August 2006 Score Card -- Part I: Expenses

As the month of August has come to an end, it's time to see how I did in the past month.

The first item on the score card is the monthly expenses. This is the first time in a while that I kept a complete record of how we spent the money this month. Not included in the chart are $800 for the child care, $1635 mortgage, and those we invested in stocks/mutual funds/bonds. Otherwise, it's a complete picture.

Looking at the chart, the single biggest item is gas at more than $300. Both my wife and I have to comute about 30 miles every day and have to use the car in the weekend either to go shopping or take our daughter out. I don't see much save on this part. Good news is that the gas price has come back a bit recently. This could help to trim our monthly bill.

Actually, the only place I can see a cut is at Costco. We go to Costco every other week, mostly to buy orgainc milk and eggs for our daughter. However, every time we would also buy something else that are not considered essential or in need right away. Some are impulse buyings, some are nice to have. I guess I have to blame Costco for part of this. They just won't stop sending out all those coupons!

Oh, for the phone services. It's lindline, cell phone, and cable. It wouldn't be this high if I remembered to pay last month's cell bill. And the postages are for those items I sold on Amazon. As I only got a few items on sale now, this item probably will disappear, unless I can find profitable items to buy-and-sell.

I think we were pretty good last money. No a lot unnecessary spendings.

Categories: Finance, Savings,

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Technorati tags: Networth, Personal finance, Savings

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Got First Issue Of Kiplinger's Personal Finance

I got the magazine for free from NetMagazines.com back in June with two-year subscription and I paid only $4.91 for S&H. I subscriped various financial magzines before, such as Money, Smart Money, Forbes, and Barron's, but only for one or two years. The reason I eventually terminated all of them was that I couldn't find time to read most of the articles (and most of them weren't that good anyway). For Kiplinger, I just want to give it a try, though I belive the magazine is accessable online. At least, what's on the front page, "Your toughest money problem SOLVED!" is eye-catching!

After a quick glance, however, I did notice one difference from other magazines. It has a complete list of all the mutual funds and 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, and 10 years performance. I am sure you can easily find this formation somewhere online, but it's good to have a hard copy. Also in this issue are the winners of funds in different catgories. I happen to own:

• CGM Focus, winner of All-size-company funds, 1, 3, and 5 years;
• Oakmark Equity & Income, No. 2 of Hybrid funds, 10 years;
• Dodge & Cox Balance, No. 3 of Hybrid funds, 20 years;
• Dodge & Cox Stock, winner of Large-company value funds, 10 and 20 years;
• Bridgeway Ultra Small Co, winner of Small and midsize growth funds, 5 years;
• Dodge & Cox International Stock, N0. 10 of Diversified international funds, 3 years;
• Tocqueville Gold, No. 8 of Sector funds, 5 years.

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Ok, Now It's Official

Received in the mail tonight, starting October 13th, the new Citi Dividend Reward program works as follows:

• 2% cash back on purchases made at supermarket, drugstores, and gas station;
• 2% cash back or more at convenience stores and for electricity, gas, water supply, refuse services, excluding phone services;
• 1% cash back on all other purchases;
• 1% cash back on cash advances.
  

In addition,

• 5 dividend dollars for each balance transfer of $1500 or more;
• Dividend dollars redeemable after reaching 50 (payable with check at request);
  
• A maximum 300 dividend dollars in a calendar year.

With these new changes in place, there is nothing attractive except the utility part. The Dividend card will soon become just an ordinary card with ordinary rewards. At least it will no longer be my first choice at gas stations and supermarkets. When the changes take effective in October, I will probably charge my daily purchases with my Fidelity 529 reward card, which earns me 2% cash backs on all purchases.

Time to consider some alternatives?

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New Digital Camera Review Site

Are you in the market for a digital camera?

I noticed a new site, DigitalCameraReview.com, today that offers comprehensive reviews of all major brands digital cameras. Though I already have a couple of digital cameras and won’t need a new one any time soon, I still found this site informative, the reviews are thorough and the illustrative images are clear. It seems to be a very nice site. Check it out if you want get a second opinion of the camera you want to buy.

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Terrible Translation

I put up the Alta Vista translation button in my site today just for convenience, in case there is somebody across the world needs it. Later on, I decided to try it to see how it works and I selected Chinese. Well, a click on the flag brought me the translated text, which means it did the job it's supposed to do. The translation, however, was terrible. If I don't know what I have wrote, I can barely understand what it says. The program literally translates every English word into Chinese and doesn't even bother to rearrange the sentence to make it readable. For example, "post" has the same meaning as "job position" after the translation. Total garbage!

I guess I won't attract any Chinese reader with it.

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How Do You Shop Online?

Do you go straight to the site or through a middle man? If the former is your choice, you probably missed some big cashbacks you could have earned on top of what your credit cards offer. There tons of sites offer cashback programs by shopping through them. You already spend the money, why not get some back?

I have joined both Upromise and BabyMint, two sites that aim at saving for college while shopping. Every time I shop online, I will go to these two sites and check their respective cashback offerings. All the major retailers are listed on both sites, but the cashback percentages are different. Of course, I always go with the higher one.

If I can’t find the merchant on either Upromise or BabyMint, I will then go to Ebates, which has a larger selection. For some sites, Ebates offers very attractive cashback, more than 10%. But those sites are not considered as big player, in my opinion.

It seems that small stores tend to offer high cashbacks. However, cashback offers shouldn’t be the only factor when you consider which store to go. If a big name offers a competitive price for the same item, I will go with the big name, even with a lower cashback rate. I need to feel comfortable with the site before placing any order.

One exception. Amazon is not affliated with any of the site I mentioned!

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Save Money By Delivering Lay Off Notice Via Email

"The workforce reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."

This was part of the lay off notice sent to RadioShack employees by email Tuesday, reported USAToday.

Have employers really become cold-blooded when they drop their hardworking workers? Or they are so desperate in cutting expenses that they can't afford to spare several minutes for a face-to-face meeting. They are gone anyway? Why bother?

Hope the email didn’t started with “Dear RadioShark Employee.”

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Brand Institute Survey: There Goes Again

Another invitation, yet another rejection. The criterion they use is nothing but how sick you are!

