Money Matters

Saturday, September 30, 2006

EmigrantDirect Lowers Its Rate To 5.05%

Last night when I logged into my EmigrantDirect account, the savings rate was still at 5.15%, the same as the past four months. However, when I checked again this morning, the rate dropped to 5.05%, matching the offer from HSBC.

Though the rate is not attractive as it used to be, it's still one of the highest rates out there with low minimum balance requirement. There are other banks offering higher rates, but they all require a minimum balance from $5000 to $25000, which is too high to justify the 20 basis points higher rate.

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Thursday, September 28, 2006

My First Payment From PayPerPost

I started to take the paid-to-blog opportunities provided by PayPerPost last month. Yesterday, I received my first payment via Paypal from PPP for an entry I wrote a month ago. Yes! Actually, at the beginning, I was a little skeptical about PPP. My feeling is much more positive now, however, as I believe it is real and they mean what they said. Though there are dozens of opportunities every day on PPP, I only took those suitable the overall content of my blog. True, you won't get rich by writing a short story, but you can definitely use a couple of more bucks.

If you haven't started yet, go to PayPerPost.com and take a look at their open opportunities. Besides, don't forget to visit their blog, where you can find your fellow bloggers' experience with PPP and see what they have to say about PPP.


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Write A Testimonial And Receive A Gift From Newegg.com

If you're a Newegg.com customer (yes, you have to have an account with them), now you can get a free gift by writing a short testimonial. Here's how to get your gift:
  1. Login to your Newegg account;
  2. Use this link to write your testimonial;
  3. Submit your testimonial.
I wrote my testimonial on Sept. 26th and was notified yesterday that my free gift is on the way, though I don't know what exactly it is.


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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Microsoft Offers Free Domain Name and Web Hosting

Microsoft is offering Office Live Basics for free. What this free service offered includes:

Read more »


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Free McAfee Security Software

Buy.com is currently having some McaFee security software for free. Though the McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007 is not available any more, some other items are still in stock:

Hurry up before they are all gone!


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Wednesday, September 20, 2006

One Stop Shop For Your Financial Needs

Did you ever feel confused and somtimes tired when shopping for financial products? If you run a search on Google, you are going to get thousands of offers. However, unless you already have in your mind what you are looking for, going through these offers one-by-one will become an endless process. Last time when I shopped for my car insurance three years ago, it took me nearly a week to do the research and I felt it would be nice to have an integrated place which give me comprehensive quotes and comparisons . If this is also what you are looking for, maybe Financial One is the place.

Financial One is a one stop shop for your financial needs. It offers a wild range of fiancial produects, from life insurance to mortgages to annuities. At Financial One, you can get instant quotes from more than 140 companies that offers insurance products. Their annuity quotes are updated on a daily basis and they will shop mortgages for you from multiple providers. Next time when you are in the market for life insurance, mortgate, or annuity, give Financial One a try.


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Free Financial Advice Tomorrow

Need help with your retirement plan? How about some professional assistance?

Kiplinger's Personal Finance and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) will hold Kiplinger's Jump-Start Your Retirement Plan Days on Thursday, September 21 (that's tomorrow) and Friday, October 6 (only these two days). Members from NAPFA will be available to answer your questions on retirement planning for free via the toll-free number (888) 919-2345.

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Making Money With AdSense And WordPress




I guess all bloggers out there embeds some kinds of ads in their blogs to make money online while blogging, whether it's Google AdSense, Chitika eMiniMall, or text-link-ads. However, for new blogger who just started blogging and didn't have many regular readers, it probably will take a long time before any meaningful money can be made through blogging. In online advertising, traffic is the key.

If you Google "AdSense", you probably will find tons of websites offer tricks tips for making the best out of AdSense. I recently visited a site called WordPress AdSense System and found it quite informative. At WordPress AdSense System, you can find tips on how to build your blog to be AdSense friendly and how to generate traffics, which are two essential elements of making money using Google AdSense.

Take a look at WordPress AdSense System and maybe you can achieve your goal earlier.

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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

How Do You Like The Idea

of cutting your own hair to save money?

