bank accounts last week, I deposited only $1,000 in the 9-month No Penalty CD account. That’s just the initial deposit that I plan to add more to later after the account is set up (it doesn’t make too much sense to have only $1,000 in a CD account, doesn’t it?).

So this morning, I decided to put more money into the CD account, but first I want to transfer the money already in the Savings Account to the CD account because the CD yield (2.15%) is a little higher than the yield of the savings account (2.00%). Interestingly, it doesn’t have the option to do such a transfer:

It’s only possible to transfer between Savings Account and external accounts, but the CD account is not in the mix. At first I thought it’s pretty weird because banks usually allow transfers between internal accounts. So I called Ally Bank and asked why I can’t add new money to the existing CD account. I was told that I can’t add new money to a CD account that is already funded. I will have to open a new account if I want put more money in CDs. Quite understandable. If that’s the procedure, then I just have to follow it.

While still logging in my account, I started the process of opening another CD account. Then I was a little surprised to see that it seems that I have to go through the entire process as if I am opening an account as a new customer, not an existing customer (I am still logged in my account). It turned out that I need to select “How Many Account Owners?” first before I can see the option to open an account as a current customer. It would be much easier if it shows the option at the very beginning instead of having to click a few buttons to see it. But that’s not the real problem.

I selected Joint Account, the account I want to open (9-month No Penalty CD), put in the initial deposit I want to have in the account, then I was asked to sign in as I am already a customer (I am still logged in). Without thinking of anything else, I logged in again with my own ID. The next screen I saw was with me as both the first and second account owner. That’s not right. So I had to call Ally Bank again and was told that I have to log out and asked, log in with my wife’s ID, then I will have my wife and I as the account owners, not just me. I followed the instruction: Logged out  first (the application wasn’t completed yet when I logged out), logged in my own again, restarted  the application, and logged in with my wife’s ID. When I got to the point that I had to select how to fund the account, I noticed that there are two CD accounts with two different account numbers, not just one, with the same amount of deposits that I want to put in the account. That’s not right. So I selected only one account to fund, not two, but I got an error message, saying I must select how to fund the account. If I must in order to go to next step, I must. I went back, selected to fund both accounts using my BofA account, and got the Congratulation page.

Then I checked my account list. Yes, I now have 3 No Penalty CD accounts and on the Pending Transfers page, I have to pending $56,000 transfers. When tried to delete one of the transfers, the Delete button was just disappeared (both the Edit and Delete buttons are clickable when I got the page first, but they are all inactive once I selected an account). It was just a few minutes between I finished opening the account and I tried to delete the transfer.

So I had to call Ally Bank once again and was told that I can’t delete it now because the order is already being processed. When I asked them how much time they give customers to make changes (since they have that Edit and Delete functions available, they must allow customers to do so, right?), a manager said maybe a few minutes, even seconds). On the Pending Transfers page, this is what it says:

You can view, edit and delete your scheduled Ally Bank and External Bank transfers below. Any immediate transfers to a non-Ally Bank account are processing so you won’t be able to edit or delete them.

So basically, even Ally Bank, like another bank, uses 3 business days to clear an ACH transfer, it won’t allow me to change my transfer once I submitted the request. This is really bad. I had done ACH transfers with many banks and as far as I know they all allow me to make changes, immediately or even hours later, but not Ally Bank. They told me there’s nothing they can do to stop the transfer. If I want it stopped, I will have to call BofA and stop the transfer. So I did and it cost me $30

Yes, there may be mistakes at my end, but the experience I had this morning really made me upset. Not that it really matters now because Ally Bank just reduced the yield of 9-month No Penalty to 2.05%. The stop order at BofA will stop both transfers, so no money will be transferred to Ally Bank.

I really don’t like to deal with banks that make things difficult. Seems Ally Bank belongs to that category. And before I make any money from the bank, I already paid $30.

Original Post on The Sun's Financial Diary

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Ally Bank Accounts Fully Functional, But …

Since I started to learn options trading, I decided to open an account with OptionsHouse and see how it compares with other brokers I am currently using. If nothing else, the $2.95 commission itself makes OptionsHouse a nice choice to trade stocks.

OptionsHouse Interface

My first impression of OptionsHouse’s trading interface is very positive (since I am still waiting for my account to be funded, I wasn’t able to trade). Even though the interface is web based, it feels more like a stand alone platform.

The Account page lists all the information about the account, including Account Value, Portfolio Value, Cash Balance, Stock Buying Power, Option Buying Power, Positions, and Orders. By clicking tabs on the right hand of the screen, I can read market news, see chart of a particular stock, check out stocks in my watch-list, see what’s hot in options trading, and monitor indices.

The Stock page gives me detailed information about a particular stock I am interested in. For example, it shows the company profile, financials, latest insider trades, SEC filings, analyst ratings of the stock (in the picture above is analyst ratings of Citigroup and stock chart), earnings, and historical stock prices. The information is very comprehensive, covering pretty much everything you need to know about the company.

