American Express Blue Cash Back Credit Card

Here is the reason I use the American Express Blue Cash Back Card.

+No Annual fee
+Up to 5% cashback on everyday purchases and 1.5% on everything else (see details below)
+0% interest on first 12 months of purchases (don't plan on taking advantage of this)
+Earn unlimited rewards
+Purchase Protection
+Extended Warranty

Blue Cash from American Express has 1 percent cash back on everyday purchases until you spend $6,500. After that, your rebate jumps to 5 percent cash back. On other purchases, 0.5 percent cash back goes up to 1.5 percent cash back. There are no cap limits on your purchases over the year. You can only get your cash back once every year and it they will only give you the cash back in the form of statement credit. The nice part is they put the credit on your account automatically after your year of use. No call, no worries.

Don't Forget Your Auto Loan - Refinance?

With all the talk about refinancing don't forget about your car loan. I don't recommend rolling your car loan into home mortgage refinance. The reason is you just agreed to pay interest on a car for the next 30 years while you may keep it for only 5 years. Looking at it another way. Instead of paying of a 4 year car loan and paying $2000 in interest if you roll this into your mortgage you will pay about $6000 in interest over 30 years. So, what do you do about your car loan? Well you refinance it. Most of the time you can refinance your car loan for basically no extra money. Most banks and credit unions will gladly take on your car loan for better terms. Call them up or look on Bankrate to see what the rates are and what your payments would be. If it is worth the effort then refinance.

Find Real Bargains on Tech Items at Techbargains

If you are shopping for technology, like a laptop, GPS, or IPOD, you need to check out Techbargains. It is in a blog format where new deals pop up every couple of minutes. Some deals are available for a very short time and some or available for a little longer. There are 3 ways you can look for deals. You can monitor the blog and look for deals. The second way to use this site is to do a search. You can search what you are looking for and it will give you all the deals associated with your search. The third way to use this site is to set up an alert. It works a lot like the search in that you enter the keywords you are looking for, but the difference here is it will email you any deals that match your criteria. They won't spam you either. One the sides are other useful deals. The list some more popular items on the sides. They have most popular deals on laptops, desktops, monitors, memory, GPSs and other items.

So, if you are looking for any tech gear check out Techbargains.

Christmas Giveways! Two Free Ipods

You can win a Ipod if you go to the Christian Personal Finance website. Be sure to check out this website. It has all kinds of useful information. Click over and look around.

Credit Unions - Better than Banks

I don't have any checking or savings accounts with traditional banks. Everytime I didn they would change the rules of my accounts after about a year. They would make the interest bearing checking account no longer free or raise the minimum amount required to get interest on my savings accounts. Or they did some other piddly thing to tick me off. They would change the rules to their accounts to raise fees to try make a couple of bucks off me. I just got tired of having to keep track of this months new rules and adjusting my usage of their accounts so I wouldn't get hit with the newest fee.
My solution that I have been using for the last 20 years is to use a credit union. Their accounts are always consumer friendly. No minimum on interest checking accounts. No minimum on savings accounts. Good rates and services. The offer online account access, free check images and free online bill payment. I get my car loans through them and they lower the rate 1/2% if you let them take it out of your checking account. That's a win-win since I don't have to write a check and that is where the money was going to come from anyway. And if you have read any of my posts, I like automatic payment methods.
Setup Your Automatic Savings Plans
Fund Your 401K Then Up the Amount
Organize Your Checking Accounts to Better Manage Your Money

I found one credit union through my employer and the other is in the community. I'm sure you can find one easily. Ask a co-worker, your HR department or a neighbor. I won't go back to a bank anytime soon.