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Free Magazine From TradePub

Ever since I subscribed a free magazine from TradePub.com (I had to make up some stories of what I do as the publications are supposed for professionals), I get email from them almost every day with offers for other magazines that they say I quality. So far I haven’t responded to any offer because I may just throw them into the trash bin if I subscribe but have no time to read. And that’s not impossible. But I have to say some titles, such as Financial Planning, Financial Advisor, Trader, and Investment Advisor, look attractive.

I haven’t received my subscription yet, so I don’t know how good the magazine is. Have to wait and see.

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Did You Notice

how much gas price had come down in your area in the past two weeks? For me, that's 20 cents, from $2.99/galon regular to $2.79/galon. Nearly a 7% drop. You can check your local gas prices at GasBuddy.com.

BTW, I'm living in New Jersey.

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File Backup: How I Do It

Jonathan of MyMoneyBlog is having an interesting discussion on online file backup. It seems that while nobody doubts the importance of backing up files periodically, it’s hard to put everybody in the same boat when it comes to how important files should be stored, especially those files that you don’t want anybody else to access. Mentioned in discussion is a company called Mozy, which offers online file backup and users can choose their personal 448-bit key to encrypt their files before uploading to Mozy’s file server.

For me, I never heard of Mozy before and have no idea how they run their business. However, I don’t have a good feeling of storing my personal files in somebody else’s server, even I own the key. True, my personal information is every where, at banks, credit card companies, and phone service providers. But these places at least I consider to be reliable, relatively speaking. For Mozy, nobody even knows how long their will exist, and their reliability and confidentiality are separate issues. I won't put my file in the hands of a total stranger.

The files I backup include Quicken generated transaction files, saving bonds records, monthly expenses spreadsheets, and other non-financial files such as papers I wrote before, research files, resumes, and some articles I collected, etc. Those are more for record keeping, rather than for security concerns. And here is how I do it:

• Install two physical hard drives in my computer (not two logical drives on one hard drive), one for system programs and the other for data storage;
• Save one copy on each disk so even if one crashes, which is likely to be the system disk, I still have another copy on the separate disk;
• Buy another external hard drive and copy everything I think important in the external drive. This external disk is just for backup so it is off most of the time to prevent any possible damage.

Of course, no place is 100% safe and secure and none of these methods will work if you simply FORGET to backup!

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Attention Shoppers, AT&T Is Hacked!

If you are an AT&T customer, by now you probably have already been informed. Otherwise, here's the story.

USAToday reported that hackers accessed credit cards and other personal information of AT&T's nearly 19,000 customers over the weekend. As a result, AT&T shut down its online store and notified credit card companies of those customers being affected. In addition, AT&T will also pay for credit monitoring service for those whose credit may be compromised.

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One Year Sunrocket VOIP Phone Service For $99

If you plan to drop your traditional landline phone and switch to VOIP service, here’s a good deal. According to Cheapstingybargains.com, starting today, you can sign up for a one-year Sunrocket VOIP phone service for $99. I’m still using Sprint and have no plan to switch to VOIP just yet.

I have no experience with any VOIP services, but some reviews can be found here.

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Stop. You Exceeded The Limits!

No, this is not for speeding, but for online transfers at my HSBC account.

I got a letter from HSBC tonight dated last Thursday, August 24th. The letter says my savings account at HSBC has a limit of six "preauthorized, automatic, computer or telephone transfer" in any month, calendar or statement cycle month and I have exceeded the limits.

Exceeded the limits? How?

I have been using HSBC for more than a year and this is the first time I got such a letter. I don't think I did anything differently recently, except the extra T-Bills purchase I added this month. When I increased my weekly purchase of the 4-week T-Bills to $3000, I didn't amend those previously scheduled purchase as TreasuryDirect doesn't allow changes to be made on existing orders. So I simply created a separate order of $1000 per week. This, however, makes a total of eight transfers from my HSBC account to TreasuryDirect instead of four. To make sure this is indeed what happened, I logged into my HSBC account and counted the transfers made in August. Exactly seven and the last one was on August 24th, the date that TreasuryDirect withdrew funds for that week's purchases. So that's why.

Actually, I was thinking of deleting my existing orders when I added the new purchase. However, when I followed the Delete a scheduled purchase link under the Manage Direct menu, I was afraid that I have to delete some 30 existing orders one by one as it appeared I can only select one order at a time. That's a lot of work to do! But today I have no choice but deleting all the transactions I have scheduled, even it means I have to do it one by one.

Well, things aren't as bad as I thought. When I tried to delete one transaction, there was an option of either delete this specific one, or delete all the remaining repeat orders. I chose the latter and all my orders were gone!

Probably I should have tried last time, instead of being intimidated by potentially a large number of clicks required.

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No Choice: Have To Keep Company Stocks

My wife has been with her current company for nearly five years and her employer offers a match for the first 6% of her 401(k) contributions. The only catch is the match is given in company stocks in the form a fund. Ever since she joined the company, she maxed out every year and now a sizable amount of her company stocks, while the resets are in Fidelity mutual funds. Last week, when reviewing her portfolio, we found that nearly 22% of her 401(k) is in her company’s stock fund! That’s a very high percentage and could be dangerous in the long term.

So we decided to trim the holding to 5 – 10%. When we tried to exchange the company stock fund to other mutual funds she currently holds, an error message popped up, saying employer sponsored contributions are not eligible for such transactions. Next day, my wife called Fidelity and was told that, according to the current rule, employees have to hold the company match portion before they are 50! That’s more than ten years away and anything could happen to the company during this awfully long period of time. One exception is that portion can be traded if the employee leaves the company. Fidelity also said the rule is currently under review and changes may be made. But nobody knows when that will happen. For now, my wife has to keep her company stocks for a while. A long, long while.

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A New Twist For Blog Ads

Last week I was searching about Google AdSense and followed a link that brought me to a site called Ontok. Interestingly, they also provide ad services, but in a more integrated way in my opinion.

For Google AdSense, what you need to do to place ad banners or blocks on your website so visitors can see right away. The ad service from Ontok, Ontok Highlighter, does it differently. Instead of placing the ads all over the place on your website, Ontok Highlighter searches your web page and highlights those terms that can be potential targets of advertisers and makes a hyperlink for each word it finds. Ads from Ontok will be displayed in a pop-up window only when hovering over the hyperlink, no click necessary. In this way, no ad is explicitly displayed on your website, which makes the web page look nicer. What attracting me most is that with Ontok, you can put several ad accounts, like from AdSense, Yahoo, and Amazon, together and Ontok will display ads from all of them in one window.