Sounds unbelievable that there are people actually doing that? Apparently there are, but I don't think I will do that.

While saving money is important in our lives, we should also care about our appearances, especially if we are professionals. We don't want to show up at work with a hair cut that makes our colleagues have other thoughts.

Cutting my own? No, not for me.

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Thursday, September 14, 2006

My New Site Is Up And Running

This probably will be my last post on this blog. Now my own site, The Sun's Financial Dairy, is up and running, I will post on the new site from now. Though I haven't ported all the posts on Blogger.com to the new site yet (there is a little problem), everything else was transferred.

So, stop by at my new home and tell me how you think of it!

Happy blogging everybody!


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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

I'm Moving

my blog to its own domain, The Sun's Financial Diary, hosted by BlueHost.com. I just set up the website yesterday and there are a lot of stuff to do and learn before it has the functions and features I want. I am relative new to web development, though I know HTML. So, I guess it will be a while to shape it me.

Registering a domain is easy, but I didn't figure out how to move my blog here to the new domain yet. I am not sure if Blogger provides any kind of service that allows me to transfer the entire contents over to the new domain. It would a tough job if I have to do transfer manully.

Anyway, I am excited about this move and look forward to the challenges ahead.

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Friday, September 08, 2006

Another Buy-And-Sell

Bought another wireless rounter today for $9.98 after $30 MIR. I intended to list it on Amazon (the lowest price on Amazon is $29.95), but could use it as a backup if it stucks in my hands. $9.98 is a good price for a 802.11g router.

I have added any new stuff to my inventory for a while and my little business on Amazon has been in standstill since middle of August, with only 5 items still up for sale (soon some will be delisted as the 60-day free listing period expires). Nothing to be excited about, but I sold more than $700 in the past two months and made $480 with a little effort (packing and trip to the post office).

When I started this in June, I promised my daughter (though shePublish didn't really understand) all the proceeds will go to her ING savings account. Do you think she will be happy once she knows she is $700 richer than two months ago? I know I will.

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Local Gas Price Watch

When I passed the Mobil station, the one I use to fill up the tank, on the way to take my daughter to the babsitter’s home, I notice the price of a gallon of regular has dropped to $2.66. That’s 13 cents lower from ten days ago. Haven’t seen price at this low for a while. Since we spent more than $300 to fill up our cars last month, any decline is welcome.

As the driving season comes to an end and no major damage on the oil facilities so far this year, the gas price could decline even more. However, one uncertainty is the nuclear issue with Iran and what, if any, the UN Security Council will do next if the standoff continues. If sancation is imposed, we probably see price go up again.

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EDU Jumped 39% In First Day Of Trading

Priced at $15, EDU opened at $22 in its first day of trading on Thursday with more 6 million shares traded. The $15 price is above the initial range of $11 - $13.

Recent Chinese IPO stocks, such as BIDU and GRRF, traded very well in the first several days after listing. However, the frenzy faded rather quickly and shares tumbled. Whether or not EDU will also follow this pattern remains to be seen.

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Thursday, September 07, 2006

Spam Email Dated June 2002

My Yahoo email account indicated that I had a new email, but I just couldn't find anything new after going through the first 50 emails. Where's it?

Well, I eventually found it, but not until I almost reached the end of my Inbox folder. It was an email dated June 3, 2002.

What are they trying to do? Make you take a little bit longer to find and delete it? Or make you feel it's maybe a false alert and let the message stay in your mail box forever?

Today alone, I got two pieces of such junk. The other one was even early, 2001.

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What's Your Nest Egg Score?

Following a link in Flexo’s recent post, I arrived at A.G. Edwards' Nest Egg Score page. I am not how crediable the score is, thought A. G. Edwards claimes that it is "designed to be a comprehensive indicator of how well U.S. households are doing at building personal wealth." Out of curiosity, I took the quiz to see what's my score and how it was compared with the national average of 631. And here's my answers.