ING Direct - A Great Place for your Savings

Everyone should have some savings in cash to meet short term expenses or available in case you lose your job suddenly. The best place to stash your savings is in a online savings account. I use INGdirect. They pay a good interest rate and you can monitor your account easily online. The interest rate is usually about 2% better than any bank savings account and not too far from a CD rate. After you get your account setup you then link your bank or credit union checking accounts to the INGdirect account. You can then easily transfer money back and forth effortlessly. It does take a few days for the transfer to happen but if you plan ahead it's no problem. The other reason to setup the link to your bank or credit union is to setup an automatic savings account. This way you can have $20, $50, $100 transferred every month to this savings account. I just paid off one car loan and got another. The new car loan was about $100 cheaper than the old. So I setup an automatic transfer of $100 every month so that I really save that money and don't blow it somewhere else. If you have read my other posts you know how much I like to setup automatic money items, especially when they increase savings.

Oh, by the way, the INGdirect Orange Savings account is FDIC insured.

Check out my write up Squidoo.

Watch Mortgage Rates - Options If They Go Lower

Interest rates are hovering around 5%, which is a 37 year low. If they drop much more we will be at levels not seen in 50 years or more. This will be an interesting scenario. One that will definitely have to be evaluated.

So, let's think about it. Inflation over the years has averaged about 3.42%. Stocks have averaged about 8%. Five year CD rates have averaged about 4%. US Treasuries have averaged about 5.5% for 20 year notes. Now let's imagine that mortgage rates drop to 4.5%. You can now borrow money for your house that is only about 1% more than the historical inflation rate. In the future years you will paying your mortgage with dollars that are worth less than you paid to borrow them. Or to look at it another way, you could take out $100,000 in equity on your house and put that money in a 20 year US Treasure (in a few years assuming rates return to more normal levels) and pay your mortgage while you earn an additional 1%. Or you could put it in the stock market and you should be able to earn the average 8% over the next 20 years to pay your mortgage and earn 3.5% every year. None of this takes into account the deduction you will receive on your taxes which will lower the effective rate to at least 4% depending on your tax bracket. This could give us an opportunity to acquire capital at rates not seen for quite some time.

Now with this all said, I'm only a few years away from paying off my mortgage and my current plan is to just pay it off. But these historical rates make you think.

Time to Refinance Your Mortgage?

With rates hovering around 5%, which is a 37 year low, it's time to look at where you are with your mortgage. If you have good credit you should be able to qualify easily. These rates are really nice. You need to see where you are in your mortgage. If you are a few years from paying it off then it doesn't usually make sense to refinance. But if you are more than probably 8 years away from paying it off then you should do the math. You should try to refinance your mortgage for a similar or shorter term than you have left on your present mortgage. For example, if you had a 30 year mortgage that you have been paying off for the last 10 years look for a 20 year mortgage or even a 15 year mortgage. If the rate is quite a bit lower than your current rate you might be able to go to 15 years and have basically the same mortgage. You'll pay it off 5 years earlier and save quite a bit in interest. A good place to start to determine if you should refinance is to use Bankrate's refinance calculator. It's the best one I've seen on the web.

I don't recommend adding any other loans to your mortgage unless they are house related. So, if you had a second mortgage or you got a home equity loan to increase the value of your home then I would roll that into your mortgage. I don't recommend adding your car loan or credit card debt to your mortgage. First of all, if you have been reading my blog you know I don't believe you should ever carry a balance on your credit card. You shouldn't add your car loan to your mortgage because you are just going to pay interest on your car for another 20 years instead of 3 or 4 years. That will add up to a lot of interest over the years. You should consider refinancing your car loan if you want to do something about your car. Now if you got yourself into a situation where you do have credit card debt or have other financial problems then you can consider adding it to your refinance amount but you can't, I repeat CAN'T, allow yourself to get back in debt on your credit cards in the future.

Year end Financial Tasks

Before the year ends there are few things to do to close out this year and begin next year. First find your most recent paycheck. Use that to figure out how much you will make, how much was taken out in taxes and how much you invested in your 401K. If you have some money you saved to cover your expenses for the rest of the year, contact your payroll department and have them increase your 401K contribution for the last paycheck of the year. You can change that amount every paycheck if you want. Now take the totals from your paycheck and do a quick calculation on how your taxes may come out. If you didn't contribute enough, contact payroll and have them take out more on that last check so you don't have a big tax bill in April. If you have contributed too much have payroll lower your tax deduction on your last check. No sense in waiting until next year to get your hands on that money. I use Turbotax to calculate my taxes. I usually just take last years version and input this years nunbers to get a rough estimate. Also, you can just use the free online version to do this quick calculation.