Ontok Highlighter may look like a competitor of AdSense since it’s also content based. If you are worried about violating the AdSense rule, Ontok offers some assurance. According to their website, “We do not compete with Google AdSense or YPN but serve yourAdSense or YPN ad code.”

Let me see how it really works out.

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Amazon Grocery Shopping

When I first heard of Amazon’s grocery department, I wasn’t so sure what they were selling, but definitely not milk and fresh veggies. Those are what I considered as grocery. Last week I received a promotion email from Amazon with a $10 off of $49 or more coupon GROCERY2 for its grocery service. So I decided to give it a try. My daughter also emptied her cheerios box anyway.

When I searched “organic” in the grocery section, I was surprised that more than 1000 results turned out. That’s a huge inventory. Browsing though the search results, I found that most of the organic items are cereals, crackers, and soups. I think this is a good strategy as the local grocery stores are unlikely to have such a large collection. I went through every page of the search results and put two items in my shopping cart: Nature's Path Organic Crackers (8-oz box, pack of 12) for $24.29 and Cascadian Farms Cereal Purely O’s (10-oz box, pack of 6) for $16.14, after the coupon savings (actually these two items were in two separate orders with other items in order to reach the $49 minimum spending for the coupon). My order arrived several days later and my daughter likes the cracker and cereal. To get an idea of my savings, I went to my local ShopRite yesterday and found that the sameNature's Path organic cracker is priced at $4.49 a box and $3.49 for a 12-oz box ofCascadian Farms cereal.

The coupon code is still valid if you also want to do some grocery shopping at Amazon.

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A Little Good Side Effect

When I first inserted my Google AdSense code into the blog template, I just couldn't see any! The Google ad refused to show up no matter where I put it. I suspected that I didn't do it right, I even emailed Google and Blogger about the problem.

Well, it turend out that it's the Adblock extension of my Firefox browser that blocked the ads! If I disable the Adblock, the ads are right in front of me (wow there are sure a lot of ads on almost every website). Today I came cross a discussion of what to do if you accidentally hit your own Google ads, I realized that this actually is a bonus for me. This is no way I can click my own ads.

They are simply not there for me to click!

On the other hand, however, if everybody uses Firefox and installs the extension, is it possible that AdSense will no longer make any sense?

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Upgrade To Quicken 2007

I have been using Quicken to track my investments for a while. After started with Microsoft Money, I switched to Quicken in 2003. Ever since, Quicken has been my favorite (though I also use Excel spreadsheet). Currently, I use Quicken to track investments, bank accounts, credit cards, and loans.

For the 2007 version, the most noticeable change is the interface, a much nicer home window. The startup window now shows the balance of the current month: the income, the expenses, and the remains. The data are extraced from transactions doweloaded from banks and credit cards.

Other improvements over the 2006 version which I used before the upgrade include:

• Better graphical presentation of charts;
• Detailed cashflow information;
• Local business rating with Zipingo.

However, the income and expenses numbers reported by Quicken shall not be taken as they are. I was shocked when I first saw my 5-figure income and expenses. Apparently, Quicken treats any deposit at my banks as income, even those transfered from my other banks. Equally, it reports all withdraws as expenses including those that are actually moved from one bank to another. This way, both the income and expenses are inflated, though the balance is not affected.

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Vanguard To Offer New Dividend Fund

Good news for dividend investors. Morningstar.com reported today that Vangurad will launch Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund in the fourth quarter of this year. The fund, which tracks FTSE High Dividend Yield Index, will also be available in ETF shares. The mutual fund will have an expense ratio of 0.40%.

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Amazon.com Sales Update

Well, after what seemed to be a booming month of August, my sales on Amazon.com run into stallmate in the past week. The last sale was made on August 19th, since then all the remaining seven items still belong to me. I admit that those leftovers are not very attractive, so it didn't and won't really surprise me if none of them finds a buyer. Besides, I didn't find any good deal recently that let me make the buy-and-sell. I guess it will be a while before I can have any significant numbers again.

Since I started selling stuff on Amzon in later June, a total of 19 items (yes, not a lot) were sold. Among them, 11 were books, which is the most profitable block. I also sold 4 wireless routers, one printer, one wireless antenna, one cable kit, and one hard drive enclosure. I made $468 out of the total sales of $684. Not bad for two months.

Because Amazon limits the items can be listed for free (must be those Amazon carries), I don't think I will try to get rid off all the stuff I no longer want to keep. And I still didn't make up my mind about listing on EBay.

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Trim Your Auto Insurance Bill

Got a heavy auto insurance bill? If you can’t change your ZIP code or build a garage for your card, you may find the following tips helpful in reducing your car insurance premiums, according to Kiplinger’s.

• It pays to shop around. I believe this is the rule-of-thumb not just for insurance, but for almost everything you shop. However, I will only use online quote as a screener to get an idea of the price range I may be. Give the insurer a call for a second quote will give you the exact number.
• Buy a safe, reliable car. Yes, the maker and model of your car also have huge impact on your insurance bill. If you buy a low safety rating vehicle that costs a lot to repair, you will see it in your insurance bill. Also, try not to buy those models that are attractive to thefts.
• Set a higher deductible. Don’t settle with $250 or $500 deductibles if you really want to save. I always select $1000 deductibles and found this could be the single most effective ways to cut my insurance bill. Get quotes for $250, $500, and $1000 deductibles and you will see the difference when other selections remain the same. And with higher deductible, you may drive more carefully.
• Buy home and car insurances from one insurer. This way you can enjoy discounts for multiple policies.

Of course, you don't need a comprehensive coverage if your car is only worth several thousands of dollars.

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Experience With Brand Institute

I have signed up with some online survey sites, such as Greenfield Online, SurveySpot, SurveySavvy, Your2Cents, and Brand Institute, for more than a month and my overall experience with them so far was OK. Yes, many times I didn’t qualify for the paid surveys and I passed a lot surveys that only rewarded me with a sweepstake entry. I did manage to get through some survey screeners and completed the offer, though I haven’t seen any payment yet.

