Money Matters

2006-11-11T21:03:00.000-05:00

According to DealUniveristy, you can get a free PUR On the Go water bottle by filling out a very short form, including your name, address, email address, month and year of birth, and three multi-selection questions. I just filled out the form and it seems the bottle is still available. The whole process takes about 2 minutes and it says at the end that the bottle will be delivered in 4 to 6 weeks.

For this kind of free stuff, I always print out the confirmation page in PDF format for a record.

Money-Making Idea: Blogging

2006-11-03T17:20:00.000-05:00

Ever since I started blogging, like many fellow bloggers out there, the idea of monetization is always with me. Having tried many different ways (such as AdSense, Text Link, Ontok, PayPerPost, and YPN) to generate some side income while blogging, I found that by far the most successful one is with PayPerPost. No hassle, easy to deal with, and on-time payment. Best of all, there are dozens of opportunities every day, so you can easily find one that fits the general contents of your blog.

To start making money, go to PayPerPost and use my email address thesunsfinancial@gmail.com in the referral field when signing up. Once approved, you can use their referral program to refer your readers to sign up with your own email address.

$10 off $30 Promotion Extended

2006-11-03T17:18:00.000-05:00

Got an email from Buy.com yesterday, saying that the $10 off with an order of $30 or more and Google Checkout has been extended till November 6th.

Here's the 1GB flash drive that you can get for almost free. List price $30.95, price after rebate $15.95, price after Google Checkout $5.95. If you register your Citi card with Google Checkout, you can get another $5 statement credit from Citi. All these combined together will make the cost of a 1GB flash drive at only 95 cents!

Mortgage Refinance Made Easy

2006-10-27T17:44:00.000-04:00

Three years ago, when we bought our currently, we chose a 5-year ARM over fixed rate. The mainly reason was a favorable rate the ARM offered: a percentage point lower than 30-year fixed rate. At that time 5-year seemed far away and interest rates could only go lower. We were wrong on both.

With a little more than one year left on our ARM and interest rates headed nowhere but north, we started to think of refinancing our current mortgage and locking in a good rate before the high rate knicks in. During the research, one of our favorite places to get comprehensive information on mortgages, mortgage refinancing, and mortgage loan is Personal Home Loan & Mortgage, where I can get a instant rate quote, locate a broker in my area, calculate monthly payment for types of mortgages, fill out a quick application, and find useful discussion in their forums. Best of all, the information I provid is protected by SecureTrust which guarantees compliance with FTC regulations.

Personal Home Loan & Mortgage really makes my refinancing process easy.

Free Trade And Dividend Reinvestment From Zecco

2006-10-21T13:40:00.000-04:00

It seems that Zecco not only offers free equity trade for an account with a balance of $2500 or more, but they also have free dividend reinvestment. The following is from Zecco's FAQ section:

Does Zecco Trading allow account holders to automatically reinvest dividends for equities and exchange traded funds?
Yes, dividend reinvestment is a feature that is available to our clients and can be setup during the account opening process. If you would like to add this feature after the account opening process is complete, you must submit the request in writing to our customer service department.

Anyway, now we can be assured that they do offer dividend reinvestment. And the best way to use this service is setting it up when getting a new account.

Vimo Makes Shopping For Healthcare And Health Insurance Easy

2006-10-18T22:51:00.000-04:00

As we entered the last quarter of 2006, many of us will soon face the deadline of renewing the healthcare plan. I am not sure about you, but every year at this time, I had to spend days to go through all the paperwork to find the right plan and right doctor for my entire family, as my employer kept changing healthcare provider almost every year. This years, however, things could be a little easier, not because I get a straightforward plan, but a website Vimo that makes healthcare buying a simple and pleasant experience. At Vimo, I can compare a wide range of health care plans, get fees and ratings for different Health Savings Account providers, search for doctors and dentists in my area, and, best of all, see what other people said about a doctor before making my selection.

If you ever feel confused by your healthcare and health insurance choices, be sure to check out Vimo.com for a second opinion.

Virus Found In iPod

2006-10-18T12:09:00.000-04:00

Reuters reported today that a small number of Apple's iPods shipped last month may carry computer virus:

since September 12, less than 1 percent of Video iPods -- pocket-sized devices that can play music files and video clips - left its contract manufacturer carrying the virus RavMonE.exe, which affects computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

For more information, check Apple's tenical support website.

