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.