What seem to be interesting and confusing are those questionnaires from Brand Institute. I have received a total of four invitations since I joined in early July, yet I didn’t qualify for any of the offers. That’s fine. If I don’t qualify, I don’t qualify. However, what bothers me is how Brand Institute selects the candidate. For example, yesterday I got an email from them with a survey invitation and the usual stuff:

We would like to invite you to participate in a short screener. Participation in this screener is voluntary and those qualified individuals will be invited to participate in a paid online survey immediately.

After I clicked the link in the email, I was brought to the disclosure page:


So the study is about “potential logos for a new product,” at least that's what they said in the disclosure. It’s always good to have an idea of what’s the survey is about before starting it. I agreed and there came the first page of the screener.


What? Why my health has anything to do with my ability to evaluate logos? Actually, this was the second time that a Brand Institute’s survey screener began with a list of diseases. I’m in my 30s and what’s the chance for me to have cancer, HIV, or high blood pressure? The first time when I saw the list (I forgot what the survey was about), I chose None. Guess what? I was disqualified. So this time, maybe I shouldn’t be that healthy. OK, I have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Continue.


Isn’t that amazing? I mean if the survey is about medicine or health care, or anything related to health, I can understand why they need to know if I have certain diseases or not, but this survey is for LOGOS!

Seriously, I have to ask them about the screener, which doesn’t make any sense to me.

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Free Worldwide ATM Access For PNC Bank Customers

Good news for PNC Bank customers. If you use PNC Bank, soon you will be able to get cash from any ATM around the world for free.

MarketWatch reported today that starting September 1st, PNC Bank customers can access ATMs worldwide without paying any fees. The bank will reimburse access fees charged by other banks for getting cash from competitors' ATMs.


While this is definitely a good news for PNC Bank customers, you may find there isn't much too cheer about if you use other banks. According to a recent study by Bankrate.com, the average ATM surcharge is still on the rise, now at $1.60, up 6 cents from the same survey conducted in the fall 2005. And almost every bank now charges fees for cash withdraw if you don't have an account with them. Bankrate estimated that consumers pay nearly $4.2B for ATM withdraws made at banks that they don't have an account with.

In addition to the surcharges, banks also impose fees to their customers for using other bank's ATMs. A bit of good news is such fees have dropped a little bit for the first time since 1998, from $1.37 in Fall 2005 to $1.20 now.

My way of dealing with ATM fees is

1. Only use my bank's ATMs - no fees or surcharges for using my own bank;
2. Always keep about $40 in my pocket - enough to cover small expenses;
3. Charge with credit card whenever possible - for cashbacks and easy book-keeping.

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Free Schick Quattro Titanium Razor

According to Dealsea.com, you can get a free Schick Quattro Titanium Razor by filling out a short form with your name, address, email, DOB, and the razor you are currently using. Nothing complicate for a free razor.

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Free America's Best Colleges Access

Dealsea.com has a deal that gives you a free access to the US News America's Best Colleges 2007 website, sponsored by Chrysler.

To get an access, you first need to provide your name and email address with Chrysler and get a promotion code, then use the promotion code to register with US News. The offer will be valid for the month of August.

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$5 From Bloggingads.com

A couple of weeks ago, I submitted my blog to Bloggingads.com following a link on Getting Out Of Debt. About a week later, they emailed me, saying my blog was proved and I can post their prepared ad on my blog (you can choose to write yourself ad with keywords they provided, but I decided to take the easier route). So I inserted their ad wiht only minor changes and sent them the location. After they verified the placement of the ad, a $5 one-time payment was sent to my Paypal account today.

The first impression to me was good. I got paid within 24 hours after the post was verified and with their prepared ad, I don't have to be creative after all. However, I am wondering if this kind of business can last long. Anyway, that's not for me to worry.

Just enjoy the $5 free money.

Message from the sponsor:

The last thing you need to worry about when prepping for a trade show is whether or not your trade show graphics will attract attention. However, if you order from ExhibitDEAL, you don't have to worry about it. Their in-house designers will be right there to offer their creativity and expertise and help create a trade show display that will give you that much-needed edge over the competition.
Blog post sponsored by Blog for Pay

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$10 Staples Online Shopping Coupon

Take $10 off with a purchase of $100 or more at Staples.com. The email I got says the coupon is not transferable. However, if you want to try it, please write to me. I'll send you the coupon code, which expires on September 1st.

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2006 4-Week T-Bill Rates

Last week's 4-Week T-Bill auction set the latest rate at 5.166%, a slight dip from previous two auctions, but still higher than the rate at EmigrantDirect which pays 5.15% for savings account. So far, we have enjoyed an upward swing of the 4-Week T-Bill rates, up from 4.00% at the beginning of the year to the most recent 5.166%. However, with the Fed interest rate holds steady, I guess the rates of the 4-Week T-Bill may soon be stable.

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Should Water Find A Place In Your Portfolio?

I came cross an article about global water shortage on BBC News today. The main message of the article is that water shortage, which is usually seen as a developing country problem, now posses a threat to both rich and poor countries alike. This reminds me an article I read early this year on MarketWatch on how water is a precious commodity as compared to oil, which everybody believes we will run out of someday. Water, however, seems to be every where and easy to get.

To get an idea of how water as an investment choice may be more appealing than it looks, the article presented some interesting numbers. For example,

• Only about 1% of the water on earth is suitable for consumption.
• U.S. consumed about 408 billion gallons of water per day in 2000. In April 2006, the daily demand of gallons is about 382.2 million gallons.

However, water won't be treated as preciously as oil. When you have a truck load of oil, it represents wealth to you. On the other hand, a tank of water isn't likely to bring you much profit, if any at all. A worldwide shortage of water doesn’t necessarily mean that we will run out of water before we run out of oil. At present time, water isn’t traded as a commodity as oil. To change that, according to the MarketWatch article, we need to see some sort of crisis like the oil embargo in the 70s.

Currently, my water play is the Powershares Water Resources ETF (PHO), which tracks the Palisades Water Index. Year-to-date, PHO has a return of 11.18%, compared to S&P’s 5.59%. PHO, despite its performance, has an expense ratio of 0.67% on top of the commision you pay for trading it through broakers.