Now, think about any other year end tasks, like paying personal property tax to the state or estimated taxes if your self employed. Have you made your charitable contributions? If not, now would be a good time to do it. And since you just did a quick tax calculation would a bigger contribution knock you down a tax bracket. If you are self employed you should have some type of IRA. Make a contribution to that before the year is over. Some of the IRAs require your contribution before the year is up. The website Cashmoneylife has had a whole series of articles on self employed retirement options. I recommend reading them.

Reinvest Your Stock Dividends - Schwab vs Scottrade

I have quite a few stocks that pay dividends. The best way to grow that stock is to reinvest your dividends. Other financial advice sites suggest doing it with your mutual funds. I am suggesting doing it with your stocks too. By reinvesting your dividends your are increasing your stock holdings for free. Assuming the stock you own is worth keeping, what better way to increase your holdings for free. I have accounts at both Schwab and Scottrade. Scottrade doesn't allow dividend reinvestment on individual stocks and Schwab does. Therefore, I keep all my dividend paying stocks in Schwab and reinvest those dividends. Schwab does this for free.

I did this for two main reasons. One, with my Scottrade account I found that the money I received from dividends just went into a money market account. Most of the time the stocks I owned paid a higher yield than the money market so I felt I was leaving money on the table. The second reason I do it is that I can then see the true growth of that stock since the dividends, which are part of the overall return, are reinvested. I get a more accurate picture of the true return of that stock.

Want to Improve Your Finances? Measure Them

One thing I have learned in the business world is if you want to improve something, measure it. Whether its widgets made per hour or agent time spent on the phone. If you measure it, it will improve.

The same goes for your finances. You need to measure your spending, saving, and investing. How do you measure your finances? It's really easy now with the advent of these online money management sites like Quicken, Mint, Wesabe, and Geezeo (See my Online Money Manangement site comparison). They make it really easy. If you do business at the right banks and credit card companies it's a no brainer. They will gather all the data right for you. All you do is setup your accounts and then login to get up-to-date info. It is then a piece of cake to categorize your spending and saving. These services also provide great graphs for see visually where your money is going. If online isn't for you then do it the old fashioned way by righting down where you spend your money. Either way, you have taken the first step to improve your finances.

After you are collecting data, look at the data at least once per month. Determine how much money you are spending for each category. Spending too much on dining out? Make a mental note and adjust your spending. Until you see where your money is really going it is hard to make adjustments. Look at every expense. Can you reduce it or eliminate it? How much do you spend on car or homeowners insurance? Have you got a quote lately? You can probably find a better deal. But until you look at where your money is going you will just keep going down the wrong path. This works for savings too. If your plan is to save $100 month, are you? Do you see your savings account growing each month? It will be easy to see if you monitor your accounts.

Remember, measure your finances to improve them.

Wesabe has a new feature - Spending Targets

Wesabe has added a new feature that I really like. It's called Spending Targets. You can pick up to 5 categories/tags to monitor. After you pick these tags you then put in a target amount that you want to spend or budget for the month. It then shows you how you are doing as the month progresses. I use this to keep track of some of the more variable expenses we have each month like clothing or other non-essential expenses. As I have said in earlier posts I pay all my fixed expenses like utilities from a separate checking account and fund that with direct deposit. I then pay all my variable expenses out of another account. I then just watch my spending on these items to determine whether I will spend less than I make. This is the key! To spend less than you make.

Click here to see my online money management site comparisons

How to Use Credit Cards to Monitor Your Spending

First let's discuss how to use a credit card for your benefit.