While the interface looks impressive, I found it’s a little weird that all stock quotes are delayed 20 minutes. I don’t know why it only gives delayed quote (hope it isn’t like TradeKing that I have to setup the account to get real-time quotes). If I want to trade stocks at real time, then I need real time quotes, not something that has happened 20 minutes ago.

The Options page shows Option Chain of a particular stock with expiration times for Put and Call Options from 17 days to 572 days.

OptionsHouse Tools

What I like the most are the tools offered by OptionsHouse. Here I can use tools such as Streaming Charts & News, Risk Viewer, Probability Calculators, P&L Calculator, Stock Screener, Vol Charts, Put Spread Investigator (as shown in the following screenshot), Call Spread Investigator, and Covered Call Investigator.

Even though I didn’t find a tool to let me do, for example, Technical Analysis, it does have quite a few tools for options trading. However, since I don’t trade options, I can’t comment on whether those tolls are useful for options trading or not. I will need to study a little more to know how to use them

I did played a little bit their stock screener. The function that let me export results in CVS file, which you can open with Excel, is quite nice (if you think it’s necessary to export the results of course).

What else?

Since I am still waiting for my account to be fully functional right now, I am sure there will be other functions that I will find helpful once I start to use it to trade. In addition to the flat $2.95 commission per stock trade, OptionsHouse also charge flat $9.95 for options trading. The flat fee, however, could cost you more if you only a small number of contracts (1 options contract represents 100 shares of the underlying stock). For example, if you trade only one options contract, you will pay OptionsHouse $9.95 in commission, while trading the amount of contract with, say, TradeKing, will cost you only $5.45 ($4.95 + $0.50/contract) because, TradeKing, like most other discount brokers, charges commissions for options based on the number of contracts traded (see updated discount brokers comparison for commissions charged by each broker for trading options),  plus the commission per stock trade. If you buy or sell more than 10 contracts, then OptionsHouse will make a better choice since TradeKing will charge more than $9.95 for trading more than 10 contracts.

If you are other brokers, but interested in trading stocks and options with OptionsHouse, you can open an account with OptionsHouse ($1,000 minimum is required), then use ACAT to transfer your account from other broker to OptionsHouse. Though you are likely to be charged with an account transfer out fee, but OptionsHouse will reimburse you up to $100 transfer fee charged by other broker.

Update: I had a online chat with OptionsHouse and it seems that I have to wait until my account is funded to see real time quotes. Also for the account to be fully functional, I need to fax in the signed application together with a voided check.

If you are interested in opening a brokerage account with OptionsHouse, use OptionsHouse promotion code below to open an account and start trading.

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A Look at OptionsHouse for Stocks and Options Trading

Even though $4 per investment is quite low, the planned investment scheme itself lacks the flexibility if you want to invest at your own time, instead of a fixed day every month. In addition, the actual cost  of each investment can be rather high if only a  very small amount of money (for example, $100, which is quite typical for investors who do dollar-cost-averaging) is invested each month. If I want to invest in stocks, I’d rather pay $4.50 per trade to buy shares with Zecco, for instance, at any time I want than paying $4 to invest with ShareBuilder on the first Tuesday of the month.

Anyway, that’s just what I would do. If you like ShareBuilder’s scheduled investment scheme, you can use promo code SBMP25 to open a ShareBuilder account and get $25 bonus (valid for first-time ShareBuilder account holders only). To qualify for the bonus, you must open the account with the promotion code and make at least one trade. One these requirements are met, the bonus will be credited within 4 weeks.

BTW, this offer is from ShareBuilder via MyPoints. As I mentioned early, MyPoints let you earn reward points for free by simply clicking the ads they send to you every day. Each click can earn you 5 points and there are multiple bonus offers every day. If you want to accumulate points faster, you can actually take up the offers (if you like them of course). For example, for the ShareBuilder offer, in addition to the $25 bonus, you can also receive 550 points from MyPoints if you open the account through MyPoints. Points earned can be redeemed for gift cards (3,75 points for a $25 Amazon.com gift card). Check it out if the program interests you.

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ShareBuilder $25 Bonus Promotion Code

The job is from the second employer that I was interviewed a few weeks ago. It’s a division of  the same employer who offered my very first job 9 years ago and does business mostly with the government. I got offers from the first two employers rather quickly. After evaluating the nature of the jobs, locations, and benefits, I decided to take the offer from the second employer mainly because the job is much more related to what I did before and the location is closer to where we are going to leave. So the decision is relatively an easy one.

The salary of this new job is about 15% higher than the salary of my previous job. In addition, I also get 4 weeks of vacation to start, 8% match of 401(k) contribution, plus an annual bonus that’s 10% of the base salary. The benefit is much better than what I got from my last employer. After the first day at my last job two years ago, I was very disappointed by what I had to do every day. For the time that I spent with the company, I never liked what I did, even though it also paid quite nicely. I hope that won’t happen to this new job

Now I am still waiting to hear from the last interview I took last week. It’s a very nice company (one of Forbes 100 Best Companies To Work For) and the job also matches my background quite well. I don’t know whether there will be an offer or not. If it does come, then it will be a much tougher decision to make between the job I am having now and the latest offer. But that’s not something I need to worry at this moment.