1. What is your marital status?
Married

2. What is your age?
35 - 44

3. Do you have any dependent children in your household?
Yes

4. What is your gross annual household income (including investment and Social Security income)?
$100,001 - $250,000

5. How long have you been at your current job?
1 to 5 years

6. Do you participate in a retirement program at work or invest in an IRA?
Yes

7. Approximately what percent of your gross monthly income do you save or invest? (before taxes)
More than 20%

8. In general, will you be able to save or invest more this year than you did last year?
Yes

9. Has your risk tolerance changed in the past three years?
Yes, I'm taking more risk to help build wealth.

10.How many years until you plan to retire?
11 - 20 years

11.Approximately what percent of your monthly take-home pay do you spend? (after taxes)
Less than 80%

12.How much equity do you have in your home?
Between 31% and 50%

13.What is your household net worth?
Based on your estimated assets and debt, select the range below that best represents your household net worth.
$500,001 - $1,000,000

Wow! I have to admit I was surprised when I saw the number. 801! And what does it mean?

When I looked back at those questions, I think that they are quite vague and for some questions, if you are at the edge and can go either way, the score could be a lot different. For example, if I chose my networth to be in the $250,001 - $500,000 range, instead of the $500,001 - $1,000,000 range, my score drops to 775. Though it's still a decent number, we all know the difference between having 1M and 500K.

To be accurate, the ranges have to narrowed. But I guess the test itself doesn't mean to be very accurate. After all, it served as an indicator of how well everybody is building their nest eggs, approximately.

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Do You Have A Hot Job?

Beside being a blogger (if that's what you do to make a living), do you have a hot job? Kiplinger's Personal Finance today runs a list of hot jobs and the defination of "hot" is the job's expected growth rate for a ten year period from 2004 to 2014.

1. Network systems and data communications analyst (54.6%)
Degree:
Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering or information science.
Median salary:
$60,600

2. Physician assistant (49.6%)
Degree:
Bachelor's plus a two-year physician-assistant program. Must pass a licensure exam.
Median salary:
$69,410

3. Computer applications software engineer (48.4%)
Degree:
Bachelor's in computer science or software engineering
Median salary:
$79,930

4. Computer systems software engineer (43%)
Degree:
Bachelor's in computer science, computer information systems or software engineering.
Median salary:
$79,740

5. Network and computer systems administrator (38.4%)
Degree:
Bachelor's, but not necessarily in a computer-related field.
Median salary:
$58,190

6. Database administrator (38.2%)
Degree:
Bachelor's degree in computer science, information science or management information systems. Many employers seek workers with a master's of business administration (MBA).
Median salary:
$60,650

7. Physical therapist (36.7%)
Degree:
Bachelor's and accredited physical therapy educational program. Must pass a licensure exam.
Median salary: $60,180

8. Medical scientist (34.1%)
Degree:
PhD in a biological science
Median salary:
$61,320

9. Occupational therapist (33.6%)
Degree:
Master's required beginning in 2007. Must pass licensure exam.
Median salary:
$54,660

10.
College
instructor (32.2%)
Degree:
Master's required for entry-level jobs. PhD required for tenure-track positions.
Median salary:
$51,800



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If Everybody Uses Firefox

and installs the Adblock extension, will Google AdSense make no sense?


When Adblock is disabled.


When Adblock is enabled. How neat is that!

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Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Aetna Dropped Our Hospital

My wife is three-month pregnant and we went to our hospital this afternoon for a scheduled ultrasound screening. We were excited to have a chance to see the baby again, however, the news we got before the procedure almost took the anticipation away: Starting from Sept. 19th, our hospital will no longer be in Aetna's network!

The news really shocked us as we already scheduled for Amniocentsis later this month and our doctor is only affiliated with this hospital. I don't know what choices we have now with Aetna, but if we have to change doctor and switch hospital, we probably will miss the best window for Amnio. I guess the first thing we can do is to talk with Aetna and explain our situation, especially the schedule Amnio, see if they can at least let us finish the diagnosis. But I have no idea if this will work.

The hospital we are using now is only about 15 minutes from our house and our daughter was born there. It's not a big university hospital, but very quite and nice and we like it a lot. We are hoping for a smooth pregnancy and everything went great till we got this news.