For Every Successful Website, There's A Reliable Server

2006-10-12T23:14:00.000-04:00

So you got your own website, whether it's your online store or simply a weblog. You work hard to build your content to attact visitors. And you are happy to see tens of thousands visitors coming to your site everyday. Then all of the suddent, it seems taking forever to load your webpage and, sometimes, you can't even log in to update your site.

What happened?

Apparently, your server failed you and can't handle the traffic any more!

The solution to your problem is a new technology from called "clustered failover hosting" developed by Hosting Zoom. This revolutionary hosting technology distribute traffic among multiple servers to reduce network down time. For more information about Hosting Zoom and their services, go to HostingZoom.com and see how they can help you build a reliable, high performance website.

Free iPod Nano From Bank Of America

2006-10-12T23:04:00.000-04:00

n addition to the 1GB Nano, Bank of America has a credit card offer that also include

$50 Statement Credit after qualifying transaction(s)
0% balance transfer for one year

To receive the free iPod, you have to

use your new account within 90 days of the date the account is opened by Bank of America to make any combination of purchase or cash advance transactions (includes balance transfers) totaling at least $2,000.

Since balance transfer is considered as qualified transactions, meeting the $2,000 spending limit shouldn't be a big problem. While the deal looks generally OK, the only catch I found was the balance transfer fees. According to the offer:

Balance Transfers and Cash Advance Checks are subject to transaction fees in the amount of 3% of the transaction (minimum $10).

Get Your Website In 48 Hours

2006-10-12T10:21:00.000-04:00

Yes, in 48 hours, you could have your own website up and running!

For people who have brilliant ideas that they want to market but with limited knowledge about internet, building their own websites pose huge challenges. Often times, the dream of owning their own online business was put off because of the seemingly unsurpassable obstacle of website design.

Now, help is on the way.

WebsitesIn48Hours.com is a website that can help you realize your dream. Specializing in website design, marketing, consultation services, WebsitesIn48Hours.com guarantees your own website in 48 hours, or you get full refund. With as little as $99, you can have a website with up to four pages, five email accounts, 100 Megabytes of Hosting, 300 Megabytes of Bandwidth, and website traffic monitoring system.

Don't let website design stands on the way of owning your website. Go to WebsitesIn48Hours.com and get it done in two days!

30 Free Trades per Month from BoA

2006-10-11T13:43:00.000-04:00

Bank of America is now offering $0 equity trade for customers with $25,000 or more in all asset across BoA deposit accounts, including checking, savings, and CDs.

Offer available with an individual or joint Banc of America Investment Services, Inc. (BAI) Self-Directed Brokerage account. If you have a combined total of $25,000 or more in your deposit accounts at Bank of America N.A., BAI waives its commission fee for as many as 30 online equity trades each month. When you make an online equity trade, BAI determines whether you meet the balance requirement to qualify that trade for the commission fee waiver. BAI adds the average collected balances in your checking and savings accounts as of the prior month to the balances in your CD and FDIC-insured IRA accounts as of the prior business day. If this calculation reflects a combined total of less than $25,000, BAI then makes a second calculation to see if the trade qualifies by adding the balances in your checking, savings, CD and FDIC-insured IRA accounts as of the prior business day. Offer applies only to online equity trades, including stock and exchange traded fund (ETF) trades. Standard commission fees apply when the balance requirement is not met, or when you exceed 30 qualifying trades.

While a minimum opening balance of $10,000 can earn 5.00% APY for a 7-month CD, the rate for money market savings account is only 2.40% APY for a balance of $25,000, which is quite low.

Google Introducing New Ping Service

2006-10-05T23:58:00.000-04:00

Google today introduced its own ping service:

Today we're launching the Google Blog Search Pinging Service, which is a way for individual bloggers and blog platform providers to inform us of content changes. Blogging providers who syndicate RSS/Atom/XML and want to be included in our Blog Search index can now ping us directly.

Click here to manually ping Google and click here to see if Google can find your latest update.

What Is VoIP And Why Is It Popular?