Now I am just going to enjoy my first day at my new job

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A New Day, A New Job

I got the book for quite some time already, but didn’t get the chance to read it until recently. Actually, it isn’t really a book that you can buy from a book store, but more like notes with basics of options trading that are easy to understand. It starts with explanations of what an option and volatility is and some common terminologies used in trading options (such as Long, Short, Put, Call, and Strike Price, etc.).

After the basic concepts, there are a few pages in the book, called Rookie’s Corner, for beginners like me. This part of the book mainly covers two topics (or plays) for traders who just start to trade options and don’t want to get burned:

• Writing covered calls
• Buying LEAPS calls as a stock substitute

The discussions in Rookie’s Corner cover the definition of each of the techniques and scenarios when and how to use them.
What I like the most about the book is The Plays part that consists of a total of 30 plays. Each play tells investors the setup of the play, who should run it and when to run it, and the strategy for the play. In addition, each play also comes with a diagram that shows the market condition to use the play.

I am still reading and digesting the plays and have yet to use any technique to trade option, but so far I found that the book is quite helpful in understanding some commonly used strategies in options trading. And because of the concise, getting-right-to-the-point language used in describing each play, reading the playbook is much easier than reading a traditional book.

I got the playbook when I opened my TradeKing account a couple of years ago. Right now, the book may not be available in hardcopy. However, if you are interested in using the playbook as the starting point to learn to trade options, you can still read the book online after you open a TradeKing account (be sure to check out TradeKing review to learn more about the broker before opening an account). In addition, TradeKing also offer two free intelligence reports on options trading:

• Options Trading Basics
• Top Ten Mistakes in Options Trading

To receive these free reports, all you need to do is provide your email address and the reports will be sent right to your inbox. And besides the free reports, you will also get $50 bonus if you use the link in the email to open a TradeKing account with $2,500 or more and make a trade. Pretty sweet, right?

Given how volatile the stock market has been lately, maybe it is time to finally learn how to use options trading to profit

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The reason for me to decide to get an account now is that, despite recent cuts (which I suspected was done under the pressure from the Fed’s new policy), the rate is still quite attractive. After being disappointed by IGoBanking, I need a bank with good rates to keep my money. Ally Bank came up because of their No Penalty CD, which I am really interested in, not really because of their Online Savings Account that offers the same yield as Dollar Savings Direct does. Also, since Ally Bank’s predecessor GMAC Bank has a pretty good tracking record of providing higher rate, I am hoping that when the economic environment improves, the bank can be even more competitive than it is now.

Anyway, opening an account with Ally Bank is rather straightforward, taking only a few minutes to complete. In addition to the personal information that’s required by every bank when opening an account, I had the option to get both the online savings account and CD account with one process. I am not sure if other banks allow you to do that, or you have to open multiple accounts one-by-one, but I think it saves time. I can also set up an external account link during the application to make both the initial deposit and additional funds in the future (there are other ways to fund the account, but ACH is the most convenient choice).

Since Ally Bank uses trial deposits to verify account ownership, it will take a couple of days before the account is fully functional. Now I just hope Ally Bank won’t reduce the rate of the No Penalty CD before I can fund the account and lock in the rate

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Ally Bank Online Savings Account Opened

Since I have been doing this for very long time (I got my first credit report from Experian in 1999), I know exactly what to read each time I receive a new credit report, whether there’s a credit score comes with it or not (while credit reports can be provided to you for free by the law, you generally have to pay to get a credit score, FICO or FAKO, unless you take advantage some special promotions or use the free service from Credit Karma, for instance). If you have never got your hands on your credit report before, but are about to get your own copy for the first time (make sure you use AnnualCreditReport.com for absolutely free reports though), the following is information you can expect to see on your credit report. Even though each credit reporting agency may format the information differently on their reports, they all provide:

Credit Summary

Here you can find a quick summary of your credit information, including your personal information (name, former names if any, social security number, current address, previous addresses, and employers), the length of your credit history, the number of accounts you own, the number of accounts in good standing, any account late or past due, the number of accounts with balance, recent inquiries, and any collections or public records on file, etc.

Accounts

The quick summary gives you an idea of your credit, so you can see right away if there is any problem. But if you want to find out all the details of each and every account, you will need to go through the Accounts section of your credit file and review accounts you own. Here you will find the issuer of the account, the status of the account and when the latest status is reported,  the time when the account is opened/closed, date of last activity, account type (Revolving, Installment, or Mortgage), credit limit, largest balance, current balance, payment terms (if it’s a loan), and up to 3 years of payment history. In addition,  you will also find the number of times your account has been late for 30+ days, 60+ days, or 90+ days.

Generally, the Accounts part of your credit report also has a snapshot of all your accounts, showing information such as issuers, date account opened, balance, status, and whether there’s any late payment or not. It allows you to see quickly whether there’s any red flag of an account before going into the details.