Forced to change hospital and doctor is the least we can expect!

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Monthly Saving/Investing Schedule

Every month, I put some money in our savings and investment accounts and I do it on fixed dates. Yes, I am not trying to time the market, but rather making sure that saving/investing comes first.

Both my wife and I get our paychecks every two weeks, and most of bills (mortgage, credit cards, phones, and utilities) are paid in the first week of the month. After paying off all the bills, additional transfer in the middle of the month may occur depending on how much is left in the checking account at Bank of America. Usually, I keep about $3000 in the check account. Since most of the expenses are predictable, this automated saving/investing schedule has worked very well for us.

  • Saving: On the day we get our salaries, $300 is transferred from the checking account to the EmigrantDirect savings account; additional transfer may be possible in the middle of the month.
  • Mutual fund investing: I dollar-cost-average the minimum required amount (either $100 or $50) into ten of twelve mutual funds on the 5th of the month using the fund's automatic investing plan. I choose to invest into mutual funds early in the month because dividends are usually declared and distributed at the end of the month and fund price may dip after the distribution. I also want to avoid buy-the-dividend.
  • Bonds: I buy $3000 4-week T-Bill every week from the savings account at HSBC. For T-Bill purchase, I don’t have to keep $12,000 in my account as the purchase is made after the matured bill is deposited. In addition, I buy $200 I-bond on the 28th of the month. There is no reason to buy bond earlier in the month as you will get interests of the full even when the purchase is made on the last day.
Saving and investing require discipline. With an automatic plan, saving and investing always come first than spending.

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New Promotion From Discover Card

Time to put your Discorver card in use!

Discover card has a new promotion from October to December for 5% cashback on restaurants and movies (good for both tickets and rentals).

Making the deal more attractive, you can also earn 5% cashback from the following retailers: (both online and in-store):

  • Amazon.com
  • Barnes & Noble
  • Borders
  • Circuit City
  • Crutchfield
  • Napster
  • Waldenbooks
The promotion, however, has a cap of $1000. So the most cashback you can earn is $50 during the promotion period.

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Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Chinese Herbs

I'm no stranger to Chinese herbs, which are the heart of traditional Chinese medicine. For more then 2000 years, Chinese, as well as people in the Far East, have been using more 300 commenly used materials derived from plants, animals, and minerals to treat a wide range of dieases, including cold, flu, digestion problems, joint pain, rheumatoid arthritis, and circulation disorders. Compared with the high cost Western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine is considered as a safe and economical alternative for health care. Chinese Herbs Direct is a place where you can find more information about the history of traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese herbs, formulas, and medicine made from Chinese herbs.


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Weekend Reading: Aspects of Investor Psychology (Part I)

Since we were forced to stay at home because of the storm, I decided to pull out a paper I printed out sometime ago and but didn’t have time to read. The paper, Aspects of Investor Psychology, by D. Kahneman and M. Riepe, is not new (published in 1998 in Journal Portfolio Management), but it offers some insights on the decision-making of investors. Though the target readers of this paper are financial advisors, I think everybody can benefit from what the paper has to offer, not just financial advisors.

The paper begins with a statement that

… financial advisors must be guided by an accurate picture of the cognitive and emotional weaknesses of investors that related to making investment decisions: their occasionally faulty assessment of their own interests and true wishes, the relevant facts that they tend to ignore, the limits of their ability to accept advice and to live with the decisions they make.

As an investor, we tend to make decisions based on intuitions and biased judgments, which many times were proven to be wrong, without a thorough analysis of all the facts and possible consequences before a decision was made. To show how investor’s decision making ability is affected by intuitions, the paper asks a series of questions and provides recommendations for a sound decision.

Here are the questions:

Question 1: What’s your best estimate of the value of the Dow Jones one month from today? Next pick a high value such that you are 99% sure that the Dow Jones a month from today well be lower than that value. Now pick a low value such that you are 99% sure that the Dow Jones a month from today well be higher than that value.