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Monthly Expenses Record

I haven’t tracked my expenses for many years (at least eight as I remember). I used to use paper and pen to keep a record of every penny I spent when I was a student with a tight budget. At the end of the month, I knew exactly how much I spent on bread and milk, how much on telephone, and how much on notebooks. Back then, I didn’t have a lot of purchases to make, so the tracking was kind of easy. Later on, after I graduated and started to work, my salary went up, so did the spending. Then one day I realized that I haven’t done any book-keeping or budgeting for a long time. Probably it was because I could keep up with how and on what I spent my money.

Starting this month (August 2006), I picked up my old habit again so I created an Excel template to record the date, item, and amount of every purchase. At least at the beginning, I don’t think keeping a record of how we spent the money will change the way we spend it. What I want is to have a sense of what and how much we buy every month, what are necessities and what are impulse purchases. After several months, it may be possible that I can find somewhere to cut the spending.

Getting it started wasn’t so hard. The problem for me was I just couldn’t remember to enter in the record every time we spent the money! I guess I need some time to get used to it. The good thing is that most of spending happened in the weekend, and I charged with credit cards whenever possible, even it was just a couple of bucks. Let’s see what the grand total is for the first month.

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Cashback Credit Cards

The rumor is out that Citibank will terminate the 5% cashback program of its Dividend Platinum Select Cash Back Rewards credit card (When I checked the Citi’s web site today, I couldn’t even find the Dividend card.) Currently, the card gives 5% cashback on purchases made at gas stations, grocery stores, and supermarkets. Beginning in October, you can only earn 2% with these purchases. Though 2% is still better than most other reward programs that give only 1% cashback, it won’t be as appealing as before.

So what are the alternatives?

Discover Cashback Bonus Card

• 5% on first $1,200 in gas purchases.
• First $1,500 in other purchases earn 0.25% and second $1,500 in other purchases earn 0.50%. Earn 1% on other purchases after $3,000.
• Gas purchases in excess of $1,200 earn at the same rate as other purchases.
• Rewards are redeemable in $20 increments .
• No annual cap on rewards and rewards never expire.
• Rewards doubles when redeems for gift cards.
  

Chase PerfectCard Platinum MasterCard

• 6% Rebate on all gas at any station for the first 90 days account is open.
• 3% Rebate on all gas afterwards.
• 1% Rebate on all other purchases.

Citi Driver's Edge Platinum Select MasterCard

• Earn 6% rebates on purchases at supermarkets, drugstores and gas stations for 12 months; 3% after that.
• Earn 1% rebates on other purchases.
• Earn rebates for mileage.
• Redeem rebates toward the purchase or lease of any new or used vehicle, service, repairs or maintenance performed on vehicle.
• Redeem rebates for gift card.

Citi Professional Cash Card

• Earn 3% cash back on purchases made at restaurants, gas stations, certain office supply merchants, and for auto rental.
• 1% on all other purchases.
• Rewards given as ThankYou points with a limit of 100,000 during any calendar year.
  

American Express Blue Cash

• 5% rebates on supermarket, gasoline and drusgstore purchases and 1.5% rebates on other purchases after $6,500 of spending.
• Before that you earn 1% and 0.5% respectively.
• No annual rebate cap.
• Rebates awarded annually.
  

It seems that Discover Cashback Bonus Card may be a better alternative among other cashback cards out there. For me, I will continue to use my Fidelity Investments 529 College Rewards Card which gives me 2% cashback on all purchases.

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Highlight Of Changes In Pensions

From AP, major changes in the new Pension Bill include:

• Requires employers with defined-benefit plans to make sufficient contributions to meet a 100% funding target and erase funding shortfalls over seven years.
• Forces employers with "at-risk'' plans to make accelerated contributions. Under one scenario, a plan is deemed at-risk if it falls below 70% funded status using assumptions that employees take the most expensive benefits and retire at the earliest possible date.
• Prohibits employers and unions from increasing benefits if a plan is less than 80% funded, unless the benefits are paid for immediately.
• Restricts the use of deferred executive compensation arrangements for employers with severely underfunded pension plans.
• Gives bankrupt airlines with a "hard freeze'' on their plans an additional 10 years to meet funding obligations. Airlines with a "soft freeze'' on their plans would get an extra three years.
• Establishes a simple age discrimination standard for all defined-benefit plans.
• Bars companies from forcing employees to invest any of their own retirement savings contributions in company stock.
• Permits qualified financial companies to offer face-to-face investment advice to help employees manage 401(k) and other retirement options.
• Makes permanent provisions in a 2001 tax cut law that raised annual contribution limits for IRAs.
• Gives taxpayers the option of depositing a portion of their federal tax refund directly into an IRA.
• Lets employers offer automatic enrollment in employer-sponsored defined contribution pension plans such as 401(k)s.
• Allows employers with defined benefit pension plans that are more than 120% funded to use assets to fund retiree health benefits.

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EBay To Raise Fees For Online Stores

According to MarketWatch, starting on August 22, EBay will increase it charges for items sold through online stores in order to make up the revenue shortfalls. This will effectively reverse the fee reduction move EBay made two years ago. EBay hopes the higher fees can boost its growth after reporting a decline of more than 50% in net income in June.

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$35 Gift Check From Bank Of America

if you open a Regular Savings account with a minimum depost of $100 and link it to you BoA checking account before September 24, 2006. For the Regular Savings account

No monthly maintenance fee if you maintain a minimum $300 daily balance or make an automatic monthly transfer of $25 from your checking account.

BoA will send you the gift check within 60 days after opening the new account. Currently, the Regular Savings account has a annual rate of 0.5%, which is nowhere close the rates you will get from, for example, EmigrantDirect or HSBC. However, since the account only needs to remain open for 60 days to qualify for the gift check, this may be a good deal if you already have a checking account and close the savings account after you receive the gift check so you don't lose too much interest that you will otherwise earn from other high rate accounts.

Click here to open a Regular Savings account.

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$20 Bonus From Discover Card

I got a letter from Discover card last week, with a promotional offer of $20 cashback bonus with any purchase before August 31st. The card, which I opened in 1998, has sit in my drawer for a long time and I didn't even active it when I received a replacement card last year. This is definitely a good deal, so I called Discover this morning to active the card.

At the end of the activation process, I asked the CSR if I can get a higher limit on the card without a credit check. The current limit of $1500 was what I got when I opened the account. I told the CSR that the reason I abandoned the card was the low credit limit. After a while, the CSR told me to get a credit limit increase, they have to check my record, which I definitely won't do.