Credit Inquiries

An inquiry indicates when a business, usually a lender, has checked your credit. It usually appears on your report when you apply for tcredit and authorize the creditor to obtain a copy of your credit file. In general, credit inquiries have a negative impact on  your credit score, even though not much. Nonetheless, having multiple inquiries in a short period of time suggests that you are actively seeking credit, which represents a greater risk to lenders.

There are two types of credit inquiries: those can be seen only by yourself and those by every lender. These inquires are usually referred to as soft pull and hard pull, as I discussed before. Your credit re port usually shows credit inquires of the past 12 months.

Collections and Public Records

If you have any unpaid account that has been turned over to a collection agency, or any legal record such as bankruptcies, foreclosures, garnishments, and tax liens, they will appear on your credit report as Collections or Public Records. Any collection or public record can severely damage your credit score.

Dispute an Error

Finally, if you find any information that is not correct after carefully reviewing your report,  you need to contact the credit reporting agency (Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion) from which you obtain your report and dispute the mistake.  Remember, your credit score depends on a lot on the accuracy of all the information on your credit report and any error could seriously hurt your score (that’s why you should check your report periodically). So it’s absolutely critical to keep information on your credit report, whether it’s personal information or credit information correct and up-to-date. If you find anything wrong, do not hesitate to contact the credit bureau to get it fixed. It’s not always easy and straightforward to deal with credit agencies, sometimes it even requires a large amount of time and efforts, but the cost of leaving an error on your report far outweighs the cost of having it corrected.

So have you got your free credit report yet?

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What Can You Expect to See on Your Credit Reports?

I have left IGoBanking a long time ago, but moved back in April after seeing their actually increased the rate of their savings account from 1.85% APY to 2.12% APY, the highest yield among banks I have accounts with, while everybody else has been in the rate reduction mood for a while (see savings account interest rates history for up-to-date rates). Attracted by their good   rates, I moved all my cash savings from Dollar Savings Direct to IGoBanking in April and have transferred additional money to the bank several times since then.  Unfortunately, that good rate didn’t long. The rate was cut to 2.02% APY at the end of May and now it stands at 1.91% APY.

While I have no problem with banks changing their rates whenever they feel like it, the problem I have with IGoBanking happens when I try to move my money out of the bank. Last Friday right, I scheduled my first transfer of $15,000 from IGoBanking to my checking account at Bank of America. Since IGoBanking has a daily transfer-out limit of $15,000, I couldn’t move all my  money out at once. The first transfer order seems going through without any issue. But since then I got this error message every time when I tried to schedule another transfer:

Error: The transfer amount you have entered exceeds the daily limit for Standard Service Type.

Even though the second transfer was scheduled several days after the first one. Did I miss something here? That $15,000 is a “Daily Limit”. How can I exceed the daily limit when I scheduled two $15,000 transfers 3 business days apart? Since I was always from home since Sunday, I wasn’t able to call the bank to find out exactly what’s going on with my transfers. But if they give me any unacceptable excuse when I call, I will just ask them to close my account and send me a check. I hate dealing with banks that make things so difficult.

Speaking of rates, I just received a notice from FNBO Direct that the rate of their savings account is now 1.50% APY. I hope they know how pathetic that rate is. FNBO used to offer very attractive rate. Now they just became another ING Direct or HSBC Direct. And that seems to be a trend once a bank becomes popular.

Update: I called IGo and was told that I have wait till the first transfer settled, which usually takes up to 3 business days, before I can schedule another transfer. They do, however, have another option that requires me to email their customer service to get the account upgraded to $100,000 limit. I have already sent the email. Now I am waiting for the upgrade to complete so I can transfer my money out at once. I guess I will still keep my account

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I Hate IGoBanking

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Friday Deal: Amazon Flip HD Camcorder Sale

If you are a MS Money user for years, like my fellow blogger 2million, you probably won’t be very happy about Miscosoft’s decision to discontinue Money, especially if you have all your personal finance data stored in Money. At the same time, it may be time for you to start to look for alternatives to replace MS Money before the day when all updates and supports of the software end.

Desktop Software

As far as I know, MS Money is one of the two commercially available desktop personal finance software. The other one, which stands to benefit from the discontinuation of MS Money, is Quicken from Intuit. I have been using Quicken Home & Business to track my investments and credit card and bank accounts for quite some time and like the software quite well, especially its reporting functionality. I also used MS Money before switching to Quicken a few years ago. Now it seems I made the right decision back then

Update: If you are considering switching to Quicken, you can take advantage of their special promotion to get up to $50 off some popular Quicken products from now till July 31st with free shipping. Products currently on sale include:

• Quicken Deluxe: Was $59.99, on sale at $39.99 ($20 off);
• Quicken Premier: Was $89.99, on sale at $59.99 ($30 off);
• Quicken Home & Business: Was $99.99, on sale at $69.99 ($30 off);
• Quicken Rental Property Manager: Was $149.99, on sale at $99.99 ($50 off).