The first question exposes the overconfidence phenomenon in decision making. If you carry out as instructed for the above question, it makes you 98% sure that the Down Jones will be in the ranges you picked one month from today and you have 1% of high surprises (the real value is higher than your high estimate) and 1% of low surprises (the real value is lower than your low estimate). If the Dow Jones value indeed falls inside your estimated range one month from today, you are well-calibrated in your judgments of probability. However, for many people, there are too many surprises. In other words, investors are often overconfident about their abilities to make unbiased judgments.

And recommendations for overconfidence:

  • Keep track of instances of your own overconfidence;
  • Be mindful of your propensity for overconfidence when making statements to clients. Bold statements may help attract clients, but failure to live up to them will come back to haunt the advisor;
  • Make clients aware of the uncertainty involved with investment decisions;
  • Do not let clients project their own overconfidence onto you. If you do, you will create an unreasonably high standard of performance that will lead to short-lived client relationships.

Though the above recommendations are for advisors, they are also applicable to investors, in my opinion.



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Chase 0% Balance Transfer Charges Follow Up

So I called Chase this morning before I came to work about the finance charges associated with the 0% balance transfer I made back in July. The $40.49 charge was under the “Periodic Rate” category and my main questions to the CSR were what is periodic rate and why was I charged for 0% balance transfer. After the conversation, I realized the charge seemed due to my mistake. However, Chase agreed to waive the charge because I had a good history of paying my bill on time before.

Right before I took this balance transfer, I paid off a previous one on July 2nd and transferred $11,000 of the current offer on July 10th. The previous offer had an expiration date on “the first day of the billing cycle that includes July 1, 2006.” I called Chase before the offer expired to get the exact date the balance had to be paid off, and I was told it was the payment due date of July 7th. However, the statement was printed on June 19th, and that made “the first day of the billing cycle that includes July 1, 2006” June 20th, not July 7th, the payment due date as I was told.

Though the issue was resolved with Chase being nice to waive the fee, it reminds me I have to be very clear about my own responsibilities and no to rely too much on what I was told as it’s likely I will get different answers when talking to different people.

The other fee, $1 finance charge of periodic rate, was, however, Chase’s fault. Apparently, Chase treated the $75 balance transfer fee as purchase and charged me for carrying a balance on top of the amount I transferred.

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Monday, September 04, 2006

A Little Celebration Of My Own

I was notified last week that my biography has been included in the 2007 edition of Marquis Who's Who in America and Who's Who in Science and Engineering.

It feels good to be recoginzed.

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Sunday, September 03, 2006

Latest Chinese IPO On Deck -- EDU

New Oriental Education (EDU) will be the latest Chinese stock to be listed on the big board. According to IPOHome.com, EDU will offer 7.5 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at a range of $11-$13 and the stock will start to trade on Wednesday, September 6.

EDU's main business is test preparation. As tens of thousands of Chinese students taking foreign language tests (such as TOEFL and GRE) every year, EDU has enjoyed tremandous growth since it was founded in 1993. I had some personal experience with EDU in the early 1990's when I was preparing to take TOEFL and GRE. At that time, EDU was more like a evening school renting classrooms from local universities to offer test preparation courses. Every classroom was packed with more than two hundreds students and teachers had to use loud speaker so students in the last row could hear them. The condition was tough, but they built a good reputation among Chinese students who want to pursue further education in countries like US, UK, and Australia, with US being the biggest destination. If you go to any university in US and ask a Chinese student about EDU, chances are he/she not only knows it, but also is a student of EDU.


However, like investing in any emerging market, caution has to be excercised when you consider investing in Chinese stocks. Though the 10+% annual GDP growth makes China one of the biggest magnet of capitals, regulatory and accounting issues are always of concerns. And Chinese stocks are more volatile.

