Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
Check out this article. Bank of America is raising their checking account fee to $12 a month unless you have direct deposit set up with a minimum deposit of $250. If that won’t work for you, you can keep a minimum of at least $1500 in your account for every day of the month (which you’ll get very little interest on). My favorite part of
Leroy Fick from Saginaw Michigan won a $2 million lottery in 2010. While this sounds great, somehow Leroy is still receiving food stamps to help put food on his table. Why? Well, Leroy took the lump sump payout, bought a new house and a car and then invested the rest. Since his income is based on the amount of investment income he’s receiving from the
NBC has an article about whether those technology buy back programs that companies like Best Buy offer are worth it. My opinion is that they are not. As the article points out, the terms are clearly stacked in their favor and you have to jump through a number of hoops to be successful. I won’t go in to the mathematics (because I’m not smart enough)
A good friend (and neighbor) and I have been talking about our retirement strategies and plans for years. It usually consists of us standing around in the street in front of our houses comparing approaches and percentages in various accounts. Don has been a great saver for much of his life. Both he and his wife have worked during their marriage and I have found
Am I the only one that finds the latest HTC smart phones very sexy? Just one more thing that can cause us to part with our money! I better just stick to my Iphone and blow my money on the monthly service charges: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/15/htc-sensation-versus-the-rest-of-the-dual-core-world-smartphone/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Fengadget+%28Engadget%29
For years, I’ve watched the real estate market around my primary and secondary homes. At any one time, I can tell you what’s for sale and what the prices are. Maybe I should have been a realtor because I really enjoy watching the market. I’ve often thought about picking up an investment property to rent out so that might factor in to why I watch
Did I mention I like credit unions? In a breaking news development that should shock no one, a recent study found that many banks do their best to hide their fees (especially now that they are creating so many new ones) and are spending most of their time trying to convince you to open accounts without the information on fees that you should really be
Banks are considering capping debit card transactions at $50 to $100 per transaction due to one of the new regulations that is most likely coming from the Dodd-Frank act. The regulation will limit the fee banks can charge for debit card transactions to $.12 instead of the average fee of $.44. Banks argue they need the higher fees to help offset fraudulent losses and to
I was thinking this year would be a pretty insignificant raise because of the economy and the general state of things. I’ve been working hard at work so I figured I’d get something but was absolutely blown away to find out I got over a 9% bump. Needless to say, I was thrilled. We won’t be spending the additional income since we really have everything
I love this time of year. We are just about through the worst of winter (which means spring and summer are on the way) and it’s bonus and raise time at work. On top of that, it’s tax time which usually means we get some sort of tax refund as well. This year it’s looking like I’ll be getting somewhere around a 6% raise. I