2006-10-04T21:15:00.000-04:00

Simply speaking, Voice of Internet Protocol, commonly known as VoIP, is a technology that can carry voice signal over the Internet rather than traditional telephone lines. Though the technology was originated from a technology developed in the 1970s, it became commercially available only in recent years. Now big players such as Vonage and SunRocket are promoting heavily their products and services.

What attracting people most about VoIP services is cost. Since it utilizes existing infrastructures, the service can be offered at much lower prices than what traditional telephone services could cost, and VoIP phone to VoIP phone calls are largely free. Even though the popularity of VoIP has increased dramatically and more and more people abandoned their landline phones and swithed to VoIP, many people still feel confused not just about the technology itself, but also various features offered by VoIP service providers. To learn more, check out VOIP, where you can find all information you need about the technology.

A New Record For The Dow

2006-10-04T09:35:00.000-04:00

I don't know if there's anybody celebrating, but we had a new record for the Dow at the close, 11,727.34. The old record was 11722.98, set on January 14, 2000 at the peak of the Internet bubble.

They Got Coupons!

2006-10-03T13:15:00.000-04:00

I am a hardcore couponer and love to search through weekend newspapers for coupons that I can use at my local grocery stores. Since I will do the shopping anyway, why not use coupons to keep a couple of more bucks in my pocket? A little bit here and there, the savings add up!

When it comes to online shopping, the idea of e-coupon works even better: no cutting and easy searching. I shopped a lot at Amazon.com and Buy.com, but I never went directly to their sites, the same as I never went to the grocery stores without going through the newspapers first. Instead, I will check places like Coupon Chief for coupons of the online merchants. Best of all, there are also great deals on Coupon Chief that make online shopping even more rewarding. Try Coupon Chief and see how much you can save.

INGDirect Reference Code

2006-10-03T12:28:00.000-04:00

INGDirect isn't the leader in online saving interest rates now as it used to be. With current rate at 4.40%, it's not as attractive as other banks such as HSBC and EmigrantDirect. But if you still want to open and INGDirect account, you can use the reference code CK921/gheaeriz to get $25 bonus if you have a minimum deposit of $250.

To open an INGDirect Orange Savings account, go to ingdirect.com and get rewarded.

Reminder: Free Financial Advice This Friday

2006-10-03T12:26:00.000-04:00

This is just to remind you that Kiplinger's Personal Finance and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) will hold Kiplinger's Jump-Start Your Retirement Plan Days on October 6. Members from NAPFA will be available to answer your questions on retirement planning for free via the toll-free number (888) 919-2345.

A Tool To Boost Your eBay Sales

2006-10-02T22:30:00.000-04:00

Becoming a eBay seller is easy, the difficult part is how to attract buyers to your eBay shop and buy what you're selling. If you are a casual seller who only wants to turn those stuff no longer needed into cash, you may feel overwhelmed by all the details of getting your item listed: find a category, write a description, set a price, etc. Now, there's a great tool that can make listing on eBay as easy as 1, 2, and 3.

List'd Express is a web site that provides easy templates for sellers to build their eBay inventory. It has tools to help sellers select the right keywords for their items, add images to make the description, and put the items into the right directory. Next time before listing your item on eBay, check out List'd Express see how it can boost your sales.

EmigrantDirect Lowers Its Rate To 5.05%

2006-09-30T14:52:00.000-04:00

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.

My First Payment From PayPerPost

2006-09-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

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.

Write A Testimonial And Receive A Gift From Newegg.com

2006-09-28T10:04:00.000-04:00

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:

Login to your Newegg account;
Use this link to write your testimonial;
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.

Microsoft Offers Free Domain Name and Web Hosting

2006-09-26T15:24:00.000-04:00

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

A company domain name
A hosted Web site with 30 MB of storage
Five free e-mail accounts with 2 GB of storage each
10 MB E-mail attachment limit
10 GB/month data transfer (bandwidth)
Basic Web site traffic reports

If you want to take a look, follow this link.

Free McAfee Security Software

2006-09-26T15:22:00.000-04:00

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!

One Stop Shop For Your Financial Needs

2006-09-20T22:06:00.000-04:00

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.