It's good that I only need one purchase to qualify the bonus, that's what I'm gonna do. To get the bonus, however, I have to wait two months before it can show up in my account.

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How Can A Keypad Enhance Security?

I have several accounts that require me to use an online keypad to enter my password to get access to my accounts.

First is this from INGDirect, a small keypad with 10 keys to input 10 numbers and 10 letters. When I first setup my ING account, the password was a 4-digit PIN. Since I haven't update my password after ING adopted the keypad, I am not sure if letters are allowed in the password now. However, by providing a keypad with only 10 letters, ING effectively limits possible password combinations. Is this good for security? I don't know.

Second is this from HSBC if I want to go to the Bank-to-Bank transfer section. It's a bigger keypad with 10 numbers and all 26 letters.

Finally, a huge one from TreasuryDirect that have almost all the input keys you can find on your keyboard.

Well, I have to say that I didn't see any added security values of providing online keypads at all. Everything I can find on these keypads are there on my computer keyboard. However, with my keyboard I can choose some special characters if allowed. I also can put capital letters in my password combination. With the keypad, as comprehensive as the one from TreasuryDirect, I am not sure if I can enter capital letters. Or I still have to use the Caps-Lock key from my keyboard to do that. If that's the case, why bother using the keypad. And can't I just use my Backspace to delete what I entered? I don't feel using the Backspace key to clear the characters one-by-one is too much trouble compared to using the Clear key on the keypad to clear them all at once.

Even worse for ING and HSBC, a smaller keypad means fewer combinations of in passwords. Some websites actually encourage people to use special characters in their passwords. With these two, we simply don't have that choice.

So by providing a keypad to enter the password, are they enhancing the security or limiting it?

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Response From Greenfield

It really surprised me this morning when I opened my mailbox and found the response from Greenfield, lease than 24 hours after I complained about the problem I had. Here's what I learned:

" ... there was some technical problem with the servers. This could have resulted out of heavy user traffic within the survey, or connection/communication issues between servers. At times there are server difficulties beyond ... control."

For those surveys that I was cut off:

" ... unfortunately you would not be able to retake this survey as (only one submission per email address) is our policy. This is to ensure the integrity of the data we collect and to meet our client’s policies and demands regarding the exposure of the material shown in these projects."

And for the future, though I didn't get the assurance that the same won't happen again,

" ... you will have many more opportunities to participate in our upcoming surveys and get rewarded for your efforts and the precious time you share with us."

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Trouble With Greenfield Online

Greenfield online is a company that provides paid online survey and I joined the panel last month. Since then I have been receiving nearly five survey invitations every day and almost all of them only rewarded me with an entry to their sweepstake, which I don't have much interest. Once in a while, they did send a survey that pays cash. However, for these rare opportunities, I always had problems and so far didn't earn any credit, not that I didn't qualify.

For example, when I took today's survey, I passed the screening and went through most of the questions. When I was asked the question "Any people under 17 in your household," I answered and pressed the button to go to the next page. Instead, I got a "Server error/Configuration error" page. I couldn't go forward so I moved backward and re-tried that question. The next screen I got said I already completed the survey. However, when I checked from my account, there was yet another sweepstake entry for me, not the cash prize. Then I tried another survey and the same error appeared and for this survey I even didn't get a chance to go to the third question. For this two surveys, I used with two different broswers, Firefox and Internet Explorer, just to verify that it wasn't my Firefox causing the error. Twice I got the same error message.

Before today, there were also a couple of times that I had the same problem, almost all near the end of the surveys. This makes me wonder if Greenfield online deliberately did this. Otherwise, why didn't they fix the problem? Or is it just me having this problem?

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Oh No ......

Got lots of rebates to track?

I have been using a software called Rebate! Rebate! to track my rebate submissions for a while. It records the item, price paid, rebate amount, submission date, contact information, received amount and date, even the postage paid for rebate submissions. At the end, it shows a summary with my net savings and reminds which rebate is overdue. Actually, I was quite happy with the program until last night. After I entered my item, I was about to close the program when a message popped up, saying there was an error and the program needs to be closed. When I tried to restart the program after the shut down, I got another message and it was pretty: The file is corrupted and cannot be loaded!

Well, what can I say. Though I still have the hard copies, I lost all other information on which rebate I have received and how much. See, there are all kinds of software out there for your needs. But when it comes to reliability, a hard copy always has its value.

And never forget to back up!

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HSBC To Improve Their Login Process, Again

I got a notice today from HSBC though bankmail, saying that soon they will improve the login process at HSBCdirect, again. Somehow, the message disappeared after I clicked it once. When I tried to go back to my bankmail folder to get some details, the message was there any more and that's why I don't have the exact date when this will happen. From my quick glance, I noticed two main items:

• Some reset questions;
• A security key.

Looks like HSBC is following ING and EmigrantDirect in enhancing the online banking security. Before judging whether or not the new security features are necessary, I do hope that the new process won't mean too much troble.

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More T-Bill Purchases

Now I buy $3000 of 4-week Treasury bills every week.

I have been purchasing $2000 of 4-week T-bills weekly since since April after reading a discussion on Morningstar.com about the rate of 4-week T-bill and the rate of online savings account. At that time the two were every close, but since T-bill is exempted from state income taxes, the actual rate of T-bill came out slightly higher.

I set up an automatic purchase every Tuesday when the bill is auctioned and the transactions (withdraw and deposit) are made through my HSBC savings account. Since I started purchasing the bill, I only checked the rates on the TreasuryDirect web site a couple of times, and didn't make any change to my plan. Though banks now are in a heated competition for customers' deposit by raising their savings rates, T-bill never fell behind.

The highest rate for my online savings accounts is from EmigrantDirect, which now pays 5.15% APY after the latest wave of raising interest rates at banks. Tonight when I went to the TreasuryDirect site for the latest rate, I was surprised to find that the rate of 4-week T-bill auctioned on August 10th was 5.227%, higher than what I earn from EmigrantDirect. After the Fed decision on interest rate early this week, it seems that it will be a while before banks start to offer higher interest rates to their customers again. Maybe now it's time to get a little more of the bills.

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End Of 0% Balance Transfer?