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August 2006 Score Card -- Part III: Asset Allocation

Morningstar instant X-ray shows that for our mutual fund portfolio, more than 52% are in US stocks as of August. Another big chunk is foreign stocks, which counts more 38%. The foreign stock part has got a little bigger than what I desire 30%, and the growth mainly came from investments in Dodge & Com International Stock (DODFX), which is the largest holding in the portfolio and has an accumulative gain of 72% since we purchased it three years ago. Some asset allocation suggests 20% in foreign stocks, which is much lower than our current holding. The reason I decide to go with a larger piece of foreign stocks is to catch the repaid growth of developing economies, as well as the steady growth of other meatured markets such as Frence, UK, and Japan.


I sold our only bond mutual fund early this year, but kept the I-Bond and continue to add every month. Now all our bond mutual funds are in tax sheltered accounts.

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August 2006 Score Card -- Part II: Networth

I have already summarized our expenses in August. Now it's the networth's turn to appear on the score card. Not included in the plot are 1) car loan (as well as the values of our cars) and 2) mortgage (as well as the value of our house). The main reason of not including these two items in the networth calculation is that I am not sure the market values of the cars and the house. Adding them to the equation may skew the result and give us a inflated number. Overall, the net change from July is $15,055, or about 4.25%.

The month of August turned out to be a pretty good month in terms of the growth of our networth. We continued to contribute to our retirement accounts (401(k) and Roth IRA), taxable accounts, bonds, and college savings accounts as scheduled. Thanks to a generally good month of stock markets, we have some gains in our investments, as compared to July.

The major part of the credit card debts are balance transfers, which expire in December. Every month I paid a little bit more than the minimum requirements to stay good standing.

Started in August, I boosted our weekly purchase of the 4-Week T-Bill from $2000 to $3000. This contributes to the most increase in the bonds category. In addition, we also make $100 purchase of I-Bonds every month.

We parked our cash at EmigrantDirect, which earns us a 5.15% APY. In addition, we also have a small amount in HSBC, ING, and Virtual Bank. I keep monitor the interests of these banks and switch back and forth among them to get the highest rate. HSBC, which now has a 5.05% APR, is the one that I use to fund the T-Bill purchases and receive deposits from TreasuryDirect once the bills mature.

In our taxable accounts, we have a number of stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs. I dollar-cost-average in all the mutual funds, but not the stocks, at the beginning of the month as most dividend distributions are likely to be at the end of the month.

We have two 529 plans and one Coverdell ESA for our daughter. In addition to the monthly contributions to these three acounts, we also earn cash backs with our Upromise and Fidelity 529 reward credit cards, which are linked to the 529 plans.

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Saturday, September 02, 2006

Your Blog's Value Is $6.35!

It's nice to see that my blog has some values, hehe, though a mere $6.35. I am happy with it anyway.

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VOIP Review Forum

Like what you did before making any purchase, it pays to do some research before you drop your landline phone and switch to a VOIP phone service. With more and more players entering this arena, price is no longer the single factor you should consider. Other features such as caller ID, virtual phone number, even number portability are probably as important as the quality of the sound. If you plan to swith to Vonage VOIP phone, Vonage VOIP Forum may be the place to find Vonage services and product reviews, user discussions and company related news.


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First PineCone Check

It's not a big deal, but I got my first $5 check from PineCone Research yesterday.

I signed up for an account early this month, but didn't hear from them until August 28, an email with the first survey invitation. The survey has an expiration date of September 4, but the check I received was issued on August 28, confirming what I heard that they pay you even before you take the survey.

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BoA Sweetens Its Offer For Savings Account

Bank of America used to offer $35 gift check for opening a regular savings account with $100 minimum deposit. Now if you open an account that is linked to you checking account before October 26, you will receive a $50 gift check instead of the $35 one. The minimum deposit is still $100. See my previous post for details.

Use this link to open the account.

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A New AdSense Community

TrendyFriendy.com is a new revenue sharing community for bloggers. At TrendyFriendy, users can launch journals, post stories and share images. Best of all, users can register their own AdSense IDs (as welll as channel ID) such that ads will be shared in the community. Posts will be rated by users and the higher the rating, the more ad sharing. Give it a try if you want to give your ad revenue a boost.


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It's Holiday Weekend But We Got Nowhere To Go

Though Tropical Rainstorm Ernesto is probably still located some where in Maryland, we already know what it could bring to us in the next 24 hours. According to the forecast, Ernesto is marching north at 10 mph, and we could receive more than 2 inches of rain by this afternoon.