While you will have to pay for the software if you want to switch to Quicken, there’s also one free personal finance software available called GnuCash. I have heard about this software for sometime and even installed it on my computer, but I’ve never got a chance to try it myself to see how it works. Maybe it’s time to start working on it. If you want to find out more about GnuCash, About.com has short review of the software.

Web Based Software

Like Microsoft admitted in the announcement, there are plenty of web based personal finance tools available that you don’t really need to pay a penny to use them. One of them is Quicken Online, also from Intuit. Mint.com is another popular website that lets you budget and track your money for free. I have mentioned a few other personal finance tools early and they are all free (if you are comfortable with online tools of course).

Microsoft Money may be gone, but there are many other choices, paid or free, out there that can help you keep your financial records up to date.

photo credit: zolierdos

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Alternatives to MS Money

The letter was a notice to let us know that we now owe the IRS $485.07 because

We changed the amount of the recovery rebate credit you claimed on Line 70 of your Form 1040 because the amount entered was computed incorrectly.

While it isn’t as bad as an audit letter, it still made me feel that I didn’t something wrong with our tax return, whether it’s my fault or not. So I went back to our 2008 tax form and found on Line 70 “Recovery rebate credit“, the amount entered was $483. The problem is I didn’t enter that amount myself. It was TurboTax, the tax software I used to prepare our tax returns, which determined the amount of rebate credit we should get for us What is more frustrating is that I can’t seem to figure out how $483 is calculated even after going through related worksheets. Actually, the only information I can find that’s related to the recovery rebate credit in the return was on the Federal Information Worksheet, which has the following two lines under Recovery Rebate Credit Information:

• Estimated economic stimulus rebate calculated on your 2007 TurboTax return: $384;
• Economic stimulus payment received (before offset): $201;

The difference of $183 between the actual amount of economic stimulus payemnt we received and the amount TurboTax calculated is the penalty for not paying enough estimated taxes in 2007. Maybe I made a mistake about “before offset”, but somehow the numbers just don’t add up: How exactly is the $483 credit calculated anyway?

What should I do next? Pay the amount we are told we owe? Or disput the correction?

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Did TurboTax Mis-calculate My Recovery Rebate Credit?

Having been investing in gold since 2002 (Tocqueville Gold Fund (TGLDX) is my main vehicle to invest in gold though I have also bought a few gold coins in the past couple of years), I was pretty excited when gold broke the key $1,000/ounce mark in March 2008. But since then, gold has been traded down in general.

But then you’d think that with the government printing money at a record speed to finance the stimulus and recovery, gold could easily retake the $1,000 level and be traded even higher. That didn’t happen until March 2009 when gold did claim back the $1,000 an ounce level as the stock market got hammered by seemingly endless turmoils in the financial market. The rally, however, was yet again a short-lived one, with gold reaching as low as $870/ounce in April. Since then, gold has made another attempt to break $1,000/ounce, but failed (only reached $990) and currently is traded around $930.

Where is gold going from here? Can the precious metal find support at $930 and start to trade higher again? Or is it forming a double-top and going to test recent lows again?

In this latest INO educational video (more about INO and MarketClub), gold’s recent trade was examined from the technical analysis point of view. Check it out if you also want where gold is heading to.

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Where Is Gold Heading to?

The new offer is the High-Yield Savings Account from American Express. The credit card issuer received permission from the Fed to become a bank holding company last November. Right now the savings account has an yield of 2.00% APY. There’s no minimum deposit requirement to open an account (of course, you will have to have at least $1 in your account to earn interest). The account has no monthly fee either and it’s insured up to $250,000 by the FDIC. AMEX uses trial deposits to verify account ownership. Once the verification process is completed, you can link external bank accounts to AMEX account and make electronic fund transfer (ACH). For the savings account, interests are compounded daily and credited every month.

In addition to savings account, AMEX also has CD products with maturities ranging from 3 months to 5 years. The 1-year CD rate is currently at 2.00% APY and 2-year at 2.50% APY.

Well, there isn’t much information on their website about the new savings account offer if you want to know more about it. When I look at  savings products, the only thing that matters to me is the rate. Without a good rate, there’s just no basis for any other features. To be fair, 2.00% APY isn’t that appealing for a savings account, even in a weak environment (you can find comprehensive, update rate information for popular online savings accounts). You can find better deals from, for example,

• Ally Bank Online Savings Account 2.05% APY;
• Dollar Savings Direct Savings Account 2.05% APY;
• EverBank Money Market Account 3.01% 3-month bonus rate;

Speaking of savings account, I am still considering whether to get an account with Ally Bank (a savings account and a no penalty CD) or not. If it weren’t the rate cut last week, I probably had one already

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American Express Online Savings Account 2% APY

I am not really a big fan of online tools as I prefer to store sensitive information on my home computer instead of on a website. For example, I use Quicken Home & Business to track my investments and bank and credit card accounts, which is the only money management tool that I am currently using (Quicken Online is an online version of the software that’s free for everybody to use).