I have three Chase credit cards, and since some time last year, I got 0% balance transfer offers from all three cards almost at the same time every month. The terms however are little different from those that came with new cards. Those offers were usually valid only for no longer than half a year and there were always transaction fees from $50 to $75 (maximum). With interesting rate raising, I have taken advantage of these offers twice. The most recent transfers were made in July and the payoff date is December 1st.

However, when I opened the two envelops from Chase, I noticed a slight change of the terms: the usual 0% rate is replaced by a rate of 0.99%, while the higher rate of balance transfer jumped from 3.99% to 4.99%. Of course, there is still a maximum $75 transaction fee. Does this signal the end of 0% balance transfter for existing cards at least at Chase?

Yesterday, I read an article on USAToday.com how recently banks have begun to change terms on balance transfers. Among changes mentioned in the article the most significant one is that the new offers don't have a cap on balance-transfer fees, which usually is 3% of the amount transferred, upto a maximum of $75. Without a cap, a $10,000 balance transfer could cost cardholders $300, making such transfer useless.

For my Chase offers, though there is still a cap of $75 of the transaction fee, I think I will pass this time.

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AMEX Downgrades Its Reward Program

And upgrades fees for some cards.

If you have an AMEX card and have been a happy member of its Membership Rewards program, chances are you are not going to enjoy the double rewards points program any longer.

Recent news reported on CNNMoney.com said that AMEX will eliminate some double rewards points program while raising annual fees on some cards $35 to $125. The reason for the overhaul is to reduce company expenses associated with the rewards program. Details about these changes could come together with the August statement.

Cardholders watch out!

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Amazon Sales Update

In my previous post, I said that I bought a hard drive enclosure kit for $15.99 AR and intended to sell it on Amazon.com.

Last Friday night, two days after I received the kit and put it for sale on Amazon, it was sold for $29.99, the lowest price for the same item listed. After the commission and shipping cost, the kit brought me a profit of $9.35.

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$6 Staples Coupon Give Away

I have a $5 and a $1 Staples coupons that I no longer need. The coupons will expire on August 15th. If you still have some back-to-school shopping to do at the Staples and could use these coupons, please use the like on the right to email me and I will send you the printable files.

P.S.: the coupon is only good for in-store purchase.

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An Unwelcome Byproduct Of The Housing Boom

And it is the rise of property tax.

Today’s New York Times article offered a glimpse on how personal income increases since 2002 were outpaced by the rise of property tax. According to the article, from 2000 to 2004, personal income went up 16 percent nationwide, while property tax soared 26 percent. In the tri-state area (NJ, NY, and CT), property tax grew two to three times faster than the gain in personal income. This, however, was not the case ten years ago during the internet boom of the late ‘90s. From 1995 to 2000, personal income was up 33 percent, topping property tax increases during the same period by 19 percentage points.

As the stock market cooled off in 2001, municipalities throughout the country felt the pressure as revenue from income and sales taxes sharply lowered. For most local governments, property tax, commercial and residential, became the main source to fund the municipal and county governments and the public schools, and the stable period of property tax increases residents experienced in the late ‘90s came to an end. On the other hand, while many people in the tri-state area saw their house values doubled or even tripled in recent years, a steep rise in property tax has become a burden, especially for those who bought their houses at the peak of the real estate boom.

In New Jersey, which already has the nation’s highest property tax rate, situation is even worse. After 2000, the New Jersey’s government employment rate went up twice as faster as the national average, and that in turn dramatically drove up property tax while personal income kept pace with other areas in the nation. According to the Times’ article, in Bergen County, NJ, property tax jumped 26 percent from 2000 to 2004, three times the growth rate of income. The sharpest rise happened in Somerset County, NJ, the county I am living in, where a 41 percent jump in property tax is more than eight times of the income growth rate.

And the solutions?

"Sell my house and move out of New Jersty."

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The Rate Game: What's Your Bet?

It's about 30 minutes away from the latest Fed interest rate decision. With speculations intensified in recently weeks that the Fed may pause this time after the two-year rate-tightening campaig, what's your guess for the Fed's next move? Though the economy seems slowing down, we kept getting conflict reports.

I say we get another 0.25 percentage point this time.

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MSFT Shares Stay With Me, For Now

I received in the mail a notice from Microsoft today regarding their announced share buy back plan. The offered cash price is between $22.50 to $24.75 per share and the offer will expire on August 17, 2006.

Currenly I have 200 Microsoft shares, purchased in November 2004, days before their speical $3 dividend distribution. Since then, the stock was traded betweeen $24 and $28 for more than a year until it took another big hit when the earnings came out short of expections in last April.

I don't plan to surrender my shares in this round of share buy back. Microsoft has pushed back the release of its new operating system to early next year. I will hold on at least to that time to decide what to do with my holdings.

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Loaded More Nortel Shares

I bought another 320 shares of Nortel Network, at $1.99, with some dividend money accumulated in my Scottrade account. This brings the totoal number of shares I owned to 2720. Since early 2002, I have been on and off with NT several times and when I first bought NT in 2002, the shares were traded below one dollar.

Before the addition of these 320 shares, I have seen a loss of nearly 60% of my NT share values. More than four years have past since I first became a NT shareholder and the stock doesn't seem to go any where in the near term, though a slight hope has emerged after the recent alliance with Microsoft.

Though NT was nothing but disappointment for the past couple of years, I plan to hold NT a little longer (at least till the end of this year) to see if there is any improvement of the fundamentals after some steps the company has taken recently.

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Partial Transfer to Vanguard

Well, after a long delay, I finally called Vanguard this morning to check out the possibility of transfering my Roth IRA assets currently at Scottrade to Vanguard. I currently have a total of five funds in my portfolio and four of them are Vanguard funds: VTSMX, VWELX, VGTSX, and VIPSX. The only exception is BRSIX, which I owned since 2003. With scottrade, I have to pay $2 for each pre-scheduled transaction.

I didn't expect any problem to move those Vanguard funds to Vanguard, so my concern was on BRSIX. Before I made the call, I quickly broswed Vanguard website, but didn't find the information I wanted. So once I got connected to a Vanguard CSR, I went straightly to the question: How much fees I have to pay to purchase this fund through Vanguard.

Bad news: The fees Vanguard charges for every transaction of this fund is $35!