Outside the window now, wind is gusting and rain is pouring. Every parking slot is occupied by a car. People are staying warm and dry.

The last holiday before we have to put our jackets on is ruined and we didn't even have one barbecue this year!


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Friday, September 01, 2006

Chase Charged Me Additional $40.49 For 0% Balance Transfer

And no, this is not the balance transfer fees, which is another $75.

The current balance transfer was made in June and will expire in December. Since I only have the balance transfer in my account, I usually don't check the statement, assuming that as long as I pay the minimum, everything should be fine.

However, when I did read the statement tonight, I notice a $1 charge under the "Finance Charge Due To Periodic Rate."Periodic rate? This is the first time I noticed such a fee and have no idea what it is. So I clicked last month's statement and there it is: a $40.49 finance charge under the same label. This may be the origin of the $1 charged this month. In addition, instead of getting a 0% APR, the statement says:

"Effective Annual Percentage Rate (APR): 0.10%"

where the effective APR "represents your total finance charges - including transaction fees such as cash advance and balance transfer fees." But there is no explaination of Periodic rate and how it is calculated.

I hate to call CSR as they always sound like I am the bad guy who didn't follow the rule or didn't read the fine print (yes, I didn't read the fine print), but I guess I have to give them a call next Tuesday to clear it up.

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Yes! Finally Qualified

I am not really excited by the $2 payout from Brand Institute. After being asked all the diseases four times and failed each time, I am very curious to know how Brand Institute screens their survey candidates. So when I was brought the same screen again today, I decided to be sick, very, very sick.

Have I been diagnosed with Allergies, Asthma/COPD/Breathing Difficulties, Eye Problems/Vision Problems, High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, Migraine headaches, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Obesity, Type II Diabetes, or Urinary Tract Infections? You bet! Have them all!

And guess what? I passed! Actually, I probably should have noticed what kind of people they really want earlier. If you go to their website, the front page shows you two choices, either consumer brand, or health care brand. After you make a selection, a sign up page will appear. I forgot which one I chose when I signed up, so I can’t tell if the sign up pages of these two groups are different or once signed up, the screening questions will be different. But from those questions I have been asked so far and today's survey, I guess I probably went to the health care brand. Anyway, it’s weird they even make such distinction.

Next time, I probably will again make all the selections if asked to see if there is any difference.



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Credit Check Time

And it’s Equifax’s turn.

With the recent amendment to the federal Fair Credit Reporting, getting a free credit report has never been easier. Now everybody is eligible for one free credit report from each of the three credit agencies.

Since 2006, when the free credit reports became available for New Jersey residents, I set up a reminder on January 1st, May 1st, and September 1st, to get a free report. Instead of getting all three reports at once, I request of a copy every four months from one of the agencies. In this way I can continuously monitor my credit throughout the year. Should there be any error, I don’t have to wait for a year to catch it.

Since tons of “free credit report” offers out there, you have to make sure that you get the real stuff you intend to get instead of some commercial products that are not free at all. Don’t try to search

"free credit report"
"free credit score"
"free credit check"
"one free credit report"
"free credit report online"
"free credit monitoring"
"free credit rating"
"free credit history"

If you do, it’s likely you will end up in those dirty hands. The only authorized website for free credit report is AnnualCreditReport.com, which you can find on FTC’s website (on the right, there is Free Annual Credit Reports button).

Enjoy you free credit reports!



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I Hear Donald Trump Speaking Everyday

on my local radio station

“I think we’ve come up something that is going to be spectacular.”

And exactly what he is referring to?

How to become a real estate guru and how to make millions in the real estate market.

Seriously, do you believe what he said? A couple of years ago when he was hot on Apprentice and every body was talking about “You’re fired,” his casino and hotel business went into trouble and almost ended in the bankrupt court. Sure, he made a lot of money, but is this kind of push on the radio really necessary?

There is one thing, however, I agree with him

“Once you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

Success is not defined without passion!



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