Last week, an article on The Wall Street Journal listed a few what it called the best online personal finance tools that can make your life easier. The article broke the tools into 6 categories, covering such topics as budgeting (though I have talked about how to use free tools to make a budget before, I don’t have a budget myself), financial planing, tracking investments, and managing loans, etc. Among those tools mentioned, some, like Mint and Yodlee, have been mentioned here before, while most of them are new to me. Even if I am probably not going to use any of them, it’s still good to know that there are such options available.

Budgeting

This is definitely the biggest category among the six with the most tools available, including very popular ones Mint.com, Wesabe.com, and Geezeo.com. The basic function of these websites is to help users track thrr expenses by allowing them to download transactions from banks or credit card issuers, which is the first step in creating a working budget. In addition, these websites can also alert users when, for example, a bill is about to pass the due date or the available balance of a bank account or credit card is below a preset level, helping users avoid bank or credit card fees.

Financial Planing

Once you are ready to move beyond the stage of tracking and budgeting, there are also free tools to help you go to the next level, such as making plans for how to save for your retirement, and invest your money in general. However, unlike budgeting which is quit straightforward in some sense (you make a plan and stick to the numbers), investing strategy is highly subjective. No matter how comprehensive the online interview can be, no software or website can make investment decision for you. Nonetheless, if you are looking for help to get started, SimpliFi.net is one of the websites that “uses a virtual financial adviser named Sophie to guide you through a planning process based on financial goals.” Other sites like Planwithvoyant.com and Basic.esplanner.com also offer free advices to help you plan your financial life.

Tracking Investments

Nowadays, many brokers, such as Zecco, TradeKing, and Firstrade, have their own social networks where customers share investment ideas and compare portfolios. But the idea of tracking *real* investments doesn’t belong exclusively to brokers, which do have the advantage over other third party players. You can also do the same with Covestor.com and CakeFinancial.com. If you want  more than just suggestions from your peers, you can try Portfoliomonkey.com, a website that will examine your portfolio and tell you the expected returns based on your allocation.

Other Tools

In addition to the above mentioned three categories, you can find websites that let you check for fraud (Finra.org), obtain free credit score (CreditKarma.com), and manage loans (Virginmoneyus.com). Check them out to see if you find any of them useful. I know Credit Karma’s free credit monitoring service is

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Free Online Money Management Tools That Make Your Life Easier

This afternoon, we called one of the agents we talked with before and signed all the paperwork with him so we can get the process started.  Originally, the plan was to list the house at the beginning of the month, but now it’s the middle of the month already. We can’t afford more delays if we want to sell the house before the new school year begins. We were told that June, July, and August are the best time to sell a house.

The realtor we hired seems to be quite easy-going (we didn’t use the realtor who helped us buy the house five years ago because she was a little pushy). He has been in this business for more than 12 years, bought his first house also in this community, so he’s very familiar with the market. After we mentioned to him that we prefer to sign a three-month first instead of six-month, he gladly agreed. As for the commission, the maximum we will pay is 5% under normal condition. If the agent finds a buyer himself, then the commission is reduced to 4%; if we can bring in a buyer, then we only need to pay him 2.5% commission.

Now let’s wait and see how it goes.

My job search, on the other hand, went much more smoothly than I thought. As expected, I got my first offer yesterday, from the second interview a couple of days ago, not the first one last week. Speaking of the job offer, it’s quite ironic that after more than 8 years, I may work for the same employer who offered me my first job after graduating from school. And more ironically, I finally could make more now from this job than from my first job That’s 8 years, back to where I started as a new graduate.

The job hunting could end very soon, given how it has gone so far. Next week, there will be another, maybe the last, interview with one of the 100 Best Companies To Work For. Since it’s a big company, I don’t expect it to be a quick process. So I guess my best bet is take the offer I just got, then see what will come out of the next interview.

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House and Job Update

In addition to PineCone Research, I also use MyPoints to earn points for free by simply clicking the ads they send to me every day (there are usually multiple Bonus Emails every day) and earn 5 points for each click. I can also earn more points by shopping through MyPoints or taking up some offers, but I am usually too lazy to do that, so most of the time I only got the free points. MyPoints also have surveys for 50 points per completed survey. Check it out to see if you like it.

Get it before it’s gone again

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First, our 4-year old was diagnosed with Strep last Thursday. She started to cough a little bit on Tuesday, then woke with a mild fever on Thursday. Since New Jersey is one of the hardest hit states by the Swine flue virus, her symptoms really made us nervious. When we called the school she attends, we were told that there were other three kids called in sick last week. Fortunately, she tested positive for Strep and that explains the fever. After a couple of doses of antibiotic, she appeared to be recovering very well.

But that’s not the end the of it. Since Strep is highly contagious, we tried to separate the 4-year old from the rest of the family. But our effort failed badly. First was my wife, then me, then our 2-year old, all feeling ill over the weekend. And I was the worst. I had to bed rest for entire weekend to just get some strength back. Haven’t felt that sick for a long, long time. While nobody else was tested positive for Strep, we all had a little fever and sour throat and I have to take antibiotic as well

The timing couldn’t have been worse for us. Last week, we hired a contractor to fix a few minor issues around the house and plan to use the weekend to do some final clean up before putting the house on the market. That, of course, didn’t happen and it’s at least one more week of delay.