1. Find a card that gives you cash back. I recommend American Express Blue and Discover Card.
2. Everytime you use it, realize you will pay that amount when the credit card bill comes
3. Repeat of #3, don't ever carry a balance. Pay your bill in full each month.
4. Take advantage of the online features of your credit card website to track where you spend your money.

I pretty much use my credit card for everything I buy. I never carry a balance from month to month. I watch my balances online so I know how much I've spent and how much I need to pay at the end of the month. I use my cash back to reduce what I owe the credit card company. I use my credit card data to see where I spend my money each month and where I need to cut back on my spending. Dining out creeping up this month? I better cut back and find something at home to eat. If I use cash I tend to lose track of where I spend the money.

Don't even get a credit card if you will do any of the following:

1. Know you won't pay the balance in full every month.
2. You don't realize your spending the equivalent of cash every time you use it.
3. You won't go back and see where you are spending your money and make adjustments to stay within your means.

I repeat. Don't get a credit card if you won't pay it off every month. The first month you can't pay it off, cut it up.

I'm kind of the opposite of most people. If I have cash in my pocket I tend to spend it on silly stuff like frozen cokes and shakes. For some reason, it doesn't make sense for me to use a credit card on this kind of purchases so I won't buy them if I don't have cash. Most people find it hard to spend cash but easy to spend on credit. I fear not being able to cover the credit card bill at the end of the month and tend to cut back on spending.

Fund Your 401K Then Up the Amount

Every financial blog or magazine tells you to fund your 401K. I absolutely agree. Do it now. Do it when you are young. Do it!
Let's assume you listened to this part. Now I'm going to tell you to put in more. More? How? Well, next time you get a raise put some or all of that in your 401K. Let's say you get a $100 a month raise. Act like you didn't get a raise and put the whole $100 in your 401K. You will increase your savings in the 401K plus avoid paying income tax on the extra $100. Even if you can only put a portion in, DO IT!
Put in whatever you can, then raise that amount each year. At least put in enough to get any of your companies matching money. That's the easiest money you will ever make. Do it!
Once you get all the company matching money, then raise it again. Every year you get a raise put part of it towards your 401K until you max it out. Read your companies brochures and see how this money will grow. It's amazing. You need to do this. Social Security won't meet your needs. You need to plan for this on your own. The generations working now don't have the retirement plans our parents did. We are on our own.
After you do all this and build up that retirement money, don't take it out until you retire. Don't tap into this money to buy a house or buy a car. Don't do it! If you have to do this, then you can't afford whatever you are buying. Only take this money out before your retirement if you have pretty much used up every other avenue and you need this money to buy you food.

Save Money by Not Being Able to Get To It

In an earlier writeup I talked about how I use different checking accounts and direct deposit to put my monthly expenses on auto pilot. I also use a similar trick to help me save more money. First I created a savings account at a credit union through work. The credit union is located about 30 miles away from my home and about 20 miles from my work. It is really inconvenient to get to. They tried to offer me a debit card and a credit card so I could have easy access to my cash. I refused to accept one. Sounds like it would be the last thing you would do. The next thing I did was to set up a direct deposit through work to put a small amount of savings in this account every paycheck. I then try to forget I have this money. When I get tempted or desperate for money I might remember that I have this account but then it's difficult to get the money out. I don't like to drive out there. I can't use an ATM. I can't use a credit or debit card to spend it. It's just a hassle. I usually try to find another way to come up with the money or decide I don't really need to spend that money right now. The whole time it's earning a small amount of interest but the total amount keeps building slowly because I don't touch it.

Setting up these automated systems to help you save or spend money wisely is super easy to do. Once you get them started they just take care of themselves. Try it, REALLY!

Online Money Management Sites Compared - Mint, Quicken, Wesabe and Geezeo

I have previously commented on my opinions about Mint, Quicken, and Wesabe. Since then I have tried Geezeo. Above is a table showing the functionality of each service. Click on the image to bring up a bigger, easy to read version. I have listed the features in order of importance to me. As they say, your mileage may vary depending on what you are looking for.

Currently Geezeo has limited functionality as far as graphically showing you how you are doing. They do have a method of getting any account added since they support both an automatic and a manual entry method. They also have community that helps support its users through discussions and common goal sharing. The one annoyance I had with the website is the abundance of adds. I understand they are trying to help pay for the free service but it overwhelms the usefulness.

All in all, I'm still using Wesabe for my money management. It gives me what I want in easy to read graphs and a powerful tagging and reporting capability.

Setup Your Automatic Savings Plans

In an earlier article I talked about how to set up your checking accounts to put your financial life on auto pilot. One of the things I do is automatically have my savings taken out of one of my checking accounts that I put all my monthly fixed expenses. I make my savings become a fixed expense just like my utility bills or mortgage. I pay myself first which is a method that I'm sure you have heard a hundred times. By doing this all automatically it becomes less painful and gets "lost" in all the other expenses. This getting "lost" is good because you tend to forget that you are saving this money.

What should you do with this money. Well just don't let it sit there. Have it moved, of course, automatically to a good savings vehicle. I use INGdirect for my emergency funds and Schwab for my investments. I have these companies automatically move the amount I have identified as savings to my accounts at these sites. The INGdirect.com is a traditional savings account but with a higher interest rate than you will find at your bank or credit union. With the money going to Schwab I have that invested in a mutual fund for my kid's college funds. You don't need a lot of money to get started at either of these sites. Getting started with either is easy.

Again, set this all up automatically and it is just easier. Before you know it you have a nice stash.

Organize Your Checking Accounts to Better Manage Your Money

Here is how I organize my checking accounts to separate my fixed expenses and my discretionary expenses. I have 2 checking accounts, one I'll call the Fixed Checking account and one I'll call the Variable Checking account. I then setup certain bills to be automatically paid out of my Fixed Checking account. I hate to write checks and since these expenses are pretty much non-negotiable I have them take out the money automatically. In the Fixed Checking account I pay expenses like the mortgage, electric bill, gas bill, telephone bill, car loan payment, etc. I put all the utilities on budget billing so the amount is basically the same all year. I also add one important thing to this account. I also add to the Fixed Checking account my savings for each month. I add an expense for my kids college savings and our personal savings. I have my brokerage then take these amounts out each month and invest them automatically. I then add up all these fixed expenses and have my employer, using direct deposit, put an amount in my Fixed Checking account every payday to cover these expenses for the month. I then have the rest of paycheck put in my Variable Checking account. From the Variable Checking account I pay things that are less important and for unpredictable amounts, like credit cards, dance classes for my daughter, vacations, etc. If we don't have the money in the Variable Checking account to cover the expense, we can't afford it.

With this method, I know the basics living expenses and my savings are covered with the money in my Fixed Checking account. I can then just concentrate my time on monitoring the money going out of the Variable Checking account. I don't pay any other bills out of my Fixed Checking account so that I don't get myself in trouble meeting those expenses. You have to monitor your Fixed Checking account every few months to make sure one of the expenses didn't go up or down and adjust your direct deposits accordingly. If one of the expenses would go down, I then add that money to my savings amount each month. This really helps me to keep an eye on my discretionary expenses. Once you get it all setup it's really easy to keep going. Try it!

My Dollar Plan Website

My Dollar Plan is my favorite site for learning ways to save, make, and conserve money. Madison DuPaix made a calculated move to quit her job. It was a bold move but has worked out well for her. Read her story and you'll see that this was a well thought out plan. She is a real numbers person. She has some very ingenious ways to stretch a buck. One thing she does that is not conventional, but effective, is what she calls credit card arbitrage. She looks for credit cards that offer free interest for credit transfers and new purchases. She then puts the money she would have spent in an interest bearing account and pockets the interest. She has a intricate method of tracking all these credit cards and keeps moving them so she never has to pay interest. You need to read her plan to even consider it. Miss one transfer date and you'll pay more in interest to the credit card company than you will make in a savings account. She covers just about any topic from Insurance to IRA's to college savings. I have her on my daily read list. I never miss a post. I have picked up several items that she has written about to save me money or look for a better deal.

Off Topic - Photo Question

This post is off topic, but I had quite a few folks ask about the picture of the dock. I took this picture of my friends dock at his lake house. I then used a software product called Photomatrix to create the dramatic effect. In fact, if you click on the image and look at the full resolution photo you will see the Photomatrix watermark. The watermark is added until you purchase the software. I didn't purchase it because I just didn't get the time to use it to its full extent. Actually, this is pretty much the only thing I did with it. To get a shot like this you need to take three pictures at different exposures. On my Canon XT DSLR Camera I just used the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) setting to take the 3 exposures automatically. You need to put the camera on a tripod or solid surface and you can't move it any between exposures. After you get your three exposures of the same image you open the image in the Photomatrix software. You then go through a combination step and then move some slidders to affect the resulting picture. It can really make for some interesting images. The Photomatrix software is free to download and use. Paying for a license removes the watermark. If you want to learn more about this type of photography do a search on Google for "HDR Photography".

Quicken Online has improved!

Quicken Online has improved their free online offering since I last wrote about it. In my earlier post I compared Mint.com, Quicken Online and Wesabe. I noticed this weekend that Quicken Online has made some changes. It seems to add a few new minor options but the biggest option is they do a calculation of how much money you have available until your next paycheck. They base this on the previous months payments and paydays. It's really pretty accurate. This is a nice feature, but I believe it just encourages spending. By knowing how much you have left to spend by the next paycheck, I look at that like okay I have $50 that I can spend. It should be looked at like I have $50 to save or invest but I don't. It looks ahead and takes into account future repeatable expenses that are coming up before your payday so it should help you not overspend. I think the service is nice but I just look at it wrong. The one thing I can't do that I really rely on is to compare my expense to my earnings for the month. I look at that every month and then determine how much, if any, I can move to savings. I looked all over the web page but couldn't figure out how to get a graph, chart or listing that shows how much I made versus how much I spent. Quicken Online is still the easiest site to get your data imported from your accounts automatically. I set it up the first time and now everytime I login it automatically updates all my accounts without me doing a thing. That is nice.

I am still using Wesabe for the time being. I really like the income versus expenses graph. Wesabe gives you that on the front page. Between that and a little more flexible tagging or categorizing is why I still like Wesabe better. I can get all my accounts updated fairly easily (still not as easy as Quicken). Mint.com still can't upload my credit union data. Until I can do that this site will not work.

Still the winner: Wesabe

Are you cutting back on your Christmas presents this year?

I've been hearing from quite a few people that they are cutting back on Christmas presents this year. This is s from people who haven't lost their jobs either. There seems to be a general mood across the nation of cutting back on all spending. Almost a new thought of "we don't have to have everything". There is no blockbuster item this year like the Wii, or iPhone, so there isn't anything driving the nations desire. But it seems like people are just really disinterested in spending money. There seems to be no fads. This is just weird to me. Let me know what you are thinking and how your Christmas shopping is going to be this year by commenting below.

Dick Davis Digest Newsletter Review

I have subscribed to the Dick Davis Digest newsletter for the last few years. The newsletter is a culmination of all the other newsletters. They get one or two stock selections and write ups from all the different newsletters. They publish these along with all the others. They probably have 20-30 stock recommendations in every newsletter. The newsletter is published every two weeks and is mailed to your home. Their online offerings are pretty slim. The write ups are usually pretty short and concise which coincides with my theory on picking stocks. If you can't explain in about 4 sentences why you own the stock then you probably shouldn't own it. I have made some very good stock purchases over the years based on recommendations from this newsletter. The other advantage of this newsletter is that you start to learn which other newsletters have the best selections or conform to your stock picking methodology. This way you can "try before you buy" the other usually more costly newsletter. I highly recommend this service.