Free Financial Advice Tomorrow

2006-09-20T22:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Making Money With AdSense And WordPress

2006-09-20T00:09:00.000-04:00

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.

How Do You Like The Idea

2006-09-19T23:58:00.000-04:00

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.

My New Site Is Up And Running

2006-09-14T09:58:00.000-04:00

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!

I'm Moving

2006-09-12T10:02:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: General,

Technorati tags:Blog, Web hosting, Weblog

Another Buy-And-Sell

2006-09-08T13:25:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: General, Savings,

Technorati tags:Amazon.com, Savings

Local Gas Price Watch

2006-09-08T13:18:00.001-04:00

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.

Categories: General,

Technorati tags: Gas price, Oil

EDU Jumped 39% In First Day Of Trading

2006-09-08T00:09:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Investing, Stocks,

Technorati tagsInvesting, IPO, Stocks

Spam Email Dated June 2002

2006-09-07T23:21:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: General

Technorati tags: General

What's Your Nest Egg Score?

2006-09-07T17:51:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Finance, Networth, Savings

Technorati tags: Networth, Personal finance, Savings

Do You Have A Hot Job?

2006-09-07T15:51:00.000-04:00

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

Categories: Job

Technorati tags: Education, Job, Salary

If Everybody Uses Firefox

2006-09-07T13:33:00.000-04:00

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

When Adblock is disabled.

When Adblock is enabled. How neat is that!

Categories: Weblog, General,

Technorati tags:AdSense, Advertising, Weblog

Aetna Dropped Our Hospital

2006-09-06T17:22:00.000-04:00

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!

Categories: General,

Technorati tags: Health care

Monthly Saving/Investing Schedule

2006-09-06T13:31:00.000-04:00

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 5^th 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 28^th 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.

Categories: Savings, Investing, Finance,

Technorati tags: Investing, Personal finance, Savings

New Promotion From Discover Card

2006-09-06T11:46:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Credit

Technorati tags: Cashback, Credit cards, Rewards

Chinese Herbs

2006-09-05T23:57:00.000-04:00

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.

Weekend Reading: Aspects of Investor Psychology (Part I)

2006-09-05T17:54:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Investing

Technorati tags: Investing

Chase 0% Balance Transfer Charges Follow Up

2006-09-05T11:34:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Bank, Savings

Technorati tags: Balance transfer, Bank, Savings

A Little Celebration Of My Own

2006-09-04T10:49:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: General

Latest Chinese IPO On Deck -- EDU

2006-09-03T22:21:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Investing, Stocks

Technorati tags: Investing, Stocks

August 2006 Score Card -- Part III: Asset Allocation

2006-09-03T21:24:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Investing, Networth, Finance, Funds
Technorati tags: Asset allocation, Investing, Mutual funds, Stocks

August 2006 Score Card -- Part II: Networth

2006-09-03T14:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Networth, Finance, Investing, Savings,

Technorati tags: Investing, Networth, Personal finance, Savings

Your Blog's Value Is $6.35!

2006-09-02T22:04:00.000-04:00

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

Categories: General

Technorati tags:Weblog

VOIP Review Forum

2006-09-02T21:11:00.000-04:00

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.

First PineCone Check

2006-09-02T20:47:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Survey

Technorati tags: Free Money, Paid Survey, Survey

BoA Sweetens Its Offer For Savings Account

2006-09-02T20:31:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Bank, Savings
Technorati tags: Bank, Checking account, Free Money, Savings account

A New AdSense Community

2006-09-02T13:10:00.000-04:00

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.

It's Holiday Weekend But We Got Nowhere To Go

2006-09-02T12:48:00.000-04:00

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!

Chase Charged Me Additional $40.49 For 0% Balance Transfer

2006-09-01T23:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Bank, Savings, Credit

Technorati tags: Balance transfer, Bank, Credit cards, Savings

Yes! Finally Qualified

2006-09-01T15:06:00.000-04:00

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.

Categories: Survey

Technorati tags: Free money, Paid survey, Survey

Credit Check Time

2006-09-01T14:08:00.000-04:00

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 1^st, May 1^st, and September 1^st, 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!

Categories: Credit,

Technorati tags:
Credit, Credit report

I Hear Donald Trump Speaking Everyday

2006-09-01T09:55:00.000-04:00

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!

Categories: General,

August 2006 Score Card -- Part I: Expenses

2006-08-31T23:56:00.000-04:00

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,

Technorati tags: Networth, Personal finance, Savings

Got First Issue Of Kiplinger's Personal Finance

2006-08-31T22:56:00.000-04:00

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.

Ok, Now It's Official

2006-08-31T20:10:00.000-04:00

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?

New Digital Camera Review Site

2006-08-31T18:12:00.000-04:00

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.

Terrible Translation

2006-08-30T21:32:00.000-04:00

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.

How Do You Shop Online?

2006-08-30T16:46:00.000-04:00

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!

Save Money By Delivering Lay Off Notice Via Email

2006-08-30T14:55:00.000-04:00

"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.”

Brand Institute Survey: There Goes Again

2006-08-30T14:05:00.000-04:00

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

Free Magazine From TradePub

2006-08-30T13:15:00.000-04:00

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.

Did You Notice

2006-08-30T11:52:00.000-04:00

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.

File Backup: How I Do It

2006-08-30T11:07:00.000-04:00

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!

Attention Shoppers, AT&T Is Hacked!

2006-08-29T20:49:00.000-04:00

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.

One Year Sunrocket VOIP Phone Service For $99

2006-08-29T10:09:00.000-04:00

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.

Stop. You Exceeded The Limits!

2006-08-28T21:39:00.000-04:00

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.

No Choice: Have To Keep Company Stocks

2006-08-28T14:31:00.000-04:00

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.

A New Twist For Blog Ads

2006-08-28T13:57:00.000-04:00

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.

Amazon Grocery Shopping

2006-08-28T10:41:00.000-04:00

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.

A Little Good Side Effect

2006-08-26T23:15:00.000-04:00

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?

Upgrade To Quicken 2007

2006-08-26T22:29:00.000-04:00

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.

Vanguard To Offer New Dividend Fund

2006-08-25T22:58:00.000-04:00

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%.

Amazon.com Sales Update

2006-08-25T22:12:00.000-04:00

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.

Trim Your Auto Insurance Bill

2006-08-25T12:28:00.000-04:00

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.

Experience With Brand Institute

2006-08-24T10:03:00.000-04:00

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.

Free Worldwide ATM Access For PNC Bank Customers

2006-08-23T10:19:00.000-04:00

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

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

Free Schick Quattro Titanium Razor

2006-08-23T09:50:00.000-04:00

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.

Free America's Best Colleges Access

2006-08-23T09:38:00.000-04:00

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.

$5 From Bloggingads.com

2006-08-22T14:44:00.000-04:00

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

$10 Staples Online Shopping Coupon

2006-08-22T14:33:00.000-04:00

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.

2006 4-Week T-Bill Rates

2006-08-21T23:05:00.000-04:00

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.

Should Water Find A Place In Your Portfolio?

2006-08-21T16:05:00.000-04:00

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.

Monthly Expenses Record

2006-08-21T15:18:00.000-04:00

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.

Cashback Credit Cards

2006-08-21T12:02:00.000-04:00

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.

Highlight Of Changes In Pensions

2006-08-17T14:13:00.000-04:00

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.

EBay To Raise Fees For Online Stores

2006-08-17T12:53:00.000-04:00

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.

$35 Gift Check From Bank Of America

2006-08-15T23:40:00.000-04:00

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.

$20 Bonus From Discover Card

2006-08-13T17:00:00.000-04:00

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.

How Can A Keypad Enhance Security?

2006-08-13T16:12:00.000-04:00

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?

Response From Greenfield

2006-08-13T12:27:00.000-04:00

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."

Trouble With Greenfield Online

2006-08-13T01:03:00.000-04:00

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?

Oh No ......

2006-08-12T23:53:00.000-04:00

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!

HSBC To Improve Their Login Process, Again

2006-08-12T23:06:00.000-04:00

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.

More T-Bill Purchases

2006-08-11T22:45:00.000-04:00

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.

End Of 0% Balance Transfer?

2006-08-10T23:42:00.000-04:00

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.

AMEX Downgrades Its Reward Program

2006-08-10T15:00:00.000-04:00

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!