Then there are job interviews. My search for a job in the DC area has yielded some very positive results. After a few phone interviews, I went down to Maryland last Wednesday for my first face-to-face interview and will go to Virginia again for another interview Then there will be one more, at least, in two weeks in Virginia. I’d love to do all these interviews in a couple of days so I don’t have to drive 500 miles every week or two. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.

Anyway, this is a pretty busy period for us with a lot of things to do. Hopefully, I can keep up with the posts, when I have time

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Strep, House, and Job

Actually, what interested me the most isn’t the new rewards program, but what is mentioned in the story about possibly the fate of the Chase Freedom card rewards program that I have been enjoying for quite a well:

For Chase, the move is also a way to replace older versions of its Freedom card, some of which had offered richer cash-back rewards and bonus opportunities. Throughout the year, all Chase Freedom cardholders will be moved to the rewards program, where they will earn 1% cash back (or one point) for every dollar spent and 3% cash back (or three points) for every dollar spent in categories that change each quarter.

……

… However, some Chase Freedom cardholders who want to earn a fixed 3% bonus for spending in grocery, gas and fast-food categories, will soon pay a $30 annual fee. Chase’s Sapphire Preferred card — where users can transfer points to other travel reward programs — has a $95 annual fee.

Just last week, I said that I am lucky because I still haven’t got the letter from Chase about reducing the cashback from 3% to 1%. If what said above is true, then I guess there won’t be much time left for me to keep getting 3% back and I won’t pay $30 annual fee to use the card.

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Chase Introduces Ultimate Rewards

Just two days ago, I praised Ally Bank for offering very attractive rates for its products, including savings account, money market account, and CD, when the trend for interest rates is down in general. Today, however, it seems that Ally Bank has adjusted their rates down quite significantly. For example, the rate for online savings account is now 2.05%, almost at the same level as Dollar Savings Direct. And the one-year CD rate is reduced to 2.49% from 2.80% and the rate for 9-month no penalty CD (the product that I am particularly interested in) is now 2.30%, down from 2.50% APY. The Money Market Account rate remains at 1.90% APY. The reason for the sudden rate change is that Ally Bank has been under pressure from American Bankers Association (ABA) for providing an interest rate that’s significantly above the national average. In a letter (PDF file) sent to the bank in late May, ABA President & CEO said (with my highlights):

GMAC Bank/Ally Bank is offering interest rates well above the market in order to attract those deposit. For example, according to Bank Rate Monitor for May 18, the national average rate on 6-month certificates of deposit is 0.99%. Ally Bank is advertising at more than double this national average, at 2.13%. Rates offered by GMAC Bank/Ally Bank for 1-year and 2-year CDs are generally the highest in the nation. At the same time, the bank’s public financial reports have shown the bank to be losing money with losses of $112 million for all of 2008, and losses of $133.5 million in the first quarter of 2009.

This aggressive deposit strategy is particularly egregious when it is used by a trouble bank in which the government holds a controlling interest. Such a bank is significantly shielded from investor and market influences that might otherwise act as a brake on risky financial strategies. In the case of GMAC Bank/Ally Bank, the Treasury Department, through the Capital Access Program, reportedly recently added $7.5 billion in capital to the $6 billion of federal money already invested in the firm.

We believe that the situation with GMAC Bank/Ally Bank is analogous to that contemplated in FDIC rules governing brokered deposits sought by troubled banks. Such banks would never be allowed to follow the aggressive deposit strategy being pursued by GMAC Bank/Ally Bank.

Well, the message is loud and clear. Even though GMAC Bank has been offering rates that are significantly higher than its peers for a long time, the new Ally Bank can’t keep doing the same while receiving government bailout money. And it looks like the reason for Ally Bank’s rate reduction is exactly what I worried about in my previous post, that the national average rate the FDIC calculated will be used to limit interest rates offered by banks that are less well capitalized (apparently Ally Bank belongs to that category). In this case, ABA led the charge against Ally Bank. On one hand, the regulation is to protect consumers because a bank that is losing money should focus its effort on improving its balance sheet instead of paying extraordinarily high rate to attract new customers and giving the false impressions that the bank is financially strong, while on the other hand, regulating how much the interest rate a bank can pay its customers could end up hurt them if the bank’s competitors use the average rate to complain.

Anyway, too bad that I didn’t act quick enough to lock in the 2.50% APY for the 9-month no penalty CD when it was available. Now that the rate is lowered quite a bit, I have to reconsider whether to get an account or not, even though 2.30% APY is still pretty good.