So it doesn't make any sense to transfer my entire account to Vanguard due to the high transaction fees Vanguard charges for non-Vanguard funds. The good news is I am able to transfer partial assest to Vangurad. Before I can find a better place to hold BRSIX, it will remain with Scottrade. For the other four Vanguard funds, moving them to Vanguard can eliminate the 2% fee I am paying.

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Enhanced Login: Is It Really Necessary?

Think you have enough online passwords to remember? How about adding a couple of more questions each you try to access your account?

Recently, there is a wave to improve securities at several financial institutions by adopting the so-call “enhanced login process.” For the past month, among various accounts I own, I have seen HSBC Direct, ING Direct, and EmigrantDirect followed one another to change their logins.

For HSBC, there isn’t really any change to my opinion. Before, they have user name and password on the same page. The new login process simply splits the user name and password: I first enter my user name, then a new page comes up where I type in my password. I didn’t see any enhanced security features and I don’t understand how this can prove security as they claimed.

At ING Direct, the new process contains two parts: in the first part, I need to kind of “register” your computer by selecting and naming an icon (it actually is a picture) and ING asks me if the computer is the primary computer that I use to access my account (From my knowledge, Bank of America did this early this year). The second part asks me to answer 5 out of 10 questions as an extra layer of protection. The good thing of ING’s new process is that once I registered my computer, those questions won’t show up in the login process unless I try to access my account from another computer. I only need to enter my password.

The biggest hassle came from EmigrantDirect. To setup the new login process, I was also asked to provide 5 out of 10 security question answers. Among them, 5 are standard questions from EmigrantDirect. If I am not happy with these five, I have to come up with different ones. Once this the setup is done, I start to login by first typing in my user name. Then in the new page, I not only have to give my password, but also answer 2 out of those 5 security questions! Even worst, my answers are shown right on the screen!

For me, these enhanced features didn’t really make me feel safer about my accounts. Rather, I saw some of them as unnecessary. Getting access to my own accounts shouldn’t become a headache. I'd rather take precautionary steps, such as use a firewall, install anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and clean-up my computer regularly, than being asked a bounch of questions.

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Save Now, Girls!

I came cross an article on SmartMoney.com yesterday titled “The Girl’s Guide to Retirement,” and there are some interesting numbers in the article that caught my attention.

Everybody knows women tend to live longer than men (on average five years longer), yet when it comes to retirement expectations, women usually underestimate the amount they need in order to maintain their pre-retirement life style. For example, according to the article, a recent survey found that nearly 37% of women believe they can live comfortably with only $250K for retirement. On contrast, nearly a quarter of men surveyed said they need at least $500K to a million. What’s more shocking is that 42% of women in the survey said they have less then $10K in all their retirement saving accounts (401K and IRA)!

What to do?

Buy fewer shoes and save more for retirement!

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No Phily Tax Refund

From 2002 to 2005, I have worked in Pennsylvania while keeping my residence in New Jersey. Before 2004, my employer had withheld NJ income tax for me and I didn’t need to pay PA income tax (if there was any PA income tax withhold, I could get it back without any problem). For one year from 2004 to 2005, I worked in Philadelphia and when I filled my 2005 tax returns, I asked for a PA tax refund as it showed in my W-2 that there was Philadelphia tax withhold. Sounds OK? Well, not really as I thought.

I got a notice from PA state revenue office last month and in the notice there are two columns of data: one column is the numbers I provided in my PA tax return, including wages, tax withhold amount, and refund amount I requested, and everything looks OK. The other column, the numbers the revenue office provided, has nothing but zeros.

“Why all zeros? Does it mean I didn’t earn any income and didn’t pay any taxes?”

With these questions, I called the PA revenue office yesterday and was told that indeed I didn’t have any income with the state and there was no state tax withhold, therefore, no refund. When I was directed to my own W-2 form, I realized for the first time that all my tax withhold was for the city of Philadelphia, not the state. No wonder all those zeros.

I then called the Philadelphia tax office and was told that though I am not a Philadelphia resident, I still have to pay Philadelphia local tax at a lower rate and my employer was right to withhold the tax for me and

NO REFUND!

I was hoping to invest the refund money. Now I guess I have to live with the fact. But, did I include the Phily local tax when I filled my NJ state tax? And how do I know whether or not the proper amount of tax was withheld?

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What’s In Your Wallet?

Remember the CapitalOne commercial? While CaptialOne is not in my wallet, I do carry a couple of cards:

• American Express True Savings card: It’s associated with my Costco membership and I only use it at Costco, which gives me 1% rebate together with the 2% cashback I get from Costco of being an executive member. I also use this card when dinning out at places AMEX is accepted for 3% rebate.
  
• Citibank Dividend card: I get 5% cashback for shopping at gas stations and grocery stores.
  Cibibank Upromise card: I used to use this card for almost everything to earn 1% cashback which will later be invested in my daughter’s Upromise college saving account. Now I use this card whenever this is a Upromise sign and this is the card I use to shop online as I have registered it at many places. I don’t want to expose too many cards online. I have earned $367.83 so far with this card.
  
• MBNA Fidelity 529 College Reward card: I get 2% back for every dollar I charged with this card and the cashback will be again invested in my daughter’s 529 account at Fidelity. Now this card becomes my every-day-card and I have accumulated $65 of cashback since March.
  
• Bank of America Check card: I only it to get cash from the bank’s ATMs. I don’t carry much cash in my pocket and use credit cards to pay for almost everything. If credit cards are acceptable, why pay by cash? I get cashback and it’s easy to track my spending. I pay my cards in full every month and have never been late, so I am not worried about late-fee or financial charges.

I have copied all these cards, front and back, in case I lose my wallet.

In addition, I also have driver license, insurance card, AAA membership card, Costco membership card, and some grocery store discount cards.

I guess I should pay some emergency contact numbers in my wallet if anything happens to me.

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Good Day On Amazon.com

Orders just kept coming in.

Today alone three items I listed on Amazon.com were sold, bringing in a profit of $110.00. All of them are books I no longer need. So far I have sold 11 items on Amazon and there are still 13 up for sale. Looks like I may need to find some new stuff to sell soon.

Actually, all my five orders in the past week came from books. From these sales, I noticed a trend: as the fall semester is about to begin, there are strong demands for college textbooks.

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