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Ally Bank Made Significant Rate Changes

EverBank has been one of the banks that consistently pay savers highly competitive rates. After this rate increase, yield of the Money Market Account is the highest among online savings accounts that I track. Combining the bonus rate and current rate together, the actual yield of the account is 2.00% APY for balance up to 50K in the first year. The yield isn’t as good as, say, that of Ally Bank Online Savings Account, which currently pays 2.25% 2.00%APY (see Ally Bank Review for details), but it beats many other popular banks easily. For more information, check out my EverBank Money Market Account review for details.

In addition to the Money Market Account, EverBank has also increased bonus rate for its FreeNet Checking Account to 3.01% and the actual rate for the first year is 1.96% for balance between $50K and $100K. Go to my EverBank FreeNet Checking Account review for more discussions about the account.

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EverBank Raises Money Market Account Bonus Rate to 3.01%

on this day, I was a still a college student when I witnessed and participated in an event that I will never forget. Even though I wasn’t in Beijing at that time, the city where I lived and studied in was one of the cities where the whole thing started in late April.

6.4 was not started as a “pro-democracy” movement as described by Western media today and for many college students who involved it was never about the so-called democracy. Rather it was about fighting inflation and corruption and punishing party and government officials using their power to profit for themselves and family members at the time when ordinary citizens struggled with their lives (20 years ago China was an impoverished country, however, all college students in the country didn’t need to pay any tuition to go to colleges). Students angry about the society only wanted their voiced to be heard. Nobody wanted to throw out the government (that is why it received broad  support from not only ordinary citizens, but also top leaders from the government initially). But things got out of control later.

I, as well as all my classmates, left the school and went back to home (college semesters in China usually end in July) without permission on 6.4 after hearing all the rumors spread on campus (we didn’t have a TV at that time, so we didn’t exactly what happened). Later the school informed me that classes were all canceled and the school year was official ended in early June. The new school year in the fall was also delayed.

Now 20 years have passed and 6.4 has become a distant memory for me and many at my age who were then college students (we have never talked about it again even privately because there just isn’t much to talk about). Looking back on its 20th anniversary, one thing is quite clear to me: The innocent students were held hostages on the square by some who had their own agenda, no matter what they say in public now and then (None of those so called student leaders was killed). Could there have been an entirely different outcome had we known went to stop and return to our classrooms?

Though I haven’t lived in China for the most part of the past two decades, I have seen dramatic developments every time I went back for a visit (there are many, many things the government did that I don’t like, especially how it controls what people need to know and what they don’t). The country was in wars or chaos most of the time in the 20th century. Nobody wants to see that happens again.

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20 Years Ago

So far I have never included house in my calculation because I have no idea how much our house is worth. So instead of guessing, I chose to focus on assets that can be easily tracked month over month, such as cash and investments. Now that we are moving, we finally had a good estimate of the market value of our house. If we could sell it for around $260K now, then we would have more than $120K after the mortgage and that would push the total to over $710K before broker commission. But I still prefer to only include those I know exactly

Here are some details of how each category looks like on May 31th:

• Credit card balance(-): We continued to keep our expenses low last month. With the total balance at $3,463.68 on May 31st, we reduced our credit card balance by $232.68, or 6.29%. However, the spending is likely to increase this month as we spent some money to fix a few minor issues of the house before putting it on the market. Also the preparation of moving will also increase spending.
• Cash(+++++): I am very pleased to see that, after 3 straight months of decline in our cash reserve, this part of our net worth finally grew again in May. At the end of the month, we had a total of $88,806.91 in savings and checking accounts, up $10,259.49, or 13.06%, from the previous month. Right now, most of the cash is in the savings account at IGoBanking. As I mentioned early, Ally Bank’s 2.50% APY 9-month no plenalty CD seems very attractive. I may open an account with them move most of my money to there to take advantage of the high yield.
• Taxable accounts(+++): Our taxable investment accounts, including brokerage accounts and mutual fund accounts, gained the most among all categories in terms of dollar amount last month, though not percentage wise. With everything included, the total market value of our taxable accounts was at $249,362.03, up $21,708.57, or 9.54%, from April. Unlike previous couple of months, I only put $1,000 new money in my broker account at Scottrade to buy stocks in May. After huge gains since March, stocks are no longer as cheap as they were three months ago.
• Retirement accounts(++): Our retirement accounts also did quite well last month, gaining $15,396.48, or 7.40%, to a total of $223,456.54. The only new money added to our retirement accounts is contributions in 401(k)s.
• 529 plans(++++): Our investments in 529 accounts another double-digit gain last month, after more than 16%  increase the month before, thanks to the $25 bonus promotion from CollegeAdvantage that has ended on May 31st. The total market value of 529 accounts at the end of May was $18,947.80, up $1,857.72, or 10.87%, from April.
• Bonds(+): Even though I-bond interest rate from May to November is zero, I kept buying the bond every month using my automatic purchase plan (I am probably too lazy to cancel it). For the bond part, the gain in May was $172.06, or 1.12%, to a total of $15,604.68.

Year-to-date, our net worth gained $121,939.51, or 25.97%, even though year-over-year, it still shows a decline of $10,820.76, or 1.76%. If the trend continues, we could see a net year-over-year gain next month.

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May 2009 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth